The Double Dealer, Page 2

  You shock ’em to their core. None of this pleasantry crap. My, what a pretty string of jewels. Would you mind ever so much placing it ’pon my hand? I’d as soon swive a barnyard pig as say such shite. I’ve done one in my time and not the other, and I shan’t tell you which.

  The door then opens a crack, and then all at once, and a great man with a great belly, dressed in a suit of sky-blue cloth, all lace and gold thread about him, stumbles out. His wig is askew, no doubt knocked about from his terrible trembling, and his face is slick with perspiration, despite the chill in the air. Hard by fifty years of age, and there are tears in his eyes; he’s crying like an infant what been ripped from its mother’s teat and hurled against the wall.

  “Please,” he says, all snotty weepful. “We’ll do as you say. Don’t hurt anyone.”

  “Don’t hurt anyone?” I bark. “Why, look about you, my blubberer. Your guardians are dead, your coachman smote. Mean you that I should not hurt anyone above the station of a servant?”

  I think to add more, but time is of the most importance, and a man of the highway ought not to comport himself as though he were a comedian. “Out of the coach, the rest of you,” I says.

  “There’s no one in there but my wife,” the weeping fat man tells me.

  “Out with her, or there shall be no one in there but your widow,” I answer. Mighty clever, I was in those days.

  Out she comes, as pretty a thing as I’ve ever seen. Not more than eighteen, with white skin, a swan’s neck, eyes so green they’re like the brightest leaves on the sunniest day of the clearest summer. She’s got one of those fancy gowns on, and the bodice makes visible a fair portion of her massive bubbies. She has her eyes cast downward, and, like her husband, her lips are all atremble, but these lips are red and moist and waiting to be kissed.

  Farting Dan gives a right lascivious look, and neither the woman nor the husband can guess if he means to blow a hole through her or to make use of the ones she’s already got.

  I toss the fat man a sack. “Start filling it. Your coins, your notes, your jewels, aught of import. I plan a search before we go, and I mean to cut off one of your fingers for everything I find that you ain’t included.”

  I’ve still got my pistol trained on them when Farting Dan says, “I believe we must tarry a few minutes longer than planned.”

  He’s looking at the wife, so there is no mistaking his mind, but I wish to make it clear that this ain’t the time for frolicks. “Spend your share with the whores,” I say. “I’ll not take chances here.”

  “I’ll wager you will.” He gets onto his horse so as say he’s no concern for my preferences.

  The sods, meanwhile, are putting into the bag what I ask. The fat man has put in his purse and is taking the buckles off his shoes. The lady is taking off her rings and her necklace.

  I send the husband up top to throw down the trunks what’s stationed up top, a pair of fat ones they’ve got. They crack open egglike when they hit the dirt, and out spills a mass of clothing and trinkets. I make the pretty lady collect the trinkets, and put them in the bag, and as she pushes things this way and that, I see something bright and shiny, all glistening in the sun. It can’t help but draw my attention.

  It’s a lock box, very like the one I have back in my rooms, the one I schemed to get, the one containing a fortune which might as well not exist since I can’t get at it. It’s the same sort, with the very same filigree design on the steel of it. This one is a great bit smaller, about twice the size of my fist, but the lock seems to be exactly the same size, looking unusual large on this piece. So now there’s something on my mind more important than the pretty wife.

  “What’s in the box?” I ask the husband.

  “Banknotes,” he tells me. He clearly don’t want to, but he does it anyway. Good fellow. Deserves a pat on the arse, he does.

  “Give me here the key,” I order.

  He only shakes his head, and tells me, “I don’t have it.”

  “Where is it?” I demand.

  “There isn’t one. The notes inside are too valuable, so I destroyed the key.”

  “Then how the deuce do you get them out?” I roared, for it was a mighty reasonable question, and worthy of being asked loudly.

  “I have the one man in the world who can pick a Domal lock,” he says. Thus it is that he points to the crumpled heap of Phillip the coachman, bloody, glistening in the sun almost so much as the metal box.

