Mister Slaughter (56 page)

Matthew stood up, dropping the dart to the floor. His throat was cold, his neck prickling where the tip had entered.

"Stay where you are," he said. He was aware that his tongue was starting to freeze.

Ripley, the young assassin-in-training, advanced as in a nightmare. Obviously he had graduated to using a blowpipe and a dart smeared with frog venom. Matthew recalled with terror what Mrs. Sutch had told Slaughter: " . . . causes the muscles to stiffen and the throat to constrict. Within seconds, the victim cannot move . . . "

If he had only seconds, he was going to make them count.

He picked up the candleholder with numbed fingers and hurled it. Not at Ripley, but through the glass of the windows. The crash echoed along Stone Street and made a dog start barking. His only chance, he'd realized, was to bring the nearest constable to his aid. If no one heard the noise, he was dead. And he might well be dead, anyway.

He retreated. His legs were cold and trembling; everything seemed to be in slow-motion, and he was aware that his heart—when it should be pounding in his chest—was also slowing. When he drew in a breath, his lungs creaked. They felt as if they were filling up with icy water. Even the workings of his mind were running down: Ripley may have shadowed him from the Trot . . . come ahead and picked the lock . . . relocked the door . . . waiting for him in the dark . . . his method of a needle through his eye . . . into the brain . . . for resolution of this matter of . . .

Matthew picked up Greathouse's chair and held it before him, as he backed toward the wall.

In the flickering light cast by the candles on Greathouse's desk, Ripley glided forward step after step.

"Hello?" someone called from the street. "Hello, up there!"

Matthew opened his mouth to shout for help, but his voice was gone. It came to him to throw the chair at Ripley and take his chances on getting down the steps. As soon as this thought registered in his brain, his hands spasmed. He lost hold of the chair. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees.

A fist hit the door at the bottom of the stairs. Matthew fell onto his face. He was shivering, his muscles jumping as if the venom had birthed frogs beneath his skin. Still, he tried to push himself across the floor. Within another five seconds both his strength and power of will had abandoned him.

Ripley stood over Matthew, who lay frozen on his stomach, his eyes open and his mouth gasping.

"Corbett?" shouted another voice. There came the sound of the doorhandle being worked back and forth.

Ripley reached down and began to turn Matthew over.

Something slammed against the door.

Ripley succeeded in his task. In his prison of ice, Matthew thought he should get his hands up before his eyes. He tried this also, but nothing happened. I'm drowning, he thought. My God . . . I can't breathe . . .

Again, something smashed into the door. There came the noise of wood ripping asunder. Matthew felt the floor shake underneath him.

Ripley grasped a handful of Matthew's hair. Candlelight jumped off the needle's tip as it hovered over the center of Matthew's right eye. Ripley had become a blur, a white shape, truly ghostly. The needle's tip descended, and looked to be burning with blue fire.

Matthew saw Ripley's head turn.

A dark shape enveloped the assassin.

Ripley's mouth opened, and suddenly a huge black fist hit him in the face and his jaw crumpled and teeth and blood flew out. For a second the blurred Ripley gave a hideous rictus of a grin with his ruined mouth, the single good eye wide and staring, the other fish-belly white, and then his face disappeared again beneath the fist. This time Ripley fell out of Matthew's line-of-sight, leaving what Matthew saw to be a streak of spirit image across the air.

Matthew's lungs hitched. He was gulping breath down, swallowing it from where he lay at the center of an ice-pond.

"Corbett!" Someone was above him. He couldn't make out the face. "Corbett!"

"Is he dyin'?" another voice asked. A green lamp floated over Matthew.

The face went away. There was a silence, during which Matthew continued to gulp small mouthfuls of breath, for it was all he could manage. His heartbeat was slowing . . . slowing . . .

"Christ!" came a shout. "Zed, pick him up! Peterson, do you know where Dr. Mallory lives? On Nassau Street?"

"Yes sir, I know."

"Run there as fast as you can! Tell him we're bringing in a poison victim!
Go
!"

"Drink this."

Matthew recoiled; he couldn't recoil very far, however, for he was swaddled in damp beddings with his arms down by his sides. A cup of steaming liquid was tilted to his lips, which Matthew even in his humid haze kept tightly pressed together.

