Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter mc-3

by Robert R. McCammon

  At the bottom it was signed, Sirki.

  The letter had been in Mrs. Sutch's safebox, among papers detailing mundane business things such as money paid for delivery agents to carry orders of sausages to Sally Almond's in New York and both the Squire's Inn and the Old Bucket tavern in Philadelphia, as well as-interestingly enough-the Peartree Inn on the Philadelphia Pike at Hoornbeck. The deliverymen, contacted by the decent and hard-nosed constable from Nicholsburg, were simply locals who had been recruited by Mrs. Sutch to do the work, and they were amazed that anyone would have murdered Mrs. Sutch and Noggin and burned the place to the ground. But then again, these were evil times, and God save Nicholsburg.

  Also in the box had been a half-dozen small white cards, identical to the one Matthew had received in the second week of September excepting the fact that his had borne the bloody fingerprint.

  Matters of honor, indeed.

  He had tried to reason this out. The best he could figure was that Mrs. Sutch was given the command by Professor Fell-or whoever this Sirki was-to carry out these preparations. It was likely she gave Noggin-or an unknown someone else?-the card and put him on a packet boat from Philadelphia. Then, depending on the professor's pleasure, time passed while the intended victim was left to squirm. Only in Matthew's case, the professor had decided to resolve the matter of honor by the end of November, this very month, in order to remove a potentially-dangerous distraction.

  Matthew didn't know whether to be pleased or insulted by that. It also irritated his craw that they were laughing about his house.

  He walked south along Broad Street, passing City Hall. Lights showed in the attic windows. The sky was full of sparkling stars, and Matthew wondered if on this crisp and quiet night Zed was not sitting up there, maybe with a blanket draped around him, thinking of nights spent with loved ones under those same celestial banners.

  Lanterns gleamed from wooden posts on the street corners. The constables were out, carrying their green lamps. Matthew saw one coming north further along Broad, the lantern swinging back and forth to check nooks and crannies. Matthew turned to the right onto Stone Street, took from his pocket the key he'd gotten from home, and unlocked the door to Number Seven.

  He fired the tinderbox that sat on a table beside the door, and with its flame touched the wicks of three tapers in a triple-armed candleholder also on the table. He locked the door, picked up the candles and climbed the steep stairs.

  As he reached the top he heard a soft little thump. The ghosts were greeting him, in their own way.

  Passing through the oak-paneled outer room with its cubbyhole-chest and its windows that looked toward the Great Dock, Matthew entered another door that held his and Greathouse's desks. He left the door open and lit four candles in an eight-armed wrought-iron chandelier overhead. The unshuttered windows in this office gave a view of New York to the northwest. The room held three wooden file cabinets and a small fireplace of rough gray and tan stones sure to see much use when the really cold weather began. It was good to be home.

  Matthew sat the triple-candleholder on his desk. Relishing his return, he peered for a while through the windows at the comforting view of the little lamps scattered across the expanse of town. Then he removed his hat and cloak and hung them up, situated himself at his desk, took the letter from Sirki to Sutch out of his pocket, and smoothed it down before him. Opening the top drawer of his desk, he brought out the magnifying glass that was a gift from Katherine Herrald, and studied the handwriting with closer scrutiny.

  A man's hand, he decided. Flowing, yes, but with very little elaboration except for a flourish beneath the name. What kind of name was Sirki? And what was that about returning to the island toward mid-September? Matthew could see where the quill had paused from time to time for another dip of ink. The paper had been twice folded to fit an envelope. It was light brown, not as thick as parchment. He held it up before the candleglow, and there he saw something that made him turn it over and look again.

  He brought from his drawer a pencil and scratched lead over what seemed to be a faint impression on the back of the paper.

  Before him appeared the stylized shape of an octopus, its eight tentacles stretched out wide as if to seize the world.

  It was the impression of the wax stamp that had been used to seal the envelope.

  He heard a quiet noise, almost a sigh.

  Something bit him on the side of his neck.

  A little sting, no more.

