Walking across the open pavement of Billingsgate, the man skirted the little Punch and Judy stage, and he heard the piping voice of Punch exclaim, “Ah, one of the Dolorous Brethren, I do b—” The voice choked off, and the man glanced at the puppet.
He halted and grinned. “Somethin’ I can do for you, Punch?” he asked.
The puppet stared at him for several seconds. “Uh, no,” it said. “I thought for a moment I—no.”
The man shrugged and walked on toward the vacant dock. Soon his worn boot heels were knocking on the weathered wooden decking, and he paused only when he stood right on the splintery lip of the dock.
He stared out across the broad, darkening face of the great river at the first few lights on the Surrey-side, then he laughed quietly and whispered, “Let’s just test your… stamina, Chinnie.” He crouched, leaned forward and, arms over his head, kicked off in a long and fairly shallow dive. There was a splash and spatter, but it was not loud and there was no one nearby.
The ripples were just beginning to subside when his head broke the surface twenty feet farther out. He shook the wet hair out of his face and then trod water for a few moments, breathing in fast, whispered hoots. “Cold as the water through the seventh hour,” he muttered. “Ah well—sherry and dry clothes in Just a few minutes now.” He did a leisurely crawl, punctuated by rest stops during which he floated on his back and stared at the stars, until he was far out in the center of the river, nowhere near any of the few boats and barges that were on the water that evening.
Then he expelled all the air from his lungs in a slow hiss that quickly became bubbles as his head disappeared under the surface.
For nearly a full minute bubbles continued to float up and pop in the lonely center of the river. Then there weren’t any more, and the river resumed its featureless smoothness.
It had been a close bout all along, but at last, from his vantage point by the window, old Harry Angelo saw his premier pupil setting up his opponent for the thrust Angelo had recommended for use against a left-handed fencer.
The bout had been going on for more than five minutes without either fencer receiving a touch, and Richard Sheridan, who had strolled over, brandy glass in hand, to join the cluster of spectators, had remarked quietly to the pugilist “Gentleman” Jackson that it was the best display of swordplay he’d seen since Angelo had had his salle in the Opera House in Haymarket.
Angelo’s pupil, the prize fighter known as the Admirable Chinnie, had repeatedly disengaged from a feint toward the outside line of sixte into a thrust in the quarte line, on the other side of his opponent’s blade, and his opponent had each time parried it easily, though never managing to land a riposte on Chinnie.
At the age of fifty-four, Harry Angelo had been the unquestioned master of fencing instruction in England ever since his legendary father’s retirement a quarter of a century ago, and now he could read his pupil’s intention as clearly as if Chinnie had spoken it: another sixte feint and then the by now expected disengage—but this time not all the way around the opposing bell guard to the quarte line, but instead up under the opponent’s guard into the unprotected low flank.
Angelo smiled as the sixte feint was thrust out—then frowned, for the tipped point just wavered there. The opponent started to make the conditioned quarte parry, then noticed that Chinnie’s blade was motionless, and so picked it up in a lightning bind that sent his own point corkscrewing in to thud and flex against Chinnie’s canvas-jacketed stomach.
Angelo expelled his held breath in a whispered oath; then the Admirable Chinnie staggered back and almost fell over, and several of the spectators rushed to him to hold him up. Chinnie’s opponent yanked off his mask and dropped it and his foil on the hardwood floor and exclaimed, “My God, did I hurt you, Chinnie?”
The prize fighter took off his own mask, straightened and shook his head as if to clear it. “No no,” he said hoarsely. “Just a bit of trouble catching my breath just now. Right in a sec. Strain of the peculiar posture.”
Angelo raised his gray eyebrows. In three years of concentrated instruction this was the first time he’d ever heard the Admirable Chinnie describe the en guard position as peculiar.
“Well, we certainly shan’t count a point that was made when you were off guard,” declared Chinnie’s opponent. “Whenever you’re ready we’ll resume the bout at zero and zero.”
Though smiling cheerfully, Chinnie shook his head. “No,” he said. “Later. Right now—fresh air.”
Old Richard Sheridan helped him to the door, with Angelo striding along beside them, as the rest of the company shrugged and picked up their foils and masks as two couples squared off on opposite sides of the pistes painted on the floor. “I trust he’s all right,” someone muttered.
Out in the hall Chinnie waved the other two men away as the clang and rasp resumed in the salle. “I’ll be back in after a moment,” he said. But when they’d reluctantly gone in, Chinnie hurried down the stairs to the street door, flung it open and sprinted away down the Bond Street pavement.
When he reached Piccadilly he slowed to a walk, taking deep lungfuls of the chilly autumn air, and at the Strand he glanced to his right, toward the river, and whispered, “How ye doin’, Chinnie me lad? Cold, ain’t it?” Another man on the sidewalk had started toward him as if he recognized him, but drew back, disconcerted, when Chinnie burst into maniacal giggling and did a fast, if inexpert, dance step on the pavement.
He continued muttering to himself all the way down Fleet Street to Cheapside. “Hah!” he exclaimed at one point, bounding into the air. “Good as Benner’s, this is. Better! Don’t know why it never occurred to me before to grab the West End sort of merchandise.”
The first part of the dream was devoid of horror, and Darrow never remembered until he woke up that he’d been through it many times before.
The fog was so thick that he could see no more than a few yards ahead, and the damp black brick walls on either side were visible only because they were so claustrophobically close. The alley was silent except for an irregular knocking somewhere in the fog overhead, as though an unfastened shutter was swinging in a breeze.
He’d been taking a short cut that should have wound up at Leadenhall Street, but he’d been lost for what seemed like hours in this maze of courts and alleys and zigzagging lanes. He hadn’t met a soul yet, but he’d stopped now because he’d heard a low cough from the dimness ahead.
“Hello,” he said, and was instantly ashamed of the timidity in his voice. “Hello there!” he went on more strongly. “Perhaps you can help me find my way.”
He heard the shuffle of slow steps, and saw a dark form begin to emerge from the wall of mist; then the figure was close enough for him to see the face—and it was Brendan Doyle.
A hand seized Darrow’s shoulder and the next thing he knew he was sitting bolt upright in his own bed, clenching his teeth against the despairing cry that in the dream had burst from his lips and resounded flatly in the fog-deadened air:
“I’m sorry, Doyle! God, I’m sorry!”
“Jeez, chief,” said the young man who’d awakened him, “didn’t mean to startle you. But you said to roust you out at six-thirty.”
“Right, Pete,” Darrow croaked, swinging his legs to the floor and rubbing his eyes. “I’ll be in the office. When the fellow I described gets here, send him in, will you?”