"It's just tea.
English
tea, that is. With honey and a dash of rum. Go ahead, drink it."

Matthew accepted it, and Jason Mallory held the cup to his mouth until the tea was gone.

"There," said Dr. Mallory. "Wasn't so bad, was it?"

Matthew's swollen eyes took in the doctor sitting in a chair beside his bed. On an octagonal table next to the chair was a single candle with a polished tin reflector behind it, and by that light Matthew made out Mallory's face. The rest of the room was shrouded by darkness.

Matthew felt as if his mind had been shattered like a mirror and pieced together again by a stranger who was not quite sure how the memories fit. Had Rachel Howarth ever stood beautiful and defiant before a mocking throng of Indians in a Seneca longhouse? Had Magistrate Woodward ever nocked an arrow and fired it into the night-black forest? Or Berry ever leaned her head against his shoulder under the stars and wept heartbroken tears? He was all messed up.

More than that, his bones ached, his very
teeth
ached, he couldn't have gotten up from this bed or in reality lifted his arms from his sides for eight times eighty pounds, and he had the awful impression of a woman sliding a chamberpot under him and saying, "There you are, now do your business like a good boy."

He remembered sweating. But he remembered freezing, as well. Then burning up. At some point, had cold water been poured repeatedly over his back? He remembered someone pushing down on his chest, again and again, hard enough to . . . had he wept, like Berry had? And someone saying close to his ear, "Breathe, Matthew!
Breathe
!"

Ah, yes. He remembered drinking the tea.
Not
English tea, certainly. This had been thick, sharp-tasting, and . . .

Again, Matthew. Drink it, now. You can do it. All down
.

His heart. He remembered how his heart was pounding, as if about to tear itself from his chest and tumble across the floor spewing blood. He was sweating, he was lying in a sodden mass of linens, and . . .

One more cup, Matthew
.
Come on, Greathouse, get his mouth open
.

"How are you feeling?" Mallory asked.

Matthew made a noise between a fart and a whistle.

"Do you know where you are?"

Matthew could see nothing but the doctor's face, illuminated by the reflected candle. Mallory was a lean, handsome man who appeared to possess features part angel, in his long, graceful Roman nose and luminous sea-green eyes, and part devil, in his arched, thick dark brown eyebrows and a wide mouth that seemed to be on the constant verge of a cruel burst of laughter. He had a weathered face that spoke of the harsh fire of tropic suns. His hair was dark brown, pulled back and tied into a queue. His chin was square and noble, his demeanor calm, his teeth all in their places. His voice was low and smoky, like the rumble of distant guns.

"The treatment room in my house," he said, when Matthew didn't respond. "Do you know how long you've been here?"

"No." Matthew was shocked at the weakness of his own voice. How time flew: one day a young man, the next ready for Paradise.

"This is your third morning."

"It's day, then?" But where was the sunlight? Surely there were windows in here.

"When I last checked the clock, it was just after two. In the morning."

"A night owl," Matthew rasped.

"You might give praise for night owls. Owing to a particular night owl named Ashton McCaggers, you were brought promptly to me."

"I remember . . . " What? A one-eyed ghost, sliding out of the wall? A sting in the side of his neck? Oh, yes. That. His heart was beating hard again, and suddenly he was wet with perspiration. The bed already felt like a sinking boat. "Ripley," Matthew said. "What happened to
him
?"

"He is in need of a new face, and currently resides in the prisoners' ward of the King Street hospital. It's unlikely he shall be speaking anytime soon. You might thank McCaggers' slave for that."

"How did Zed
get
there?"

"Well, he knocked the door down, is the short answer. As I understand, the slave was up on the roof of City Hall and saw your light. He relayed this—as he does in some way, I suppose—to his master, who wished to take you a bottle of brandy to toast your return. There was something about hearing glass break. So again, you might give thanks for night owls, both the white and black variety."

"Why?" Matthew asked.

"Why what?"

"A moment." Matthew had to compose the question again, for it had slipped away between thought and lip. "Why was I brought to
you
? There are other doctors nearer Stone Street."

