“Your father will come ‘round.” Mother said.
David frowned at her, but the expression slid to a smile when he noticed Annie looking down at him through the window. He waved; his niece babbled something he couldn’t hear and then the little girl’s mother joined her at the window.
Catherine – a grown-up Cat – smiled down at him as well, and then said something over her shoulder. Probably an answer to something her husband, Angus, had mentioned. Little Annie pressed her face to the glass to watch a porter trundle by with a hand cart.
The moment came and went in an instant.
“He’s had ten years, mum.”
“And it may take another ten, but he’ll come ‘round.” She embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll talk to him again. One day he will be glad you chose to wear that collar. Have hope.”
He made a face at her; she laughed.
The last whistle blew.
“I’m glad you convinced us to stay until this morning. I only wish we could visit longer,” his mother said as he helped her up into the train.
“Well, the next time Angus has business in London…”
“Yes, yes.” She looked down at him from the top step. “Give my regards to that friend of yours – to Lewis. And you behave.”
“Mother,” he ran a finger under his collar wryly and raised an eyebrow.
She smiled. “As I said: behave.”
He laughed.
David turned to go once the train started to pull away, and then it happened. At first he thought that it was some sort of explosion, the noise was so shriekingly percussive.
But it was worse than that.
As if of one mind, everyone on the platform began running toward the twisted mess through the steam and the smoke.
There was screaming. David thought he might have been screaming as well. The car that he’d seen his family climb into was the one crumpled around the engine that had jumped the tracks.
Mother. Cat. Annie. Angus.
He knew where they’d been sitting, but the crash had mangled the car and turned it on its side.
He couldn’t see them, and the air was hot around the wreck. It was very hard to breathe, but he waded into the twisted metal to reach them. There were so few rescuers.
Though he bloodied his hands and arms on the wreckage, David wasn’t quick or strong enough.
Of the four he’d put on the train, only little Annie got free of the crushed tangle.
Afterward, David had asked the doctor to explain what had happened. Why it had happened. The doctor’s blunt reply still resonated starkly, verbatim.
“I’m afraid there was nothing to be done for your mother or your brother-in-law, even if rescuers had broken through more quickly,” he’d said, his tone soft in a gruff attempt at condolence. “Your mother’s heart gave out; Mr. McNamara was standing when the crash occurred and his injuries were much too severe. They both would have perished almost instantly.
“Your sister, however: like your niece, she sustained no injuries in the crash. It was the smoke. Had she been pulled free more quickly…but no: the smoke was too much for her.”
* * * * *
“Good! You’re here. I believe the next visitors are nearly here as well – reasonably on schedule.”
The speaker was one David hadn’t heard before, and the man’s words broke through the horror replaying in the priest’s head.
Oh. They’d stopped moving.
“W-w-why d’ you ‘urt ‘im?”
Innocent’s indignation – in all its clarity and purity – drove back the choking blackness strangling David’s thoughts.
(The boy’s very presence was as comforting and as soothing to the priest’s troubled soul as an afternoon spent in his garden puffing on his pipe.)
David sensed the young man hurrying past him, presumably to Lew’s side. He moved unhindered by the heavies surrounding them.
The newcomer’s voice murmured commands to someone; the blonde replied; then several of the men departed back the way they’d come.
David heard footsteps come toward him, and then the new fellow spoke quite nearby, as though he were standing next to Innocent and Lewis.
“You speak out of turn.”
“‘E’s m-m-m-my frien’!”
There was a pause, a swishing sound, and then a single muted thump.
Lewis screamed, the sound broken.
“Do. As. You’re. Told.”
The words carried a casual yet emphatic menace that stilled and silenced everything and everyone in the room (except Lewis, whose panting had returned to a sawing rasp).
“…Y-y-y-yes s-s-sir.”
Innocent’s reply was scarcely more than a murmur; his uncle’s enjoinder (the new fellow had to be the uncle) had him cowed. The boy’s trembling was audible.
Blind and bound and frighteningly alone in the darkness, the last tendrils of hope in David’s heart vanished.
* * * * *
Horace Tipple had no expectations about what he’d find when he and his guide reached their destination.
They’d walked no more than a few minutes when the inspector noticed the tunnel brightening ahead of them, and then they turned a corner and stepped into a large, circular room.
“Stay ‘ere,” the blonde fellow said.
Horace did, and then another of the gang made a show of searching the old policeman, patting him down for weapons and the like. While he submitted to this minor indignity, the detective flicked his eyes about the place.
