The remaining leaves on the trees in Bloomsbury Square shone gold and red in the sunlight on Thursday afternoon as Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar stepped out of Paddy Corvan’s, stared with homesickness for a moment at the trees and the grass, then carefully wiped beer-foam from the artificial beard and moustache and turned resolutely to the left, down Buckeridge toward Maynard Street and the Rat’s Castle. The breeze was from ahead, out of the heart of the St. Giles rookery, and the smells of sewers, and fires, and things being cooked that ought to be thrown away, shattered the frail sylvan charm of the square.
Jacky hadn’t been to Rat’s Castle since the night five days ago when she’d hurried down the stairs to the underground dock, right behind Doctor Romany, intent on killing Dog-Face Joe; and she was checking in now to see if anyone else had made any progress toward finding the furry shapechanger.
When she turned right into the dark chasm, narrow at pavement level but narrower still at the top, that was Maynard Street, a little boy leaned out of an imperfectly boarded-up loading dock on the third floor of an abandoned warehouse on the corner. Under a piratical and oversized three-cornered hat his fish-blank eyes followed the shambling figure of Ahmed the Hindoo Beggar, and the nearly toothless slash of a mouth turned up in a smile. “Ahmed,” the boy whispered, “you’re mine.”
A rope still hung from the rusted pulley under the overhanging roof three floors above—only because it hung too far away from the wall to be snagged by leaning out from the docks on each floor and its ends swung too far above the pavement to be reached even by a man on another man’s shoulders—and goaded by the immensity of the reward Horrabin had offered, the child hopped up onto the board his hands had been resting on, and then sprang out across two yards of empty space and clutched the old rope.
The pulley had rusted almost to immobility, and fortunately for the boy the rope ran through it haltingly, so that though he collided hard with the brick wall on the way down he didn’t break his legs when he landed on the pavement three floors below. He wound up sitting down, with loops of stiff, weathered rope slapping the cobbles around him and thumping his hat down over his eyes. The child sprang to his feet and scurried after Ahmed as a trio of old women emerged from a cellar stairway and began to fight about who’d get the rope. Ahmed was walking beside a low wall, and the boy climbed up onto it, ran along the coping and then sprang onto the Hindoo Beggar’s back, screeching like a monkey. “Oi’ve got Ahmid!” he shrilled. “Fetch ‘Orr’bin!”
Drawn by the echoing racket, several men stepped out of the recessed front doorway of Rat’s Castle, stared for a few moments at the prodigy of a lurching Hindoo flapping about with a shrieking child perched on his back and clawing at his throat, then they sprinted up and seized the Hindoo’s arms. “Ahmed!” said one, fondly. “The clown is ever so anxious to chat with you.”
They tried to pry the boy loose, but he only dug his fingernails deeper into Ahmed and bit at every reachable hand. “Hell, Sam,” one said finally, “take ‘em as is. He won’t give the reward to no infant.”
Jacky was trying not to panic. She thought, if I could get a hand to my turban I could—maybe—snatch the pistol out and kill one of these men and maybe club this nightmare child off me. The reeling knot of people was only a few steps from the building now, and she reached up under the turban, found the butt of the pistol and yanked it down—the turban came down too, tangled around the barrel—and she pressed it against the ribs of the man on her right and yanked the trigger.
The hammer came down on a fold of cloth, knocking open the flashpan cover but producing no sparks. Desperately she wrenched away the cloth and, as the man was shouting, “Christ, a gun, grab him!” she cocked it one-handed and again pulled the trigger. There was a spray of sparks but all the powder had spilled out of the open pan and the gun didn’t fire, and an instant later a hard fist slammed into Jacky’s stomach and a nimble boot kicked the gun out of her hand.
The gun clanked on the paving stones, and the piggyback child, evidently deciding to take the cash in hand and waive the rest, hopped to the ground, seized the pistol and scampered away. The two men picked up the jackknifed, gasping Hindoo Beggar—”Lightweight bugger, ain’t he?”—and carried her inside.
