carry it home. Uh… I guess it went off accidentally.”
“The man’s an idiot,” pronounced Doyle’s questioner. To Doyle he added, “It can’t have been any good anyway. You see it flew to bits after being fired only once. Here, now, come with me and we’ll get you to a doctor who’ll patch up your head.”
“No!” Doyle couldn’t recall whether antiseptics were in general use in 1810, and though he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, he also knew he didn’t want to pick up some damned infection from unwashed fingers and stitching thread. “Just… get me some brandy please. Strong brandy. Or whiskey—anything with a lot of alcohol in it.”
“I knew it!” piped up one old man who couldn’t really see what was going on. “It’s a dodge. He likely lost his ear years ago, and goes ‘round pretendin’ to have blowed it off over and over again all over London, just so’s gullibles will stand him to a drink.”
“Naw,” contradicted someone else. “Look, there’s part of his ear over there. Whoops! Look out! He’s gettin’ sick!”
Doyle was indeed. A few moments later he gathered the strength to push through the decreasingly solicitous crowd. Unaware of the wondering stares turned on him from all sides, he shed his coat, ripped off the remains of his shirt, tied it tightly around his head to staunch the blood that was pattering on the pavement and sliming his hands, replaced his coat, and then, dizzy from shock and loss of blood, he reeled away to find a grog shop; for though he was certain of very little at the moment, he took comfort in the knowledge that the purchase of the gun, which still swung from his neck, had left him with enough cash for two brandies: one to soak his bandage with and one to pour, rapidly, down his throat.
* * *
Two days later he heard the Beatles tune again. When he’d gotten back to Kusiak’s on Sunday afternoon, pushed open the front door and lurched into the entry hall, the old innkeeper had looked up from some bookwork with an expression of alarm that had quickly turned to a tight-lipped anger. He’d cut through Doyle’s incoherent explanations with a curt order that Doyle be put to bed in a spare room and watched over “until his soul pops away through the ceiling or his damn feet can take him out the back door.” He had put a knuckle under Doyle’s chin and tilted the pale face up. “I don’t care which way, Doyle, but you leave here as damn soon as possible—you understanding me, hah?”
Doyle had drawn himself up to his full height and framed a dignified reply—which he could never recall afterward—and then abruptly his eyes rolled up out of sight and he toppled backward like an axed tree; the floor boomed like a drum when he struck it with the whole length of his body, and his fingernails, scrabbling, for a moment on the polished boards, sounded like castanets. Kusiak, with some relief, pronounced him dead and ordered him taken out back to await the summoning of a constable, but when a couple of the kitchen boys had dragged the limp body as far as the back door, Doyle sat up, looked around urgently, said, “Flight 801 to London— you’re supposed to be holding a ticket for me. It’s paid for—by Darrow of DIRE. What’s the problem?” and then passed out again.
Kusiak wearily cursed Doyle, and the absent Jacky, and then ordered the boys to take the delirious and unwelcome guest to the smallest possible vacant room, and check in on him from time to time until he had the grace to die.
For two days Doyle languished on a narrow bed in a windowless and peculiarly shaped room under the main stairs, nourished by Kusiak’s excellent fish chowder and dark beer, and sleeping most of the time; on Tuesday evening he stood up and walked out into the hall, where he was seen by the aproned Kusiak, who said that if he was recovered enough to leave the room he was damn well healthy enough to leave the inn altogether.
When Doyle had put on his coat and taken a few wobbly steps down the street, he heard something clatter on the pavement behind him. He turned around and saw that Kusiak had thrown his destroyed pistol out after him. He went back and picked it up, for it might bring a few pennies at one of the ubiquitous junk shops, and as things stood right now the acquisition of three pennies would double his fortune.
It certainly is ruined, he thought as he picked it up. The hammer and flashpan were gone, the stock was splintered, and the twisted corpse of the bullet that had crashed into it was visible, wedged deeply into the wood. Doyle shuddered, remembering that the ball would have drilled straight through his chest if this gun had not been in the way.
He peered at the bullet more closely—it had the flat base of a slug fired from a shell—it wasn’t a ball.
He had reached Borough High Street. To his right was the somber bulk of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and to his left London Bridge soared away through the twilight, spanning the broad Thames whose surging, gunmetal-gray face was already beginning to twinkle with the first lights of the evening. There seemed to be more promise across the river, and he turned left.
A thought struck him.
At the gently curving apex of London Bridge he paused and leaned on the still warm stone rail and gazed west along the river toward the darkening sunset that silhouetted the five arches of Blackfriars Bridge half a mile upriver.
He pushed away from the rail and began walking down the north slope of the bridge.
When he came out of his reverie he was off the bridge and crossing Thames Street. He glanced up and down the lamplit street, remembering the day, two and a half weeks ago, that he’d almost allowed himself to be taken to Horrabin by that fake blind beggar, and then had been rescued by Skate Benjamin.
There were few people out on the streets this Tuesday evening, and the pubs and dining rooms along Gracechurch Street spilled light but little noise out across the cobblestones. Doyle was able to hear the whistling when it was still a good distance away. Yesterday again.
When the first moment of blind panic had passed, Doyle smiled in grim amusement at how Pavlovian his response to that damned Beatles tune had become—he had instantly leaped into a recessed doorway, yanked the ruined gun out of his coat pocket and raised it like a club over his head. Now, as he realized the sound was coming from at least a block away, he lowered the gun and allowed himself to breathe—though the pounding of his heart didn’t slacken. He peered cautiously out of the alcove, not daring to leave it yet for fear of attracting notice. After a few moments the whistler rounded the corner from Eastcheap and began walking down Gracechurch, in Doyle’s direction but on the opposite side of the street.
The man was tall, and seemed to be drunk. His wide-brimmed hat was pulled low over his face and he lurched from side to side as he walked, though once for a moment or two he broke into a clumsy parody of tap dancing, whistling the tune fast to accompany himself. Just when he was about to pass Doyle’s hiding place he noticed, with an exaggerated jerk of his head, a pub at his right, a narrow, ill-lit place called The Vigilant Rowsby. The man stopped whistling, patted a pocket, and, reassured by the jingle of coins, pushed open the bull’s-eye windowed door and disappeared inside.
Doyle started to hurry away south, toward the river and Gravesend, but after a few steps he halted and glanced back at the pub.