The room was taller than it was broad, but not so disproportionate that it felt like standing in a well. The center of the room was sunken: a pit about 10 feet deep and perhaps 15 across, with steep, smooth sides, a rusty handrail circling the drop, and no visible ladder or other means of entry. The wide ledge Horace stood on wrapped all the way around the pit – though its width varied a touch here and there; a balcony of similar proportions topped the ledge and overlooked the pit as well. Lamps fixed to the pillars supporting the balcony lit the pit brightly, but the ledge and its occupants were half shadowed.
If he weren’t mistaken, the inspector thought he might’ve just stepped onto the spectators’ berth in a prizefighting arena. And prizefighting was quite illegal. Very much so.
Putting this thought aside, Horace skimmed his companions. Whoever the magician was had quite the number of hired muscle at his disposal. Adding the eight or so on the ledge with him to the number of men left in the tunnel, and there were easily two-dozen bodies to concern the police.
Besides the fair-haired fellow and his underlings (or so Horace gathered from the deference they showed the former), were three men with heads shrouded by hoods; two of the men – one tall, one short – were bound as well. The tall and short one (these had to be Lewis Todd and David Powell) stood several paces to Horace’s left, heavies on either side of each of them. The third hooded fellow had been led in from a tunnel to Horace’s right and stopped a few paces away from and directly in front of the detective. This fellow was otherwise unbound and had a single thug as a guard; he appeared to shake in trepidation.
And to Horace’s left, almost but not quite hidden in the shadows behind Todd and Powell and their guards, was the long-sought Nicholas Harker.
When the man patting the inspector down finished and was waved back by the blonde, the arena fell silent.
Horace felt certain the magician had to be close if he weren’t in the room already, and he was willing to let his quarry make the first move in their wretched game.
The blond fellow bobbed his head to acknowledge some signal the old detective missed. Pulling a thin sheaf of folded parchment from a pocket, the blonde yanked the hood off the man in front of Horace and thrust the parchment at the fellow.
Now the detective was mildly surprised, for the third captive was none other than Conway Duke.
Duke blinked blearily in the relative brightness, and then jerked his head around in a low panic, taking in the surroundings.
“Where—?” He began faintly, but stopped when the blonde slapped the parchment on his chest again. Duke hesitantly took the paper and unfolded it at the other’s command to read it aloud.
Horace said nothing.
“Ahem.” Conway Duke cleared his throat. His gaze flicked up and he seemed to notice Horace for the first time; Duke’s eyes grew wide.
“You’re here!” he breathed. “Are you with—?”
Duke’s question ended when the blonde gave him a glancing cuff to the head.
“Read.” The leader commanded sternly.
Horace said nothing as the other studied the parchment for a moment and then complied.
“‘On account of my speech impediment,’” Duke began, “‘I have had my demands written so that you may understand me plainly. My uncle will speak my words to you now, since he was an effective messenger before.’”
At this, Duke looked toward the shadows and his nephew and swallowed sharply.
Horace said nothing.
“‘Detective Inspector,’” Duke continued, “‘you have harassed my family for many years. I was hardly more than a babe when you first arrested my grandfather. Your continued, unjust persecution sent my great-grandfather to an early grave, and our family enterprise has suffered several times from your misguided attentions. My grandfather, my uncles, and my cousins are not the criminals you paint them to be.
“‘I, however, am.’”
Movement to Horace’s left caught his attention just then; he looked and saw that both Todd and Powell had jerked their hooded heads up, as if the words had somehow caused astonishment. Nicholas Harker, for his part, was silent and unmoving in the shadows.
Horace continued to say nothing, though he thought the existence of the prizefighting pit under Harker premises counter to the young Harker’s claim of his family’s innocence.
Well, the old detective conceded inwardly and reluctantly, it was possible they knew nothing of it.
“‘I am a murderer among other things, and justly deserve censure for my crimes,’” Duke went on. “‘But I enjoin you to leave my family alone from this day forward. These men here with me are loyal to my cause of justice, but my crimes are my own. You will do as I ask and then let them go free.’”
“Or—?” Horace spoke in the pause that followed.
“‘Or the two you sought and my uncle—’” Duke broke off with a grimace at the script in his hands, “‘—or my uncle, who is not a Harker, will die. Do as I wish, and you may leave with them when we are finished here. Unmolested, unhindered.’”
Horace pursed his lips. “I want to be certain those two are mine.”
At a gesture from the blonde, off came the hoods and the inspector was pleased to see both Lewis Todd and David Powell standing there.
