The Angel of Highgate (29 page)

“You see, if Snudgy here lets go of this rope, your little dolly-mop is gonna drop fifty feet straight down. Be nothing left but a bag of broken bones for you to snuggle up with. Won’t look too pretty then, either, wiv a cobblestone smashed through her face.”

Aurelia moaned beneath the gag.

“Now then,” Fowler said. “Hand over them pistols.”

Torn, Thraxton hesitated.

“If we surrender the pistols,” Algernon muttered, “they’re likely to shoot us anyway.”

Thraxton gasped in exasperation. He glared at Fowler. “If we give you the pistols, you will release Aurelia. You give us your word as a gentleman?”

“As a gennulman?” Fowler cackled. “Oh yeah. My word as a gent all right.”

Thraxton nodded to Algernon. Reluctantly, they uncocked the pistols and handed them, grip-first, to Fowler. He hefted them in his thick-fingered hands, ogling the pistols appreciatively.

“A matched set of dueling pistols. Very fine. Very fine, indeed,” he said, then tucked them into the rope hawser tied around his waist that served as a belt.

“And now, as I am a gennulman of my word… Snudge, toss ’em the rope. Snudge threw the loose end of the rope to Thraxton. As he let go, Aurelia plummeted toward the ground, screaming. Thraxton dropped his walking stick and dove for the rope whiplashing across the floorboards. He managed to grab it, but Fowler kicked him in the side of the face, tumbling him over. His grip loosened and the rope sizzled through his fingers. Just before the end flew through his hands, he gripped the rope, burning his hands as he fought to slow it, arresting Aurelia’s plummet just ten feet from the ground. She swooned.

Thraxton stiffened as a pistol was pressed into the side of his head. “Let go,” Fowler said.

“You will have to shoot me.”

Fowler sniggered. “We ain’t gonna drop her again. That was just a bit of a larf. Naw, she’s worth more to me alive.”

Snudge grabbed the rope from Thraxton and started hauling the unconscious Aurelia back up until the other mobsmen were able to pull her back inside.

Thraxton found himself staring into the muzzle of one of his own pistols. “Now that you know I ain’t playin’, let’s talk about dosh. I fink an ’undred pounds is a very tidy figure.”

“A hundred pounds! You must be mad!”

“One ’undred or me and the lads will have ourselves a right gay old time wiv your little dolly-mop until her fanny’s as loose as an old whore’s.”

“But it would take a month to liquidate my holdings and come up with such a sum!”

“Well, well. You have gotta problem then, ain’t ya?”

“Ten guineas. I have it in my rooms. I can put the money in your hands in just a few hours. Ten guineas.”

A shifty smile smeared across Fowler’s face.

“Right then. Ten guineas. But you best be quick about it. If you’re not back in four hours my friend Mister Pierce is gonna poke his nose into her business—if you know what I mean.”

Thraxton choked on his anger, but said nothing. He picked up his walking stick. “Come on, Algy.”

“Oh, he ain’t goin’ wiv ya.”

“But you already have Aurelia. Surely you have no need of a second hostage.”

“I don’t want him for no hostage. I just wanna show you I mean what I say.”

Fowler snatched loose one of the dueling pistols and tossed it to Walter Crynge. “Mister Crynge. Shoot blondie in the head.”

Crynge cackled as he pressed the pistol to Algernon’s temple. Thraxton’s fingers fumbled along the length of his walking stick until they found and folded out a hidden trigger mechanism.

“Go on!” Fowler urged. “Top him!”

Crynge pulled back the hammer with his thumb.

Algernon realized he was about to die and threw a terrified look at his friend. Thraxton slowly raised the walking stick until it was pointed at Crynge’s face. The boar’s head stick contained a single-shot shotgun. Thraxton slipped his thumb into the boar’s mouth and pressed the jaw down until it locked, cocking the weapon. He squeezed the trigger and the stick fired with a tremendous
boom
! The blast caught Crynge square in the face, splashing his brains across the wall and killing him instantly. Another of Fowler’s men sprang forward and leveled a pistol at Thraxton, but his angry scowl turned to a look of horror as Algernon drew the sword cane and plunged it through his heart. The pistol tumbled from the mobsman’s hands and discharged as it hit the floor. The bullet hit Tommy Ebbs in the leg and dropped him screaming to the floorboards.
Bang
. A confused melee followed. Shouts. Curses. More gunshots. Blinding gunpowder smoke billowed. But in the mayhem, no bullets hit their mark. The mobsmen panicked and bolted from the room. Thraxton snatched the dueling pistol from Crynge’s cold fingers and raised it, but Fowler had thrown his arms around Aurelia and now he dragged her backward from the room using her as a shield. The door slammed after them and locked, leaving Algernon and Thraxton sealed in.

