by C. A. Asbrey
“A woman in the law? How ridiculous.” Her slim brows knotted in curiosity. “Where have we met before?”
He shrugged. “Are you staying at the hotel? Maybe we met there?”
Doubt flickered over her face. “Yes. That must be it. The hotel.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am, you appear unusually calm about an armed robbery.”
She nodded. “Unusually? Well, if you’ve ever taught piano to unwilling boys in Glasgow, this is considered easy. You don’t seem too upset, either.”
“He was more scared than we were. Let me see you back to safety.” He proffered an arm. “You shouldn’t be wandering about at night on your own.”
“Nor should you,” she looked up at him seeing only the white smile flash through the shadows under the brim of his black hat. “Your voice is really familiar. Where do I know you from?” She examined him again in the unlit street but the shadows shrouded everything but shapes in the thin moonlight. “What’s your name?”
He glanced around the street seeking inspiration before his gaze came to rest on a shop near the hotel’s illuminated windows. “Baker. Thomas Baker. And yours?”
“Abigail—ah we’re here.” She paused on the bottom step wondering why he didn’t come into the bubble of light.
“I’m waiting for my friend.” He stepped back into the obscurity. “You go on in.”
Her cat-like eyes narrowed and her dark curls melded into the darkness as she tilted her head in question. “If you’re sure.”
“I am. He’s following behind, and he may not have a guardian angel with a spade to protect him.” He tipped the brim of his hat. “Goodnight, Abigail. Thanks again for your help.”
“You’re welcome.”
He watched her turn and disappear into the building, unable to suppress the smile she left behind. Jake caught up to him and Nat knew he’d give him a hard time for leaving the poker game.
Somehow, it was worth it.
♦◊♦
The diminutive man looked at the huge drop from the railway carriage. “Aren’t you going to give me a hand? It’s got to be at least three feet of a drop.”
The outlaw gathered a ball of mucus from the back of his throat. He raised his masking bandana and gobbed a greasy ball of phlegm on a railway sleeper. “So what? You’re a man ain’t ya?”
“My wife would give you a debate on that, but may I point out I’m a homunculus of the species? The distance is rather more to me than it is to you,” the man smiled, “relatively speaking.”
“Huh?”
“I’m little. Restricted in height.”
“You sure are,” the outlaw guffawed. “You could be in a travellin’ show. Has your wife got a beard?”
“My wife’s beard is irrelevant and I’m not that small,” the passenger objected. “I thought The Innocents were supposed to be helpful to people on trains they held up.”
“So?”
“Provide some assistance, be accommodating, become benevolent, act in a way which is efficacious,” he paused, reading the muddled eyes whirling with doubt and rephrased with emphasis. “Be helpful.”
“Aw, right.” The criminal frowned. “You sure speak fancy. Where’re you from?”
“Boston. You held up a train from Boston. Isn’t that a clue?”
“Well, I ain’t liftin’ you like no lady. It ain’t seemly to do that to a man. I’ll put my hands together and you use them as a step.”
The man nodded his graying head. “I don’t want to be lifted like a lady, either. I saw where you put your hands, and there was nothing innocent about it.”
The outlaw scowled. “D’ya want help or not, mister?”
“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?” He stepped into the fingers laced together into a fleshy stirrup and grabbed the outlaw’s shoulders for support until he was low enough to jump without injury. “Thank you, my man. I shall join my compatriots on the grassy knoll.”
“Sheesh,” the criminal watched him beetle away in his dapper coat, the white spats flashing in the caustic winter sun. He turned to his fellow gang member. “He says he’s married? He’s got a face like a frog. I gotta meet me some of them there Eastern women. They’ve gotta be as smart as bait to get involved with the likes of that. It has to be the easiest place in the country to get your leg over.”
“Didn’t he say his wife had a beard?”
The first outlaw shrugged. “I don’t expect to get a perfect one. Ya gotta be more realistic, Carl.”
