“I didn’t want to. I was kidnapped by a crazy gypsy. But what are you telling me, then? That Darrow came back again? How could he? Did he find new gaps to jump through?”
“No. Why should he need to? Look, the whole Coleridge speech thing was just a lucky way to finance Darrow’s real purpose—which was to move back here to eighteen-goddamn-ten permanently. He was hiring open-minded, history-savvy lads to be his personal retinue—physician bodyguards—that’s the job I got that I wouldn’t tell you about, remember? And then he noticed that old Coleridge was giving a speech in London during the period of the gap. He’d been having problems paying for everything, and this was the solution—get a million a head from ten rich culture freaks to go hear Coleridge. And he decided he needed a Coleridge expert for that, and that’s when he hired you. But all along, the main… objective… was to come back again, just him and his hand-picked staff, to live. So when the Coleridge party got back to 1983, he hustled them all off into cars and then set up for another jump back to the same September first gap, and we jumped again. But this time we arrived in the middle of the gap, an hour or so after all of you—us—had driven off to see Coleridge, and we cleaned up the signs of our arrival and were long gone by the time the two coaches came back, minus one Coleridge expert, and waited for the gap to end.” Benner grinned. “It would have been fun to drive to the Crown and Anchor and look in on ourselves. Two Benners and two Darrows! Darrow even thought about doing it, and seeing that you didn’t go AWOL, but he decided that changing even that small a bit of history would be too risky.”
“So why does Darrow want me killed?” demanded Doyle impatiently. “And if Darrow’s so damn concerned about the inviolability of history, why has he kidnapped William Ashbless?”
“Ashbless? That jerk poet you were writing about? We haven’t messed with him. Why, isn’t he around?”
Benner seemed to be sincere. “No,” Doyle said. “Now quit ducking the question. Why does Darrow want me dead?”
“I think he wants us all dead, eventually,” Benner muttered into his beer. “He’s been promising that his staff will be permitted to return to 1983 through a gap in 1814, but I’m pretty sure he intends to kill us all, one by one, as he stops needing us. He’s holding all our mobile hooks, and he’s already killed Bain and Kaggs—those were the two who were supposed to do you in a week ago. And then this morning I overheard him order me shot on sight. I managed to grab a fair amount of cash and get away, but now I don’t dare go near him.” Benner looked up unhappily. “You see, Brendan, he doesn’t want anyone else here who knows twentieth century things—radio, penicillin, photography, all that kind of stuff. He was worried you’d patent a heavier than air flying machine, or publish ‘Dover Beach’ under your own name, or something like that. He was very relieved when I—”
There was a pause that lengthened uncomfortably while a hard smile deepened the lines in Doyle’s cheeks. “When you reported to him that you’d shot me through the heart.”
“Christ,” whispered Benner, closing his eyes, “don’t shoot me, Brendan. I had to, it was self-defense: he’d have had me killed if I didn’t. Anyway, it didn’t kill you.” He opened his eyes. “Where did it hit you? I didn’t miss.”
“No, it was a good shot, square in the center of the chest. But I was carrying something under my jacket, and it stopped your bullet.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad of that.” Benner smiled broadly and rocked back in his seat. “You say you didn’t choose to go AWOL from the Coleridge trip? Then you and I can help each other tremendously.”
“How?” Doyle asked skeptically.
“Do you want to get back? To 1983 ?”
“Well… yes.”
“Good. So do I. Man, don’t know what you got till it’s gone, eh? You know what I miss most? My stereo. Christ, back home I could play all nine Beethoven symphonies in one day if I wanted to, and Tchaikovsky the next. And Wagner! And Gershwin! Janis Joplin! Hell, it used to be fun to drive up to the Dorothy Chandler and hear things in concert, but it’s lousy if that’s the only way you can hear ‘em.”
“So what’s your plan, Benner?”
“Well—here, Brendan, have a cigar—and,” he waved at a barmaid, “let me get us another round, and I’ll tell you.”
