death was hard—my complexion is quite
Miss Poole—and joining her with a bellowing “haw haw haw” was Colonel Aspiche—erupted in laughter at her pun. In Svenson’s spent emotional state, it was something of an abstraction to realize that the object of their sport was his being burnt in an oven.
“This way—this way—yes! I do declare, Miss Poole, the ride does not seem to have suited her!”
“And yet she seemed so recently
They were taking Eloise away—she was alive. What had they done to her? Worse, what did Miss Poole mean by “tractable”? He tormented himself with the image of Eloise on the wooden staircase, the confusion in her eyes…she had come to Tarr Manor for a reason, no matter that it was gone from her memory. Who was Svenson to say who she truly was? Then he remembered the warm press of her lips against his and had no idea what to think at all. Still Svenson’s fear at being discovered would not let him look up. The seconds crawled by and he muttered to himself, fervently wishing the pack of them off the rooftop as quickly as possible.
Finally the voices were gone. But what of the men mooring the craft, or guarding it? Doctor Svenson heard a muffled clicking from the hatch beneath him, then felt the handle turning in his hand. He scuttled back as the handle caught the bolt. The hatch rose, and directly after it appeared the grease-smeared face of a man in coveralls. He saw Svenson and opened his mouth in surprise. Svenson drove the heel of his boot into the man’s face with all his strength, grimacing at the crunch of impact. The fellow abruptly dropped back through the open hatch, Svenson scrabbling after him. He thrust both legs through the round hole, ignoring the line of iron rungs bolted to the wall, and launched himself down onto the groaning, stunned body sitting at its feet. Svenson landed squarely on the man’s shoulders, flattening him hard against the floor with a meaty thud. He stumbled from his unmoving victim and grabbed on to the rungs for balance. Sticking out from a pocket of the man’s coveralls was an enormous, greasy wrench. Weighing it in his hand, Svenson recalled both the wrench with which he had doomed Mr. Coates at Tarr Village, and the candlestick with which he had murdered the unfortunate Starck. Had such mayhem become so necessary, so natural a tactic? Was it only the night before when the Comte had brought to mind Svenson’s guilt upon poisoning the fellow—the villain, did it matter—in Bremen? Where were those tender scruples now?
He stepped carefully through the gondola, which was divided up into smaller cabins like the cramped yet well-appointed interior of a yacht. Against the wall were leather upholstered benches and small inset tables and what seemed to be a drinks cabinet—the lashed-down bottles visible through the secured glass front. Svenson’s numbed fingers fumbled with the leather straps across the cabinet door. His hands were still half-frozen and raw and he could not get them to perform such fine work as unbuckling a simple clasp. He whimpered with impatience and snatched up the wrench. He swung it once against the glass panel and then jammed it through the shattered hole to clear away the jagged fragments from the edge. He carefully extricated a bottle of cognac and pried out the cork with stiff, claw-like fingers. He took a deep swig, coughing once and happy for the warmth, and then took another. He exhaled fiercely, tears at the corner of each eye, and then took another swig. Svenson put the bottle down—he wanted to be warm and revived, not insensible.
On the opposite wall was another, taller wooden cabinet. He stepped to this and tried to pull it open. It was locked. Svenson raised the wrench and with one solid blow smashed in the wood around the lock. He pulled apart cabinet doors to reveal a well-oiled row of five gleaming carbines, five polished cutlasses, and hanging from hooks behind them, three service revolvers. Svenson tossed the wrench onto a leather seat and quickly availed himself of a revolver and a box of cartridges, snapping open the cylinder to load. He looked up, listening as his fingers went about sliding shell after shell into the gun and, after six, snapping the cylinder home. Was someone else outside? He reached for one of the cutlasses. It was a ridiculously vicious weapon, rather like thirty inches of razor-sharp butcher’s cleaver, with a shining brass bell hilt that covered his entire hand. He had no idea how to use it, but the thing was so fearsome he was nearly convinced it would kill by itself.
The man in coveralls was not moving. Svenson took a step toward the front, paused, sighed, and then quickly knelt by the man, stuffing the revolver in his pocket. He felt for a pulse at the carotid artery…it was there. He sighed again at the man’s clearly broken nose, and shifted his position so the blood would drain without choking him. He wiped his hands and stood up, pulling out the revolver. Now that he was sure he retained his humanity, he set forth for revenge.
