by Will Thomas
Abruptly, a loop of rope fell around my neck. I jumped and looked up. The trap was open, but Racket's familiar whiskers were nowhere to be found. I seized the rope and tried to pull, more annoyed than alarmed, but it was suddenly drawn tight. Very tight. The hemp bit into the flesh of my throat.
Slowly, I was hauled up out of my seat, as someone heaved upon the rope. My shoulders came in contact with the edges of the trap, but my head was pulled through. For a second or two, I found myself looking out over the top of the cab. I wanted to turn around and see my attacker, but I couldn't breathe, and my fingers couldn't loosen the rope enough for me to catch my breath. I wanted to cough, to gasp, to drag oxygen into my tortured lungs, but I couldn't. Spots began to appear in front of my eyes, as if someone were spattering India ink on me. The last thing I remembered before I passed out was the voice of Pokrzywa's funny little mystical rebbe, Reb Shlomo, saying, "Look out for trapdoors!"
28
The pain that caused me to pass out was as nothing compared to the pain that awakened me again. My head throbbed, my muscles burned, and my heart was hammering in my chest. Searing pain radiated out in waves to my toes and fingertips and back. It felt as if I had been in pain for hours, perhaps forever.
I willed my eyes to open, to move beyond the pain, but what I saw made no sense. I was disoriented. Perhaps I was having a nightmare. I was in some sort of large, dark room, my head close to the ceiling. My eyes refused to focus. Something flitted in front of me, causing my head to move back and strike a post behind me. More pain. The post and I began swaying. Where was I? Flit, there it was again. Limbs. I think it was a man's limbs I saw, but they were upside down. No, it was I who was upside down. I was tied to a post and suspended from the ceiling somehow. I lifted my head, slowly, and focused on my body. I was near naked and lashed to the post, only it wasn't a post. It was a cross.
Finally, I was able to focus my eyes on the ropes that bound my wrists and ankles. They that bore my entire weight. My chest was on fire, and breathing was difficult. Every joint felt dislocated. What I had first taken for the ceiling was in fact the floor under my head. The cross, suspended from a rope going up into the darkness, was affixed to a pulley in the top of the building.
"Awake, already, are you?" a familiar voice came out of the darkness.
The limbs appeared again, and my eyes saw something red above me. It was John Racket's rusty beard.
"Racket," I croaked, licking lips, which were parched. "Racket, cut me down."
"When I went to all this trouble to truss you up? Not half. Try calling on your precious Mr. Barker to come cut you down."
"Why?" I gasped.
"I'm glad you asked that," Racket said. "I've been studying the Good Book a lot lately, searching for some really spectacular way to kill you. That bullet I put through my cab was just to put Barker off for a while. I thought of hanging you from your hair like Absalom, but yours was too short, or of gutting you like Abraham almost did to Isaac, but I didn't think anyone would get the idea. I about gave up when I remembered Peter being crucified upside down. Now that, my friend, is the dramatic moment. Truly artistic, and not above my poor powers. I'm just going to leave you hanging here until Barker finds you, though at this rate that might just be sometime in the next century. Of course, by then, all the blood will have run to your brain and burst your vessels. Poor Barker will have to find a new assistant all over again."
"Why are you doing this?" I spat out, before my chest convulsed in a paroxysm of pain. My ears were ringing with the thunder of my own labored heartbeat.