…Even if both men looked horribly wretched. Had they really been captives only a few days? Lewis could barely stand and was bleeding from wounds in both legs (the heavies on either side were keeping him upright). The little papist, who wasn’t quite so battered, kept shooting half-terrified glances at his friend as though he were anticipating horrors Horace hadn’t yet discovered.
Their appearance wrung a displeased grunt from the inspector; he managed to keep his anger otherwise in check, however.
“What do you want?” he asked softly.
Duke looked down at his parchment, skimming the words, and then flipped to the next page.
“Oh.” The uncle was shocked. “He says…he wants – by your hand only, no other’s….”
“Read hit.” The fair-haired fellow interrupted.
“Of course…. It says, ‘I, Nicholas Harker, want you, Detective Inspector Horace Tipple, to kill me.’”
Horace grunted. He didn’t know what to think about that.
As he digested this demand, the inspector noticed it had incited Lewis’s friend to shout something incomprehensible into his gag and tug against his restraints and guards. The gestures were ineffectual, though, and one hulking thug cuffed the little priest roundly about the ears until the fellow’s brief struggles subsided.
Horace saw something glisten on the little papist’s face and thought it might be tears.
“This isn’t the trade I was told of at the police station.”
Duke skimmed a little more, then read, “‘Having killed me, you will trade your freedom for theirs. You may go to prison a murderer, and perhaps even take my place in the noose. My family’s lawyers are very proficient, and this outcome would be ideal. At the very least, however, my death will end your career, which would be minimally sufficient.’”
Instead of responding to this, the inspector turned to Nicholas Harker and asked, “Why did you kill Frank O’Malley?”
The question caused another, nearly instantaneous uproar.
Harker shouted something Horace didn’t understand, though he thought it an expression of fury (perhaps O’Malley had angered him grievously?), and both Todd and Powell looked at each other in what could only be dismay before they both wrenched at their captors’ holds.
Awful though he looked, Lewis almost managed to wrest himself free, but then the blonde strode over.
If he were obeying someone’s signal, Horace hadn’t noticed. The fair-haired fellow struck the tall policeman with a closed fist to the ribs, and though the jab didn’t seem too hard, Lewis dropped like a stone. His guards let him tumble to the floor.
The little papist stilled at once, and both he and the inspector stared at the police sergeant. Horace could hear Lewis struggling to breathe from 10 paces away.
“Why did you do that?” the old man found himself saying.
“No questions.” The blonde replied tersely as he stood over Lewis’s trembling form. “Either do what ‘e said, or we kill ‘em. You ‘ave two minutes t’ choose.”
* * * * *
David’s head ached from Venn’s blows, but his thoughts had been scattered well before the heavy had struck him.
Another tear slipped free and worked its way down his cheek.
He was of no use to his friend, of no use to Innocent, of no use even to himself.
And Inspector Tipple! The gray haired detective had schooled his expression well when the blonde had demanded that he choose – choose between one murder and another – but David had seen his face in that moment. For a single second, a bleakness akin to sorrow had stricken the old man’s weary eyes, but then it was gone.
“A moment, if I may.”
Tipple’s request was quiet and simple; no one said anything as he bowed his head slightly, eyes nearly closed and his hands folded meditatively behind his back.
His was a terrible choice – and he hadn’t a clue of Conway Duke’s neat trap. The uncle’s acting was sublime, and no one could or would counter the script Innocent had supposedly composed.
The priest swallowed. He tried not to look at where his friend lay bleeding, perhaps dying, on the floor, and couldn’t look back over his shoulder at Innocent.
O God!
David swallowed again, choking back a sob. The gag felt looser in his parched mouth this time; perhaps the rough use at Venn’s hands had made it slip a little. He worked at it with his tongue.
The inspector still stood with his head bowed as the kerchief slipped from the priest’s lips. Since all the thugs who might have raised an alarm were watching Tipple, no one said anything.
However, David’s throat was as dry as his mouth, so he also said nothing. Or at least not right away, waiting until he was sure his voice was ready.
He could remain silent. He could let the inspector make the terrible choice. The old man would, of course, elect to save as many lives as possible – the innocent over the professedly guilty – even if the choice meant his own ruin.
And Innocent, if he were true to form, would willingly step between those he called friends and their attackers. The young man would let Tipple kill him.
Or David could speak and try to spare Tipple and Innocent that awful fate. The consequences might be…. Well, the priest figured in a moment of bell-like clarity, Venn would likely hold nothing back in retribution, what with his remarkably ferocious and focused antagonism.