Doctor Svenson advanced through the next smaller cabin to the doorway—another hatch with a collapsible metal staircase opened out to the surface of the roof some ten feet below. Another staircase led up to the cockpit of the dirigible. He made sure no one at the base of the stairs could see him and listened once more. This center cabin seemed much like the other—benches and tables—when his eye caught an innocuous litter of rope on the floor beneath a metal wall brace. Svenson knelt with dismay. The fragments were cut on one end and bloody… Eloise’s bonds, her hands, her feet, her mouth. Whoever had confined her had done so without scruple—tight enough to draw blood. Svenson felt a chill at what she had endured, and an answering glimmer of rage in his veins. Did this not demonstrate her virtue? He sighed, for of course it showed nothing other than the Cabal’s cruelty and thoroughness. Just as they sacrificed potential adherents at Tarr Manor, so they would hardly scruple to make sure of a new adherent’s loyalty—and, of course, any true adherent would undergo every trial without protest. If only he knew what they had said to her, what urgings and temptations, what questions…if only he knew how she had replied.
He pulled the revolver from his pocket. With a deep breath—he was not so transformed that he could descend such a thing, trusting to balance with a weapon in each hand, without some tangle of anxiety—he stepped through the hatch and as swiftly as possible climbed (or careened) down the gangway. He whipped his gaze across the rooftop, looking for any other guard. But as far as he could see he was alone. The craft was moored to the roof by two cables attached to the underside of the gondola, but otherwise unattended. He decided he should not tempt his fate further and strode toward the only way his quarry could have gone—a small stone shed some twenty yards off, its door propped open by a brick.
As Doctor Svenson walked he looked down at his hands—the cutlass in the left, the revolver in the right. Was this the proper arrangement? He was no particular shot at anything but short range, nor had he any experience with the cutlass. For each, using his right hand would make for a more effective weapon—but which would be least hampered in his left? He thought who he might be struggling against—his own Ragnarok troopers or Colonel Aspiche’s Dragoons—all of whom would be carrying sabers and savagely trained in their use. With the cutlass in his left hand he hadn’t a prayer to parry a single blow. And yet, if the thing was in his right—did he still have any chance—or, more importantly, did he have a better chance than shooting at them? He did not. He kept each weapon where it was.
He opened the door and looked to an empty staircase with smooth white plaster walls and flagstone steps. He heard nothing. Svenson eased the door to its brick stop and stepped back, crossing quickly, swallowing the rising fear in his throat, to the far edge of the rooftop overlooking the garden. This edge was lined, like an ornamental castle, with a low wall of defensive crenellations from which he could both hang on and peer out simultaneously. The fog was still thick, but below him he could see the massive garden as through a veil, with conical tops of formally trimmed fir trees, tips of statuary and decorative urns, and then moving torches all piercing the lurking gloom. The torches seemed to be carried by Dragoons, and he heard cries, but it was difficult to place where they’d come from, as clearly not all the men in the garden had torches. Then the shouts were louder—somewhere near the center? This was followed by a shot and then a strangled cry. Two more shots rang out in direct succession and Svenson could see the torches converging and he scanned ahead of them to find their quarry. The fog was still too thick—yet the fact that they were in motion told him that whoever had been shot was not sufficiently wounded—or not alone.
Suddenly Doctor Svenson saw a movement, nearly below him, as a figure crept from the line of hedges to the grass border of the garden, preparing to dash across the strip of gravel to the house itself. The fog clung to the moist vegetation and dissipated at its border…it was Cardinal Chang. The Dragoons were hunting Chang! Svenson waved his arms like a lunatic, but Chang was looking instead at some window—the fool! Svenson wanted to scream, but what good would that do—aside from getting a squadron of Dragoons running directly to the roof?
Then Chang was gone, darting back into the shadow of the garden—creeping who knew where—a pair of Dragoons arriving at the spot only moments later. Svenson realized with a shudder that if he
What was Chang doing here? And how could none of these running men have noticed the arrival of the
