“I would be forfeiting my life!” he suddenly cried out.
“Your life is already forfeit,” said Sam, thumbing back the hammer with a loud click.
Major Duval rocked forward, dragging Billy with him.
“Wait … please wait … I tell you,” he cried out, his English no longer faultless. “Is in shipping documents. They show you where bad carriages were sent.”
“We already surmised that,” said Val dismissively. “Unfortunately, the ones we have are forgeries.”
“But I know where real ones are!” he shrieked, the gun still at his head.
“Where?” demanded Val.
“At the Quartermaster General’s Office in Washington.”
“No, they’re not,” said Val. “We’ve already checked those records.”
“You see false ones,” cried Major Duval. “The real ones in different place. I can show you where.”
“It is too late for that, we need the information now,” said Val, his voice devoid of pity.
“You can wire Washington,” he begged. “I’ll tell you where to find them.”
Sam eased back the hammer and lay the revolver down on his lap again.
“You are a fortunate man, Major Duval,” he said. “You had better not test my patience a second time.”
As Billy released his arms, Major Duval sank forward and vomited on the floor. Sam summoned two guards, who raised him to his feet, and escorted him out of the room. He staggered out as if drunk.
“Well done, Sam,” said Val.
General Hathaway grinned back at us.
“I suppose it helps if one has reached a level of anger where it actually becomes conceivable to pull the trigger,” he said with relief. After putting his glasses back on, he looked professorial again.
Val went to the desk and began writing in one of Sam’s order books.
“After Major Duval gives you what we need, I would suggest that you send this wire to Ted Connell in my Washington office along with the instructions of where to find the shipping files,” said Val. “Connell is completely trustworthy. Once he has the documents in his possession, he should immediately head down here with them. There will be far too many routing manifests and bills of lading for him to wire them all. Once we have them here, we can match the shipping dates with the dates that each artillery unit received its carriages.”
Sam nodded and said, “I will order a packet boat to be waiting for him at the navy yard. With luck, we will have everything we need by late tonight.”
Val looked at his watch.
“In the meantime Kit and I have found an important witness to the murder of that young woman last night. We need to go back and interview him as quickly as possible.”
“Go on,” said Sam. “I’ll take care of things here.”
The low dark clouds above us looked heavy with snow as we emerged from the mansion house and headed back in the open coach to the overseer’s cottage. The ruts and fissures in the ancient farm lane were glazed with new ice, and the coach wheels made sounds like pistol shots as we cracked through them.
“Wake me up when we get there,” said Val, laying his head back against the rear cushion.
I gazed across the pure white landscape, thinking of the dead girl lying in the icehouse, and then of her sad-eyed companion at the party. Could she be a prostitute, too? It seemed impossible.
We overtook a cluster of soldiers who were striding quickly along at the edge of the lane. Oddly, none of them were carrying their rifles, which didn’t make sense if they were on their way to sentry duty or to take part in a drill or exercise. Farther down the road, we passed another group of men headed in the same direction.
As the coach emerged from a stand of hardwoods into open country, I thought I heard the staccato sound of a full battle cry. Startled, I looked over at Val, but he was fast asleep, the collar of his greatcoat turned up against the biting wind.
Then we came over the brow of a hill and the entire vista opened up below us. In the distance I could see the roof of the overseer’s cottage about a quarter of a mile away. But it was what lay between our coach and the cottage that caused me to bolt upright in amazement.
An ocean of blue uniforms filled the small valley ahead of us, turning the pristine, snow-covered fields on both sides of the lane into a vast landscape of slush and mud. Perhaps two thousand soldiers were already there, with more arriving every minute. The undulating mass nearest the cottage seemed to sway in the distance like a living thing. Val came awake beside me on the seat as a low roar that sounded like sea surf came back toward us on the wind.
He rubbed his sleepless, bloodshot eyes as he surveyed the scene in front of us.
“I have badly misjudged the speed at which those ugly rumors travel,” he said. “We must act quickly to avert a tragedy.”
Up ahead of us, the lane was completely choked with soldiers. The teamster reined his horses to a stop.
“We need to get through there, Corporal,” Val called up to him.
The teamster spit a slug of tobacco juice into the snow.
“Can’t see how, Colonel,” he said, turning to face us. “Not without runnin’ those men down in the road.”
For the first time since I had met him, Val looked at me with indecision in his eyes. The soldiers just ahead of us were acting like spectators who had arrived too late to buy tickets to a sporting event. Most were aimlessly milling about at the edge of the throng, while others cavorted among themselves, obviously enjoying the break from camp routine. Two bare-chested men were engaged in a good-natured wrestling match in the snow.
“I have an idea,” I said. “At least it’s worth a try.”
I told the teamster to change places with me, and I took his place on the box. Grabbing the reins in my left hand, I removed my revolver from its holster and fired twice into the air. The men standing in the road all spun toward the sound. That’s when I whipped the horses forward.
Seeing the coach rumbling toward them, they frantically scattered to each side of the roadway, leaving a narrow path for us to navigate through. Their shouts drew the attention of the men in front of them and we were soon moving at a slow trot down the lane. A little farther on, it was necessary for me to fire another round to set off the same reaction. I was glad to see that very few of the men in the crowd were armed.