A choice – to speak or remain silent. Such a simple thing.
It was as Lewis had said.
David inhaled slowly; exhaled.
Have mercy.
* * * * *
Horace waited as long as he could, only speaking when he noted some of the heavies growing restive.
“I’ll need a knife.”
As soon as Horace said this, Nicholas Harker started forward. As the young man rounded the group of prisoners and their keepers, a blade thrown by the blonde clattered to the ground at the inspector’s feet.
Horace stooped slowly and picked it up, the weapon drawing his attention like a magnet.
The blade felt strange and almost awkward in his hand: heavier than his penknife, of a different shape from the knife he used at table, and nothing like the cavalry sabre he’d wielded years ago. This was a tool for quiet killing: not pretty, but deathly functional.
He dimly wondered if this was the same blade used to murder Frank O’Malley, for the appalling symmetry was twisted enough to fit the scene.
Nicholas Harker stopped a little more than an arm’s length away, and Horace forced himself to meet the young man’s gaze.
The inspector couldn’t remember ever really looking at Harker before – really looking at him; cases rarely required it. Certainly Horace knew the young man by sight, but in this short stretch of time before Horace was to kill him, every detail of the young man’s face burned itself into his brain.
Nicholas Harker looked so young. He was no more than 19 as it was. Silent and expressionless, he looked even younger.
Whether culpable for everything the script proclaimed or just a poor fool as entangled as were Lewis Todd, David Powell, and Conway Duke, the young Harker seemed strikingly innocent – even vulnerable – in that moment.
Yet he also seemed resolved to die at the inspector’s hand.
Delay. He must delay.
“Please,” Duke said quietly. “Help us! I—We want to go home.”
Horace half-turned toward the unfortunate spokesman, but after staring into Harker’s eyes, he couldn’t meet Duke’s. It was far easier to look at the man’s feet than his face.
A moment, though.
He chewed his lip.
“If I may ask a question,” the detective said, “how did you come back here, Mr. Duke? My men assured me they saw you safely home.”
When no one objected, Duke replied, “They nabbed me only a minute or two after the bobbies left.”
Horace finally looked up.
“You were injured?”
The other man shook his head. “They grabbed me from behind and used a rag with some sort of vaporous substance to knock me out. I came to when they were leading me down the tunnel here.”
The detective pursed his lips and pointed.
“Whose blood is that?”
Duke looked down. A dark, reddish smudge shown faintly under the shifting lamplight on the toe of the man’s right shoe. The uncle said nothing, only shook his head slightly.
Horace opened his mouth to ask something further, but the little papist began shouting then.
“Nicholas Harker is innocent!” David Powell’s words were hardly more than a rough, hasty shriek, but they carried easily through the chamber. “It’s a trap! This was all set up—!”
Then Horace saw a flash of metal in the hand of the burly, angry thug who’d thrashed the little fellow earlier. Powell’s shout ended abruptly.
The bruiser had stuck a knife in the priest’s back.
At that same moment, Lewis Todd, still supine on the floor, swung his legs around and knocked the blonde to the ground with a sweeping kick.
* * * * *
The pain was sudden and almost inconceivably fierce.
It was as if there were nothing left of his body except that one tremendous, burning sting just to the left of his spine about midway down. It robbed him of his breath and his ability to move, or speak, and almost even to think.
Sights and sounds became oddly disjointed, but they began to fade. The dim light in the circular room dimmed further – slowly at first, and then more rapidly – until all David saw was his friend attacking their captors.
Good. Lew only…pretended….
With a colossal effort, he cast his eyes toward the old detective, but couldn’t tell if Tipple had heeded his warning.
The room went black.
I hope….
The pain lasted longer, but even that disappeared and he knew nothing more.
* * * * *
Men began yelling.
Horace thought he heard a police whistle somewhere behind him in the tunnels; but that was as useful as wishful thinking for all the good it did them in the moment.
Lewis laid the fair-haired fellow low with a blindingly fast trio of kicks: one to the legs to knock him down, another to the chin, which snapped the man’s head back, and a third to the head for good measure. Caught completely unaware, the blonde went down and stayed down.
The other heavies scattered as the police sergeant rolled to his feet. His hands were free – how was that possible?
Ah yes, a knife, Horace noted. Apparently, the fellow had snagged one from his captors and then played dead (or almost dead) in order to cut through his bonds.
Another of the thugs fell in the space between one heartbeat and the next; a weasel-faced fellow fled around the pit and into a tunnel on the far side; three others – each burly and capable – formed a wheeling triangle around the policeman, their knives out and ready.
