by A. A. Glynn
Dacers was trying to put his thoughts into order. He had just learned that the Dixie Ghosts were staying at the Blue Duck so, probably, they had simply commandeered this empty old shop to use as a front for their operation. A cynical part of his brain told him it was all very well to collect information on his opponents, but it would be of no use if he was at the bottom of the Thames.
The light from the window strengthened and Dacers saw the faces of the three squatting beside him: Tebbutt, looking surly; pugnacious-faced Meakum, a picture of discontent and plainly troubled; and Fortune, with stark malevolence in his glittering eyes and murder in his heart.
Dacers felt an aching stiffness creeping into his body and, for the first time, he discovered that his hands were tied behind his back and he was lying on them. He wondered if his captors were going to kill him there and then, either by shooting or bludgeoning him and then disposing of his corpse. Or would they gag him, attach weights, and throw him into the river while alive?
Neither prospect appealed to him, and caused him to wriggle and attempt to loosen the bonds tightened around his wrists. Fortune noticed his struggles and, with a frosty grin, he snarled: “There’s no point in struggling, Mr. Dacers, you’re tied up pretty firmly, and that’s the way you’ll stay until what’s left of you is found on the riverbed some distant day from now.”
He rose to his feet and his two henchmen followed suit. Fortune nodded curtly to Tebbutt.
“C’mon, you,” he ordered. “We’re going to the Blue Duck to get Josh Tooley’s brougham ready to take Mr. Dacers out to the country where the lovely Thames flows so sweetly. I need you to help with the rig, and you will not touch a bubble of liquor while you’re at the saloon. We have serious business on hand.”
Dacers made another mental note—not only did the Dixie Ghosts lodge under the roof of the Blue Duck, but the hostelry’s landlord was the owner of the carriage they used. Josiah Tooley was evidently very much tied up with the Dixie Ghosts. Then, the chilling thought returned: what was the earthly use of collecting evidence and holding it in his head when he was about to be killed without a chance of using it?
Fortune addressed Meakum: “You stay here, since you’re so stricken by conscience and seem to have no belly for what we’re about to do. You can guard Mr. Dacers. He’s been struggling pretty damned hard to get free of those ropes. Make sure he doesn’t manage it. And be just as sure that Mr. Dacers is going to be disposed of my way no matter how many high-principled objections you make.”
Dacers, lying on the coarse, dusty boards of the floor, had a chance to take in his surroundings now that the light of day, struggling through the grubby curtain, was stronger. It was sparsely fitted out with some oddments of decrepit furniture, which must have been there for decades. There were a few plates, cups and eating utensils, and items of clothing scattered about, suggesting that the trio used this place as a bolthole, situated as it was in a deserted and abandoned region in the midst of the extensive improvement workings. The Dixie Ghosts were lodging at the Blue Duck, but that was probably too public a place for them to spend too much time there in the ordinary course of the day, so this closed-up old shop was an obscure place in which they could hatch their plots.
He kept his eyes half-closed, as if still partially stunned, but, watching through slitted lids, he saw Fortune and Tebbutt putting on their tall hats, preparing to go out. Fortune issued orders to his companion: “We’ll go out by the back way and keep to the alleys. Some of these building people might be hanging around and we don’t want them to get too nosey,” he stipulated. He turned to Meakum, saying curtly: “Keep a tight watch on this fellow until we get the brougham here to drive him out to the country.”
Meakum merely looked at him and glowered darkly while Dacers’ thoughts raced. From what he had just heard, it seemed it was Fortune’s intention to kill him where they were at that moment, then drive his corpse out to the country to dispose of it in the upper waters of the Thames. That way lessened the chances of his bloated remains floating up to the surface of the river in the thickly populated surroundings of the city, as frequently happened, so setting off an inquiry.
Fortune opened the warped old door of the room, which gave a harsh protesting creak and he and Tebbutt left.