"I'm just throwing our little bloodhound off his scent," Racket continued. "You see, the Jew was stealing my girl, after we'd been married for five years. I didn't mind that she was a Jewess, since she had converted to Christianity, but for her to take up with another of her kind, after all I'd done for her, after I'd made her respectable, that was too much. I knew Barker would be hired to take the case, him being all friendly with the Jews and all. So, I began early. I preached against the Jews in Hyde Park days before I killed him, just to throw your boss off the track. I got Miriam's sweetheart in an alleyway not far from their church in Poplar. It was incredible, a real feeling of power. I smacked him about for a couple of minutes, then I got him with the knife. One blow, right to the heart, and he was a goner. I bundled him into the cab and brought him here. Saw the resemblance to Christ, though I'm a trade unionist and an unbeliever. In a trice, I'd stripped him down and nailed him to a stall plank. I thought, Why not hang him high in Petticoat Lane for all the Jews to see? That'd keep 'em all away from my Miriam. Then I had a stroke of genius. I took a piece of chalk and wrote 'The Anti-Semite League' on it, along with a verse I culled from Miriam's Bible. Told her I was thinking of going to church. I tossed him in the cab, board and all, covered in an old blanket, and found plenty of rope. Nobody saw a thing in the heavy fog, or if they did, they were too terrified to squeal. The Lane was quiet as the tomb. Juno didn't care for it when I used her to haul the Jew up the telegraph pole, but she's a good ol' gal. From sticking him to hanging him didn't take more than an hour or two.
"I tell you, it was a real pleasure watching your Guv'nor chase all over town looking for a group of Jew-haters that didn't exist. When I wasn't looking over your shoulders, I was in the pubs, agitating against the Jews, blaming them for stealing jobs and running up prices. It's amazing what one bloke can do."
I moaned as my body was wracked by another spasm. I could no longer feel my legs. They were ice cold, while my chest was on fire. I couldn't take much more before I passed out, and death would inevitably follow. While Racket went on, boasting of his evil accomplishments, I prayed and prepared myself to meet my Maker.
"Miriam was a good wife for a while, before she cuckolded me. I had to tell her what I done, and how I knew about both of them. If she'd been smart, she'd have kept her gob shut and chalked it up to a hard lesson. But she started yammering, and it was obvious she was gonna peach on me. I took her down, right here, with a rubber-headed mallet. Bashed her head in one stroke. I tossed her out the back loading door, down onto the tracks below, then dragged her down the tunnel and chalked another note. Your boss was too stupid to get it without a little hint. Did you like the shooting? Nobody'd suspect a cabbie of putting holes in his own cab. I wrapped the pistol in a scarf to keep the powder burns off the side, but Barker didn't even check.
"Later, I piled some fellows from the Crook and Harp pub into a cart and drove 'em all down to your place. Shoulda bloody well known they'd get their heads bashed. But young McElroy got left behind, and you know what he did? He turned Judas on me. He told you everything he knew, didn't he? Of course, you remember what happened to Judas, don't you?"
Racket took an arm of my cross and turned me around slowly. There was a pair of slack limbs dangling behind me. I didn't have to look up into the bloated face to know that the body was once Albert McElroy.
"Stupid sod. If he'd had half a brain, he would've looked to see who his cabman was, but then you weren't much smarter with your educated ways, were you? I even brought you here to the stable, overlooking the tracks.
"So, here we are again. I'm going to set you up proper here, like old Peter, and see how Barker likes losing his new assistant. But you don't look much like Peter, I must say. Here." He raised a hand to his ear and pulled the false whiskers from his face. Underneath them was the man we'd been looking for, with the birthmark on his chin. He stepped forward and set them over my own ears.
"Very nice," he decided. "Artistic-like. You didn't know you was sending Albert to his doom last night, did you, boy? Barker should get a kick out of this. I'm afraid he turned out to be a disappointment, not much better than the peelers. I was just making things up as I went along. Old Push never suspected a thing."
I was starting to lose consciousness. My whole body had gone cold, and breathing had become almost impossible. I was beginning to hallucinate. I thought I heard my employer's voice.
"I wouldn't say
that, Mr. Racket. I've had my eye on you for some time."
The cross spun in a circle, and when it stopped, a pistol was clapped to my head. It was my own revolver. I recognized the filed-down sight. I closed my eyes and felt surprisingly at ease. I was ready to die now. I gave it all over. At that point, I would have preferred a bullet to slow death. There was a short scream in my ear, and I opened my eyes in time for them to be sprayed with blood. One of Barker's copper pennies was imbedded in the back of Racket's hand. Racket dropped the gun and slammed into me, sending my makeshift cross spinning in wide circles. New paroxysms of pain began, as the centrifugal force pulled my entire body away from the post.