Another heartbeat.
Lewis, whose lips were clenched in a thin line, hesitated but a moment. Then he attacked his attackers.
The thug who’d stabbed David Powell fell first, hamstrung in both legs and unconscious.
Two more heartbeats.
The second large bruiser staggered back and then sat down heavily; he had no visible wounds, but seemed thoroughly addled.
Four heartbeats together.
The last one danced around the wary police sergeant, and managed to swipe a line of red down Lewis’s right forearm with his blade…before the tall policeman simply punched him in the chin. This fellow’s head snapped up and he fell backward, as straight as a board and out cold before he hit the ground.
In less than two-dozen heartbeats, Lewis Todd had nearly leveled the room.
(Somewhere in the tunnels behind the old detective, another police whistle shrilled faintly and Horace thought he might hear sounds of fighting. The whistle was far off, but closer than before. But not yet close enough.)
The police sergeant dropped to his knees beside the little clergyman’s still and crumpled form, and let out a brief, quiet, keening moan.
“Lewis,” Horace said, finding his voice. The detective hadn’t moved at all during the melee, his attention divided between Nicholas Harker and the remaining thug guarding Conway Duke.
“He lives,” the sergeant murmured, and then more sharply, “Innocent! Come here.”
The old man’s confusion only increased when Nicholas Harker took a hesitant step toward the policeman and priest, and then moved more quickly when Lewis made an insistent, beckoning gesture.
“Help him,” the tall policeman commanded when the young man reached them and knelt down.
Harker cast a frightened look back toward Horace and the others, but nodded. Lewis Todd pushed to his feet and stalked toward the old detective, Duke, and the single remaining heavy.
If Horace had ever seen an angrier, more determined expression on a man’s face, he couldn’t remember when. Whether by force of will or some power the detective had never encountered before, Lewis not only ignored the bloody wounds in his legs and one in his side (when had that happened?), but also managed to move with all the lethal grace and speed of a tiger at hunt.
The final thug took one look at those cold gray eyes and began swearing profusely.
“Throw down your weapon,” Horace said, wondering where on earth the magician was in all of the chaos. Had he miscalculated so badly?
The thug paused briefly in his swearing, exhaled in a huff, swore once more, and then lunged toward Conway Duke. In a trice, he had flung an arm over one of the uncle’s shoulders and under the opposite arm, pinning the unfortunate man to him, and pressed the blade of his knife across Duke’s throat. When Duke scrabbled at the imprisoning arm, a trickle of red bloomed under his chin; he ceased struggling at once.
“Warnin’ you,” the heavy grated to them. “Safe passage, or ‘e gets hit.”
The uncle let out a terrified whimper.
Sergeant Todd paused a few paces away, snarled, and then started forward again.
“Lewis!” Horace put out a hand to stop the man.
Where was that bloody magician? To a similar point, where were Sergeant Bartholomew and the others?
“It’s a bluff,” the tall policeman growled, even though he stopped in his tracks.
“How can you be sure?” the detective asked as the thug dragged his prisoner backward toward the tunnel from which the pair had come originally.
“The blood—” a wracking cough interrupted him, “—the blood on his shoe is mine. Kicked me.”
Lewis took a step toward the retreating pair but faltered as another cough nearly bent him double.
Horace grasped the sergeant under the arm to steady him, “Lewis?”
The sergeant straightened, clenched his jaw determinedly, and tried again to take another step, but his legs buckled.
“Easy, son. I’ve got you,” Horace murmured, getting his arms around the tall policeman before the fellow collapsed completely. The detective went to one knee helping the younger man sit down, keeping an eye on the thug and his prisoner all the while.
“Sir,” Lewis mumbled, his head starting to loll. He coughed again. “Don’t let them ‘scape. Duke’s not a victim…mastermind.”
Horace grunted.
“He’s been giving ‘em hand signals. Don’t let…” Lewis murmured again, and then he fainted.
The old man gently laid the younger policeman down and then lurched to his feet. Jogging as quickly as he might after the pair that had just disappeared in the tunnel’s darkness, Horace cursed his own shortsightedness.
Of course he trusted Sergeant Todd’s judgment; though he didn’t quite see how it all fit together yet or how Duke might be his magician, Horace was willing to take Lewis’s pronouncement on faith.
…only there was no sign of either Duke or his captor ahead of him in the tunnel.
Horace slowed, stopped, and swore.
Too slow, old man, he berated himself, but then he heard something that nearly made him smile.
