Mister Slaughter

by Robert R. McCammon

  Or, for that matter, boring?

  He also loved gunpowder. Its rich, almost earthy smell. Its promise and power. Its danger. Yes, that was part of the love, too.

  “Who is it?” Oliver asked.

  “He just inquired if this was the house of Oliver Quisenhunt. He said it was vital that he speak to you.”

  “Vital? He used that word?”

  “He did. He…um…he’s a little frightening in appearance. I’ll go back and ask his name, if you want.”

  Oliver frowned. He was twenty-eight years old, had been a bachelor—a life-long bachelor, he’d assured his friends over ale at the Seven Stars Inn—until he’d met a pretty little plump curly-haired sparkling-eyed girl two years ago whose wealthy father wanted a Dutch clock in their parlor repaired. It had taken him the longest time to fix that clock. It had been strange, repairing a clock and wishing time would stop. At the same time.

  “No, that’s all right.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Something so vital, I suppose we ought to find out what, eh?”

  She caught his arm. “Ollie,” she said, and she looked up at him imploringly. Way up, because he was rail-thin and six-feet-three-inches tall and towered above her plump little self. “He…he might be dangerous.”

  “Really? Well,” he said with a smile, “danger is my business. Part of it, at least. Let’s go see what he wants.”

  In the rooms there was a place for everything and everything in its place. One thing that Priscilla had taught him, an artist did not need to live in confusion. Did not need to fill up the house with books and scribbled-upon papers and little gearwheels and sacks of gunpowder and lead balls everywhere and underfoot clay jars full of different varieties of grease that made a terrible mess if they were broken. Indeed, not with the new Quisenhunt coming. So he had his workshop where what she termed confusion was his paradise, and she had the rest of the house, excepting of course the cellar.

  He also loved the fact that she called him an artist. The first time she’d said that to him, in her father’s garden, he had looked into her face and asked himself what the term life-long bachelor really meant, anyway.

  Priscilla had closed the door when she went to fetch him. She stood at Oliver’s side, clutching the sleeve of his cream-colored shirt. He opened the door, and the man outside turned around from observing the parade of wagons, carts and passersby on Fourth Street.

  “Oliver Quisenhunt,” the man said.

  Oliver nodded, when his flinch had passed. He thought he might have heard a note of…what?…relief in the man’s voice. And Priscilla had been right about him: this was a raw-boned and rough-edged leatherstocking straight from the woods, it appeared. Straight from the frontier where Indians hacked your limbs off and boiled them in pots for their suppers. This man looked as if he’d seen a few of those boiling pots. Maybe had barely escaped from one, as well. How old? About twenty-six, twenty-seven? It was hard to tell, with those blue bruises splotching his right cheekbone and forehead. Both his eyes were bloodshot. The left eye had a white medical plaster laid just below it. The dark hollows under his eyes, and the general grim menace of his countenance…was he twenty-seven, going on fifty? A few days’ beard, a mess of black hair, the palms of his hands wrapped up in dirty leather, torn burgundy-colored breeches and a waistcoat the same color, stained stockings, filthy white shirt and a fringed buckskin jacket scabby with grime. On his feet were honest-to-God Indian moccasins.

  He was a scout, Oliver guessed. Someone who goes ahead to clear the way, who takes the risks only the bravest—or most foolhardy—men can face.

  He thought they called that kind of man a providence rider.

  “My name is Matthew Corbett,” said the visitor. “May I come in?”

  “Ah…well…I am very busy at present, sir. I mean to say, it would be best if you came back some other—”

  “I want to talk to you about one of your inventions,” Matthew plowed on. “An exploding safebox.”

  “An…exploding…oh. Yes. Those. You mean the keyless safe? The thief trap?”

  “Whatever you call it. I just want to know how it got into the hands of a killer named Tyranthus Slaughter.”

  “Slaughter?” Quisenhunt searched his memory. “I’m sorry, I have no recollection of that name. I sold no thief trap to him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I keep strict records of who buys my…” He almost said art. But instead he said, “Creations.”

