‘Who do you represent, Algy?’
That was the question I’d never answer, not if he shot all the legs off the table and let me kick. Even if I died, Moriarty would use spiritualist mediums to lay hands on my ectoplasm and double my sufferings.
‘If I step off this table, your circumstances will change,’ I said. ‘You will be murderers, low and cowardly killers of a hero of the British Empire…’
Never hurts to mention the old war record.
‘Under whatever names you take, you will be hunted by Scotland Yard, the most formidable police force in the world…’
Well, formidable in the size of the seats of their blue serge trousers…
‘All hands will be against you.’
I shut up and let them stew.
‘He’s right, Jim. We can’t just kill him.’
‘He drew first,’ Lassiter said.
‘This isn’t Amber Springs.’
I imagined the climate was somewhat more congenial in Amber Springs, wherever that might be. The community’s relative lack of policemen, judges, lawyers, gaolers, court reporters and engravers for the Police Gazette — which in other circumstances would have given it the edge over Streatham in my book — was suddenly not a point in its favour.
Even with my ringing ears, I heard the click. Lassiter cocked his gun.
He walked around the table, so he could at least shoot me to my face. It was still dark, so I couldn’t get much of a look at him.
‘Jim,’ protested Jane-Helen.
There was a flash of fire. For an instant, Lassiter’s fiercely moustached face lit orange.
The table was out from under me, and the noose dragged at my Adam’s apple.
I expected the wave of pain to come in my chest.
Instead, I fell to the floor, with the chandelier, the rope-coil and quite a bit of plaster on top of me. I was choking, but not fatally. Which, under the circumstances, was all I could ask for.
A tutu and a sweetie would not have made me feel more alive.
Lassiter kicked me in the side, the low dog. Then the woman held him back.
That futile boot was encouraging. The fast gun was losing his rag.
Gaslight came up. Hands disentangled me from the brass fixtures and the noose, then brushed plaster out of my hair and off my face.
I looked up, blinking, at a very pink angel.
‘Wuvvwy mans,’ said the glassy-eyed girl, ‘Rache want to keep um.’
VI
Though still tied — indeed, with my ankles bound as well — I was far more comfortable than I had been.
I was propped up on a divan in the parlour of The Laurels. Rache — the former Little Fay — was playing with my hair, chattering about her new pet. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, but acted like a six- or seven-year-old. I remembered to smile as she cooed in my ears. Children can turn suddenly, and I had an idea this child-minded girl could be as deadly as her foster father if prodded into a tantrum.
She introduced me to her doll, Missy Surprise. This was a long-legged, homemade, one-armed ragdoll with most of her yellow wool hair chewed off. She got her name because there was a hiding place in her tummy, where Rache kept her ‘pweciousnesses’ — cigar-tubes full of sweets.
The ‘Laurences’ were still undecided about what to do with me.
It’s all very well being a gunslinger, but skills that serve in the Wild West — or the jungle, come to that — need to be modified in Streatham. At least, that was the case if you were a fair-play fathead like Jim Lassiter.
These were truly good, put-upon people. That made them weak.
Rache kissed my ear, wetly.
‘Stop that, darling,’ said her mother.
Rache stuck out her lower lip and narrowed her brows.
‘Don’t be a silly, Rache.’
‘Rache not a silly,’ she said, knotting little fists. ‘Rache smart, ’oo knows it.’
Jane-Helen melted, and pulled the girl away from me, hugging her.
‘Not so tighty-tight,’ protested Rache.
Lassiter sat across the room, gun in hand, glowering.
Earlier, he had been forced to tell a deputation of concerned neighbours that Rache had dropped a lot of crockery. No one could possibly mistake gunshots for smashing plates, but they’d retreated. Blaming the girl had put her in a sulk for a moment, and inclined her even more to take my part.
This blossoming idiot was heiress to a fabulous gold mine.
‘We could offer him money,’ Jane-Helen said, as if I weren’t in the room.
‘He won’t take money,’ Lassiter said, glumly and — I might add — without consulting me for an opinion.
‘You, sir, Algy…’ began the woman.
‘Arbuthnot,’ I said, ‘Colonel Algernon Arbuthnot, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers…’
A right rabble, that lot. All their war wounds were in the bum, from running away.
‘Hero of Maiwand and Kandahar…’
I’d have claimed Crécy and Waterloo if I thought they’d swallow it.
‘Victoria Cross.’
‘’Toria Ross,’ echoed Rache, delighted.
‘Colonel Arbuthnot, what is your connection with the Danite Band?’
‘Madam, I am a detective. Our agency has been on the tracks of these villains for some months, with regards to their many crimes…’
She looked, hopeful, at Lassiter. She wanted to believe the rot, but he knew better.
‘…when we were alerted to the presence in London of dangerous Danites, well off their usual patch as you’ll agree, we made a connection. Of course, we knew you were here under an alias. We had no reason to bother you, but the movements of incognito Americans — possessed of fabulous riches, but content to live in genteel anonymity — are noticed, you know. If we could find you, so could they. We’ve had men on you round the clock for two weeks…’
That was a mistake. Lassiter stopped listening. Anyone who could hear a cocking pistol through a window and across the road would have noticed if he were being marked.
‘…if I’m not at my post when my replacement arrives, the agency will know something is amiss.’
Jane-Helen looked hard at me. She hadn’t bought it either.
Still, in the short term, my story would be hard to disprove. I had introduced a notion that would snag and grow. That I was to be relieved, that confederates would be arriving soon.
Lassiter’s sensitive ears would be twitching.
Every cat padding over a garden wall or tile falling off an ill-made roof would sound like evidence of a surrounding force to our rider of the purple sage.
‘Algy wants to see Rache ’utterflee dance now,’ announced the girl.
She fluttered dramatically about the room, trailing ribbons, inflating sleeves and lifting skirts. One of her stockings was bagged around her ankle.
‘’Utterflee ’utterfly, meee oh myyy,’ she sang.
Lassiter’s face was dark and heavy. I was quite pleased with myself.
I snuck a peek at the clock on the mantel and made sure I was noticed doing it.
‘’Utterfly ’utterflee, look at meee…’
Lassiter chewed his moustache. Jane-Helen seemed greyer. And I was almost starting to enjoy myself again.
Then the front window smashed in and something black and fizzing burst through the curtains.
I saw a burning fuse.
VII
Lassiter got his boot on the fuse, killing the flame.
‘That’s not dynamite,’ I said, helpfully. ‘It’s a smoke charge. They want you to run out the front door. Into the line of fire.’
I didn’t mention that I’d thought of something similar.
‘Jim, they’re out there,’ Jane said.