  He put his hand there and felt a small object in his flesh. When he pulled it out, he was looking at a wooden dart about three inches long with a smear of yellowish paste on its stinger tip and on the other end a piece of hollowed-out cork.

  A ghost stirred in the corner beside the file cabinets, where the shadows lay thickest.

  This ghost, as it emerged, wore a long black cloak and tricorn and had silky hair the color of dust. He was of indeterminate age, small-boned, pale of skin and weirdly fragile. A long thin scar ran up through his right eyebrow into his hairline, and his eye on that side was a cold milky-white orb. He held a wooden tube, which he now set atop one of the filing cabinets. His black-gloved hand went into his cloak-his movements slow and horribly deliberate-and reappeared with a long, sharp knitting needle that glinted blue in the candlelight.

  Matthew stood up, dropping the dart to the floor. His throat was cold, his neck prickling where the tip had entered.

  "Stay where you are," he said. He was aware that his tongue was starting to freeze.

  Ripley, the young assassin-in-training, advanced as in a nightmare. Obviously he had graduated to using a blowpipe and a dart smeared with frog venom. Matthew recalled with terror what Mrs. Sutch had told Slaughter: " causes the muscles to stiffen and the throat to constrict. Within seconds, the victim cannot move "

  If he had only seconds, he was going to make them count.

  He picked up the candleholder with numbed fingers and hurled it. Not at Ripley, but through the glass of the windows. The crash echoed along Stone Street and made a dog start barking. His only chance, he'd realized, was to bring the nearest constable to his aid. If no one heard the noise, he was dead. And he might well be dead, anyway.

  He retreated. His legs were cold and trembling; everything seemed to be in slow-motion, and he was aware that his heart-when it should be pounding in his chest-was also slowing. When he drew in a breath, his lungs creaked. They felt as if they were filling up with icy water. Even the workings of his mind were running down: Ripley may have shadowed him from the Trot come ahead and picked the lock relocked the door waiting for him in the dark his method of a needle through his eye into the brain for resolution of this matter of

  Matthew picked up Greathouse's chair and held it before him, as he backed toward the wall.

  In the flickering light cast by the candles on Greathouse's desk, Ripley glided forward step after step.

  "Hello?" someone called from the street. "Hello, up there!"

  Matthew opened his mouth to shout for help, but his voice was gone. It came to him to throw the chair at Ripley and take his chances on getting down the steps. As soon as this thought registered in his brain, his hands spasmed. He lost hold of the chair. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees.

  A fist hit the door at the bottom of the stairs. Matthew fell onto his face. He was shivering, his muscles jumping as if the venom had birthed frogs beneath his skin. Still, he tried to push himself across the floor. Within another five seconds both his strength and power of will had abandoned him.

  Ripley stood over Matthew, who lay frozen on his stomach, his eyes open and his mouth gasping.

  "Corbett?" shouted another voice. There came the sound of the doorhandle being worked back and forth.

  Ripley reached down and began to turn Matthew over.

  Something slammed against the door.

  Ripley succeeded in his task. In his prison of ice, Matthew thought he should get his hands up before his eyes. He tried this also, but nothing happened. I'm
drowning, he thought. My God I can't breathe

  Again, something smashed into the door. There came the noise of wood ripping asunder. Matthew felt the floor shake underneath him.

  Ripley grasped a handful of Matthew's hair. Candlelight jumped off the needle's tip as it hovered over the center of Matthew's right eye. Ripley had become a blur, a white shape, truly ghostly. The needle's tip descended, and looked to be burning with blue fire.

  Matthew saw Ripley's head turn.

  A dark shape enveloped the assassin.

  Ripley's mouth opened, and suddenly a huge black fist hit him in the face and his jaw crumpled and teeth and blood flew out. For a second the blurred Ripley gave a hideous rictus of a grin with his ruined mouth, the single good eye wide and staring, the other fish-belly white, and then his face disappeared again beneath the fist. This time Ripley fell out of Matthew's line-of-sight, leaving what Matthew saw to be a streak of spirit image across the air.

  Matthew's lungs hitched. He was gulping breath down, swallowing it from where he lay at the center of an ice-pond.

