I’ve got to get back to 1983 before this cough kills me, Doyle thought unhappily. A shot of penicillin or something would clear it up in a couple of days, but if I went to a doctor here the bastard would probably prescribe leeches. He felt the throat tickle building up again, but resolutely resisted it. I wonder if it’s developed into full- blown pneumonia yet. Hell, it doesn’t even seem to be good for business anymore. Nobody wants to give anything to a beggar who looks like he’ll be dead in ten minutes. Maybe the captain would—
Someone thrust a leg in his way and before he could step aside he was heavily shoulder-bumped, and he pitched straight forward onto the cobblestones, abrading the palms of his hands. The person who’d tripped him walked on, but someone else crouched beside him. “Are you all right?” the newcomer asked.
Dizzily Doyle started to make his deaf-mute gesture, but all in an instant the man slapped one hand over Doyle’s face, holding his jaw shut with the heel of his hand, and with the other drove a blade down at Doyle’s shoulder. Doyle caught a glimpse of the knife and thrashed backward, so that it cut through his coat and skin but was deflected outward by his collarbone. He tried to yell but could only produce a sort of loud hum with his mouth still held shut; his assailant knelt on Doyle’s free arm and drew the knife up for another try.
Suddenly something from behind collided hard with the man and he
Doyle allowed himself to be marched at a trot back the way he’d come, for he assumed these were some of Copenhagen Jack’s beggars who had come to his rescue; then he saw the upright grasshopper figure of Horrabin waiting in the alley ahead, and realized that Doctor Romany had found him.
He extended one arm and then slammed the elbow back into the stomach of the man who held his left arm, and as the man crumpled Doyle drove his left fist into the throat of the man on his right. He too went down and then Doyle was running south with the boundless energy of pure panic, for he remembered Romany’s cigar so well that he could almost feel the heat of it on his eye. He could hear the footsteps of the third man pounding close behind him.
He was off the main street and pelting down an alley now, and the racing pursuer’s footsteps echoed terrifyingly close, so when he saw a stack of boxes full of vegetable peelings against one wall he reached out as he ran past and yanked the stack out; Doyle spun with the momentum of the action, lost his footing and fell heavily, skidding on his hip and then on his cut shoulder, but the boxes had toppled directly into the path of Horrabin’s man and he had tangled his feet in them and done a resounding belly-flop onto the round stones of the pavement. He lay motionless face down, the wind and maybe the life knocked out of him, and Doyle got to his feet, whimpering, and limped as fast as he could on down the alley.
He crossed two narrow streets and followed his alley through one more block and then found himself on the brightly lamplit sidewalk of the Strand, only a few blocks east of the Crown and Anchor. All the running had started him coughing again, and he made a shilling and fourpence from the awed passersby before he got it under control. When he could get a breath again he began walking west on the Strand, for it had suddenly occurred to him that this was the Saturday night Coleridge had been scheduled to speak, and that Coleridge, while not now in any position to grant substantial aid to anyone, might at least be able to help Doyle get back to Captain Jack’s house unseen.
Oblivious to the bright store and restaurant windows he passed, he hurried down the sidewalk, hunched over to relieve the pain of the stitch in his side, limping, and breathing with fast asthmatic wheezes. He saw a woman recoil from him in actual fear, and it came to him how grotesque he must look with his make-up, tattered clothes and crippled cockroach gait; abruptly self-conscious, he straightened up and walked more slowly.
The crowd that parted hastily in front of him seemed no more composed of individuals than a plywood theatrical flat representing a bus-line, but he did notice when a startlingly tall figure stepped out of an alley into his path. A white conical hat topped a head like a decorated Easter egg, and Doyle gasped, spun around and ran, hearing the knocking of the pursuing stilts on the pavement.
Horrabin ran easily on the stilts, taking bobbing ten foot strides even as he wove through the sidewalk traffic, and as he ran he emitted a succession of piercing high-low-high-low whistles. To the terrified Doyle it sounded like the Nazi Gestapo sirens in old movies about World War Two.
The whistle was rousing certain beggars and drawing them out of alleys and doorways; they were silent, powerful-looking creatures, and two of them plodded toward Doyle while another was working his way over from across the street.
Looking over his shoulder, Doyle caught a freeze frame glimpse of Horrabin only a giant pace away, his face grinning maniacally like a Chinese dragon and one white claw extended. Doyle leaped sideways into the street; he tumbled, rolling with only inches to spare out from under the hammering hooves of a cab horse, and then he scrambled to his feet and sprang up onto the step of a carriage and braced himself there with one hand on the window sill and one on the roof rail.
The carriage’s occupants were an old man and a young girl. “Please speed up,” Doyle gasped, “I’m being chased by—”
The old man had angrily picked up and poised a lean walking stick, and now with all the force of the first breaking shot of a pool game drove the blunt end at Doyle’s chest. Doyle flew off his perch as if he’d been shot, and though he managed to land on his feet he instantly fell onto his hands and knees and then rolled over a couple of times.
The ruin-faced, one-eyed old creature huddled in a doorway giggled and clapped his papier-mache hands silently. “Ah, yes yes! Now into the river, Doyle—there’s something I want to show you on the other side,” chittered the Luck of the Surrey-side beggars.
“God save us, he’s been shot!” shouted Horrabin. “Get him while he’s still got any breath in him, you dung beetles!”
Doyle was on his feet now, but every breath seemed to spread a crack in his chest, and he thought that if he started coughing now he’d die of it. One of his pursuers was only a few paces away, advancing with a confident smile, so Doyle dug into his pocket, fetched out the heavy bracelet and pitched it with all his strength into the man’s face, then without pausing to see what effect it had he turned and hobbled to the far curb, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into an alley.
“Tomorrow night’s dinner you all are unless you bring him to me!” shrilled Horrabin, froth flying from his vermillioned lips as he did a woodpecker tap dance of fury on the north sidewalk.
One of his beggars hurried forward but had misjudged the velocity of a Chaplin Company coach and went down under the hooves, and one of the front wheels had cut across his middle before the driver was able to wrench the horses and vehicle to a halt. By now all traffic had come to a stop in this section of the Strand, and drivers were shouting at each other and, in a few cases, lashing at one another with their whips.
Horrabin stepped off the curb and began poling his way through the confusion toward the opposite side of the street.
* * *
Doyle emerged from between two buildings and clattered down an ancient set of wooden stairs to a sort of boardwalk that ran along the top of the glistening riverbank. He hurried down to the end of one of the piers and crouched behind a high wooden box, and his breathing gradually slowed to the point where he could close his mouth. The river air was cold, and he was glad Copenhagen Jack didn’t insist that his beggars appear half-clad in cold weather—though it was an effective touch. He pulled his jacket and shirt away from his collar-bone—the knife cut was still bleeding pretty freely, though it wasn’t deep.
