stance. “You filthy liar!”
At that, Connor and his men began to laugh, exacerbating Beecham’s emotional turmoil. As the mocking howls went on, I walked over to stand by Beecham without knowing why, then gave the three laughing fools in front of me a disapproving scowl that produced no effect. Turning to Kreizler in hope of getting some guidance, I saw that he was staring down the promenade past Connor and his men, his face a picture of anticipation. His mouth fell open, and for no reason that I could divine he suddenly shouted:
And then all hell broke loose. With the speed and precision that only years of professional training can breed, an ape of a man leapt up and over the inner promenade fence and crushed Connor’s gun-wielding hand with a stout section of lead pipe. Before the other two thugs could react several lightning combinations of blows from two enormous fists laid them both out on the promenade. The howling Connor soon shared the same fate. Then, just for good measure, the newcomer—his face hidden under a miner’s cap—leaned over each man’s head in succession and delivered a series of resounding blows with the lead pipe. It was a clinic in violence that was awesome to behold—but my joy at the attack faded considerably when the performer stood up and finally revealed himself.
It was Eat-’Em-Up Jack McManus, former prizefighter and current enforcer of decorum at Paul Kelly’s New Brighton Dance Hall. Tucking his piece of pipe into his pants, McManus picked up both the Colt and the Webley and then stepped toward me. I braced myself, reasonably calculating that Laszlo and I would be the next victims of his pugilistic artistry; instead, McManus straightened his shabby jacket, spat hard into the waters of the reservoir, and handed me the guns. I trained the Colt on Beecham as Jack slowly walked up to Kreizler, raised a hand, and touched the brim of his cap respectfully.
“Well done, Jack,” Laszlo said, at which I almost hit the pathway beneath me in a dead faint. “Bind them, if you would, and gag the two bigger men. The one in the middle I’ll want to talk to when he comes around.” Laszlo studied Connor’s body, evidently impressed by McManus’s work. “Or perhaps I should say,
McManus touched his cap again, crossed back in front of me, then produced several lengths of rope and two handkerchiefs and carried out Laszlo’s instructions like a patient, laboring ox. Kreizler, in the meantime, went quickly to the bound boy, and began to free his mouth, hands, and feet.
“It’s all right,” Laszlo said soothingly, as the youth continued to sob and whimper uncontrollably. “It’s all right, you’re quite safe now.”
The boy looked up at Laszlo, eyes wide with terror. “He was going to…”
“What he was going to do is no longer important,” Laszlo answered with a small smile, producing a handkerchief and wiping the boy’s face. “What
With everything under control, at least for the moment, I satisfied my curiosity by approaching the fence on the street side of the promenade and taking a quick look over it. A few feet below, strung before our arrival and held in place by climbing pitons much like the one that Marcus had found at Castle Garden, was a length of stout rope. As Kreizler had suspected, getting around and behind us had been no great job for an experienced climber like Beecham. I turned back around and looked at our now beaten foe, shaking my head at the sudden, baffling way in which the tide had turned.
Jack McManus had finished the job of binding Connor’s men, and he looked to Kreizler expectantly. “Well, Jack,” Laszlo said. “All secure? Good. We won’t be needing you further. But again—my thanks.”
McManus touched his cap one last time, then turned and strode back down the dark promenade without saying a word.
Kreizler turned to the boy again. “Let’s get you inside, shall we? Moore, I’m just going to put our young friend here in the control house.”
I nodded, keeping the Colt leveled at Beecham’s head as Laszlo and the boy disappeared inside. Still huddling and spasming, Beecham had begun to let out a quick, guttural little whimper of his own. It didn’t appear that he’d give me any trouble, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Quickly scanning the area, I saw his knife lying on the pathway, and moved to pick it up and tuck it into the back of my own pants. Glancing at the unconscious Connor, I noticed that he had a pair of manacles clipped to his belt. I retrieved them and tossed them to Beecham.
“Here,” I said. “Get these on.”
Slowly and absentmindedly, Beecham fit the manacles around his wrists, closing first one and then the other with some difficulty. I searched Connor’s pockets and found the key to the restraints, after which I noticed that there was a small bloodstain on Connor’s shirt. Unbuttoning the dirty garment and then pulling it aside, all the while keeping my gun on Beecham, I saw that Connor had a long, half-healed wound in his side, which had apparently been torn back open by Jack McManus. It was the injury, I realized, that Mary Palmer had inflicted before Connor had flung her down Kreizler’s stairs.
“Good for you, Mary,” I said softly, standing away from Connor.
Kreizler came back out of the control house, running a hand through his hair and surveying the scene before him with evident, if rather amazed, satisfaction. Then he looked my way self-consciously, as if he knew what was coming.
“You,” I said, evenly but very firmly, “are going to tell me what in hell is going on around here!”
CHAPTER 45
Laszlo had just opened his mouth to reply when the sound of a sharp whistle echoed up from Fortieth Street. Kreizler ran to peer over the street-side fence of the promenade, and I quickly joined him, looking down to see Cyrus and Stevie in the calash.
“I fear that explanations will have to wait, Moore,” Kreizler said, turning toward Beecham again. “Cyrus and Stevie’s arrival means that the opera has been over for at least three quarters of an hour. By now Roosevelt’s suspicions have been thoroughly aroused. He’ll have checked with the others at High Bridge Tower, and when they learn of our disappearance…”
“But what do you plan to do?” I asked.
Kreizler scratched his head and smiled a bit. “I’m not terribly sure. My plans didn’t quite provide for this situation—I wasn’t entirely certain that I’d still be alive, even given our friend McManus.”
That stung me, and I didn’t mind showing it: “Oh,” I huffed, “and I suppose I would have been dead, too!”
“Please, Moore,” Kreizler said, waving his hand impatiently. “There simply isn’t time.”
“But what about Connor?” I demanded, pointing to the former detective’s prostrate form.
“We shall hold Connor for Roosevelt,” Laszlo replied sharply, crossing over to where Beecham sat huddled. “Though he deserves far worse!” Crouching down to stare Beecham in the face, Laszlo drew a deep breath to calm himself, then held a hand in front of our prisoner’s eyes and moved it back and forth. Beecham seemed utterly oblivious.
“The boy has come down from the mountains,” Kreizler mused at length. “Or so it would seem.” I took his point: if the man we’d first encountered on the walls that night had been the evolved version of the cool, sadistic young trapper who’d once roamed the Shawangunks, then the terrified creature now before us was the inheritor of all the terror and self-loathing that Japheth Dury had felt at every other moment of his life. Evidently aware that there was little to fear from the man so long as he was in this mental state, Laszlo took Beecham’s jacket from him and draped it around the man’s huge, bare shoulders. “Listen to me, Japheth Dury,” Kreizler said, in an ominous tone that got Beecham to finally stop swaying and moaning. “You’ve a great deal of blood on your hands. That of your parents, not least of all. Should your crimes become known, your brother, Adam—who is still alive and still attempting to carry on an honest, decent life—will most certainly be privately destroyed and publicly hounded. For