It was while driving through that sea of tightly packed bodies that I saw the ugly truth at the heart of a mob. The faces of the men were flashing past me, each registering for an instant as we hurtled by. At first they were basically good faces, some curious and some angry, but open and honest. As we drew closer to the front of the throng, however, they became contorted masks, their eyes like livid gashes, one face after another transfigured with hate and loathing. Above the indecipherable din, one shriek rose toward me.
“I seen what they done to her!” he was screaming.
At the end of the lane, we broke through the last crush of men and into a large patch of open ground near the overseer’s cottage. The sturdy post-and-rail fence that bordered the front yard of the property was the only physical barrier holding back the mob.
On the other side of the fence, a single rank of twenty armed guards from the Provost Marshal’s Office stood shoulder to shoulder facing the massive throng, their bayonets fixed in front of them. A few feet behind them, a young lieutenant stood by himself in the yard, coolly smoking a cigarette. He held his presentation sword loosely in his right hand, its tip resting against his right shoulder.
Stepping down from the coach, Val turned to the teamster and said, “Take it around to the back of the house.”
The teamster was looking back at the mass of men we had just come through, his face a pasty yellow. I saw his lips moving, but no sound came out as he urged the horses into motion. The young lieutenant stepped forward, giving us an offhand salute. He was about my age, with corn-colored hair and startlingly blue eyes.
“Lieutenant Hanks … temporarily assigned to the provost m
arshal,” he said. “These were all the men I could scare up on short notice. I have another ten inside covering the doors and windows.”
“You did well, Lieutenant,” said Val.
“Give ’em up, you nigger-lovin’ sons a bitches!” shouted one of the men behind the post-and-rail fence. The soldiers around him took up the same call. I watched as one of them, bolder than the rest, began climbing over the top rail.
“Two steps forward!” shouted Lieutenant Hanks, and the single rank of guards advanced, their bayonets extended at chest height. The man quickly crawled back behind the fence.
“I will need ten minutes, Lieutenant,” said Val.
The blond officer tossed his cigarette to the ground and carefully crushed it with his boot.
“I just hope it’s important, Colonel,” he said with a lazy grin. “A man could get his pants mussed here.”
“One of the Negroes inside is our only witness to a murder last night,” said Val. “He and his son are innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Lieutenant Hanks stared at him earnestly for a moment. Then he said, “Well … don’t much like a mob anyway.”
“Can we get them out from the other side of the house?” asked Val. With his back to the mob, the lieutenant gestured toward a thick line of six-foot-high boxwood shrubbery that extended out from each wing of the overseer’s cottage. From the left end, it ran about fifty feet to a brick carriage shed and a large woodpile. The section on the other side connected the cottage to a small brick summer kitchen.
“Those boxwoods effectively divide the mob,” he said, “but the last time I looked, there were already a hundred men gathered at the back of the house.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large rock come sailing toward us through the air like a mortar shell. It fell harmlessly to the ground, but another quickly followed, smashing through one of the downstairs windows.
The mob erupted with a bellowing, almost feral roar. As it rose to a deafening wave of noise, I saw the fence rails bulge toward us as the men farther back in the mass pressed forward, driving those in the front rank toward the line of bayonets.
Lieutenant Hanks shouted an order to his men. They raised their rifles to the sky and fired a ragged volley. In its wake the tumultuous roar slowly subsided to a dull clamor.
“Are you going to try to parley with them, Colonel?” asked Hanks.
“There is no one to parley with,” said Val, surveying the crowd. “They are no longer men.”
With one last intimidating glare, he pivoted on his heel and strode toward the front door of the cottage. As soon as we were inside, a guard barred the door behind us. Mr. Beecham was standing with his son in the doorway to the parlor. He took hold of my arm as I went past.
“They will be coming soon,” I said, trying to avoid his eyes. I did not want him to see the utter hopelessness I felt at what was about to happen.
“I know that,” he responded, his voice strained. “Captain, I do not care what happens to me … but Daniel … he has never known … he has had no chance to live.”
His black eyes gazed into mine, completely bottomless.
“We will try,” I said.
I followed Val up the stairs to the second floor. The large rear window in the center hall gave us a good view of the terrain at the back of the house. A large vegetable garden, its evenly furrowed rows still crowded with the detritus of the fall season, filled the expanse directly behind the cottage. It was bordered on each side by parallel mounds of small field stones that had been cleared from the garden patch.
The cultivated area extended away from the house about twenty yards toward a long, trellised rose arbor that bordered another farm lane. Beyond the lane a large rocky field led off to a copse of mature elm and maple trees. From off to the right, our coach came slowly into view and stopped in the middle of the muddy lane. A half-dozen soldiers quickly surrounded it.
By then there were about two hundred men behind the house. Most of them were clustered near the back door. The rest were standing near the lines of boxwoods so that they could keep track of what was happening in the front.
Val pointed to the stationary coach.