* * *

On the other side of the door, Fowler tried to regroup his men as Aurelia kicked and struggled in his arms.

“They ku-ku-killed Bob and Crynge,” Whitey Smith stammered. “And Tu-Tu-Tommy’s still in there!”

Fowler shoved Aurelia into Snudge’s arms. “Lock her up in the snug.”

Snudge wrapped his huge arms around Aurelia, but glared at Mordecai Fowler, his lower lip jutting. “Why’d you kill little Titch?” he demanded. “He was my friend.”

“Why? ’Cause the little bleeder tried to steal from me. That’s why I killed him!”

Snudge’s face purpled with rage, but Fowler ignored him, turning to his men. “There’s only the two of ’em. Follow me, you lot. We’ll go downstairs and shoot up through the floorboards. That oughta make ’em dance!”

* * *

Tommy Ebbs moaned and writhed in agony. The bullet had shattered his femur and severed an artery. Blood gushed in a widening pool.

Algernon looked with amazement at the still-smoking walking stick clutched in Thraxton’s hands. “Any more shells for that thing?”

“None, unfortunately.”

“Now what? We’re trapped.”

Thraxton’s eyes scoured the empty room until they found the rope still dangling from the crane jib.

“The rope. We can swing across to the next room.”

“Fowler’s in there.”

They turned at the sound of a thump. Tommy had staggered upright on his one good leg and hopped toward the door;
thump, thump, thump
. Suddenly, the floorboards beneath him exploded with a cacophonous volley of shots. Hit twice more, Tommy screamed and toppled. A moment later, another volley erupted, blowing the floorboards to splinters and killing him outright.

Algernon looked at Thraxton. “We’re dead if we remain in here.”

“There’s only one way out.” Thraxton nodded at the open loading doors and the rope dangling from the jib. Thraxton seized the rope, lashed the loose end around a cleat screwed to the wall, stepped back a few paces, then threw himself into space, swung in an arc, and landed neatly in the open doorway next door. He leaned out the window and called out, “Algy, I’ll swing the rope back. Get ready to catch it.”

Unbeknownst to Thraxton, Fanny was creeping up behind him. Algernon caught the rope, then swung toward the open doorway. Fanny ran up behind Thraxton and shoved him just as Algernon swung in. The two collided and Thraxton grabbed his friend and hung on as they swung back out into empty space. But Fanny’s own momentum carried her forward and she tumbled out and fell screaming all the way to the cobblestones below.

Algernon and Thraxton swung back together and fell in through the open doorway. Thraxton scrambled to his feet.

“Aurelia!” he shouted.

They heard pounding from somewhere, small fists beating against a door, then Aurelia’s muted cries for help.

“Up there!” Algy said, pointing toward a door at the top of a narrow staircase.

The two friends pounded up the squealing steps. Fortunately, the dim-witted Snudge had left the key in the lock. Thraxton turned the key as Fowler and his mobsmen came thundering up the second-floor stairs and burst into the room.

“Look lively!” Algernon shouted. They snatched the key, ducked into the snug, and locked the door from the inside.

“Geoffrey!” Aurelia cried and leapt into Thraxton’s arms.

“I had feared I would never see you alive.”

“I am so sorry,” Aurelia sobbed. “This is all because of my foolishness.”

“We may not be alive much longer,” Algernon said. “There’s no way out of this room.”

“No, there is!” Aurelia said, and pointed up at the hidden roof hatch young Titch had dropped through.

Outside the snug, the mobsmen hastily reloaded their pistols.

“We got you now!” Fowler shouted. “Come out. If I has to come in there it will be the worse for ya. And don’t try nuffink with them fancy walkin’ sticks!”

Fowler banged on the door of the snug with the meat of his fist and jumped back. No response. He looked around at his men.

“Right lads, give ’em a volley!”

The mobsmen leveled their pistols and fired a deafening fusillade, splintering the door into matchwood. When the gunpowder smoke cleared, he gave the nod and Snudge crashed through the ruined door. Fowler followed, rushing in with pistol drawn.

But the room was empty.