  Matthew hadn’t known quite what to expect from this man. Quisenhunt was thin and gangly, had hands that seemed too big for his skinny wrists and feet like longboats. He had large brown eyes and a topping of blond hair with a cowlick that shot up at the crown like an exotic plant. Thick blond eyebrows arched up over the rims of his spectacles, as if he were perpetually asking a question. Matthew already knew he was twenty-eight years old, from his inquiries, but Quisenhunt seemed younger than that. There was something almost childlike about him, in his slightly-slumped posture, or in the inflections of his voice that seemed to rise on the last word of every sentence. This impression was aided by the multitude of freckles scattered across his cherry-cheeked face. He looked to Matthew to be a strangely overgrown twelve-year-old boy wearing his father’s buckled shoes, white stockings, dark brown breeches, cream-colored shirt and yellow-striped cravat. The phrase mishap of nature came to mind.

  It was time to roll out the cannon. Matthew said, “I am a representative of the law from New York. In this case, you may consider me an arm of the royal court. I’m looking for Slaughter. You may have information I need.”

  “Oh,” came the hushed response. Quisenhunt rubbed his lower lip. “Well, then…why aren’t you in company with the Philadelphia officials? I personally know High Constable Abram Farraday.”

  “Yes,” Matthew said. “He sent me here.”

  “I thought you were an Indian scout,” Quisenhunt said, and almost sounded disappointed.

  “May I?” Matthew made a motion of entrance.

  There was an uncomfortable moment where the master of the house looked to his wife to see if she approved letting such a ragamuffin into their domain, whether he was a law man, an Indian scout, or chief of the street beggars. But then she nodded graciously at Matthew, retreated a step, and asked if he might like a nice cup of lemon water.

  Quisenhunt took Matthew along a hallway and through the door to his workshop, and there Matthew saw how much a man could love his calling.

  Three days ago, in the weak light of early morning, Matthew had stumbled down out of the forest into the village below the watermill. He didn’t get very far before a man wearing a brown woolen cap, a gray coat and carrying a torch came out between two houses and hollered, “Who goes there?” Matthew thought it was wise he answer, because the man was also aiming a blunderbuss at him.

  Indian trouble, the watchman had told him as they went to see the town’s constable, by name Josaphat Newkirk. The town’s name was not Caulder’s Crossing but Hoornbeck, and according to the watchman was situated on the Philadelphia Pike about four miles away from the city. The Indians have got their warpaint on, the watchman told him as they walked. Matthew still had a pounding headache and his vision blurred in and out, but he could function, more or less. Hey! Did they jump you too?

  Who? Matthew had asked.

  The Indians, man! They’re crawlin’ all around here!

  Hoornbeck, a small town that overlooked a picturesque lake, was in a state of high alert. Men with guns were everywhere, leading skittish horses. Women stood in groups holding babies or comforting frightened children. By the time Matthew was escorted to the constable’s office in the white-washed town hall, a clerk reported that Constable Newkirk had gone out on his rounds to check with the other watchmen. Matthew had no time to waste; he asked to be taken to the town’s doctor, so in a few minutes he was at the door of a white house with dark green shutters on the edge of the lake.

  Dr. Martin Lowe, a big bearish man with close-
cropped brown hair, a brown beard streaked with gray and brown eyes behind his spectacles, took a look at him, rushed him in and put him on a table with three candles on either side of Matthew’s head. He began to examine the injuries while his wife boiled water for tea and hot towels.

  “Lucky here,” said the doctor, in a bass rumble that Matthew could feel in his chest. He touched the sore, blood-crusted area below Matthew’s left eye. Matthew hadn’t realized before now that Slaughter’s fingernails had worked their magic. “You might have lost that eye if those claws had caught you any higher. And that was a bad blow to your head, from the size of the bruise. Very dangerous. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Three,” Matthew said, when he concentrated and half of the man’s six fingers disappeared like wisps of smoke.

  “Mouth open. Did you swallow any teeth?”

  “Sir…please…listen…I’m not here about myself. I’m looking for a man who probably came in…” What day was this? “Yesterday.” Slaughter was simple enough to describe. “He would have had an arrow in his upper right arm.”

