Even so, the door had swung open before the carriage stopped. As if caring little for his fine, bright blue jacket and buckskin breeches, the vehicle's occupant dashed into the swirling dust. His energy belied his age, which was now past fifty. Though he had lately spent considerable time recuperating from a variety of wounds, he sprung forward with great energy to inspect the dead men. Brandishing his walking stick, he waved it over them as if it were a bishop's scepter, imparting some blessing to the already vanquished souls.
But the man had not stopped to administer Christian niceties. He was instead a connoisseur of death, congenially interested in examining the nuances of each individual tragedy, hoping to increase his already considerable stock of knowledge on the subject. For the man who now pushed the bodies back and forth like so many laboratory specimens was no less than Major Dr. Harland Keen.
The very same man Jake had seen fall over the Cohoes Falls to the bottom of the Mohawk River less than a fortnight before.
The reader is entitled to some explanation for the shock of that last line, and we shall here deliver it as succinctly as possible, to avoid losing the thread of our present tale.
As a young man, Harland Keen had left his native London to tour the world, gathering the esoteric knowledge that would supplement the skills he learned at Edinburgh and render him among the most brilliant practitioners of the medical arts in Europe. He had not yet become the evil-hearted assassin who would eventually forget his fraternity's oath against causing harm, though already his character shaded toward Life's darker vales.
It was during a stay in Venice that he came upon an old woman, reputed of Borgia stock, who had gained great fame as a reader of the Egyptian cards. On a cloud-besotted day on an obscure piazza overlooking the Grand Canal, the woman plucked the Magician from the deck and nodded approvingly. But then she found Temperance inverted, and crossed severely by the Moon. Keen himself shuddered when the next card of her divinatory layout proved to be Death, mounted aboard a white charger with the red rose as his banner.
Even a reader unfamiliar with the portents must sense the message the cards foretold. As the reading proceeded in a progressively darker vein, Keen felt his anger grow. He had never been superstitious, yet something in the woman's manner convinced him not only to believe what she said, but to take it as a curse rather than an objective interpretation of Fortune’s wheel. He pounded the table and upset the cards, demanding to know what, if any, good news she had for him.
'You shall not die a water death,' proclaimed the woman. 'You cannot be killed by water.'
Suddenly, he was seized by a fit. 'Let us see if the same is true of you,' he shouted, picking the woman up and throwing her into the canal.
Immediately, he repented, threw off his boots and coat, and dove into the dark water to save her. But despite the long hour he searched in the putrid stream, he could not retrieve her body.
The full explanation for the dark roiling of his soul is perhaps more complicated, involving other choices and decisions as well as personal reverses. But it is nonetheless true that his path took a severe turn that afternoon. The woman died without relatives. Keen found himself not only free but in possession of her considerable texts and potions, and in a few hours gained knowledge his instructors at Edinburgh could not have dreamed in a lifetime.
His career progressed, and at length he returned to London and became doctor to the highest elements of society, including the king himself. Despite his fame, his experiments brought him disrepute. He was accused of heinous crimes before King George III exiled him to America, in exchange for his life. By then, he had joined the king's secret department, sworn to carry out assassinations and other assignments in utter secrecy.
Once a member of the department, there is no resignation short of death. Keen continued to carry out assignments under the direction of General Bacon, who besides being the intelligence chief was the king's personal representative at the head of the clandestine order of assassins.
A few months after his arrival in New York, Keen was given the red-jeweled dagger signifying a mission — and told to kill Jake Gibbs and his friend Claus van Clyne. The doctor was bested by the pair below the great iron chain that spans the river at Peekskill, but he did not despair. Instead, he traced the two men north, and as they worked on a mission among the Mohawk he struck again.
Keen believed van Clynne perished in a burning building, where he had left him tied and gagged. In fact, the Dutchman had escaped through a basement passage used by an earlier occupant as a beer cellar.
Jake, meanwhile, proved harder to find, let alone kill. Keen joined forces with the local Mohawks, and was able to trick the American spy into a meeting just above the Cohoes Falls. The two men fell upon each other and engaged in a death struggle. Keen, aided by drugs that increased his stamina and natural strength, throttled Jake, then had him bound and gagged, placed into a canoe and sent tumbling over the falls.
But the doctor himself became tangled in the tackle trailing from the boat, and plunged over in the torrent. The canoe, loaded with heavy supplies, sank at the foot of the falls — as Jake had seen.
Jake saw this because he had not been fooled by Keen, but rather played the trick back to ensnare the doctor. With the aid of a confederate … ah, but we do not wish to give the plot away to those who have not read the adventure. Suffice it to say Jake watched Keen fall, and observed the commotion on the riverbank below as the doctor's Indian allies debated what to do. By the time Jake left to complete his mission, Keen had been underwater ten minutes at least; no one, he thought, could have survived the tumult without drowning.
But he had not counted on the Borgia curse or prediction — whichever it might be. Nor did he know that Keen had found a pocket of air within the overturned canoe. The British assassin reached the shore intact. His Indian cohorts were dumbstruck to see him. As fooled as Keen by Jake's plot, they assured him the white man had died, and after a lengthy search produced a blond scalp to back up their claim.
The hair now rested on the bench of Keen's carriage. He was fully confident that it belonged to his nemesis. But how to explain that one of the dead men bore the unmistakable signs of having been killed by a poison few men besides Keen himself could concoct?
A poison that had been on the bullets when Gibbs stole his Segallas pistol back in their fateful fight before the falls?
There might be many theories. Perhaps one of the Indians had managed to find the gun on the body and then used it here.
But why? The man's rough outer clothes were not exceptional, but he had on a silk undershirt. That and his pocketful of coins suggested he was an English agent, but not a robbery victim.
Very few people in this province would not ransack a body before death. Keen knew full well Gibbs was one. He felt his blood rising against the rebel's sham virtue.
But he was dead, wasn't he?
The doctor saw the death wounds of each man before returning to the carriage, where his Mohawk assistant waited. The man had lived among whites for many years, and had acted as an interpreter during Keen's recent travels.
'Clouded Face,' said Keen, addressing him as he stood by the side of the carriage, 'come down a moment.'
'Doctor, sir?'
'Simply say 'doctor.' I am not a knight, nor do I aspire to be. Knighthood, in fact, is out of the question. Come down here.'
There was nothing specifically venomous in Keen's voice, yet the assistant trembled as he put down the reins. He slipped to the ground, then held his hands in a tangled, sweating knot before him, where they would be conveniently situated should he have to beg for mercy.
'Clouded Face, you assured me Jake Gibbs was dead, did you not?'
'Yes, sir, yes, Doctor, yes I did.'
'And you did that because of the scalp?'
'I saw him go over the falls myself,' said the assistant. 'And heard the death wail. I kicked the body with the others on the shore below. You have the hair.'
'The ribbon is the same. The color, of course. But tell me. .' Keen tapped the man's uncovered head with his cane. 'Tell me if a scalp could be taken without a man being killed. Or if the wrong scalp could be taken and dressed with another man's ribbon?'
'Impossible.'
'Let us try the first, then, and see,' said Keen, producing a knife. 'Your knot is convenient.'