Sam Meakum sat on an unsafe-looking old chair and waited until he heard the slam of the shop’s rear door sounding from below. Then, deliberately, he stood up, slipped a hand inside his waistcoat and produced a long, broad-bladed Bowie knife. The sight of it brought an icy whirligig swirling in Dacers’ innards, as he remembered the ugly knife used by the swell mobsman, Dandy Jem, and the injury he suffered when he assisted Twells in arresting Jem.
Frowning, with his mouth tightened into a grim line of determination and gripping the knife purposefully, Meakum advanced on the helplessly bound Dacers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PURSUIT
Sam Meakum crouched over Dacers with the knife in his hand. Dacers, lying on his back with his hands tightly bound under him, held his breath as he saw the uncertain light put a sheen on the broad blade which, in its design, seemed to reflect the crudity and savagery of the American frontier where it was devised. He saw beads of perspiration on Meakum’s fleshy face and heard his gasping, anxious breathing. He showed all the signs of a man in a hurry.
“Turn over!” barked Meakum. “C’mon, quick, turn over!”
Dacers, stiff through lying in such an unnatural position for so long, wriggled and made slow work of turning his body over and Meakum urged again in a voice edged with desperate urgency: “C’mon, turn over, damn you. I want to cut those ropes!”
Bewildered, Dacers tried to find an answer but, with his face against the filthy boards of the floor, he could only manage an incoherent gurgle.
He felt Meakum grab his hands in his own big hands, then the knife began to slice into the ropes and he felt them slackening. Blood began to circulate in his aching hands and wrists again.
“I’m getting the hell out,” said Meakum with the same breathless suggestion of panic in his voice. “I ain’t going to be a party to killing you. I’m running for it before those two get back here—and you do the same, damn quick. Don’t underestimate Fortune.”
“What the—”
“No questions. I haven’t time. Nor have you. I’m skedaddling, getting away from Fortune and that half-crazy drunk, Cal Tebbutt, who thinks he can fool the Limey quality by borrowing the name of Virginia quality and can’t see that Fortune’s just using him. I’m sick of the whole blamed fool game, and I’m damned if I’ll stoop to murder and finish at the end of a rope. C’mon, quick, on your feet!”
Dacers, with his hands free, was hauled up to a standing position by Meakum.
And he realised that the pugnacious, solidly-built man was quivering like a jelly, obviously consumed by fear and in a desperate hurry to get away.
Questions crowded into Dacer’s mind. He wanted to ask about the scheme the three were operating and about the attack on Theodore Van Trask and much more, but Meakum gave him no opportunity. He shoved Dacers to one side forcefully, grabbed his hat from where he had left it beside the chair he sat in, and crammed it on his head with one hand while stowing the knife under his coat with the other.
He made for the door at speed. He was in a near blind panic at the prospect of the imminent return of his erstwhile partners in the Dixie Ghosts scheme. He turned and said hoarsely: “Get out, quick. Back way’s the quickest, the door’s already open. They’ll bring the coach into the alley, so get out before they show up!”
He pulled the door open with a groan of hinges and fled from the room. Then there came the echoing sound of his feet clattering down the bare boards of a stairway.
Dacers was utterly stunned by this turn of events. He was not to know that Meakum had long been uneasy about the Resurgent South project and his part in it. While numerous former contributors to the Confederate States’ coffers during the war showed an initial interest in the proposal the Dixi
e Ghosts were hawking, second thoughts seemed to have won out. Few followed up with a definite decision to risk more funds on the dream of a reborn Confederacy.
That, at least, was the state of affairs as reported to his two colleagues by Fortune. His insistence that he alone had the right to deal with all paperwork, including such little mail as arrived at the closed-up old shop premises in Blindman’s Yard which served as their front, plus his caginess in giving any detailed account of the progress of the enterprise, forced Meakum to the conviction that Fortune was cheating. He suspected he was diverting whatever money materialised into his personal channels. When pressed for an evaluation of progress, Fortune always took the disarming line that things were bound to be slow at first, but the assured fortune would eventually arrive.
Meakum’s sudden flight left Dacers standing blank-minded for a couple of minutes, rubbing his rope-chafed wrists. Then the chilling import of Meakum’s warning hit him—Fortune and Tebbutt were about to show up with the coach. Their intention was murder: Dacers was to be the victim, and the coach would carry him to the place where his corpse would be disposed of.