“Hi! You there: stop! Why, Mr. Duke—! No, no! We’ll sort all that out at the station.”
Sergeant Bartholomew’s voice wafted to him from somewhere up ahead, faint and oddly distorted by the confines of the passage, but clear nonetheless.
Finally! The reinforcements he’d sent the long way around had found their way in. Apparently the metal door on the main corridor was the entrance to the arena.
Less than a minute later, the face of a constable he sort of recognized peered back at him around a bend, the lad’s face haloed by lamplight.
“Sir!” The constable then shouted back over his shoulder, presumably to Sergeant Bartholomew: “It’s the inspector!”
“Come with me, quickly.”
Letting the constable run to catch up, Horace spun on his heel and retraced his steps to the arena.
Sergeant Todd was as he’d left him: unconscious, bleeding, and breathing roughly. The old man paused for a moment to make sure the constable who’d followed was taking care of the dear boy, and then stood and stopped.
Slowly he pivoted on his heel, noting that not one of the heavies Lewis had knocked down was stirring yet.
Hopefully they would stay that way until more reinforcements arrived. What could he do, anyway? Hit them again?
In a moment he was kneeling next to Nicholas Harker by Lewis’s best mate. Powell lay twisted on his stomach, and Harker had stripped off his own shirt to press to the bloody wound in the little man’s back.
Horace fumbled for a moment before he found a pulse, but there it was: weak, perhaps, but steady.
Harker said something, a question inflecting his tone.
Horace shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“He…asked if you would…untie my hands.”
Powell’s eyes fluttered open and then his face screwed up in pain.
“Oh! Hush, lad,” Horace commanded gently, and then bent to do as Harker had asked.
“I’m glad…God, that hurts—!” the papist groaned. “—I’m glad…you didn’t…didn’t kill him. He’s in—…innocent.”
“I’m glad as well. Your warning was well-timed. Now please stop speaking.”
The detective kept a quiet vigil over the little priest until the band of bobbies he’d parted from at the blonde’s request trooped into the arena. The pushed quite a number of the gang before them; aside from the weasel-faced chap who’d fled, Horace thought they might’ve captured all of the two dozen or so he’d counted.
From the other tunnel, Sergeant Bartholomew and his squad (his crew’s numbers had swelled) brought with them the final heavy and Conway Duke.
Horace beckoned to Bartholomew as soon as he caught the sergeant’s eye.
“Sir, glad to see you,” the sergeant began, but Horace cut him off.
“Watch Mr. Duke very carefully.”
“Sir?” A puzzled Bartholomew glanced back to where a protesting Conway Duke was being handcuffed the same as all the assembled heavies. Turning to the inspector, comprehension suddenly dawned on the bobby’s face. “Is he—?”
“Yes. Particularly note if he makes or seems to make any sort of hand signal to anyone.”
“Of course, sir.”
Conway Duke was given his own personal detail of constables.
The last group of policemen to enter the chamber had the fine goods factory owner in tow.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
Archibald Harker had been none too happy when a few policemen had shown up on his doorstep to ‘invite’ him to accompany them during a raid on his factory. By the time he’d been led down to the fighting arena, the man was nearly apoplectic.
“The indignity of traipsing around in the darkness—! Harassment by the police!” he was ranting when he caught sight of his nephew and stopped.
“Nicholas?” Archibald spluttered. “This is where you’ve been?”
The boy shrugged and nodded.
Horace stood and, grasping the young man by the elbow, drew Nicholas to his feet as a pair of constables took over tending the little papist (who’d mercifully lost consciousness again).
“We found him down here,” the detective confirmed. “As well as the fellow behind it all.”
He nodded toward Conway Duke, who was still playing innocent. Horace watched the senior Harker’s reaction.
Archibald frowned. “You’ve given up the nonsense about my nephew being some criminal mastermind, then?”
Horace said nothing.
“Nicholas has not been cuffed like the others,” the senior Harker noticed. “You know he’s not a murderer.”
“Seems unlikely,” the inspector conceded, watching with concern as David Powell and Lewis Todd were loaded onto stretches for transport out.
“Lord! It’s about bloody time!” Archibald seemed both exasperated and relieved. “You’re alright, son?”
Nicholas nodded, pulling the suit jacket his uncle had doffed and given him about his bare shoulders.
“He’ll come with me, then.” Archibald stated.
Horace shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“Why? Clearly we’re victims in this mess.”
The inspector stared at Archibald for a moment, then glanced pointedly around the arena, and then back at the senior Harker.
“I think not.”