The dapper little man grabbed onto his immaculate Derby and scuttled over to the rest of the passengers on his short legs, his instincts for self-preservation sending him right up to the trunk of the large pine tree where he had both a vantage point and a barricade from the unfolding robbery.
“They say they’re The Innocents,” a lemon-lipped woman spoke to everyone and no one from the depths of a poke bonnet. “I’ve read about them. They’re real polite. These aren’t. This gang’s gone to the dogs.
Another woman chimed in. “They cuffed my Alfie around the ear, and I don’t even want to talk about what they did when they were helpin’ Doris from the train.”
“You saw that too, ma’am? I most certainly did,” the short man called around the tree.
“So did I,” a woman with a pointed nose in the poke bonnet asserted. “I was disgusted.” She nudged her husband. “Wasn’t I disgusted, Robert?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Mindless thugs with guns. I wish they’d leave me alone with them for five minutes.”
Her husband stared off at the train. “Yes, dear. I wish the same.”
She paused, frowning at him. “I beg your pardon, Robert?”
“Just agreeing with you, dear.”
“Yes, this ain’t the way they operated last time,” the second woman said. “I tell ya, they ain’t gonna keep gettin’ cooperation with the public if they do this. I thought they were better’n this.”
“So did I,” mused the little man. “Quite brutish, aren’t they?”
They stared over to the baggage car where a long metal box lay on the ground and a gaggle of perturbed criminals gathered around in discussion. “Can’t we just drag it away behind us?”
“What, and lay out the best trail a posse ever had to find us? Use your brain, Frank.”
“How about carryin’ it between a couple of horses?”
“It’ll slow us too much. Have you felt the weight of that thing? It’s ’specially weighted to make stealin’ it hard. It took most of us to get the damned thing out here where we could see it.”
“Well, I ain’t got an answer, Sam. Why don’t you come up with an idea instead of shootin’ down everyone else’s ideas? The last time we blew one open, the lock jammed.”
Sam nodded. “I got an idea.” The tall, thin man in a black hat, his face masked by a bandana, barked orders at the guard. “Git the security box open! Quit wastin’ time.”
The railway employee’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t know how to. I’m just here to guard it. It gets opened at the bank, not—”
“Then you’d better learn how to open it, and fast.” A burly outlaw drew his gun.
“But I don’t know how—”
“Frank, the train’ll be late by now. They’ll send out a posse soon.”
The outlaw called Frank tensed. “Git it open.”
“I can’t. You can shout at me all you want. The bank won’t give me the combination for the locks.”
“Well, try!”
The railway guard knelt on the ground, his nervous sweaty hands slipping on the combination and his clumsy fingers fumbling with the delicate mechanism. The burly man’s voice rose an octave along with his weapon. “Well?”
“I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’.”
“Try harder,” yelled Sam.
Frank’s patience was hanging by a thread. “This is takin’ far too long.”
“Why don’t you try it if you think you can do any better?” The guard stood, his own emotions sp
iraling. “I thought The Innocents were real good at crackin’ locks. You claimed to be them when you took this train.”
“Don’t talk back!”
The railway worker kicked the box in frustration. “I can’t get this thing open!” He stood and advanced on the robber, hands spread in appeal. “I’d like to see you do it better.”
Panic flashed over the gunman’s eyes and he stepped back. Frank lifted his gun and fired. The guard’s chest burst open in a grotesque detonation, and he crashed to the ground. The wound sucked and throbbed as the man’s dying, rattling breaths ebbed away. The cries of horror and impotence of the bystanders gave way to the heightened emotions. Angry muttering floated around the outlaws who tensed and drew their guns toward off any revenge attack.
The nervous robbers glanced around, but the passengers had fallen back into shock and they huddled together, herding women and children behind the men; all except the short gray-haired man who peered out from behind the tree. Ragged strains of strangled sobbing cut through the oppressive hush and the aroma of cordite hung in the air.
“What’re you lot starin’ at?” growled Frank. “He was warned.”
“You ain’t The Innocents,” a shocked conductor hurried over to his colleague who lay bleeding out on the ground. He dropped to his knees crouching over in a daze. “Mike? Can you hear me, Mike?”