Abruptly, I was dragged aloft, into the darkness above. There were stairs, and I saw the second level and the hayloft. A gun went off almost in my ear, and my cross began plummeting, plummeting to earth. I came to an abrupt stop, and strong arms grasped my chest. I felt flesh rip and sinews snap.
"I've got you, lad," Cyrus Barker said. Then I heard no more.
***
I opened my eyes dully. Terence Poole was lifting me up and putting a flask of brandy between my lips. I was off the cross. Who knew how long I'd been out? I began to sputter, and with the kind assistance of the inspector, who thumped me soundly between the shoulder blades several times, progressed to a full-blown cough.
"Thank you, Inspector," I finally managed to squeak out.
"Don't mention it, young fellow. Looks as though you had a close call here."
"Where's Mr. Barker?" I asked, for I couldn't see him for the swarm of blues. There must have been a dozen constables combing the stable.
"He's out front, helping with Racket's body."
"What happened?"
Poole's bucolic face broke into a grin. "I'm still figuring that out, myself. Barker spat it at me so fast, I couldn't make head nor tail of it. Something about Racket jumping out the upper granary door on a rope attached to your cross. He went down, and you went up. He would have escaped, leaving Barker behind to save you, only Barker was too clever for him. He parted the rope with one shot. You and the cross fell into his waiting arms, while Racket fell and dashed his brains out. Very messy way to die. But I can't say I feel sorry for the blighter, considering all the pains he put the Yard to."
Barker and a further handful of constables brought the body of our former cabman in, wrapped in a blanket. It was probably the one he had used to conceal the body of Louis Pokrzywa. I could see part of the head under the bloodied blanket. As Poole said, it was a very messy way to die.
My employer came over and looked down at me.
"Alive, are you, Thomas?"
"I'll pull through, I reckon, sir," I rasped.
"Don't try to talk. You have a bad rope burn on your throat. I believe you'll be spending some time in hospital."
"No, sir!" I have no love of hospitals any more than any other public institution. "Could I not recuperate at home?"
"What did I tell you, Terry?" he said, turning toward the inspector.
"You've got a corking little terrier here, Cyrus," he responded. Terrier, indeed!
"He's in no condition for questioning. I'll stop by your office in the morning with a prepared statement. You can question him in a day or so, if that is agreeable."
"Be at my office tomorrow for questioning," Poole countered, "and I think we can wait until he can talk again."
"Done. Let's get him home."
Racket's corpse was to remain for the coroner, Vandeleur, to issue a death certificate. A constable was assigned the task of taking Barker and me back to Newington in that fateful hansom which had twice brought me so close to dying. Death had no sting for me at the moment. After Barker gingerly lifted me into the cab, still clad in blankets, I lay back in a corner and drifted into a sound, dreamless sleep.
29
I floated on opium clouds for several days. Barker's physician, a dried apple core of a fellow named Allcroft, kept me on a steady diet of morphine and little else. I had endured a severe trauma not only to my body but to my brain as well. Dr. Allcroft feared brain fever, and with good reason. Due to the heavy tissue damage, I ran a high fever. Any weight I may have gained due to Dummolard's cooking and the nice restaurants in which we had dined, melted off my frame quickly. I must have looked quite the apple core myself, I suppose.
Barker decided that the logistics of the situation called for turning the infrequently used sitting room into a convalescing room. He and Mac carried my bed and mattress down the stairs and consigned much of the sitting room furniture to the lumber room upstairs. Nurses were hired round the clock. Apparently, things were rather touch and go one night. I had an irregular heartbeat, and Allcroft feared there might have been damage to the muscle itself. Somehow I pulled through. Later, Barker asked me how it was to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I recalled intensely vivid dreams, constantly changing like a child's kaleidoscope, but the events in these dreams slipped through my fingers when I finally woke.
A woman's face came into view, a careworn but friendly enough face it was, with a healthy dusting of freckles.