“Where the bleedin’ hell?” Fowler muttered, bewildered. But then he looked up and saw the roof hatch open to the night sky. “They’re up on the tiles. Get the lads out. All of them. I ain’t done with Lord Toff yet, not by bleedin’ half. When I get me mawleys on him, he’ll beg for death!”

* * *

The rooftop pitched down precipitously on either side. The three crept along the apex, one foot on either side, but the slates were loose, missing or slick with decades of green slime and greasy soot. One slip and the hapless person would toboggan down the slippery tiles and be launched into thin air. Algernon led the way, with Aurelia in the middle and Thraxton following behind. Their only hope of escape was to slip back inside the building far enough away from Fowler and his mobsmen to make good their escape. But the dilapidated roof was treacherous: in places it sagged perilously or gaped with jagged holes.

To complicate matters, the air was choking. Dense fog crackled with fiery cinders. Chimney smoke roiled with the pestilential vapors rising from the canal below. They reached their first obstacle, a large chimney stack. Suddenly two of Fowler’s men leaped out from behind. One was armed with a sickle that he swung wildly at Algernon’s head. He missed and swung again, and this time Algernon dropped, thrust his walking stick between the man’s legs, and twisted. The man’s feet splayed beneath him and he fell. The man dropped the sickle, scrabbling for grip with both hands as he slid down the steeply pitched roof then flew out over the edge, screaming all the way to the ground. Meanwhile Thraxton faced off against a big man wielding a cudgel which whished through the air each time he swung at Thraxton’s face, forcing him to back away—the walking stick too light to catch any of the blows. Behind him a hole gaped in the roof and he was being driven steadily toward it. Thraxton caught his heel on an upraised tile and fell at the edge of the yawning hole. His attacker laughed and raised the cudgel high over his head, but then Aurelia ran from behind and shoved him. The cudgel-wielder staggered forward, tripped over Thraxton’s body and toppled through the hole, crashing to the floor of the room below with a bone-splintering thump followed by a low and agonized moaning.

“Look,” Algernon said, pointing farther ahead. “The roof steps down and there’s a walkway. If we can just reach—”

He was interrupted by the boom of gunfire and the slate tiles around them shattered and exploded as bullets whizzed past their heads. He looked back to see Mordecai Fowler clambering out of the trap door in the ceiling of the snug. He was shortly followed by twenty of his mobsmen. The pursuers saw the three and filed along the apex of the roof toward them.

“We must reach that walkway!” Thraxton said.

They hurried onward and unexpectedly came to the end of the roof. What had seemed to be an easy escape route proved to be a deadly trick of perspective. An unjumpable gap separated the roof of the building they were on from the building with the walkway. The drop to the cobblestones below was easily sixty feet.

Trapped.

“Well, well. No place to run to, eh, Lord Muck?” Fowler cackled as he duck-walked along the tiles toward them, dueling pistol in hand, his mobsmen marching behind. “After me and the lads have taken turns with your little dolly-mop she should be nicely broken in for the paying public. She’ll make a nice two-shilling whore down in Whitechapel.”

Fowler brayed a coarse laugh and his men joined in. “As for you, Mister Toff, you and my friend Mister Pierce are gonna spend some long, long hours gettin’ to know each other.”

“You think you’re the equal of any gentleman, Fowler,” Thraxton shouted back. “You think you are just as good as I am… prove it!”

“I don’t gotta prove nuffink to the likes of you.”

“You are the lowest form of filth. Lower than the lowest mud lark or sewer scavenger, for at least theirs is an honest trade. You could never be a gentleman. Not in this life nor any other.”

Fowler flourished the dueling pistol as he shuffled closer. “Like I told ya, in the Seven Dials, I’m the king, and I decide who lives or dies.”

Thraxton laughed scornfully. “A king? You? You are the king of nothing. Look around. You live in a cesspool of filth and decay. But even if you had been born into the highest house in the land, this is where you would end up. Because you are filth and could never be a gentleman, never.”

“Oh, you are gonna wish you had a spare set of lungs, ’cause you’re gonna need ’em for all the screamin’ you’re gonna do!”

“Prove me wrong, Fowler. If you really think you’re a gent, then fight me like a gentleman.”

Fowler’s face concertinaed in puzzlement. “Wot?”

“A duel. That is how gentlemen settle their differences. Or have you not the spine for it?”

“Duel you? Why the bleedin’ hell should I?”

“To prove yourself. To prove to your men that you’ve got the guts to fight me man-to-man.”

“Rubbish!” Fowler laughed, but this time the men did not join in.