“It ain’t none of your business who we are. I want the security box opened.”
“He was delaying,” the conductor sobbed in dismay. “The Innocents can open a lock like that. If we’d known you couldn’t do it we’d have done it. We wouldn’t risk our lives for nothing! If you’d just told the truth—”
“Well, get it open and fast, unless you want to be next,” Sam barked.
“I will, I will.” The conductor turned glittering eyes on the gang. “I went to school with him. I went to his wedding.”
The passengers watched the box being opened in silence and the contents loaded into saddlebags with a greedy frenzy until the criminals mounted and rode off toward the trees at the feet of the craggy, mountainous horizon.
Groups of people ventured forth bit by bit, the sounds of praying and crying hanging over the scene like a pall. The little man was last to approach, creeping around the edges of the crowd, watching everything and everybody.
“I need men to help me get his body back on the train and to clear the track,” the conductor called out. “Who’s with me? We need to get moving again.”
The prospect of action galvanized the group into action, but the little man from Boston still hung around on the peripheries, observing and listening while he clutched his Derby in his plump, toy fingers.
A weeping woman approached him. “It’s shocking isn’t it? I think I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
He nodded. “No wonder students of the human condition are so depressed all the time. Those of us who recognize the futility of the human condition are so frequently confronted by the most futile examples of humanity.”
She eyed him with suspicion, a frown playing over her brow. “Yeah. I guess. Are you some kind of preacher?”
The stranger smiled to himself. “An excellent question, madam. I’ve often wondered that myself.”
♦◊♦
Nat scrutinized the newspaper with hungry eyes. “This is bad, Jake. Real bad.”
The fair head nodded in agreement. “They killed someone and put our name all over it. That’s a hangin’ offense right there.” He kicked out at the leg of a chair. “It’s the third robbery in the county where a gang claimed to be us.”
“Folks cooperate because they know they’re treated well by The Innocents. It won’t last if they think we’ll kill. We need to get these bastards, and soon.”
Jake swung into the chair like it was a horse and leaned his chin on the back. “No argument there, but how? My guess is it’s an outfit from another territory. No one knows them. I’ve got nothin’.”
“We know someone who people do talk to and in front of all the time.” Earnest dark eyes rose to meet his uncle’s. “She lives not too far from the robbery, and we’re long overdue for a visit. She has a way of getting people’s guards down.”
“Pearl?” Jake grinned. “When they’re at her place they’ve got everythin’ down.”
♦◊♦
The tainted air swirled with the odor of tobacco and cheap perfume with low salty undertones of human sweat. An excellent pianist turned his opaque blind eyes to the ceiling as his talented fingers flashed over the keys. The blue notes mingled with the heady atmosphere in a room where the drink flowed, flesh rippled, and couples snuck off to curtained-off side rooms for less-than-discreet coupling, and in some cases, tripling. A skeletal man gathered impressive gout of phlegm and fired it at the brass spittoon. He missed the top and watched it slide its greasy way down the side toward the floor. His bony arm reached out and grabbed the wrist of the woman topping up his beer from a jug. “Put it down and c’mere.”
She pulled back, but he held fast. “I’m the maid. I’m not here to do anything but serve drinks and clean up.” She gestured with her head toward the door. “Pearl throws men out if they break the rules.”
“Let ’er go, Sam. Ain’t you got enough to keep you busy?” The man with the dark moustache looked her up and down. The stained apron and thick glasses glinting in the light didn’t compete with the milky flesh spilling over the tight-laced corset of the nearby woman toying with a cigar in the most suggestive manner. “We paid good money for high class whores. Quit botherin’ the help.”
The thin man released the maid who melted into the shadows. “Why are you pickin’ at cornbread when we got prime steak?” laughed the dark stranger. “These are fifty-dollar whores. The best. We can’t usually stretch to more’n two or three dollars.” He hunched forward on his chair. “How’re you doin’ today?”
The dark man with the moustache lowered his voice. “How do you do it, Sam? You ain't never bothered when you kill. I keep seeing his face over and over in my head.”
