Now he faced death for the third time since starting out on the new slaughter road which had arbitrarily been plotted for him by whatever power it was that controlled his destiny. And his end seemed far more likely now than when Joe Pearce had attacked him with a knife and Fisk had shot at him from the rooftop.
‘You sonofabitchin—’
The emotion - or combination of emotions - that were shaking the reason out of Marlow gave his voice tremendous stridency. His opening oath was no more of an insult than a thousand more might have been. But the volume and tone of his voice forced the rider to drag his terror-filled gaze away from Edge. And, even though Marlow was still in the process of pumping the Winchester’s lever action, the horseman elected to swing his gun in the same direction.
He squeezed the trigger while the barrel was still tracking through an arc. The bullet clanked into the top of Edge’s stolen Winchester and ricocheted with a spinning action. It went sideways into Marlow’s right eye, its initial muzzle velocity vastly reduced, so that, as the detective stumbled into the path of the galloping horse, the torrent of blood from the eyeless socket spat the bullet out again.
Marlow’s scream revealed he was still alive when he hit the ground. But a flying hoof burst his head open and the scream was curtailed.
‘Edge!’ Spade roared.
The rider had to turn in his saddle for his next shot, as the horse leapt clear of Marlow’s body. The motion caused fresh blood to spray away from the furrow in his cheek.
The half-breed had rolled over on to his back, sat up, and waited for the turn he knew would come. The Colt, still in the two-handed grip, spat a bullet that had survived the ducking. The bulging Adam’s apple of the man was suddenly gone: replaced by a dark hole that erupted with far more blood than the cheek wound had spilled.
The screaming man was knocked sideways out of his saddle. His shoulders and the back of his head hit the ground and he was dragged twenty feet before his foot was shaken clear of the stirrup. He had stopped screaming the moment he hit the ground. Then, as the horse continued to bolt, he became as unmoving as the five other corpses which littered the street.
‘Archer didn’t have a chance,’ Spade rasped as he moved away from the cover of the station building and the hoof-beats of the runaway horse merged with the countless muffled sounds from the freight depot on the waterfront.
‘Not even to be a moving target,’ Edge allowed as he eased upright. ‘That’s the way some people die.’
The sandy-haired detective advanced slowly, not taking his eyes off the bodies of his two associates. As he halted between them - Archer sprawled out on his back and Marlow face down - clerks emerged nervously from their stores and a group of trainmen filled the station building entrance.
‘Phil just went to pieces,’ Spade muttered, shaking his head.
Edge remained where he was for a few moments, holding the Navy Colt high and turning the cylinder so that empty and unexpended cartridges dropped to his boots and bounced off on to the street.
‘He always seemed to be the toughest,’ Spade went on, in the tone of a man speaking aloud his thoughts.
‘Just an act,’ Edge said as he started forward, taking fresh shells from his gunbelt and slotting them into the empty chamber of the Colt. ‘But soft-centered underneath, I figure.’
‘Not like you?’ Spade snarled. ‘You got nothin’ but un-feelin’ iron between your front and your back.’
The half-breed completed loading the revolver and slid it into the holster. Then he stooped to pick up his Winchester from where it had dropped out of Marlow’s dead hands. The bullet had marked the surface of the barrel without denting it. He eyed the impassioned face of Spade coldly as he booted the rifle and hoisted his gear to his shoulder.
‘You said you’re a student of human nature, feller,’ he reminded. ‘You won’t get to graduate if you can’t figure I’m from a different hard-boiled school than he was.’
‘You look like you’re proud of it!’ Spade snapped, a sneer emphasizing the insult he intended.
Edge spat at the street midway between himself and where the detective had dropped into a squat beside the bodies of Archer and Marlow. ‘However I look, feller, it’s got to be better than the big sleeper and the one with the ivory grin.’
Spade continued to glare at the half-breed for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and the tautness went out of his body as grief displaced anger. He turned to look along the street where, on both sides, the bystanders were still maintaining their nervous surveillance of the scene from the shelter of doorways.
