"I owe you pain," he whispered, and swung it.
There was a little high whistle and a stab of pain on the point of my elbow. It shot up my arm, up the side of my face to the top of my head. I heard the whistle again and felt the snapper strike my right collarbone. The pain was deep, and traveled through my bones to my chest, my right shoulder, and my lower jaw. The whistle again, and Lapels had reached low and struck my left knee. He hit it hard, and the left leg gave way in a wave of agony. It felt as though my bones were breaking. I sucked air through clenched teeth.
"Please don't! That's enough!" pleaded Roantis, a look of horror on his face.
"Quiet, short stuff, or you'll get it too."
The little truncheon continued to whistle and snap at me like a trained serpent. And Lapels had studied his perverted craft. He knew exactly where to strike so the steel would hit bone and- nerve bundles and send the pain into the center of my neural pathways until I was aglow with hurt. He finally tapped me almost delicately on the tip of my jaw, and the world grew fuzzy. Noises were distant, and there was the sound of rolling surf in my poor hurt head.
"That should slow you down, Adams. If I had anything to say about it, I'd kill you here and now. Now let's go, both of you. Mr. Critchfield's waiting."
Lapels walked behind us, the big smoothbore aimed at our kidneys. It would have made me nervous if I hadn't been so woozy already. The sap had taken the tar out of me all right. I could barely walk. Roantis, his pride no doubt injured at having been outfoxed by a common thug, stomped on ahead of me, his hands shoved deep into his Windbreaker's pockets, looking at the ground and saying nothing. We passed my parked Scout, then the jeep. It was obvious to me now how he'd gotten the drop on us. The chauffeur brought the jeep around behind the house, out of our line of sight. It had stopped there momentarily for the chauffeur to get out and Lapels, with his smoothbore, to climb in. He'd left the estate, doubled back up the dirt road, then crept up on us. One thing was becoming more and more apparent to me: Old Man Critchfield was smart and tough. And he had help that was utterly loyal and brutal.
After we passed the vehicles we walked down a steep and twisty path, and it was there that Roantis fell down. It happened so fast that I almost stumbled over him. He had tripped over a root and fallen flat on his face. He'd fallen hard because we were going downhill. I regained my balance and leaned over him. He didn't move. He had covered his head with his hands, and was moaning. I noticed one strange thing: his watchband had been turned inside out.
"Get away," said Lapels. I stood ten feet away, swaying back and forth to keep upright. I wasn't faking. Lapels held the shot-gun at Roantis and kicked him in the legs. More whimpering from Roantis, whose hands went down under his face for a pillow.
"It's broken," he wailed. "I think I broke my ankle. Please don't kick…"
Lapels listened to his whining and whimpering with a disgusted look. Then Roantis tried to get up several times, but each time he fell back on his stomach.
"Want me to help?" I asked. Lapels told me to shut up and stay where I was. I watched him kick and prod Roantis, finally grow impatient, and reach down and grab the prone man by the back of his jacket collar and heave."
Wrong move.
We walked single file through the gates of the Critchfield estate. Roantis was right behind me, and Lapels followed, holding the gun on both of us as before. The gatekeeper-gardener, a husky chap of Hispanic heritage, watched our little parade closely to make certain nothing was amiss. Lapels nodded at him and he closed and locked the gate behind us.
We were in there now, and couldn't get out. we climbed up the stone terrace steps to the huge oak door. The old black chauffeur opened it and let us in.
"Bring them in here, Lundt!" cried a shrill and imperious voice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"And so you see, Doctor Adams, when I took Lundt's advice on the hiring of DeLucca, I really had no idea of the kind of man he was. I needed someone sufficiently schooled in violence to make the point, you see… but I admit I got way more than I had bargained for. I assure you I have fully apprised Mr. Lundt of my displeasure at the choice."
The old man glared across the wide room at his assistant, whose eyes lowered under the withering gaze. He still had the shotgun across his knees, but he seemed intimidated by the old codger nonetheless.
The room was huge, with an ornate plaster ceiling, leaded windows, oak wainscoting, and a gigantic Tabriz rug which extended the entire length of the room underneath the overstuffed furniture. We could have been in a castle in Scotland instead of a big house on the outskirts of a New England mill town.
I looked steadily at old Critchfield. He was dressed in a wool suit and vest. He looked the part. He was old, no doubt of it. The white hair was almost gone; the flesh had left the beaky face. A big blood vessel stood out like a piece of twine on his high, bony forehead. His chin and neck were bags of saggy wrinkles and liver-splotched skin. And yet there was the look of vitality, of tremendous strength and will in the face and eyes, which twinkled bright blue beneath the bushy white eyebrows. He glared in my direction, a look of self-satisfaction, even hauteur, in his intense eyes. I glared right back at him.
"Your story doesn't impress me one bit," I said. "You say Andrea Santuccio was blackmailing you with the photographs. I frankly find that hard to believe."
"Then believe what you like," he snapped. "I can't stand impertinence. It is true. As I told you, he claimed he wanted to use the money for some rehabilitation project in that North End neighborhood. Likely story. He made some asinine statement that I owed his people some sort of reparation."
"And you don't think you do? You don't feel any guilt at all for helping railroad Sacco and Vanzetti into the electric chair?"
"I didn't railroad anyone. I was an adviser to the prosecution. An able one too, I might add. Many of us who were perhaps less emotionally swayed by the immigrant community's appeals for socialism saw the grave danger that these men, and all like them, posed to capital investment and free enterprise. This ignorant, superstitious, and ill-mannered peasantry! Effluvium of Europe! Flotsam and jetsam washed upon our shores! How dare they seek refuge and plenty here, then proceed to denounce the very source of their newfound security and freedom as unjust? How dare they? My God, Adams, you're a dunce!"
I was about to rise from my chair and go over and smack him one. I wondered what Mary would have done to him. I shuddered at the thought, and remained seated. I had to remember that we were prisoners in Critchfield's mansion.
"The picture you see before you, which shows Sacco standing in front of the penny ferry in the North End, proves he was innocent. An innocent man was executed. That means nothing to you?"
"It was unfortunate. Many innocent people die every day. It is the nature of the world we live in. It isn't good, but it's all we have. Now Sacco and Vanzetti: two men who dodged the draft and avoided the First World War by fleeing to Mexico, and who at the time of their arrest were armed and carrying literature denouncing the nation that had fed and clothed them far better than their native Italy ever did. Do I feel sorry for them? Not on your life, Doctor. I did not and to this day I do not," he shouted, and sat back with a smirk.
"Very well. There then remains a more recent transgression: the murders of John Robinson and Andrea Santuccio. Hear me, Critchfield: I said murders. You're the primary accessory before the fact. You're in on it. Up to your wrinkly old ass. And I'll tell you what. I'm going to see you spend your last days not here, in this fancy place, but in a cell six feet by ten, with all those other 'dregs' like Sacco and Vanzetti. How do you like that?"