The thought of it jarred him into action and he charged through the door, found himself on a decrepit landing from which a flight of unsafe-looking warped wooden stairs descended. A musty smell of rot and decay permeated the innards of the building. Dacers clattered down the stairs, moving as fast as he could, and fearing that the whole structure might collapse under his weight. He reached the bottom and was in a narrow hallway. An open door revealed what had obviously once been a kitchen and a splash of daylight within it indicated the open back door through which, doubtless, Meakum had fled into the rear alley.
Dacers ran for the light and came out of the gloom and the reek of decay into the alley and the light of full day, bright but edged by the icy nip of winter.
He looked around, seeing no sign of Meakum. The mean alley was totally deserted, as was so much of this region where the Bazalgette reconstruction project was in progress. A row of the rear of closed-up shops similar to that from which Dacers had just emerged made up the opposite side of the alley; floored with broken cobbles.
Still half-bewildered and feeling one of the twinges in his wound which Dr McLeish warned him about, Dacers looked about him, wondering which way to run, and decided to go to his left. To go right would be to travel towards the Blue Duck, and it was from that direction that the coach would be coming.
With his heart thumping, Dacers raced for the further end of the alley. He was intent on getting clear of this place, but a portion of his mind was trying to think ahead. Should he now go to Scotland Yard? It was difficult to be sure of what hard evidence there was against the Dixie Ghosts to present to the police. Possibly attempting to obtain money by deception; attempted fraud and conspiracy to murder could be levelled against them, but what was the weight of proof?
Pounding the cobbles of the alley with his legs moving like pistons, his thoughts whirled around another issue. He had to escape the murderous pair. At the same time, he needed to confront Fortune physically. For he now had vital knowledge about the man that should go a long way to exposing the Dixie Ghosts. Implementing it required physical action. He had to physically get his hands on the hunchback.
Abruptly, his striving to sift out his difficulties while running was halted. Turning into the alley directly ahead of him and fully in his path was the brougham carriage with Tebbutt at the reins and, probably, Fortune inside. There was only just room in the narrow alley for the vehicle. Dacers had fully expected it to return by way of the other end of the alley since that was the direction in which the Blue Duck lay. Into his alarmed thoughts came the notion that, outside the approaches to Blindman’s Yard, there must be many obstacles such as partially demolished buildings and stacks of materials because of the improvement works, that Fortune and Tebbutt were forced to make a detour which meant they had to enter the alley at its other end.
Septimus Dacers, with his heart in his mouth, saw the brougham looming in front of him and he felt bottled up in the narrow ribbon of the alley. Tebbutt only had to urge speed out of the horse to send the animal and carriage hurtling forward to knock him over, trample him, and run the wheels over him.
Tebbutt half stood behind the reins and Dacers was now close enough to him to see distinctly his mouth dropping open and his eyes widening with surprise. He yelled in alarm: “Dacers is free!” His voice had the near-hysterical quiver Dacers had noted before.
Almost in mid-stride, when he seemed to be near enough to touch the horse’s nose, Dacers whirled around and began to run back the other way. When in the very act of turning, he saw Fortune’s head protrude out of the carriage window while, over the clop of hoofs and the rumble of iron-rimmed wheels on uneven cobbles, Tebbutt was bawling again: “Dacer’s is free! He’s out!”
Dacers turned his head briefly while he tried to put on a spurt of speed. He seemed to be barely a yard ahead of the pursuing coach and Fortune’s head was out of the window. It looked hardly inches away from the backs of the buildings hemming in his side of the alley. His hand appeared and the wintery morning sunshine touched a gleam to it. A revolver!
Trying to run at a crouch and feeling a jab of pain in his recently healed side, Dacers gritted his teeth, expecting at any second to feel either a bullet slamming into his back, or to be flattened and pulped by a surging weight of horseflesh and carriage.