  "Corbett!" Someone was above him. He couldn't make out the face. "Corbett!"

  "Is he dyin'?" another voice asked. A green lamp floated over Matthew.

  The face went away. There was a silence, during which Matthew continued to gulp small mouthfuls of breath, for it was all he could manage. His heartbeat was slowing slowing

  "Christ!" came a shout. "Zed, pick him up! Peterson, do you know where Dr. Mallory lives? On Nassau Street?"

  "Yes sir, I know."

  "Run there as fast as you can! Tell him we're bringing in a poison victim! Go!"

  Thirty-Four

  "Drink this."

  Matthew recoiled; he couldn't recoil very far, however, for he was swaddled in damp beddings with his arms down by his sides. A cup of steaming liquid was tilted to his lips, which Matthew even in his humid haze kept tightly pressed together.

  "It's just tea. English tea, that is. With honey and a dash of rum. Go ahead, drink it."

  Matthew accepted it, and Jason Mallory held the cup to his mouth until the tea was gone.

  "There," said Dr. Mallory. "Wasn't so bad, was it?"

  Matthew's swollen eyes took in the doctor sitting in a chair beside his bed. On an octagonal table next to the chair was a single candle with a polished tin reflector behind it, and by that light Matthew made out Mallory's face. The rest of the room was shrouded by darkness.

  Matthew felt as if his mind had been shattered like a mirror and pieced together again by a stranger who was not quite sure how the memories fit. Had Rachel Howarth ever stood beautiful and defiant before a mocking throng of Indians in a Seneca longhouse? Had Magistrate Woodward ever nocked an arrow and fired it into the night-black forest? Or Berry ever leaned her head against his shoulder under the stars and wept heartbroken tears? He was all messed up.

  More than that, his bones ached, his very teeth ached, he couldn't have gotten up from this bed or in reality lifted his arms from his sides for eight times eighty pounds, and he had the awful impression of a woman sliding a chamberpot under him and saying, "There you are, now do your business like a good boy."

  He remembered sweating. But he remembered freezing, as well. Then burning up. At some point, had cold water been poured repeatedly over his back? He remembered someone pushing down on his chest, again and again, hard enough to had he wept, like Berry had? And someone saying close to his ear, "Breathe, Matthew! Breathe!"

  Ah, yes. He remembered drinking the tea. Not English tea, certainly. This had been thick, sharp-tasting, and

  Again, Matthew. Drink it, now. You can do it. All down.

  His heart. He remembered how his heart was pounding, as if about to tear itself from his chest and tumble across the floor spewing blood. He was sweating, he was lying in a sodden mass of linens, and

  One more cup, Matthew. Come on, Greathouse, get his mouth open.

  "How are you feeling?" Mallory asked.

  Matthew made a noise between a fart and a whistle.

  "Do you know where you are?"

  Matthew could see nothing but the doctor's face, illuminated by the reflected candle. Mallory was a lean, handsome man who appeared to possess features part angel, in his long, graceful Roman nose and luminous sea-green eyes, and part devil, in his arched, thick dark brown eyebrows and a wide mouth that seemed to be on the constant verge of a cruel burst of laughter. He had a weathered face that spoke of the harsh fire of tropic suns. His hair was dark brown, pulled back and tied into a queue. His chin was square and noble, his demeanor calm, his teeth all in their places. His voice was low and smoky, like the rumble of distant guns.

  "The treatment room in my house," he said, when Matthew didn't respond. "Do you know how long you've been here?"

  "No." Matthew was shocked at the weakness of his own voice. How time flew: one day a young man, the next ready for Paradise.

  "This is your third morning."

  "It's day, then?" But where was the sunlight? Surely there were windows in here.

  "When I last checked the clock, it was just after two. In the morning."

  "A night owl," Matthew rasped.

  "You might give praise for night owls. Owing to a particular night owl named Ashton McCaggers, you were brought promptly to me."

  "I remember " What? A one-eyed ghost, sliding out of the wall? A sting in the side of his neck? Oh, yes. That. His heart was beating hard again, and suddenly he was wet with perspiration. The bed already felt like a sinking boat. "Ripley," Matthew said. "What happened to him?"

