The Humbug Murders (40 page)

“Friends, eat, drink, be merry!” Lazytree invited, silencing the music with a brief flash of his gloved hand. “Your Christmas presents wait outside. They are being carefully prepared against a spectacular setting to best immortalize this evening's incredible nature. Dozens of gifts we present you with from all over the world, all waiting to be unwrapped with rising excitement. Will you tear at them a bit at a time, greedily, passionately? Or rip them open and see what they contain with no further ado? Whatever your choice, we will immortalize your passions on film. Have no fear of discovery; your masks will protect you.”

Lazytree signaled the players, and the music resumed. He was immediately ringed in by anxious men who clearly did not appreciate being kept waiting. “Soon, soon,” I heard Lazytree telling them, then the sounds of the party drowned out further intelligence.

Adelaide grasped my arm. “It's happening outside,” she whispered, her chest rising and falling with sharp quick movements. She was nearly breathless with worry. “The women aren't even here.”

“Quell your panic,” Shen said in his most reasonable voice. “All that matters is that it has not yet begun, and this means that most of their goons are certainly arrayed elsewhere, to prevent the ‘presents' from wandering off. All we must do is avoid Lazytree and wait for our opportunity. The moment the crowd is sufficiently distracted, we will leave here and take up position in the chapel. Don't forget why we're here and don't forget Humbug's promise.”

“Frankly,” I said, “if these men are to be the dozens that were threatened, I think I'd just as soon let carpets run with their blood before lifting a hand to stop them. We both know what they're going to do with these women.”

To our right, a man holding court with several of his fellows asked, “What do you call a pearl that's been dropped from the roof of St. Paul's?” The jokester smiled. “Nellie.”

The crowd about him burst into raucous laughter, and my gaze whipped to Shen. I expected to see him tremble with barely controlled rage, teeth grinding, hands ground into fists. But instead, he was detached, smiling thinly, exhibiting no sign of distress other than some drops of perspiration on his forehead.

Lazytree's great crimson robes flashed as he made his way through the crowd. Sooner or later, he'd come our way.

“Should we do something?” Adelaide whispered. “We can pretend to fight and draw all eyes to us while Shen gets away.”

“No . . . that would draw Lazytree, and we would be found out.”

“We have to do something,” she said, her voice hitching.

Just then, fate took the matter out of our hands. A pair of double doors leading to the garden swung in, and a small man flanked by a handful of armed guards was pushed through the crowd. Lazytree did his best to push and shove people out of the way. The diminutive fellow was scowling, intent on something of great import, frustrated that he could not simply avoid attention. I remembered him by his round spectacles and their tinted black glass.

The photographer, surely!

“The time is nearly upon us!” Lazytree called out. “This is Mr. Gustuv Bleier, and all of you are, of course, well-acquainted with his miraculous science: photography. He will be immortalizing your stag-like prowess with our vast selection of Christmas nymphs out by the abbey. Now if you would simply be so kind as to make way, make way, yes, there's a good fellow, he will complete his final preparations and the night's true entertainment shall soon commence!”

I had spied the door Dodger had described, the one leading to a hall at the end of which resided the chapel. Now was our chance to slip away unnoticed, except—

Shen was surging ahead, moving to intercept the photographer.

“Ebenezer?” Adelaide asked, her voice laced with worry.

There was nothing either of us could do. Shen surged with such inhuman speed that I barely registered that he had cracked the nearest guard's nose with his elbow and relieved the man of his pistol before the shot rang out and the little man crumpled to his knees. A neat little red hole had burst into existence upon his brow, and a spray of blood had speckled several men who'd stood behind him.

Shen lowered the gun, staring down as the little man sank to one side. Women screamed as a pool of crimson spooled out onto the hardwood floor. The Chinaman's expression was curious, even a bit perturbed, as if the experience had been less than he'd anticipated.

“Do you know what you've done?” Lazytree shouted, grinding the heels of his hands into his temple and screwing them about so tightly I thought his eyeballs might pop out. Face beet red, veins bulging, fit to burst, he studied the other guards, who now stood with their weapons all pointed at Shen. Eyes popping, mouth frothing, Lazytree raised his hands high, balled them into fists, and he loosed his incredulity at his men. “What are you waiting for!?”

In the moment before they all opened fire on my companion, I was certain that Shen's serene smile returned.

Amidst the blaze of gunfire and Shen's dying screams, Adelaide grasped my hand and hauled me to the hall door. She yanked it open, shoved me ahead, and we were running, following the plan as if it had not just been literally blown to hell.

We raced down the corridor that we had been told would lead to the great chapel and never learned if that was true or not. Behind us exploded cries of, “Those two were with him” and “Kill them.” My hand grasped the handle to the door at the end of the hall and found it locked. Adelaide hauled on another door, mercifully open, and we darted inside a small, darkened study, slammed the door shut, but did not have a key to lock it against our pursuers, whose footsteps echoed in the hall.

We upended a towering bookcase, bringing it crashing down in front of the door just as someone shoved it open. A sliver of harsh yellow light from the hall sliced in, but the door was jammed long enough for us to find an open window and slip outside and race into the night.

We ran back in the direction of the carriage road, teeth chattering, the heat sparked by terror offering precious little defense against the chill of the evening. The guards from the front of house whipped around before us, no doubt drawn by the sounds of gunfire. Shouting bolted outward from the way we'd come. For an instant, I thought we were trapped, but Adelaide grasped my hand, and together we flew towards a gazebo and beyond it, a romantically-lit trail through the woods.

We skidded on ice, tumbled, and that alone saved us as shots bit into trees that had been at eye level a moment before. I grasped Adelaide by the shoulders, propelled her further down the twisting path, and only the constant sudden sharp turns kept our pursuers from firing again.