  This is what they call an irony. Farting Dan has bashed the brains out of the one man who could help me get into this box, and the one I got hidden in my rooms, too. I stare at the heap, and then something happens that don’t look like it should. Phillip, like as if on cue in a stage play, twitches.

  With the pistols still on the happy couple, I take a closer look at him. There’s blood all matted in his hair, but his skull ain’t bashed in at all. For all his wild swinging, it don’t seem that Farting Dan done very much damage.

  What I need to do is get Phillip back to my rooms and tend to him until I can ask him to get my box open. That’s as much as anyone would conclude.

  Farting Dan’s been gone for a bit longer than perhaps he ought to’ve been, so I glance about, and see nothing. Then, with pistols held steady, I take a fleeting look behind me. If those two had been of a mind to overpower me, they could have done then, for I gazed at the scene longer than a wise prig ought.

  What was it that so caught my attention? It was Farting Dan. He was behind me, all right. Behind me, and tied to a tree. His eyes were open, his mouth was open. And though I was a good hundred feet away, it looked to me for all the world like his throat was open, for it was much streaked with blood, as was his shirt and jacket.

  Such cruelty. Such malice. Anyone casting his eyes to it would see that this weren’t meant to hurt Farting Dan, though it appeared to have done that plenty, but to put the scare into those gazing ’pon it. It felt a whole lot like someone getting even, and in that moment I knew full well that there could only be one man behind it all. Benjamin Weaver, and he meant to even things up.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you open your gob?” I demanded the fat man.

  “I didn’t see it,” he whimpered. “I was too busy collecting the articles for you.”

  “Then you’ll die for it,” I said, for this was the sort of outrage that demanded someone die, even if it were not the person what done it. My hand was calmed, however, by a voice.

  “Leave him be, Fisher,” I heard. “Face me like a man, if you dare.”

  I turned and there he was, astride a horse, about halfway between Farting Dan’s body and myself. I was far away, and it had been more than a year, but I recognized the face all the same. Sure ’nough, ’twas Weaver, the man what had struck down Ruddy Dick. He held pistols in both hands, and they was trained upon me.

  At that distance the guns should be entirely worthless, so he prods his horse forward. “It’s time for you to pay for what you did to Thomas Lane,” he says.

  I was determined to show no fear, though I was fearful plenty. “What about Farting Dan there? He didn’t have nothing to do with your precious pretty fellow.”

  “I see the damage you’ve done,” he answered, arrogant as a lord. “He deserved to die, and so do you.”

  He had his pistols trained on me, and I had mine on him. He had two, and I had one, but mine had been tended to and loaded by the great and deceased Farting Dan, and that gave the advantage to me. I would be able to fire before he dared, and lucky shot would do the business.

  He was about five feet short of what he must have considered being in range when I fired my pistol. He fired his in almost instant response, but my shot had been true, his false. Not so true as a man in my state should have liked, for it only hit his shoulder, but he lurched backward, and his pistols fired upward.

  Weaver tumbled backward off his horse, and this, I knew, was my moment. “You!” I shouted at the fat man. “Get him on my horse.” I gestured with a fresh pi
stol toward the still, slumped body of Phillip.

  The fat man obliged, and in less than thirty seconds, I had him on the horse, and myself besides. Weaver was still struggling to get to his feet. He clutched at his shoulder, and there appeared to be a great deal of blood. It seemed I had hit him in his blood tubes, a wound that would make my escape all but certain, but I would take no chances.

  I passed him quickly on my horse, emptied a pistol shot into him and rode on, my still prisoner balanced on the horse like a big bloody sack of shite.