Doyle took the cigar, a long Churchill-sized thing with no band or cellophane wrapper, and bit a notch in the end; then, again without taking his eyes off the other man, he lifted the candle and puffed the cigar alight. It didn’t taste bad.
“Well,” began Benner, lighting one for himself when Doyle put down the candle, “to begin with, the old man’s nuts. Crazy. Smart as you could ask for, of course, a very shrewd guy, but he hasn’t got both oars in the water anymore. You know what he’s had us all doing since we got here? When we could be, I don’t know, booking passage for Sutler’s Mill and the Klondike? He’s bought a damn shop in Leadenhall Street and outfitted it, completely, as a for God’s sake depilatory parlor—you know? Where you go to get unwanted hair removed?—and he’s had two men staffing it at all times, from nine in the morning until nine-thirty at night!”
Doyle frowned thoughtfully. “Did he… say why?”
“He sure did.” The beers arrived and Benner took a hearty swig. “He told us all to keep our eyes peeled for a man who’ll have five o’clock shadow all over himself and ask for an all-body treatment. Darrow told us to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun, tie him up, and carry him upstairs, and not to hurt him at all beyond the tranquilizer bullet, which damn well better not hit him in the face or throat. And get this, Brendan: I asked him, boss, what does this guy look like? I mean, aside from having whiskers all over himself. You know what Darrow told me? He said, I don’t know, and even if I did know, the description would only be good for a week or so. Now—are those the words and actions of a sane man?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Doyle slowly, eyebrows raised, reflecting that he now knew far more about Darrow’s plans than Benner did. “How does all this bear on your plan to get us home?”
“Well—say, do you still have your mobile hook? Good—Darrow knows the times and locations of all the gaps. And they’re pretty frequent around now, the 1814 one isn’t the closest. So we’ll bargain with him, get him to tell us the location of the next one, and we’ll go and be standing in its field when it comes to an end, and snap! Back we’ll be in that empty lot in modern London.”
Doyle took a long puff on the—he had to admit—excellent cigar, and chased it with a sip of beer. “And what are we selling?”
“Hm? Oh, didn’t I say? I’ve found his hairy man. Yesterday he came in, just like the old man said he would. Short, chubby red-haired guy with sure enough five o’clock shadow all over him. When I started edging toward the trank gun he got spooked and ran out, but,” Benner smiled proudly, “I followed him to where he lives. So this morning I was listening in on Darrow’s room—trying to find out if he was in a mood to be approached with an offer of you give me my hook and tell me where’s a gap and I’ll tell you where your hairy man lives, and by God, I hear Darrow telling Clitheroe to tell all the boys Benner is to be shot on sight! Seems he doesn’t trust me. So after emptying one of the cash boxes, I split, and went and talked to the hairy man myself. Had lunch with him just a few hours ago.”
“You did?” Doyle thought he’d rather have lunch with Jack the Ripper than Dog-Face Joe.
“Yeah. Not a bad guy, really—wild-eyed, and talks about immortality and Egyptian gods all the time, but damned well educated. I told him Darrow did have the power to cure his hyperpilosity, but had some questions for him. I hinted that the old man intended to torture him—which, for all I know, he may—and that he’d need a middleman, a mouthpiece, to deal with Darrow through. I said I’d been one of Darrow’s boys, but had quit when I heard about the atrocities he planned to commit upon this poor son of a bitch. See? But I still had the problem of the shoot Benner on sight order Darrow had given his men.” Benner grinned. “So you become my partner. You talk to Darrow, negotiate the deal, and then you share the payoff—a trip home. I figure you’ll say something like this.” Benner sat back and cocked an eyebrow at Doyle. “We’ll tell old King Kong not to come see you, Darrow, until he gets a letter from us. And we’ll give that letter to a friend—I know just the girl for it—with instructions to mail it only if she sees us disappear through one of the gaps. So you give us a hook and the location of a gap, and if our girl sees our empty clothes fall—and you see, she might be a hundred yards away in a treetop or window, so you can’t hope to find her—then your hairy man will get the go see Darrow message.”