“Pull yourself together, Frank,” Sam hissed. “He was warned what would happen if he didn’t get the security box open. He delayed on purpose. You saw for yourself the other one got it open fast enough after that. It did the job.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Frank drained his glass. “He was my first, though. I keep wonderin’ what would have happened if he hadn’t come at me like that. It don’t bother you at all. How many have you killed?”
“That ain’t somethin’ you ask any man,” Sam snapped, the hollows around his eyes gathering deep shadows. “Git yourself a woman and put your mind on somethin’ else.”
The venal glare pierced the burly man’s confidence, causing him to glance away. “Sure, boss.” He stood, gesturing with his head toward the coffee-skinned woman reclining in front of the fire. “C’mon, you. You’ve got fifty dollars to work off.”
The door burst open and Pearl Dubois marched in; a yellow-haired pillar of flesh in pinched-in corsetry, her impressive breasts supported by a construction of whale bone and satin. She was flanked by a wall of armed muscle. “You gotta go. All of you.” A huge barrel-chested man with a white moustache stepped forward to support her and raised a Spencer Carbine rifle, the thick stock emphasizing the bony knuckle of his missing middle finger. The metallic click of his weapon cocking underscored the echoing repeat of his fellow security men. “You’ve had some fun, so here’s half your money back. Now, git. I heard about today’s payroll robbery and you fit the descriptions.”
“I thought you said everyone was welcome here,” growled Sam.
“Everyone from the clergy, thieves, and politicians, I said. Not killers. Never killers.” She banged the cash on the bar. “The law was here lookin’ for you and I don’t need that kinda heat.” Her eyes widened to a glare. “I didn’t tell ’em a damn thing, but you go.”
“Is this a trap?” Frank growled.
“If it was a trap, these men’d be wearing badges.” Pearl
swept aside in a cloud of powder and cologne to allow the men to do their jobs. “As it is, we want you gone. This is neutral territory and we protect our patrons. We can’t do that if the law needs to raid us for a gang of killers.”
“Sam!” bawled Frank. “Get the men.”
“Are you gonna fold because some uppity madam gives you orders?” A small man emerged from the corner shrouded in nebulous shadows.
“I ain’t no fool, Will,” Frank retorted. “We git while the goin’s good. She’s got back up, and I’ll bet that she has a man ready to ride out and get the law. You don’t get to charge money like this without thinkin’ through the details. Get the rest of the gang.”
“But I was just in the middle—”
“No buts. Do as you’re told!”
The maid edged toward the door, watching men scuttle out from adjoining rooms pulling on their shirts and stumbling into their pants. “Where are you goin’?” growled Pearl. “Get this room cleaned and ready for the next party.”
“They’re killers?” the maid asked.
“Murderers ain’t welcome here, girl. I have standards, but you’re safe enough.” Pearl nodded toward the huge man toting a rifle by the door. “Make sure they’re gone, Bert. And don’t be fooled by what the law said. They ain’t The Innocents, so you don’t need to worry about takin’ on Jake Conroy. They’re imposters. You can take ’em. Hell, I could take ’em.”
♦◊♦
The bitter wind whipped Abigail’s wet hair across her face, having hidden her mousy wig and glasses under bales of hay in the stables when she grabbed a convenient horse. It wouldn’t do to get caught wearing a disguise. She already took more risks than she should as it was. Abigail picked her way through the obfuscating darkness as quietly as possible, cursing herself for being so unprepared. The gloom and tree cover meant she had to stick closer to the gang than she wanted to if she were to have any idea where they were headed, and the gusting wind made it hard to listen for the men ahead.
They weren’t The Innocents, but they were killers and a more immediate problem. The least she could do was try to establish the location of their hideout and report back to local law enforcement. Thick, inky blackness hung in an almost palpable murk and the thin moon struggled through a tempest of obscuring clouds which scudded over the silver crescent. The poor, thin light did little to help her see her way through the night, but she urged her horse on, searching the ground for their tracks in the damp earth.