‘Somebody help me get them somewhere decent!’ he called shrilly.
The storekeepers and clerks retreated into their premises. But the trainmen came out of the station building, the engineer and fireman in oil-stained dungarees, a brakeman in a sheepskin coat and a conductor in CP uniform. They came between the surrey and the station building while Edge moved around the other side of the vehicle and halted at the rear. He did not alter his impassive expression or hasten his actions when he heard muffled cries coming from the room behind the lighted window.
The corpses of the two men who had run from the building were in a tangled heap behind the surrey. Their blood had merged but there had not been time for it to congeal and rigor mortis was a long way off. So the half-breed was able to separate them with ease. It was the elder one who had the canvas, rolled up and pushed into his belt under his suit jacket.
When Edge moved closer to the lighted window, his footfalls were heard and the muffled sounds from within the room increased in volume and urgency. He checked the canvas without unrolling it and vented a low grunt of satisfaction. There was a smear of blood on the back of the painting, but no bullet holes.
He went inside the building then, and pushed open a door that led off a passageway running from the street entrance into the waiting room. He blinked once against the light from two kerosene lamps, then nodded curtly at the bound and gagged Drew and Madeline Grover.
The room was a small and cluttered office and the couple were prisoners in two swivel chairs - one to either side of a big desk. Their eyes were ablaze with anger and the flesh of their cheeks, bulged by the tightness of the kerchief gags, was a bright crimson color.
‘Picture’s safe,’ Edge announced calmly, dropping his gear to the floor and holding out the canvas at arm’s length to allow it to unfurl.
The couple did not curtail their frantic attempts at speech and hardly glanced at the painting which Edge had last seen in a gilt frame on an easel at the Palace Hotel. Edge’s lack of haste in freeing them heightened their anger. And they did not lapse into silence until after he had laid the painting carefully on the top of a safe and started towards them, drawing the razor from its neck pouch.
He attended to the man first, slicing through the ropes at the arms and feet, then leaving him to struggle out of the gag while the razor cut at the woman’s bonds.
‘It was Yancy’s doing!’ Grover shrieked as he ripped the kerchief from his mouth and sprang up out of the chair. ‘He hired those ruffians to—’
‘Did you kill them?’ the woman demanded. ‘Did you slaughter those cotton-picking sonsofwhores? I want to look at the lousy, stinking, rotten, shits of bastards!’
The thieves had stolen only the da Vinci painting. The Grovers still wore their rich jewelry and the precious stones adorning the woman’s statuesque form sparkled in the lamplight as she pushed herself up from the chair and rushed towards the door.
As she disappeared through the doorway, her husband caught sight of the soured expression on the face of the half-breed. And, with great effort, he quenched the fire of his own anger. Embarrassment replaced it as he jerked and patted at his expensive clothing.
‘You’ll have to excuse my wife’s unladylike behavior,’ he said stiffly. ‘But I’m sure you can see why she’s so upset.’
‘Yeah,’ Edge muttered as he moved to the window and drew aside the drape curtain. ‘I see, feller. She only hea
rd.’
Grover glowered at the back of the half-breed, but bit on an angry retort. His tone became more brittle with the effort of controlling his temper. ‘Did Spade and his men meet you? Were they involved in what—’
‘They met me. They were involved. Spade’s on his way here now.’
Out on the street, Madeline Grover was striding between the four corpses still slumped on the hard-packed dirt. She stood over each one in turn, an evil smile contorting her features as she drank in the sights and stinks of violent death.
The sandy-haired detective, carrying his hat in his hands, was leading a procession of the body-toting rail men towards the station building entrance.
Grover made a sound of impatience. ‘I have new instructions to give. What’s keeping the others?’
Edge allowed the curtain to drape the window again as the bodies of Archer and Marlow were carried into the building. ‘Right now the cool weather,’ he said as he turned towards Grover. ‘Pretty soon, formaldehyde.’