  * * *

  It was a hard three-hour ride to my rooms in London. I could have not have planned this better had I tried, for it was full dark by the time I arrived, though not so dark that my presence on the street should draw attention from. And London, though it has many faults, at least enjoys the marvelous trait of being a city where no one will wonder why you ride about with a slumped man over your horse. There were, after all, too many other distractions. The cries of women selling shrimp and oysters, the pie men, the whores and traders in nefarious goods. Fools ran their coaches down the narrow streets too fast, farmers led their pigs this way and that. The streets were full of emptied chamber pots and kennel and dead horses carved up by beggars for their dinner. The skies in London were full of smoke and coal, the people rushed and angry and afraid. I may as well have been a buzzing fly for aught anyone gazed upon me.

  I kept my rooms in Hockley in the Hole, and in that maze of makeshift buildings without addresses, sometimes without streets, no one could find me who was not led there by myself. And my landlord, who observed me dragging Phillip upstairs—he would say nothing. I paid him for his silence. He even helped get Phillip to my rooms, where we dropped him on the floor. To best make sure all went as it should, I gave the landlord a coin and sent him on his way.

  I didn’t live richly in my home, for it were only a place to rest; I lived in taverns and bagnios and with the ladies of the streets. Here I had my poor bed, a few furnishings upon which to sit and rest my food when there I ate. I hung nothing on the walls, covered the splintering floor with no rugs, put no dressings ’pon the cracked windows.

  On our journey home, I had observed that this Phillip’s head was no longer bleeding, and his breathing appeared to me fairly normal, all of which gave me hope. I lit a few oil lamps to allow me as much light as I needed. Then I took a bucket of water, what I used for washing that morning, and threw it upon Phillip. He stirred at once. He groaned and coughed and sputtered. He opened his eyes.

  I trained a pistol on him. “Sit up.”

  He done it and put a hand to his head and then drew it away sharply.

  “I hears you can open a Domal box.”

  He nodded, and it looked to me like the effort almost made him tumble over, and for all the world it seemed like it should take a miracle for this hurt bastard to open the box tonight.

  With some difficulty, for I was very tired, I pushed aside a large and uncommon heavy chair I kept by the wall, and then opened the secret compartment in which I stored my most precious valuables. Included among these, and indeed almost alone among these, for I had little of value at the moment, was the box. Unlike the one I had in my loot bag, this one was near the size of a man’s torso, and heavy, though from its frame or contents I knew not.

  I set it down on the floor next to him, and he gazed ’pon it groggily.

  “Open it,” I told him.

  “No,” he said in a voice surprisingly steady.

  I trained my pistol on him. “Do it.”

  “Killing me won’t get it open,” he said.

  “True,” I agreed. “But lead in your leg might encourage some cooperation.”

  Then he did something most unlike a man with a bashed head. He pushed himself to his feet and stood facing me, gazing at me with unclouded eyes, standing steadily and strong. His injuries were perhaps not so severe as they appeared, not so severe as he’d led me to believe.

  Not ten feet from him, however, with a loaded pistol, I was the master, and if he would not believe it, I would be forced to explain it in terms he could not ignore.

  “Open it,” I told him, “or you will regret it.”

  He smiled at me, and it was a smile full of confidence and, yes, pleasure. Here was a man enjoying himself not a little.

  “I don’t know how,” he said.

  “Then I will remind you,” I answered, and fired the pistol directly at his knee. An injury of that nature might cause him so much pain that he would be unable to do his business, but I have observed, and more than once, that a man with one knee shot will go to great lengths to avoid having the other served with the same sauce.

  Through the smell of powder and cloud of smoke, I noted that a man who ought to have collapsed remained still standing. From so little a distance, I could not have missed. There were no marks upon the floor, yet he remained unscathed, and had not even flinched during the firing.

  “Your pistol is spent,” he said. “Mine, however, is not.” From his pocket he withdrew an imposing piece, which he aimed at my chest. “Sit.” He gestured to my great and heavy chair.

  Make no mistake, I had my wits about me. I saw no reason to lose heart, but with no choice but to obey, I sat. From his pockets he then withdrew a length of thick rope.

  “Tie yourself to the chair,” he said. “And no deception, if you please. I have my eye ’pon you, and I know a fine knot from a poor.”

