American term for the Germans, and a rendezvous in Skibbereen.
And then it struck me-this was, perhaps, the reason Mycroft had sent me on this mission: to infiltrate the gang and find out what the Irish-American brethren were planning for the Ould Sod. What a fool I had been to mistrust him!
There was just one last missing piece of the puzzle. And only she could help me, help me see what I could not see for myself. At long last, I was piercing the veil.
Silently, she came to me that night. We spoke not a word. I slipped off my shirt. With her tender hands, she traced the markings on my back: a triangle within a circle. And suddenly, it was all clear to me. It was the same brand that Birdy Edwards once bore, and the corpse he had so devoutly wished to pass off as his own at Birlstone in order to make his escape from the Scowrers of Vermissa Valley a quarter of a century ago. The hand of a man long dead had reached out and touched my shoulder. The hand of Fate.
She kissed the back of my neck and then, moving lower, the wound, kissing the brand, kissing the mark of Cain that had been forever laid upon me.
I could hear the rustle of her shift as it dropped to floor, then felt her warm flesh upon mine. “Now we’re both comfortable,” she said.
There was revelry the next night in what passed for the Altamont’s ballroom to celebrate our departure on the morrow. The beer and spirits flowed.
Morey had been glaring and glowering at me all evening, and I smelt trouble brewing from this bonehead- trouble for which I was fully prepared, or so I thought.
“Come, Jim, let’s dance,” said Maddie. “If we’re to,” she blushed, “pretend… to be married, then we ought to act like it.” I took her sweet hand in mine and led her to the dance floor.
In a flash, the glowering Morey was upon us. “Take your filthy paws off her, you damned bastard!” he shouted. “Or, by God, I’ll send you straight to hell.” He shoved me, hard.
“No, Charlie,” cried Maddie.
“You belong to me!” he snarled.
“No,” she replied, with a quiet dignity that I shall never forget. “I belong to him, and there’s the end of it.”
Enraged, Morey lunged for her, bringing him directly into my path. I could not bear to let Morey’s Irish temper spoil that which now lay before me, nor its promise of happiness.
I struck him in the face with all my might. The same strength that unbent my poker after Dr. Roylott’s ministrations was summoned forth one last time. The whole room could hear the crack of the bone. For an instant, I thought I had killed him.
He stumbled backwards, reaching for his pistol as he fell. A shot rang out. I felt nothing. He had missed! I moved in for the kill. My Irish, as they say, was well and truly up. As I made ready to finish him-
– I heard my Maddie cry out. Instantly, all thoughts of further violence were forgotten; I turned to see her, lying on the floor. As I rushed to her side, I could see at a glance that the wound was fatal.
“Water!” I shouted.
The best I could do was make her as comfortable as possible before her final journey into that land of
“Be true to me, Jim,” she gasped. “On the blood of my father, be true to me!”
“Birdy Edwards,” I said, quietly. Her eyes told me the truth. She had known all along.
The chastened crowd moved forward, to hear the dying colleen’s last words. “God, how I hated him for his treachery, even as I admired him for his bravery. How I love the people he betrayed! And how I love him for betraying them!”
Somehow, she found the strength to raise her arms and point at the people in the room, sweeping them all up in her dragnet. “And you!” she cried. “How I hate you for what you did to him, and for what you made him do.” Her head dropped back into my arms.
Her strength was gone, and I knew the end was near. Somehow, she found the power to extract something from the folds of her dress and press it into my hand. It was the letter from Mycroft, now stained with her blood.
I put my ear to her sweet lips. “Promise me, Jim, you’ll never waiver. Never despair. Never falter.”
“I promise, Maddie.”
“Tell me you love me,” she said, the fierce light in her eyes subsiding.
“As no other.” It was just moments now. “And forever.”
“Then sing to me. One last time. The song at twilight.” She gasped and shuddered.
I sang: “Still to us at twilight / comes Love’s old song / comes Love’s old sweet song… ”
I never stopped singing to her, even after she lay quite still and silent in my arms.
The rest of my story is quickly told. I chased Morey across the sea, to Ireland and Skibbereen. He had gone to ground, seeking shelter with the IRA, but of course it was child’s play for Jim McKenna, a fellow Irish-American, to find him. As I had done so often in London, where young Irish boys had been legion among my Baker Street Irregulars, I quickly organized a flying column of street Arabs, which fanned out across all the public houses of the town. In less than a day I had my answer: “The Wild Geese.”
I slipped in incognito: cap tugged down low, hunched over, a tremor in the hand that held my walking-stick. Morey, on the other hand, was his usual loud, vulgar, and expansive self. I spotted him at a table in the corner, gesticulating wildly at a Prussian gentleman whose monocle and dueling scar proclaimed both his ancestry and his attitude.
As I edged closer, I heard him say, “… von Herling. Now a deal’s a deal and if you’ve even half a mind to double-cross me well, buster, you had better watch your step.”
The German sneered across his beer. “Do you think you can impress me with this belligerence?” he asked with a deprecatory laugh. “Look around this room; there are twenty men I could hire to work for us. Why do I need you?”
I noticed there were four empty pint glasses in front of Morey. Two went flying as he gestured wildly. “Damn you, I thought we were on the same side!” he shouted.
“Simply because the enemy of my enemy can be my friend does not mean that you and I have to like each other,” replied the German. “Quite the contrary.”
Morey’s face flushed and he started to rise. I could not let him do anything rash, not with my revenge so near to hand. I needed a diversion and the pint of Guinness in my left hand would do nicely.
The stout splashed him from head to toe. Enraged, he leapt up, the Prussian temporarily forgotten. Feigning unawareness in my senility, I passed through the side door, the one the urchins used to nip in and out of as they dragged foaming growlers back to their drunken fathers at home.
“You there! Old man!” he screamed, but pretending deafness, I ignored him. The room jeered as he struggled to his feet.
I was in the alley and waiting for him when he burst through the door. Cap off, upright and cold as death was I. “McKenna!” he said, staggering back against the door. This was just the effect I had hoped to produce, for our confrontation needed to be quick and final; the intrusion of strangers would have been most unhelpful at this point.
“Go for it,” I said.
He went for it.
I fired two shots to his one. Both mine found their mark. His did not.
Morey’s body sagged, then sat heavily as his life’s blood ebbed away. I could hear pounding on the other side of the door as the pub’s denizens were roused by the commotion. I waited just long enough to watch the light in his eyes flicker out and then into the rubbish went the elderly McKenna’s hat, stick, coat, and as much else as I could strip off in the few moments allotted to me, revealing the oil-stained, motor-car tradesman’s garb beneath.
I walked round to the front of the pub and entered just as a few men had managed to push the body aside and force open the door. As the hue and cry for the police went up, I took a seat near the German and tugged ever so slightly on my goatee. He looked at me and gave me a small nod of acknowledgement, but not of betrayal.
“What’ll it be, sir?” asked the barmaid.