Chapter Five
Edge and Spade had the Pullman day coach to themselves as the eastbound express pulled out of the Central Pacific’s Oakland station at its scheduled time of eight o’clock. Outside, the scene which slid by the windows had a quality of desolation and sullen dejection.
The mist had disappeared, but squally rain showers had followed it in from the ocean. The sky was blanketed with low, dark clouds that swirled and raced, never parting to reveal the moon or stars. The constantly veering wind hurled raindrops at the train, the beads of water smashing against the windows and transforming into threads of rivulets that raced across the planes at crazy angles.
The station was deserted except for a single trainman in a slicker and a hat with ear-pieces who hurried to complete his chores of turning out lamps and locking doors. For awhile, the scattered lights of the town of Oakland showed as distorted splashes of brightness through the water-run window. Then, gathering speed with every yard, the wood-burning locomotive hauled its string of six cars clear of the cluster of buildings, and pitch blackness pressed against the window.
The first-class coach in which the two men rode was towards the rear of the swaying train, ahead of the brake and baggage cars. In front of it was a Pullman sleeper and the two second-class day coaches.
Edge had boarded a full hour ahead of time with the burdens of saddle, bedroll and rifle that he had been toting since he left his plush room at the Palace Hotel. In addition, he carried a crate made of rough-cut wood a little over three feet long with a depth and width of about four inches. In the box, which Grover had .had specially made, was the rolled up canvas of the million dollar da Vinci.
The half-breed had climbed aboard at the first day car and walked down the length of the empty train to the baggage car. The conductor had been checking the contents of the car against a manifest and started to object when Edge asked him to leave. But, when the half-breed made the request a demand - simply by scowling and draping a hand over his holstered Colt - the conductor left. The short, squint-eyed, bald-headed man in railroad livery had to wait more than ten minutes before Edge slid back the door to allow him to re-enter. And the conductor saw the saddle and bedroll had been stowed untidily in a corner, while the Winchester was canted to Edge’s shoulder - and the long, slender crate was nowhere to be seen.
‘It ain’t my responsibility, sir,’ the man had stressed. ‘It ain’t on my manifest so neither me nor the railroad got any—’
‘How much you get paid, feller?’ Edge interrupted.
‘Three dollars a day.’
‘How many days to Omaha?’
‘Four and a few hours, if we stay on schedule.’
Edge nodded. ‘You already got too much responsibility for twelve bucks. But one other thing.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t tell anyone I was in here.’
‘I sure won’t, sir.’
‘Because if you do,’ Edge went on as if there had been no interruption, ‘the railroad company will be out one conductor and in some dollars. Amount depends how close we are to Omaha.’
Edge had left the nervous conductor then, to go up to the front of the train and back again, as far as the Pullman day coach. All the passenger cars were still empty.
It started to rain as he settled himself into a deep, padded armchair, resting the Winchester against the side. He had positioned the chair so that he was half facing the warmth emitted by a stove in the centre of the car. The angle of the chair also enabled him to look out of the window and keep both doors of the car under surveillance, merely by turning his head a few degrees one way or the other.
As the time for departure approached, the passengers’ began to arrive, hurrying from the station building and across the rain-lashed platform to climb aboard. At first they were in ones and twos. Then a large group appeared, having disembarked from a ferry boat out of San Francisco. The boarding passengers were also being watched from another quarter - by the skinny, sandy-haired Spade who had positioned himself close to the ticket window in the station waiting room. And the detective did not run through the rain and enter the Pullman until the conductor yelled it was time to leave and the engineer sounded the locomotive whistle.
He flopped into another armchair, close to the stove, just as the express jerked into motion. After the events of the late afternoon and evening he was a good deal paler and looked much skinnier than he had done when Edge first saw him at the hotel. But there was a cold light of determination in his dark, widely spaced eyes, and the bitterness that gave his mouth an even more crooked line suggested that he was ending the day an entirely different kind of man than he had been at the start of it. A less subtle sign of this was the absence of a bulge under his rain-spotted grey suit jacket, and the gunbelt with a bolstered Remington that was slung around his waist - over the coat.
