Unholy Alliance (29 page)

Chilled, aching, uncomfortable, he was
astonished to find himself drifting instantly towards sleep.

***

Cobb awoke with a start. Which wasn’t wise because
it was enough to send him crashing, rump-first, down between the
two chairs that had served him as a makeshift bed. He groaned and
rolled free of them, onto his side. His back and legs ached. The
throbbing in his skull was threatening to shatter it. His tongue
tasted like one of his socks. And for a frightening second or two
he was not sure where he was. Gradually, however, Bessie Jiggins’
dining-room came into focus and, with it, recollections of the
horrors of the night just past.

He shuddered, moaned against his various
aches, and struggled to his feet. He had to grab the chair-arm to
steady his dizziness and keep himself from toppling. The room was
still dark, but a brightening behind the calico curtains indicated
that the sunrise had already begun. He could hear no other sound
but his own harsh breathing. Then he began to shiver with the deep
chill of the room.

At some cost he hobbled over to the
kindling-box and proceeded to get a fire started in the hearth.
Then he crept across the hall and, going no farther, monitored
Bessie’s snoring for a full minute. Then he reached in through the
doorway and retrieved his clothes. Back in the dining-room, he
stood as close as he dared to the fire and wriggled into his shirt
and trousers. He spotted a kettle of water nearby and put it on the
hob. Then he sat down to think.

He thought about the tale Bessie had spun
about the butler’s illness and the day’s delay in his leaving for
Cobourg with Brutus Glatt. He thought about the door to her
quarters being scrupulously locked. And then it hit him – with a
gratifying wallop! He knew now what word she had been mumbling as
he had scuttled out of her clutches a few hours ago. And it wasn’t
“brave . . . brave.”

What to do, though? Only one option presented
itself. In stockinged feet he padded resolutely across to the scene
of Bessie’s aborted assault. She lay on her back, sawing logs –
crosscut. Her nightgown was still bunched at her throat, and the
comforter had slipped down far enough to expose four-fifths of her
stunning breasts. But Cobb forced himself to look past their
splendid arches and rigid nipples to the key that lay nestled
between them at the end of a thickly braided golden cord.

He could see no way of getting the loop of
cord over her head without waking her, so he took out his penknife
and approached her, one tiny step at a time. Just as he reached the
edge of the bed, a floorboard protested at the pressure on it.
Bessie’s eyelids fluttered. Her snoring stalled. A small bubble of
spit appeared between her lips, expanded and burst. Cobb froze.
What would she think if she were to open her eyes at this moment
and see a fully clothed man arched over her naked form with a knife
brandished in his right hand?

She didn’t wake, however. Very slowly the
snores started up again, irregular and staccato at first, but soon
ascending to their customary operatic pitch. Holding his breath,
Cobb leaned over her as far as he could without collapsing onto
those womanly hillocks, rubbed the blade of his penknife with his
thumb until the metal was warm, and eased it under the cord without
contacting flesh. With his other hand he grasped both sides of the
loop just above the knot that held the key in place, and then,
closing his eyes, he pulled the blade up against the golden braid –
slowly . . . slowly . . . a millimetre at a time.

He felt a hand on his thigh. He stopped
cutting, and tried to breathe, then not-breathe. Despite the chill
in the room, his brow was awash with clammy sweat. The fingers of
Bessie’s left hand did a little jig high up on his trouser-leg. He
saw a smile interrupt her snoring. The fingers fell away.

Without realizing it, in his panic at the
arrival of her fingers, he had jerked away just forcefully enough
to have his blade sever the cord. The key now lay atop her left
breast. With a trembling that threatened to undo him but which he
couldn’t control, Cobb succeeded in lifting the key free. Still
trembling, he backed out of the room, and stood in the hall gasping
for breath. By God, he’d been in a dozen donnybrooks and pummelled
toughs in alleys all over Toronto, but he hadn’t been this nervous
since the birth of his daughter Delia!

Well, he had the key. And one chance to test
his theory before the sultry Siren back there woke up and
discovered she had been forsaken. At the door to Bessie’s own
quarters he inserted the key without difficulty, turned it slowly,
and heard the lock give way. He inched the door inward.