  My hands fumbled with the rope. “Look here, Phillip. I have a great deal of money about me, and rather than be enemies, let’s come to what they call an understanding.”

  He said nothing until I had secured myself tight to the chair. I meant to create a loose knot, but his eyes never left me. I must now operate under the belief that he could not kill me in cold blood—and that I could buy my freedom with the promise of silver.

  Once I was bound, he smiled at me, a devilish sort of smile. “My name is not Phillip,” he said to me. “I presume you did not see my face when you knocked me down a year and a half ago, and so it is you who do not recognize me today.”

  A sort of stillness overtook the room. It was the stillness that came over the theater when a great revelation was made. Even the rabble of the pits would pause in their nonsense to look up and see what secrets were being said. Here it was, in my life, such a moment. A moment of the theater as things that had been hidden revealed themselves.

  “Thomas Lane,” I said. “I thought you was dead.”

  “No, Thomas did not die, though I am not he. You mistook the one for the other, as you were meant. I am Benjamin Weaver.”

  “Then, the man I knocked down…” I began.

  “That was me who you mistook for Thomas Lane during our last encounter. Thomas had some unfortunate bounties upon him, and he thought it useful to let the world believe he died by your hand. It was therefore spread about that you had killed him, and to give the story the credibility Thomas required, it was also spread that I sought revenge for a death that never was.”

  I began to sputter, for now this story was all confusion. “If I did not kill Lane, why all the trouble to take revenge upon me?”

  He smiled again. “It is not revenge, Fisher. It is a matter of business, as I have found a better way to earn my bread. I am no longer a man of the highway, but a thief-taker. The owner of this box employed me to retrieve it. As you would tell no one, not your closest confederates, where you kept your goods, I had no choice but to encourage you to bring me to it of your own free will. Your attempt to rob us ’pon the highway was my scheme. I permitted you to believe you manipulated me, when I was the one who manipulated you.”

  “You’re nothing but a double dealer, and a more ruthless bastard than ever I was,” I told him. “You let all those people die so that you could retrieve this box?”

  He laughed. “No one has died. No one has been hurt. Did you not wonder how you missed me when you fired ’pon me? Your companion neglected to include balls in the pistols. We deceived you with empty firear
ms and false blood from the stage.”

  It was then, over the stench from the discharged pistol, that I began to smell something else. A stench like rotted eggs—and rotted meat and rotted teeth. Then, into the room walks Farting Dan, Thomas Lane by his side.

  “I knew you had the box in your rooms,” Farting Dan announces, “but as you would tell no one where your rooms were, I could not sell that information. I knew the way you’d have to pass, though, so Thomas and I rode ahead of you and waited for you to glide by. You were so intent in getting home, so certain you were now safe, you did not notice us behind you.”

  “You’ve betrayed me,” I shouted at Farting Dan. “Why?”

  “For money,” he said with a shrug.

  “It’s a good reason,” I answered, “and I’ll not fault you for it.”

  “Now,” Dan says to Weaver, “take the box and be off with ye. That was our bargain, and I expect you’ll honor it.”

  Weaver nodded. “I should like to bring you to justice, Fisher, but I will honor my word. You’d be wise not to cross my path in the future, however.”

  And so it was that he lifted the box in his arms, and he and his companion left my rooms.

  In silence we waited as we heard their heavy steps down the stairs, then the slam of the front door. Farting Dan went to the window and watched for some minutes, and I watched him. Then at last he turned to me and broke the silence. “Not too tight, I hope, them ropes?”

  “I done it myself,” I says.

  “You comfortable?” he asks.

  “Shut your gob and untie me,” I says. “You get the last payment?”

  He cut through the ropes with his knife. “Ten more guineas, as promised.”

  With my hands free, I stood and rubbed my wrists. “A lot of nonsense for twenty guineas,” I says. “Particularly since the contents of that box must be worth a hundred times that.”