He stared in morose silence out of the window until the lights of Oakland had disappeared. After that, he could see only the reflection of himself and his immediate surroundings against the unrelieved darkness beyond the glass. He glanced at Edge, then looked away, and suddenly stared back at him.
‘Where is it?’ he demanded.
Edge finished rolling a cigarette, struck a match on the Winchester barrel and dropped the flaring stick tidily into an ashtray on the side of the chair. ‘Safe enough, I figure.’
Anger raised a little color to the detective’s wan cheeks. ‘Partners I might not like being with you, Edge,’ he snarled. ‘But it’s what I am, so—’
‘Wrong, Spade!’ Edge cut in coldly, the lamps swinging from the roof emphasizing the glitter in his slitted eyes as he gazed levelly at the detective through drifting tobacco smoke. ‘You had two partners and you lost them. You don’t go in for partners. We just happen to be two fellers working for another feller.’
‘All right, split damn hairs if you’ve a mind!’ Spade snapped. ‘But Grover’s put us on the same job. We’re both hired to guard that paintin’. How the hell am I supposed to do that if I don’t know where the hell it is?’
The half-breed kept his voice low and icy. ‘You’ll do fine. Especially if anybody comes down hard on you to tell where it is.’
The pale skin took on more color, concentrating it into patches that were almost purple at the centre of his cheeks. ‘You don’t have to trust me, you hard-nosed gun-slinger!’ he snarled. ‘It’s Drew Grover that’s payin’ me to—’
‘A grand,’ Edge interrupted again. ‘A hundred bucks in advance and the balance when we get the canvas to New Orleans.’
‘So?’ Spade asked, blinking and confusion becoming mixed with his anger.
‘I need the money and...’
‘It ain’t chicken-feed to me.’
‘...I figure to do what’s necessary to earn it, feller. Most important thing that’s necessary is to cut down the risk of losing the canvas.’
‘And I’m a risk? Because you don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut if I get pressured. But you’re so damn hard-nosed you—
’
‘Shut up, Spade. And listen. I don’t trust myself, but the job wouldn’t be worth a couple of grand to Grover if there were no risks. With only me knowing where the canvas is stashed, that particular one is halved.’
‘And if your luck runs out - the same way it did in the poker game last night?’ Spade had calmed and the glint in his eyes was now suggestive of scorn.
‘Wasn’t luck, feller,’ Edge answered softly as he crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
Spade’s mood became even more low-keyed. ‘Okay, I know it. More like deliberate self-destruction. But it don’t matter what you call it. If you end up the same way as Archer and Marlow, where does that leave me?’
Edge showed a wry smile. ‘With a problem that sure won’t be any of my concern, feller. But how many places on a train can you hide what we’re guarding? You want to fill me in now?’
‘You got a nerve!’ the detective answered, his tone and expression warning of a new rise in his anger.
The half-breed nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ve also got an idea how I can test what you can take before breaking, Spade. Or do you want to do it the easy way?’
He and Spade had received their instructions from Grover in the station office at Oakland. After the attempted robbery and gun battle that had made it abortive, Grover had reached a decision not to endanger his own life and that of his wife by travelling with the painting.
Madeline - serene and elegant again after viewing the bullet-riddled corpses of the men who had mistreated her - put up an irritable argument. But there was a limit to Grover’s indulgence of his wife’s whims and he drew the line at the point where her life was put at risk. So the Grovers would travel two days later, on the next eastbound express.
The matter of payment for the two surviving guards was easily settled - the fee promised to the three detectives now being split equally between Edge and Spade, with a small advance and the bulk payable on delivery of the painting.
Edge: Slaughter Road (Edge series Book 22) Page 7