  "He is in need of a new face, and currently resides in the prisoners' ward of the King Street hospital. It's unlikely he shall be speaking anytime soon. You might thank McCaggers' slave for that."

  "How did Zed get there?"

  "Well, he knocked the door down, is the short answer. As I understand, the slave was up on the roof of City Hall and saw your light. He relayed this-as he does in some way, I suppose-to his master, who wished to take you a bottle of brandy to toast your return. There was something about hearing glass break. So again, you might give thanks for night owls, both the white and black variety."

  "Why?" Matthew asked.

  "Why what?"

  "A moment." Matthew had to compose the question again, for it had slipped away between thought and lip. "Why was I brought to you? There are other doctors nearer Stone Street."

  "There are," Mallory agreed, "but none of them have travelled as extensively as I have around the world. And none of them know anything about the frog venom on the dart that struck you, or of course how to alleviate its unfortunate effects."

  "How?" Matthew asked.

  "Is this a guessing game?"

  "How did you alleviate?"

  "First of all, I knew what it was-what it must be-due to the blowpipe that Ashton found in your office, and of course from your condition. I spent half a year on an expedition into the jungles of South America, where I witnessed natives regularly hunt with the pipe and dart, and more than once I saw them put even jaguars on the ground. Of course there are many different species of what they call 'poison-dart frogs', some more potent than others. The venom is actually sweat from the skin. A sort of sticky yellowish-white paste. As in the small clay vial that young wretch was carrying in his pocket."

  Matthew thought of the empty space where the blowpipe had been, in Mrs. Sutch's cupboard. His own name had been in the ledger book of victims, but it would not have been crossed out until Ripley had done the deed and reported back.

  "The venom doesn't travel well," Mallory went on, his face daubed yellow by the light. "After a year or so, it loses its full lethal potency. Though it can still seize a man up, so to speak, or at least give him a good scare. The trick is to keep the victim breathing and give him a shock to the heart. Which I did with my tea."

  "Your tea?"

  "Not the English variety. My own recipe, which I hoped would work if indeed the venom was not at its full potency. A tea boiled from feverwort, y
arrow, cayenne pepper, coca leaves, hawthorn and skullcap. You received a very, very strong dosage. Several, in fact. Boiled down to a thickening, I suppose you might call it. The result is that your heart pounds, your lungs pump, and you sweat rivers, but you do banish the impurities, if you live."

  "Ah," Matthew said. "I expect my face got very red, as well?"

  "Beet-red."

  "May I ask you a question?" Matthew slowly eased himself up to a sitting position. His head swam and the room spun, but he made it. "Have you ever given that tea to Princess Lillehorne?"

  "In a much more moderate portion, yes. A very expensive health treatment. Firms the fibers, aligns the humors and is quite beneficial to women's parts. She told me she was having some trouble in that regard. I asked her to keep the treatment to herself, because my supply of coca leaves was limited, but she deemed it wise to tell a friend, who told a "

  "Friend, who told a friend, until there were five women paying for health treatments three times a week?"

  "Yes. And I allowed it because every time I raised my fee, they paid. Only now you've used up the last of my supply."

  "I don't think I want anymore," Matthew said. "But tell me how did Ashton McCaggers know you knew anything about the frog venom?"

  "Ashton and I," said the doctor, "have been meeting regularly on Crown Street for coffee. He's a very interesting and knowledgable young man. Very curious about the world. I've told him about my travels: Italy, Prussia, Hungary, China, Japan and many other places, I'm proud to say. One day I mentioned my exploits in South America, and I told him about the natives and the blowpipes. He'd already read Sir Walter Raleigh's account of his travels on the Orinoco River, and of how the pipes were used, so Ashton recognized what it was when he saw it."

  Matthew nodded, but he was watching the doctor very carefully. Some little thing, just a pittance of a thing, had begun to bother him. "I wonder," Matthew said, "how that young wretch, as you put it, got hold of a blowpipe, a dart and that vial of frog venom. Don't you?"

  "I have wondered about that, yes."