Any notions I yet held that Adelaide was the mysterious Lady were well and truly gone.

We drew up as a pair of costumed gentlemen shrieked in surprise at the sight of us, preventing a collision as they strolled, cigarettes in hand, back from wherever this path led. Adelaide and I brushed by them, swung them back and away from us, ran on, taking another sharp turn, then another. Our masks kept slipping as we ran, obscuring our view, and we threw them down as we raced on.

“There!” someone yelled. And without thought, a hailstorm of gunfire exploded at our backs coupled with shrieks of surprise and agony.

“Don't stop!” Adelaide hissed. I did not. I surmised that the men we'd passed had been mistaken for us and shot down in our place. I also guessed that our pursuers' blunder would only keep them from us a short while.

We burst from the path carved among the trees and saw moonlight tinge the ocean ahead and far below. We'd been harried up along a road paralleling the coastline, and the path had spilled out onto a ruin-littered glade where towering abbey walls flickered with crimson light. In summer, this would be a rich, welcoming meadowland. In winter, it was a frozen waste.

We could barely take in the madness before us. All activity was centered in the great cradle of the abbey ruins. Fifty people, if not more, had set about the most peculiar industry I had ever witnessed. Cauldrons so great they might have made Macbeth's witches weep in envy burned with crimson flames. A boy trudged back and forth between a dozen or more of them, examining them, chugging bucket loads of a thick powder onto them when they threatened to burn clean to yellow once again.

Dozens of women lolled upon stones or incongruously placed velvet chaise longues. Others stood with shackles upon their wrists, easing out from chains leading back to half-destroyed walls. Though thin and weak, the women had been bathed, their hair washed. They wore translucent gowns of teal, emerald, gold. Attendants, both men and women, circulated among them, painting their cheeks with rouge from palettes they held or placing flowers in their hair. The cauldrons provided not just a gaudy theatrical reddish glow that had suffused the sky even from miles away, but precious heat that kept the barefoot women from freezing to death.

Guards stood at the perimeters, just as Shen had predicted. They were at every doorway, looking inward, watching the women for any sign that they might escape. And at the heart of it, a half-dozen odd contraptions set up on tripods with cloth hoods, accordion-like extensions, rectangular glass eyes. Long steamer trunks filled with supplies for the strange machines sat nearby. What would happen to these women now that the night's “festivities” had been spoiled?

Voices rose at our backs, and Adelaide pointed upward. “We can hide up there,” Adelaide commanded.

We passed near enough one of the many open steamers to snatch blankets we might use as cloaks against the icy winds as we fled back into the chill. I followed her up a brutally steep winding stone path that cut right through the heart of the ruins to the only structure that had not been razed in whatever attack leveled the abbey. We soon found ourselves in a high tower overlooking the hellish pit below.

Adelaide sank into my arms, murmuring something about needing the warmth, and I held her tightly. We were both shivering.

Why had Shen done it? What madness had overtaken him?

Perhaps I had just answered my own question. And perhaps further, the madness had been upon him far longer than had been evident to my senses.

Something behind us caught Adelaide's attention. She pressed a finger to her pursed lips, and I saw the camera I had not noticed when we'd first stumbled in. Of course, it had been placed to peer down at the “Christmas gathering,” as we were now doing, and capture the entirety of the depraved scene set to go off below. Footsteps scraped along stone steps and we pressed against a wall as a pair of young men trudged inside. They complained about the “wretched fur'nor” and wishing he'd take a slow boat off to hell. We snuck down the steps as they set a heavy trunk next to the apparatus and cracked it open.

We fled the ruins entirely, ran up along a narrow path to a hillside, and stopped as three figures stepped out in front of us, onto the plateau we thought might lead to freedom. A short, squat man flanked by tall, brutish-looking men who reminded me of Bill Sikes. The fat man stepped into a pool of moonlight, a silver glow tracing along the barrel of his weapon.

George Sunderland smiled.

“You're Smithson,” I said, ice flowing along my spine.

“I suppose I could explain it all to you,” Sunderland said, leveling the pistol at my heart. “But what does it matter now?”

A sudden wind struck his back, buffeting him, and he rocked slightly, shuffled on the rock, but I'd had no chance to run; his aim had remained true. I blinked—and one of the goons next to Sunderland was no longer in place. A trick of the moon, I told myself, a drifting cloud had darkened my view, surely.

I said nothing. My gaze was riveted to the pistol held firmly in the fat businessman's gloved hand. I edged my way in front of Adelaide, praying that when the bullets struck me, she would flee into the night and perhaps lose herself in the darkness.

Sunderland's smile widened. “Mr. Scrooge, you surprise me. Not going to try and bargain for your life? Chivalry, even? Ah, this will make a fine tale with my boys. A fine one!”

A grunt sounded behind him, to his left, and Sunderland stood alone. The second thug was now removed from my sight.

Sunderland spun, forgetting us, aiming his gun with shaking hand, sweeping it this way and that. A woman's insane laughter echoed on the wind that again punched into him, making him sway.

A voice echoed on that wind. “Well, well, Mr. Sunderland . . . or should I say Smithson? It seems we have something in common after all. The world thinks we're both dead!”

A black wind whipped forward and a blade sank into the side of Sunderland's neck.

“Only in your case, it's true!”

SUNDERLAND FELL, SPASMING,
hands flopping, fighting his own attempts to grasp the blade that had sunk cleanly through his neck and severed his windpipe. Gasping for air, mouth flapping, he mercifully twisted onto one side and hid himself from our sight as the horrible wet gurgling sounds went on, but only for a short while.