"There are," Mallory agreed, "but none of them have travelled as extensively as I have around the world. And none of them know anything about the frog venom on the dart that struck you, or of course how to alleviate its unfortunate effects."

"How?" Matthew asked.

"Is this a guessing game?"

"How did you . . . alleviate?"

"First of all, I knew what it was—what it
must
be—due to the blowpipe that Ashton found in your office, and of course from your condition. I spent half a year on an expedition into the jungles of South America, where I witnessed natives regularly hunt with the pipe and dart, and more than once I saw them put even jaguars on the ground. Of course there are many different species of what they call 'poison-dart frogs', some more potent than others. The venom is actually sweat from the skin. A sort of sticky yellowish-white paste. As in the small clay vial that young wretch was carrying in his pocket."

Matthew thought of the empty space where the blowpipe had been, in Mrs. Sutch's cupboard. His own name had been in the ledger book of victims, but it would not have been crossed out until Ripley had done the deed and reported back.

"The venom doesn't travel well," Mallory went on, his face daubed yellow by the light. "After a year or so, it loses its full lethal potency. Though it can still seize a man up, so to speak, or at least give him a good scare. The trick is to keep the victim breathing and give him a shock to the heart. Which I did with my tea."

"Your tea?"

"Not the English variety. My own recipe, which I hoped would work if indeed the venom was not at its full potency. A tea boiled from feverwort, yarrow, cayenne pepper, coca leaves, hawthorn and skullcap. You received a very, very strong dosage. Several, in fact. Boiled down to a thickening, I suppose you might call it. The result is that your heart pounds, your lungs pump, and you sweat rivers, but you do banish the impurities, if you live."

"Ah," Matthew said. "I expect . . . my face got very red, as well?"

"Beet-red."

"May I ask you a question?" Matthew slowly eased himself up to a sitting position. His head swam and the room spun, but he made it. "Have you . . . ever given that tea to Princess Lillehorne?"

"In a
much
more moderate portion, yes. A very expensive health treatment. Firms the fibers, aligns the humors and is quite beneficial to women's parts. She told me she was having some trouble in that regard. I asked her to keep the treatment to herself, because my supply of coca leaves was limited, but she deemed it wise to tell a friend, who told a . . . "

"Friend, who told a friend, until there were five women paying for health treatments three times a week?"

"Yes. And I allowed it because everytime I raised my fee, they paid. Only now . . . you've used up the last of my supply."

"I don't think I want anymore," Matthew said. "But tell me . . . how did Ashton McCaggers know you knew anything about the frog venom?"

"Ashton and I," said the doctor, "have been meeting regularly on Crown Street for coffee. He's a very interesting and knowledgable young man. Very curious about the world. I've told him about my travels: Italy, Prussia, Hungary, China, Japan . . . and many other places, I'm proud to say. One day I mentioned my exploits in South America, and I told him about the natives and the blowpipes. He'd already read Sir Walter Raleigh's account of his travels on the Orinoco River, and of how the pipes were used, so Ashton recognized what it was when he saw it."

Matthew nodded, but he was watching the doctor very carefully. Some little thing, just a pittance of a thing, had begun to bother him. "I wonder," Matthew said, "how that young wretch, as you put it, got
hold
of a blowpipe, a dart and that vial of frog venom. Don't you?"

"I
have
wondered about that, yes."

"You know, that seems a bit strange to me."

"Yes," the doctor agreed. "To me, as well."

"I mean, it's not every day that a killer tries to murder someone with frog venom from South America, and there in the same town is a doctor who is . . . well . . . almost an expert on frog venom from South America."

"Not an expert." Mallory gave a passing smile. "There are so many more varieties of poisonous frogs yet to be discovered, I'm sure."

Matthew sat up a little straighter. He had a bitter taste in his mouth. "I would think McCaggers might wonder about that coincidence too, when he stops to consider it."

"He already has. As I said to him, it's one of those strange improbabilities that make up the chaos of life. I also told him, Greathouse and Lillehorne that the blowpipe could have been fashioned right here in New York, but that the venom would have been obtained only after much time and expense. Someone had to bring it back from the jungle. A very exotic way to kill a victim, really. But perhaps . . . it was an experiment?"