'Where is he, then?' muttered one of the men.
'Hang on – here he comes.' A third set of footsteps sounded faint against the far end of the wharf's timbers, growing louder as they strode closer.
A servile anxiety had sounded in my captors' twin voices. This gave rise to the hope that the awaited figure now approaching was their master, or in some other relationship of authority over them. Doubtless, if I could present my case to him, he would correct his underlings' mistake and have me set free, not wishing to compound whatever iniquities had been involved in the deaths of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man. The vow of a gentleman to keep a discreet silence would surely be bond enough to warrant my safe passage out of their keeping.
The new footsteps stopped at the side of the cart. All three men drew a small distance away, their hushed tones mingling in a hurried conference. I strained at the cords around my wrists, anxious to be free again and away from the grisly freight on either side of me.
The murmuring voices lapsed into silence; I could hear the trio returning to the cart; the obscuring sackcloth was snatched away from my face. Past the glare of a lantern held above by one of the ruffians, I could barely discern the aspect of the gang's captain. Taller and more slender than his squat and heavy-muscled minions, cloaked and top-hatted as if freshly arrived from opera or ballroom; all but his eyes were hidden behind a silk scarf that he raised with a gloved hand to prevent any possible recognition.
I returned the man's inspecting gaze, my muffled voice striving to impart to him that I had information of an urgent nature to communicate, when he drew back from the lantern's circle of light. 'Yes.' I heard his voice in the darkness, the one word sufficient to indicate the speaker's high degree of cultivation. 'Take him out with the others,' he instructed the two ruffians.
A moment passed before I realised that I was to share whatever disposition had been decided upon for the two cadavers nestled with me in the cart. I shouted, producing only a gagging cough through the rag in my mouth, and banged my heels against the wood, but to no avail: the gentleman who had so offhandedly sealed my fate could be heard striding away down the wharf. I was roughly seized and slung between the two others' hands as though I were a hundredweight of potatoes, then just as roughly deposited in the damp bottom of a small boat bobbing alongside the dock pilings. My breath was knocked from my lungs by the inert forms of the two corpses landing one after another on top of me.
The boat tilted as the two men clambered down into it. Over the top of Fexton's skull, the strands of his lank, greasy hair plastered tendril-like against my own face, I could see the edge of the wharf sliding away to reveal the stars overhead, as the self-appointed Charon used an oar to push away from the pilings.
'Leave off your be-damned snuffling and croaking.' The other ruffian gave me a kick from where he sat at the prow of the tiny craft. 'Save your breath; you'll be swimming soon enough.' The slap of the oars against the dark water provided a dismal counterpoint to his ill-tempered growl, as his companion rowed farther into a deserted stretch of the Thames.
'This'll do,' came the pronouncement. 'Likely no deeper than hereabouts.'
'Shouldn't we have weighted them?' The second brought the oars inside. 'They'll come up again, now won't they?'
A grisly consideration: 'The tide's running. If they come bobbing up, it'll be miles downriver.'
As I view my hobbled actions with the grace of hindsight, I realise now I would have been better occupied with prayer and silent contemplation of eternity than with attempting to mouth words past the cloth in my mouth. I entreated the men; offered fabulous sums for my release; threatened them with legions of the constabulary – the rag reduced all to a choking mumble.
The deadweight on my chest was more than halved, as the men lifted Brown Leather's corpse from on top – 'Come along, you great ugly bastard,' said one, between grunts of effort – and, swinging it by the feet and under the arms, threw it clear of the tottering boat. The impact of the body on the water threw a spray across my own face.
'And you now-' The ruffians were in a quite jocular mood as they picked up Fexton's lighter weight. 'Faugh! Couldn't be bothered with a bath when you was alive, from the smell of you – well, you'll have a long one, if a cold one, now, me boy. Count of three, now – one – two in you go!' Another splash followed the first.
'Mubble, mubble, mubble,' mocked one of the men, as he brought his grinning face close to mine. 'Wordy sod, aren't you just?'
'He can tell it all to his mates,' joined the other, indicating the river's dark water with a thumb over his shoulder.
'Now, let's not be hasty.' The two of them crouched at my head and feet, the first tapping my forehead with one broad finger. 'Seems a very likeable sort of fellow – very likeable, indeed.'
'Here, what are you on about?' Lifting my head, I could just see the other's scowl.
'Well, I just thinks a likeable sort of gentleman such as this 'un – prosperous, too, from the looks of that watch we took off him – seems a shame to just pitch him into the drink without so much as giving him a chance to express a proper sort of gratitude to us, if you know what I'm getting at.'
I nodded my head vigorously, striking the still-aching back of my head against the boat's bottom, and attempted to signal with my eyes that I was in complete accord with these sentiments.
'Bugger that.' The hinted proposition was rudely greeted. 'Worth our flaming heads, it is – he said pitch this one in, too, so in he goes, I says.'
No! I shouted – or tried to. Listen to your friend!
'Keep your braces on. I was just toying with the poor devil. See how big his eyes are! – he thought I wanted to let him go.'
'Leave off – bleeding cold it is out here.'
My tormentor grasped me under the arms. 'Right enough. Sorry, me fine gent – it's us for the gin-shop, but we won't be seeing you there.'
I felt myself raised up between them into the air, with the first swing to impart the distance necessary for clearing the side of the boat. My brain seemed to rock in identical motion inside its confines as the pin-point stars above streaked, held, then reversed their direction.
Water erupted around me, yet I oddly felt myself rising a bit higher in the chill air. I realised that the two ruffians, shouting in terror and releasing their grip on my limbs, were falling with me as the boat lifted on a sudden upwelling from beneath, tipping all of its occupants out into the river.
I struck the water, parting the thin layer of mist cloaking it, and felt the chill darkness flood upward over my face. The cloth was fortuitously dislodged from my mouth; gasping for breath, I bobbed to the surface, still bound at wrist and ankle. In the thin, spectral light I saw the overturned boat, its keel now a shattered, gaping hole.
A few feet away from me, the river murk was lashed into foam by the struggling figures of the two ruffians. Their faces were contorted with fright as a third form, a man, rose behind them. Gripping each one's shoulder, disdainful of the flailing arms, the dark shape thrust them churning under the dark water, as though they were but two stanchions by which he could thrust himself bodily clear of the river.
A moment's glimpse was all that was afforded to me. In the panic and shock that the sudden immersion had induced in me, I thought I saw the face of the Brown Leather Man, grimly terrible as the stars glinted off the wet- shining visage. his scarred grimace rigid as he drowned his murderers.
I slid under the water again. My breath burned in my lungs – briefly; then the water became yet darker, and, just before my consciousness dissolved entire, the cold drained away my own blood..
Slowly, as a dreamer recognizes the contours of his pillow, I became aware that my face was pressed against a gravelly muck. At first, I believed this to be the river bottom, and that I had come to rest upon it; my thoughts were but a last flicker before the final extinguishing, or else the beginning of that new, incorporeal nature promised to us in the teachings of the Church. I would, I hoped dimly, be shortly ascending to a higher abode.
My theological musings were interrupted by a gagging fit that disgorged a considerable amount of river water on to the damp field on which I lay. Lifting my head, I found myself shivering in the chill night air, my sodden clothes clinging about my frame; I took this to mean I was not yet dead. By some means I had been restored from what had been meant to be my watery grave, to a place of comparative safety.
Safety, if not comfort: the taste of the water was foul in my mouth; and I felt distinctly nauseated from whatever amount I had swallowed while immersed in it. Drenched to the marrow, and in the teeth of the wind that scudded the dark clouds overhead, I would soon have my trembling limbs palsied with a severe ague if I did not find