  “You mean Lord Shelby’s land speculator, Sir Edmond Grudge. Constable Newkirk brought him in.”

  “Sir Edmund Grudge?”

  “He had a terrible time of it. Indians ambushed his party. Wiped ’em out, not five miles from town. I sewed up that gash in his head, took the arrowhead out of his arm and did what I could. Gave him a bottle of brandy to ease his pain.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “I said he ought to stay here and let me watch him overnight, but he wanted to get a room at the tavern. The Peartree Inn, alongside the Pike. Damned if he’s not a strong-willed man.”

  “I’ve got to go.” Matthew had started to get off the table, but suddenly there were two bearish, brown-bearded doctors in the room holding him down.

  “Not so fast, now. Sir Grudge is due back by ten o’clock, which is a little more than two hours. I’m to check his stitches again. In the meantime, let me work on you, and tell me what the hell happened.”

  Within five minutes, Lowe was out the door like a shot to track down Constable Newkirk.

  It was awhile before they returned, because to add to the confusion of the day Matthew later learned that Newkirk had been out talking to a watchman whose eyes were evidently not so watchful, for his horse had been untied and stolen from a hitching-post on Main Street hardly an hour before. Then Newkirk, a lean gray-haired man with the sad face of a dog that just wants to sleep in peace, listened intently to Matthew’s tale, which made him look even sadder. He lit his pipe, blew smoke, and said, “All right, then,” with a sigh as if that explained everything. “Let me get some men together, and we’ll go pay a visit to Sir Grudge. Whatever his damned name is.”

  When Matthew heard about the stolen horse, he’d figured of course Slaughter had taken the beast and pounded away the last few miles to Philadelphia. But the constable had a different story for Matthew when he returned from The Peartree Inn.

  “Seems your Mr. Slaughter had himself a good meal last night,” Newkirk said as he puffed his pipe and Lowe applied the plaster to Matthew’s wound. “Everybody wanted to hear about the Indians and pay his bill. He told some big ones. Fooled me, he did. Except the last trouble we had with the red men was more than six, seven years ago. You recall, Martin. They burned down Keltey’s barn, set fire to his haystacks.”

  “I recall.”

  “Ran around hollerin’ a little while, shot some arrows into the roof and then they went.” Newkirk whistled and made a motion with his hand to represent how fast they had gone. “Back into the woods. Their kingdom. Well, he fooled me.”

  “He stole the horse,” Matthew said. “Is that right?”

  “The horse? Oh, Ben Witt’s horse? No, I don’t think so. Unless he was in two places at once. Your Mr. Slaughter”—Matthew wished he would stop saying that—“took up with a tradesman last night at the inn. Peddler told Daisy—that would be Daisy Fisk, my daughter-in-law—that he was headin’ to Philadelphia. Had all his wares in a wagon. Well, your Mr. Slaughter left with the tradesman before somebody stole Ben’s horse.”

  Having delivered that unwelcome news, Newkirk just stood there puffing.

  “Constable?” Matthew waved smoke away from his face. “Why don’t you send out some fast riders? Maybe they can catch him before—”

  “Already in the big town by now,” Newkirk replied. “Their problem, now.” He scratched his pate and gazed out the window at the lake as if he would give up everything he owned for a morning of fishing. “At last,” he said. “You say there’re some bodies out in the woods?”

  “This young man can’t go anywhere for a while,” the doctor said. “I’m surprised he can walk.”

  “The bodies can wait, then,” Newkirk decided. “Funny thing, though.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Your Mr. Slaughter. Such a killer and all, you say. Left with a tradesman.” Newkirk gave a dry little chuckle. “Fella was sellin’ knives.”

  Matthew stood on the threshold of Oliver Quisenhunt’s workshop, three days since his visit to Hoornbeck. He looked into an untidy mess: stacks of books and papers upon the floor, shelves full of strangely-shaped metal pieces and tools, a filing cabinet with more papers spilling out, a desk covered with small brass and wooden gearwheels and more tools, and at the center of the hurrah-rah a chalkboard on wheels. The chalkboard was covered side to side and top to bottom with diagrams of what appeared to be different-shaped hinges and pegs, gearwheels, drillbits and mechanisms he had never seen before. Some of them might very well have come from a distant planet, like the thing that looked like half of a spoked wagon wheel and had two batlike wings extended on either side.

