The crowd parted, opening crooked avenues for two men with pit bulls on short chains, their muzzles tied with rope. The dogs strained ferociously at their leashes as they moved toward the lip of the pit, and it was all their masters could do to keep them from leaping inside, or going after each other.
“Duke, he hails from Rosemary Lane,” the boss announced, “and Whitey, why Whitey’s the pride of Ludgate Hill. Two fine champions, gentlemen, and a right even match. So place your bets!” he cried out. “Place your bets, if you please!”
He stepped up out of the pit and rolled a barrel to its rim.
“Have you seen either of them fight?” Frenchie asked, leaning close to Sinclair’s ear to be heard over the crowd.
“Yes, I’ve won on Whitey,” Sinclair replied, while raising his hand to a passing bookmaker. “Five on Whitey!”
“Make it ten!” Frenchie threw in.
The bookmaker tipped his cap—as they were clearly gentlemen, he would not insist on the cash in advance—and turned to an old drunk pulling at his sleeve.
“Last call, gentlemen,” the boss called out as he pounded a fist on the closed barrel at the rim of the pit. “Place all bets!”
There was a sudden flurry of cries and raised hands as the dogs’ masters removed the ropes from their muzzles. The dogs barked furiously, foam flying from their lips. Then a bell rang, the pit boss shouted, “All done!” and everyone’s eyes turned toward the barrel. The boss yanked off its lid, and with his foot tipped it over.
A swarm of rats, black and brown and gray, tumbled out and fell in a frenzied torrent into the pit. They righted themselves quickly and ran in all directions, some nipping at each other, others scrabbling at the wooden boards that lined the pit. Several actually managed to leap out, but the laughing gamblers booted them back in again.
The dogs went into a frenzy at the sight of the rats, and their masters had no sooner unhooked the leads than the dogs sailed into the pit, jaws snarling and claws bared. The white one was the first to make a kill, grabbing a fat gray rat and biting clear through it.
Sinclair clenched a fist in triumph, and Frenchie shouted, “Good work, Whitey!”
Duke, the black and tan, quickly evened the score, shaking a brown one like a rag until its head flew off. The rats scurried to the sides of the pit, clambering over each other’s backs in their rush to escape. Whitey lunged at the one on top of a pile and tossed it into the air. The rat landed on its back and before it could turn over Whitey had lunged for its belly and ripped it open with one swipe.
There was a huzzah from Whitey’s supporters in the crowd.
And so it went for the full five minutes. Blood and bone and bits of rat flew everywhere—Sinclair always made it a point to stand well back so that his uniform would remain unmarred—but at some point Whitey seemed to lose his enthusiasm for the kill and decided to eat his prey. That was not good training, Sinclair thought; while the dog should be kept hungry before a bout, enough to keep its instinct for blood alive, it should not be so starved that it stopped to consume the quarry.
“Get up, Whitey!” Frenchie shouted, as did many others, but the dog remained on all fours munching the dead rodents scattered around its paws. Duke, meanwhile, continued about his grim business.
Sinclair could see his money evaporating even before the bell rang and the boss called out “Time, gentlemen!” The dogs’ masters leapt into the pit, landing between the dogs and among the few maimed rats still crawling about, half-alive.
The pit boss looked to his fellow judge—a dirt-covered urchin holding the brass bell—and announced, “It’s Duke, gentlemen! Duke of Rosemary Lane has carried the day with a baker’s dozen.”
There was a happy clamor from Duke’s supporters, and the passing of notes and coins among the mob. The bookmaker in the cap appeared before Sinclair, who grudgingly handed him the fiver. Frenchie did the same.
“Won’t Rutherford gloat,” Le Maitre said.
Sinclair knew he was right, but he had already put the loss out of mind. It was always best not to dwell on misfortune. And his thoughts, as it happened, had already turned in a decidedly more pleasant direction. As he joined the raucous throng heading back to the tavern, he was thinking of that fetching young woman he’d seen, in the crisp white bonnet, closing the hospital shutters.
CHAPTER SEVEN
November 30
FOR DAYS the sky had been filled with a swirling cloud of birds, following the Constellation as it headed south toward the Antarctic Circle. And Michael had set up his monopod—a Manfrotto with a trigger grip for quick, automatic adjustment—on the flying bridge to get as many good shots of them as he could. In his cabin at night, he’d been reading up on them, too, so he’d know what he was looking at.