Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

Matthew didn't know whether to be pleased or insulted by that. It also irritated his craw that they were laughing about his house.

He walked south along Broad Street, passing City Hall. Lights showed in the attic windows. The sky was full of sparkling stars, and Matthew wondered if on this crisp and quiet night Zed was not sitting up there, maybe with a blanket draped around him, thinking of nights spent with loved ones under those same celestial banners.

Lanterns gleamed from wooden posts on the street corners. The constables were out, carrying their green lamps. Matthew saw one coming north further along Broad, the lantern swinging back and forth to check nooks and crannies. Matthew turned to the right onto Stone Street, took from his pocket the key he'd gotten from home, and unlocked the door to Number Seven.

He fired the tinderbox that sat on a table beside the door, and with its flame touched the wicks of three tapers in a triple-armed candleholder also on the table. He locked the door, picked up the candles and climbed the steep stairs.

As he reached the top he heard a soft little thump. The ghosts were greeting him, in their own way.

Passing through the oak-paneled outer room with its cubbyhole-chest and its windows that looked toward the Great Dock, Matthew entered another door that held his and Greathouse's desks. He left the door open and lit four candles in an eight-armed wrought-iron chandelier overhead. The unshuttered windows in this office gave a view of New York to the northwest. The room held three wooden file cabinets and a small fireplace of rough gray and tan stones sure to see much use when the really cold weather began. It was good to be home.

Matthew sat the triple-candleholder on his desk. Relishing his return, he peered for a while through the windows at the comforting view of the little lamps scattered across the expanse of town. Then he removed his hat and cloak and hung them up, situated himself at his desk, took the letter from Sirki to Sutch out of his pocket, and smoothed it down before him. Opening the top drawer of his desk, he brought out the magnifying glass that was a gift from Katherine Herrald, and studied the handwriting with closer scrutiny.

A man's hand, he decided. Flowing, yes, but with very little elaboration except for a flourish beneath the name. What kind of name was Sirki? And what was that about returning to the island toward mid-September? Matthew could see where the quill had paused from time to time for another dip of ink. The paper had been twice folded to fit an envelope. It was light brown, not as thick as parchment. He held it up before the candleglow, and there he saw something that made him turn it over and look again.

He brought from his drawer a pencil and scratched lead over what seemed to be a faint impression on the back of the paper.

Before him appeared the stylized shape of an octopus, its eight tentacles stretched out wide as if to seize the world.

It was the impression of the wax stamp that had been used to seal the envelope.

He heard a quiet noise, almost a sigh.

Something bit him on the side of his neck.

A little sting, no more.

He put his hand there and felt a small object in his flesh. When he pulled it out, he was looking at a wooden dart about three inches long with a smear of yellowish paste on its stinger tip and on the other end a piece of hollowed-out cork.

A ghost stirred in the corner beside the file cabinets, where the shadows lay thickest.

This ghost, as it emerged, wore a long black cloak and tricorn and had silky hair the color of dust. He was of indeterminate age, small-boned, pale of skin and weirdly fragile. A long thin scar ran up through his right eyebrow into his hairline, and his eye on that side was a cold milky-white orb. He held a wooden tube, which he now set atop one of the filing cabinets. His black-gloved hand went into his cloak-his movements slow and horribly deliberate-and reappeared with a long, sharp knitting needle that glinted blue in the candlelight.

Matthew stood up, dropping the dart to the floor. His throat was cold, his neck prickling where the tip had entered.

'Stay where you are,' he said. He was aware that his tongue was starting to freeze.

Ripley, the young assassin-in-training, advanced as in a nightmare. Obviously he had graduated to using a blowpipe and a dart smeared with frog venom. Matthew recalled with terror what Mrs. Sutch had told Slaughter: ' causes the muscles to stiffen and the throat to constrict. Within seconds, the victim cannot move '

If he had only seconds, he was going to make them count.

He picked up the candleholder with numbed fingers and hurled it. Not at Ripley, but through the glass of the windows. The crash echoed along Stone Street and made a dog start barking. His only chance, he'd realized, was to bring the nearest constable to his aid. If no one heard the noise, he was dead. And he might well be dead, anyway.

He retreated. His legs were cold and trembling; everything seemed to be in slow-motion, and he was aware that his heart-when it should be pounding in his chest-was also slowing. When he drew in a breath, his lungs creaked. They felt as if they were filling up with icy water. Even the workings of his mind were running down: Ripley may have shadowed him from the Trot come ahead and picked the lock relocked the door waiting for him in the dark his method of a needle through his eye into the brain for resolution of this matter of

Matthew picked up Greathouse's chair and held it before him, as he backed toward the wall.

In the flickering light cast by the candles on Greathouse's desk, Ripley glided forward step after step.

'Hello?' someone called from the street. 'Hello, up there!'

Matthew opened his mouth to shout for help, but his voice was gone. It came to him to throw the chair at Ripley and take his chances on getting down the steps. As soon as this thought registered in his brain, his hands spasmed. He lost hold of the chair. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees.

A fist hit the door at the bottom of the stairs. Matthew fell onto his face. He was shivering, his muscles jumping as if the venom had birthed frogs beneath his skin. Still, he tried to push himself across the floor. Within another five seconds both his strength and power of will had abandoned him.

Ripley stood over Matthew, who lay frozen on his stomach, his eyes open and his mouth gasping.

'Corbett?' shouted another voice. There came the sound of the doorhandle being worked back and forth.

Ripley reached down and began to turn Matthew over.

Something slammed against the door.

Ripley succeeded in his task. In his prison of ice, Matthew thought he should get his hands up before his eyes. He tried this also, but nothing happened. I'm drowning, he thought. My God I can't breathe

Again, something smashed into the door. There came the noise of wood ripping asunder. Matthew felt the floor shake underneath him.

Ripley grasped a handful of Matthew's hair. Candlelight jumped off the needle's tip as it hovered over the center of Matthew's right eye. Ripley had become a blur, a white shape, truly ghostly. The needle's tip descended, and looked to be burning with blue fire.

Matthew saw Ripley's head turn.

A dark shape enveloped the assassin.

Ripley's mouth opened, and suddenly a huge black fist hit him in the face and his jaw crumpled and teeth and blood flew out. For a second the blurred Ripley gave a hideous rictus of a grin with his ruined mouth, the single good eye wide and staring, the other fish-belly white, and then his face disappeared again beneath the fist. This time Ripley fell out of Matthew's line-of-sight, leaving what Matthew saw to be a streak of spirit image across the air.

Matthew's lungs hitched. He was gulping breath down, swallowing it from where he lay at the center of an ice-pond.

'Corbett!' Someone was above him. He couldn't make out the face. 'Corbett!'

'Is he dyin'?' another voice asked. A green lamp floated over Matthew.

The face went away. There was a silence, during which Matthew continued to gulp small mouthfuls of breath, for it was all he could manage. His heartbeat was slowing slowing

'Christ!' came a shout. 'Zed, pick him up! Peterson, do you know where Dr. Mallory lives? On Nassau Street?'