“That is our only chance of getting them out of here,” he said, “but not where it is now. The men down there would overwhelm us as soon as we headed for it.”
As we watched the soldiers around the coach began drifting back toward the cottage. One of them stayed behind. He climbed up on the box with the teamster and began shouting.
“I want you to take the coach across the field and into that tree line,” said Val, pointing at the elm and maple stand a hundred yards across the field. “Once you’re into those trees, stop there and wait for us. Don’t draw any attention to yourself or attempt to come back toward the house. You must wait for us to bring them to you.”
I nodded.
“In the meantime, I’ll try to create a diversion in the front. Hopefully, it will draw some of the men away from the garden before we bring them out. If we can make it to the open field, we’ll have a chance.”
We were walking back toward the front stairs when several rifle shots rang out in quick succession. The guard covering the hall window spun backward and dropped heavily to the floor in front of us. As Val knelt beside him, I looked through the shattered window frame.
The rage of the mob became a living thing.
With a roar that filled my ears like a buffeting wind, it surged forward in a monstrous wave, smashing the post-and-rail fence and flooding into the yard.
The line of men commanded by Lieutenant Hanks never moved from their positions. I saw one of them thrust his bayonet into the chest of a man at the head of the mob. They were both swallowed up an instant later. Another guard wildly swung the butt of his rifle before he too, disappeared.
Lieutenant Hanks stood alone before them. Although it was useless to resist, he raised his pistol at the oncoming mass and fired twice before being dragged backward in the crush. He was still striking out at the men swarming around him when his blond head vanished into the maelstrom.
The house actually shuddered as the blue tide slammed into the front wall of the building. I watched as a raw log, maybe ten feet long and a foot wide, was passed above the crowd to the soldiers nearest the front door. There was a great thudding sound as it pounded into the oak frame.
Pulling out my pistol, I fired into the mass of men around the log. One of them dropped from sight but was immediately replaced by another. Then Val was pulling me toward the back of the house.
“Before I bring the Beechams out, I will have our men fire a volley from the rear windows to scatter them right and left,” he said, swinging open a casement window that faced onto the garden. “That will hopefully clear a path for us. Once they are with you in the coach, head for Sam’s headquarters.”
I nodded and shook his hand.
“Good luck,” I said, forcing myself to smile.
“And to you, my son,” he said, grasping my elbow.
Feet first, I dropped from the second-story window to the ground below. Several of the men in the garden took up a shout, but the others must have decided I was no more than a rat deserting the sinking ship. They didn’t interfere with me.
I ran to the coach. The teamster had disappeared, but he had left the reins tied around the whipstock. Climbing onto the box, I urged the horses forward, and the crowd of men ringing the garden parted to let me through. I kept going until I arrived at the stand of elms and then continued ten feet inside the tree line before reining up.
As I turned to look back at the cottage, a volley of shots rang out from the rear windows. Just as Val had surmised, the men in the garden scattered toward the protection offered by the mounds of cleared field stones that bordered it.
A few seconds later, the rear door burst open and soldiers started pouring out of the house, their rifles at port arms. There were six of them and they formed up in two lines of three. Val came next with the Beechams right behind him. Moving i
n a rough square, they began to come on at a run across the garden. Sitting helpless in the wagon, I could feel the brutal pounding of my heart.
A great clamor went up from the men at the back of the cottage, and within seconds, the horde still in front began smashing through the boxwood shrubs to join in the pursuit.
“You’re too late, you bastards!” I screamed, seeing the start that Val and the others had already achieved.
What he hadn’t counted on were the loose field stones that bordered the garden. The men who had taken shelter behind the mounds immediately started hurling them like missiles at the fleeing figures, and their flight through the garden became a bloody gauntlet. Two of the guards went down in the first hail of rocks, dropping like deadweight. Another staggered and fell as the group reached the end of the garden.
A line of soldiers stood waiting for the fleeing men at the edge of the farm lane. Val headed straight for the center of the line, sending two of them flying and clearing a space for the Beechams to break through behind him. As Mr. Beecham knocked down one of the soldiers with his fists, I could hear him shouting at Daniel to run ahead. Even then nothing could have stopped the boy from reaching me, but he refused to leave his father. Together they started toward me on the run as Val and the three remaining guards continued to battle the men at the lane. I watched as the monstrous blue tide swept over them.
Mr. Beecham and Daniel were now only fifty yards away from me, but the fastest of the pursuers in the mob had closed the gap behind them to less than twenty feet. I could see from the angle of pursuit that it would be a close call. The reins were taut in my right hand, and I held the whip in my left, ready to lash the horses forward as soon as they were safely in the coach.
Daniel could run very fast. He would race ahead of his father, turn to see him lagging behind, and then slow down to wait for him to catch up. With each yard Mr. Beecham labored harder, his chest heaving as he tried to keep his legs plunging forward. With only ten yards to go, he looked up and saw me waiting in the coach just inside the tree line.
“You can make it!” I yelled. Gritting his teeth, he nodded and came on again, lunging through the snow. Daniel was already at the tree line when Mr. Beecham lost his footing for the last time and went down.
Unholy Fire Page 16