* * *
Horrabin had returned to the Castle only a few minutes earlier, and he had just relaxed in his swing—Dungy was wheeling away the folded-up Punch stage—when they carried Ahmed into the room. “Ah!” exclaimed the clown. “Good work, my lads! The fugitive Hindoo at last.” They set Jacky down on the floor in front of the swing, and Horrabin leaned forward and grinned down at her. “Where did you take the American on Saturday night?”
Jacky could still only gasp.
“He pulled a pistol on us, yer Honor,” one of the men explained. “I had to give him a thump in the turn.”
“I see. Well, let’s—Dungy! Bring me my stilts!—let’s lock him up in the dungeon. It’s Doctor Romany that’ll have the most questions for him, and,” the clown added with a giggle, “the most motivating questioning techniques.”
It was an odd little parade that descended four flights of stairs and walked a hundred yards down a subterranean corridor that could have been pre-Roman—the hunched dwarf Dungy limping along in the lead, carrying a flaring torch over his head, followed by the two men who frog-marched between them the chintz- curtain-robed Ahmed, whose face behind the false beard and moustache and walnut stain was gray with fear, and Horrabin, bent way over forward to avoid brushing his hat against the roof stones, bringing up the rear on his stilts.
Eventually they passed through an arch into a wide chamber; Dungy’s torch illuminated the ancient, wet stones of the ceiling and near wall, but the far wall, if indeed there was one, was lost in the absolute blackness. To judge by the echoes, the chamber was very large. The procession paused after a few paces into it, and Jacky could hear water dripping and, she was certain, faint but excited whispering.
“Dungy,” said Horrabin, and even the clown sounded a little uneasy, “the nearest vacant guest room—hoist the lid. And hurry.”
The dwarf limped forward, leaving the others in darkness. Twenty feet away he stopped and lifted a little metal plate away from a hole in the floor, and squatted down, trying to get his head and the torch both next to the hole without setting his greasy white hair on fire. “Nobody home.” He set the torch upright in a hole between the stones, hooked the fingers of both hands around a recessed iron bar in the floor, carefully rearranged his feet, and then tugged upward. A whole stone slab lifted up, evidently on hinges, exposing a circular hole three feet across. The slab came to rest at a bit more than a ninety degree angle and Dungy stepped back, wiping his brow. “Your chamber awaits, Ahmed,” said Horrabin. “If you hang by your hands and then drop, it’s only six feet to the floor. You can do that or be pushed in.”
Jacky’s captors led her forward and, when she was standing in front of the hole, let go of her and stepped back. She forced herself to smile. “When’s dinner? Will I be expected to dress?”
“Make any preparations you please,” said Horrabin coldly.
“Dungy will drop it in on you at six. Get in now.”
Jacky eyed the two men who’d escorted her, calculating whether she could break away between them, but they caught the look and stepped back, moving their arms out from their sides a little. Her gaze fell hopelessly back to the hole at her feet, and to her own humiliation she felt close to tears. “Are—” she choked, “are there rats… down there? Or snakes?”
“No, no,” Horrabin assured her. “Any rats and snakes that make their way down here are devoured by other sorts of creatures. Sam, he doesn’t want to do it himself; push him in.”
“Wait.” Jacky carefully crouched and sat down on the edge of the hole, her sandalled feet dangling in the darkness. She hoped the others wouldn’t see how badly her legs were shaking under the chintz robe. “I’m going, I don’t need your… kind help.” She leaned forward and gripped the opposite edge. She paused to take a deep breath, then hiked her rump off the rim and swung down into the hole so that she hung by the grip of her hands. She looked down and could see nothing, just the most solid blackness she’d ever stared into. The floor could believably have been three inches below her toes, or three hundred feet.
“Kick his hands,” said Horrabin. She let go before anyone could. After a long second of free fall she landed on flexed knees on muddy ground, and managed not to let either kneecap clip her chin as she sat down hard.