  Of course I know Oliver Quisenhunt, High Constable Farraday had told Matthew this morning. He’s the crazy clockmaker. Well…I say that with all respect. He’s actually a very talented inventor. Designed the safebox especially for us. Now, Mr. Corbett…tell me again how you let Tyranthus Slaughter get away?

  Matthew took stock of another shelf that held a variety of clockfaces in both metal and wood. “How many of them have you made?”

  “My clocks? Twelve. Working on my thirteenth. I make three or four a year, depending on the complexity of what the client wants.”

  “What is that?” Matthew pointed to the half wagon wheel with the bat wings.

  “Part of the inner workings of my thirteenth. I don’t believe in bad luck—unlucky thirteen and all that—but with my client’s permission I’m making a clock that will…um…flap its wings like a bat upon every hour. What you see diagrammed there are the rods that the hammers will hit to cause the wings to flap. I’m thinking of creating the entire thing out of black cloth draped around a wooden frame. With a black clockface and possibly red enamel numerals. My client, fortunately, is very open to my designs and already owns two of my creations.”

  Matthew just stared at him. “Why don’t you make it meow? Like a black cat?”

  “Well,” Quisenhunt said, and studied his knuckles, “the nearest sound approximating that would be from a fiddle. When I get my self-playing fiddle perfected, then…maybe so.”

  “Your…self-playing…” Matthew decided to let it alone. “I’m not so interested in your clocks,” he said, “as in…”

  “The thief trap, yes you said that. Then you know about my other interest?”

  Matthew nodded. “Farraday told me.”

  “Ah.” Quisenhunt’s wife had entered bringing a cup of pale yellow lemon water, which she offered to Matthew. “Take your drink, then,” said the inventor, “and I’ll show you my cellar workshop.”

  “It’s awfully dirty down there,” the woman cautioned.

  “I think Mr. Corbett can handle a little dirt.” Quisenhunt paused to light a candle, and then motioned for Matthew to follow.

  Along the stairs that led down, Quisenhunt lit a succession of wall candles until they reached the bottom. Matthew had caught the odor of gunpowder as soo
n as the door was opened. As Quisenhunt continued to walk around and touch fire to a few more wicks, Matthew saw that they stood in a stone-floored shooter’s gallery. A half-dozen pistols hung on wall hooks near the stairs. On the other side of the chamber were two canvas-covered circular targets, one large and one smaller, with enough holes in them to show the straw stuffing. Matthew thought Ashton McCaggers would have felt right at home in here with his own pistols and dress-maker’s forms Elsie and Rosalind to shoot at.

  “I have always been fascinated by firearms,” Quisenhunt said when the last candle was burning and yellow light gleamed off the pistols. “These I’ve designed myself. Here, this is something I’ve been testing lately.” He picked up from a circular table not a pistol but a short sword with an ornately-scrolled grip.

  “It’s a sword,” Matthew remarked.

  “Is it?” Quisenhunt made a couple of swipes through the air with his weapon. Then he turned toward the targets. Matthew heard a click as a cleverly-disguised striker was drawn. With a flash of sparks and billow of smoke the pistol barrel constructed along the swordblade fired. A hole appeared near the center of the larger target.

  “Interesting,” Matthew said. “Bringing a gun to a swordfight.”

  “That would be the idea, yes. The trigger is hidden in the grip.” Quisenhunt showed it to Matthew, as smoke curled from the barrel. “I have high hopes for this, but unfortunately at present it does need work. The problem is keeping both sword and pistol equally-balanced.”

  Matthew thought a novice swordsman such as himself could benefit from the long reach of that particular blade. He saw a pistol hanging amid the guns on the wall that caught his attention. “May I?” he asked, and when Quisenhunt nodded he took it down. “What is this?”