He was surprised to find himself inside a
spacious room partially illuminated by bars of sunlight slanting
through gaps in the shutters that were tightly closed over two wide
windows. A
heated
room! Quickly he took in the pot-bellied
stove, the three-pillowed sofa, the padded easy-chair, the ornate
escritoire littered with papers, and a bookcase stuffed with
leather-bound volumes. The lace curtains framing the windows and
the mauve covering on the sofa suggested a woman’s room – for
sitting, writing, relaxing.

Cobb was disappointed to find it empty.

However, straight ahead among the morning
shadows he spied a short hallway with a door at the end of it. He
moved silently across the room, and as he neared the hallway, he
noticed another door to his left. It was half open, enough for him
to take a peek inside. In the dim light he could just make out a
gleaming copper bathtub and detect the lingering scents of perfumed
soap and bath powder.

He turned his attention now to the door
straight ahead. It wasn’t locked, and gave way with a squeal when
he pushed it inward. He could see nothing in front of him but
darkness.

“Anyone in here?” he called out softly.

A human figure of some sort fell into the
faint lozenge of light spilling through the opened door. Two huge
dark eyes in a white face stared up at the intruder.

“Who are
you
?” the face inquired in a
tremulous whisper.

Cobb jerked back, startled, and struck his
head on the door-sash. “Jesus, fella! You give me a fright!”

“She made me do it,
honest
!” The
crouching figure, a male despite its being clothed in a pink
nightgown, lurched forward and wrapped its bare arms all the way
around Cobb’s ankles.

“I’m Cobb,” Cobb said as he tried to
disentangle himself, “a policeman from Toronto. An’ you gotta be
Mr. Graves Chilton from London, England.”

The shivering creature at his feet burst into
tears.

Cobb half-dragged and half-carried Graves Chilton to
Bessie’s sofa, where he propped him up against two pillows and drew
the pink nightdress discreetly over the fellow’s thin, hairy legs.
Cobb sat down next to him.

“I’ve come to take you outta here,” he began,
trying in vain to make eye contact with the butler, who had stopped
snivelling but still refused to look up at his rescuer. “And I need
you to tell me how you come to be in this
predict-a-ment.
I
take it you been a prisoner in these rooms fer the past eleven
days?”

Chilton nodded, then finally glanced up at
Cobb, who was surprised to see that, except for the brief effects
of the sudden tears, Chilton did not look like a man who had been
starved, abused, or sleep-deprived with worry for almost two weeks.
“I was on the stagecoach from Kingston – on a Tuesday, I think . .
.”

“That’s right. You was headin’ fer a job at
Elmgrove in Toronto.”

“With Mr. Garnet Macaulay, yes. And I
remember becoming ill as we pulled up to some wretched-looking
wayside inn, and that large woman – the one who’s been at me all
these days and nights – ” He paused and a shudder passed through
him.

“She beat ya?” Cobb said, incredulous.

“Not exactly,” Chilton mumbled, and hung his
head once again.

“But you
were
a prisoner in here?”

“She gave me a cup of tea to settle my
stomach, and when I woke up I was lying back there – on that bed in
that dark room.”

“She must’ve drugged yer tea.”

“I – I tried to get out a window, but the
shutters are nailed tight.”

“That’s why it’s so dark in here.”

“Then that woman came – she made me call her
Dearie – and told me I was in a cabin deep in the woods, with only
snow and trees and bears around us.”

“You don’t know where you
are
?” Cobb
cried, scarcely believing his ears. “You’re in the livin’ quarters
of Bessie Jiggins, the woman who runs the inn you landed in. An’
the Kingston Road is twenty yards to the north of us!”

Chilton was stunned. “She lied to me,” he
muttered, and looked as if were about to cry again.

“Of course she did. Fer reasons I’ll tell ya
about later, she needed to keep you from gettin’ to Elmgrove fer a
week or so. Lockin’ you up here an’ spinnin’ you a yarn about bein’
a prisoner in the wild woods was her plan all along.”

“Locked?”

Cobb’s jaw dropped. “Jesus, Chilton, didn’t
you try an’ get out that door over there? Even to have a peek at
the trees an’ the bears?”

“I heard her locking it a few times, but not
every day.”

“An’ you never once tried to get away?”

Chilton put his head in his hands. At the
same moment Cobb caught sight of a small sideboard angled into a
far corner and only now visible in the fading shadows of the room.
Sitting on top of it were three bottles of Scotch whiskey, two of
them empty.