The revolver barked, sounding like a cannon in the restricted space of the alley. A bullet screamed somewhere near the back of Dacer’s head and ricocheted off one of the walls. Obviously, there was so little space between the window of the coach and the side of the alley racing past Fortune that he could hardly aim straight, but Dacers might not be so lucky if Fortune fired again.
Suddenly, Dacers was at the end of the alley and was aware of a confusion of urgent sounds at his back: the hoarse voice of Tebbutt crying for the horse to stop; the animal’s protests and the grinding of iron on the cobbles, and an incoherent gurgle from Fortune;
He realised that the carriage was being forced to halt and when he burst out of the alley, he saw why. The immediate outside area was littered with the debris of shattered buildings, piles of materials, temporary wooden structures, and idle steam diggers and cranes associated with Joseph Bazalgette’s ambitious Thames improvement work. A coach could not progress through it, which was why it was forced to detour and enter the alley by its further end.
Dacers, panting heavily, with leaden legs and a niggling throb in his wounded side, conjectured that, in carrying out their intended murderous plan, the Dixie Ghosts, after putting him, dead or alive, into the coach, would be forced to the tricky expedient of backing the brougham and horse out of the alley, because there was no room to turn and no other way out.
Abruptly, there came a screeching of wheels on cobblestones, a grinding of metal and the sound of shattering wood, the frightened neighing of a horse and the mingled curses of two men. He threw a quick backward glance at his pursuers and saw that the brougham had swerved and hit one wall of the narrow passageway and was now slanted across the alley, one wheel having broken. An agitated Tebbutt was helping Fortune out of the tilted body of the coach.
Dacers, ebbing strength, burst out of the mouth of the alley, Tebbutt and Fortune, he thought, would be occupied with their difficulties with the horse and coach for some time. They might, however, show themselves at any moment and he was fearful of Fortune’s revolver and Tebbutt’s Derringer. He plunged, half-staggering into the maze of material scattered over a wide area between Blindman’s Yard and the river.
Physically weary through his recent exertions on top of the night’s loss of sleep, he blundered around among piles of stone in the middle of which stood a temporary wooden shed, seemingly locked up. There was no evidence of any of Bazalgette’s workmen in this location. He lurched into the lee of the shed and sank down to sit on the ground and recover his breath. Sheltered there, he could see nothing of the alleyway behind
the old shops of Blindman’s Yard.
He had lost his low-crowned hat and his neddy, though it would hardly be any defence against the firearms carried by Fortune and Cal Tebbutt.
Although he was only a few yards from the opening of the alley from which those two might appear at any moment, tiredness caused him to drop his guard. His eyes closed and he fell into a half-doze. He was jarred back to startled consciousness by the scrape of boots and the sound of voices, which, ominously, had the slow, drawling quality of the Southern American states.
“This fellow could be one of them,” stated one voice.
“No, he’s the Englishman we saw last night,” said a deeper and older voice. “I told you, Irvine, I can spot an Englishman anywhere.”
Dacers became fully awake and found two figures wearing heavy topcoats against the February cold and tall hats were standing over him. One was youngish with a bar of dark moustache, and the other was older with a rich crop of facial whiskers.
“He might be English, Jim, but he could still be one of them,” said the younger man. “We don’t know how many of them there are or what nationalities are involved.”
As Dacers began to rise, the younger man grabbed him and hauled him up, bringing him out from behind the shed. Now, all three were standing within full view of the alley from which Fortune and Tebbutt had not emerged to pursue Dacers.
Holding Dacers by the coat collar, the younger man demanded roughly: “Are you involved with the Resurgent South outfit?”
Dacers mouth dropped open at the sound of the name of the confidence trick, and a question whirled through his mind: who were this pair from America and what was their involvement with the Dixie Ghosts?
He tried to form a reply but before he could do so, Tebbutt and Fortune emerged from the opening of the alley and Fortune had his revolver in his hard. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Dacers standing with the two intruders a few yards away in the midst of the building materials. His eyes became as wide as dollar pieces and took on a more intense glitter than usual. They were focussed on the younger of the two men who was gripping Dacers’ collar: “Lieutenant Bulloch!” he almost gasped the name as if winded by surprise.