"Who are you?" I croaked. My throat was raw.
"So you're awake, are you?" she said. "That's a mercy. How do you feel?"
"Like I've been crucified." My throat was afire.
"You just take it easy-like, young gentleman. I'm your nurse. We'll fetch the doctor in. You've had a lot of people here concerned about your health."
"May I have some water, please?"
She sat me up a little, to pour a tumbler of water down my parched throat. It was the first time I realized I was in the sitting room. I tried to raise my arms but found myself almost incapable of movement. My shoulders and back had received a great strain, and only time and the Great Physician Himself would ever heal them again.
"What o'clock is it?" I asked.
"†'Tis three in the afternoon, if you must know," the nurse said. "Did you have an appointment you must be off to?"
"And the day?"
"It's Thursday."
"Thursday," I repeated to myself. Four days. My mind was on the case. Was it over? What had Barker been doing without me these last hundred hours? I tried sitting up, to get out of bed. I've made many mistakes in my life, and that was definitely one of them.
"Now you've gone and done it, young man," the nurse chided me as I lay, my teeth gritted, and every muscle in my body screamed at once. "You stay there and don't you move, or so help me, I'll have straps brought in and we'll lash you to this bed. I'm calling in Dr. Allcroft directly."
The doctor came within the hour. He looked in my throat and under my eyelids, he took my pulse, he prodded me in a thousand places, then asked me a thousand times if that hurt. Finally, he pronounced me on the mend, though not completely out of danger, and reduced me to only partial doses of morphine. Had I been able to move, I would have tossed him down the front step. As it was, I just lay there, while the tide of dreams washed over me again.
"Lad." I opened my eyes.
"Hello, sir," I answered weakly.
"Back among the living, are we?"
"So it would seem. How's the case?"
"Spoken like a true assistant. It's all but over. I've just been tying up the loose ends. All that remains is the presentation of the bill, and I won't do that until you are up and about."
"Tell me about the case. How did youЧ"
"Another time, Thomas. Allcroft is a capital fellow. He'll soon set you to rights. You just get some rest. Plenty of time to discuss the investigation later."
I relaxed and the spectacles faded away into nothingness.
It was morning, presumably Friday morning, although I couldn't be sure. Mac was opening the curtains.
"Good morning, Mr. Llewelyn," he said. "I trust you've slept well." He came round and fluffed my pillows. "The nurses have all been dismissed, more's the pity."
"Sorry I missed them," I rasped.
"Are you hungry?"
"Starved," I admitte
d.
"Guv'nor's spread the word to Cook that he's to fatten you up a bit. I saw Dummolard bringing in a goose liver pie a half hour ago. I'll tell them you're awake."
He glided out, and I closed my eyes. I was in a rather enviable position if one forgot for the moment that I couldn't raise my arms. I had nothing to do but lie in bed and wonder what a first class chef was preparing for my breakfast. It turned out to be crepes with heavy cream and strawberries. The strawberries had been preserved in kirsch brandy. The meal came with a tisane, hot honey and lemon with a bit of single malt.
"I suppose you can't raise your arms."
"Not an inch."
Mac grumbled under his breath and cut the first crepe into quarters. I opened my mouth just in time, before he would have plastered cream all over my face. It was very rich. It wouldn't take much of this to put the weight back on me.
"Drink!" I said, almost gagging on the clotted cream in my throat.
"This will wear thin rather quickly, I think," Maccabee complained, bringing the cup to my lips.
"I'll remind you, I was injured trying to save your people," I told him, when I could breathe again.
"We are forever in your debt," he said archly, cramming another bite in my mouth. The combination of preserves and cream was delicious, but I wasn't much up to swallowing yet.
The meal was mercifully short. Mac replaced the empty plate and cup on the silver tray. He turned back at the door.
"Actually, you have a visitor waiting."
Was it Rebecca, perhaps, or Zangwill? Possibly it was Ira Moskowitz. I had made more friends in the last two weeks than during my entire previous time in London.