“She kept you supplied with booze?”

Chilton nodded, and mumbled through his
fingers, “I’ve got a terrible weakness for the drink. It was my
undoing back in England.”

“So you’ve been liquored up fer a good deal
of the time you was supposed to be kidnapped?”

“She knew I couldn’t stay away from it.
Diabolical, she was.”

“An’ she kept you well-fed?”

“Yes. We – we had some meals in here
together.”

“An’ just how was she supposed to rustle you
up good grub way out in the bush amongst the bears?”

Chilton shook his head. “I was – I was groggy
with the drink.”

Another, more incredible, thought popped into
Cobb’s head, as he recalled the copper tub and the still-warm
stove, and noticed how neat and tidy these quarters were. “Don’t
tell me you two cuddled back there in that bed?”

A sob erupted from Chilton. “She made me do
it,” he wailed. “She was insatiable. What could I do?”

“An’ scrubbed yer back in the copper tub? An’
powdered yer butt afterwards?”

“You don’t know what it was like!” Chilton
shouted with a touch of defiance.

Oh, don’t I
? Cobb thought, but said,
“So what’ve we got here? A fella that might’ve been drugged or just
ill from the journey, a fella who wakes up unmanacled in a dark
room an’ don’t think to try the unlocked door, a fella who’s
gullible enough an’ yellow enough to let an unarmed woman bamboozle
him, that takes to the drink she gives him like a duck to a pond,
paddles in her bathtub, takes his meals with her and – in short –
lets himself become a love-slave fer eleven days! You weren’t
kidnapped, sir, you were cuddled to death!”

“It was the gorilla,” Chilton said, pleading
his case and glancing at the door he had not bothered to test. “She
said he was her lover and if I left the safety of these rooms, he
would rip my arms off in a jealous rage!”

“Brutus? The stableman?”

“She brought him to the door once, and he
growled and howled like something unhuman – and monstrous!”

“He’s a mute, you silly man! An’ he’s
harmless.”

“I – I don’t think so!”

The door had swung open with a bang, and Cobb
turned just in time to see Brutus Glatt bearing down upon him. And
Brutus was not here to wish the guests “good morning.” Cobb jumped
to his feet, but before he could get his arms up to defend himself,
Brutus thudded into him, chest to chest. The breath went out of
Cobb as he stumbled and fell flat on his back. Brutus followed him
down, and the man’s enormous weight collapsed full-length on top of
him. Cobb felt his ribs flex, and a sharp pain tore all the way
down his spine and into his thighs. He cried out in agony. As
Brutus reared back, Cobb instinctively threw his hands up to ward
off the blows expected. But his assailant went for the exposed
throat. His huge, muscular fingers closed over Cobb’s windpipe,
cutting off his breath and the scream that boiled behind it.
Brutus’s fiery stare and his garbled curses were only inches above
Cobb’s face.

“Help! Help! He’s killing him!” the butler
shouted at no-one in particular.

That’s a lot of use, Cobb thought grimly, as
he fought for air – even as his mind was entertaining the
impossible possibility that he was about to die.

“Let him go, Brutus!
Now
! He wasn’t
trying to hurt dear Mr. Chilton.”

Brutus rolled off Cobb, checked to see that
the victim had resumed breathing, and then stood up meekly beside
Bessie Jiggins. She was standing in her pink nightdress, a twin of
the one draped over Chilton, with her hands on her hips. “The game
is up, Brutus. No sense in making it worse.”

***

“He’s not a violent man,” Bessie was saying to Cobb.
“Horses don’t take to violent men. He keeps half a dozen stray
kittens in his little cabin beside the barn. When one of our horses
gets sick, he sleeps in the stall next to it.”

Cobb fingered the bruises on his neck. “I c’n
see why he’d be protective of
you
, but why go after me when
you were a room away?”

Bessie smiled, despite her nervousness. She
had been eyeing Cobb closely ever since they had sat down at the
table in the dining-area near the comfort of the fire Cobb had
built earlier. Graves Chilton had reluctantly agreed to let Brutus
escort him into the kitchen, where the stableman had fired up the
cooking-stove and offered to help the butler into the clothes he
had not seen for eleven days.