smaller amount of space than he would have believed was possible. His breathing came through his nostrils hoarse and coarse, pushing around the gag of a firm hand pressed over his mouth, and seemingly to bounce off walls in the darkness at every turn; he could not kick with his one free leg but for dully striking the surface of some wooden crates. They were all of them packed into the cellar like fish in a barrel, and the effects of the small, enclosed space surely and quickly took a desperate toll upon the hearts of the occupants.
“I didn’t like his look when he first showed his face,” Bailey’s host explained in the darkness to his cohorts. His voice, where it concerned their prisoner, was filled with the blackest intentions. “And I liked his questions even less when they were brought up, night after night in my parlors. We should have had to do something about him before long, but as it turned out I just found out he is even more dangerous than I thought. That’s why you’re all here, for I could not move on the fellow without your support.”
“Well,” replied the orange haired man, “Now we’ve got him in our sights. But it’s one thing to do the deed while the emotions are still hot. And now that I’ve cooled a little I’m beginning to see another side of things.”
There was a bought of brittle, dry laughter from the other man.
“Losing your nerve, Archie?”
“He’s nobody ordinary, hey. And a Handyman at that. What are we to do if the thing is done tonight, and tomorrow we find the iron hands of his comrades wrapped around our throats? I’m wont to think it will happen, as likely as not.”
A quiet murmur of agreement swept through the small space of the cellar from his accomplices, for the orange haired man’s reasoning seemed sound to them.
“Either way we cannot stay,” said the innkeeper in a low voice, hoarse and raspy, which instilled a sense of deep loathing and menace in his listeners. “And I never planned to. It’s a fire beneath all our bottoms no matter how you look at it, for dead or alive we’ll have no place to call home here. We will all have to wrap things up and be on our way, leaving the country by tomorrow, so why should any loose ends be left in our wake, I ask, before we close up shop for good?”
The way his words were uttered convinced Bailey that his time was up, for there was the telltale glitter of the small man’s eyes, even in pitch blackness, which showed plainly his murderous intent. A match was struck after some fumbling about, and by its faint, flickering light the detective saw a crowbar with a wicked black head being thrust at that very moment into the orange-haired man’s hands.
“Do it, Archie! And we’ll dump his body over the bridge as we clear out before daybreak.”
The glow of the matchstick set off queer shadows dancing all over the walls. As we know the mind becomes especially alert in a crisis, Bailey managed to garner a deep inspection of his surroundings in the moment before the blow fell. They were all of them trapped together inside a cellar too small to pass for a closet, packed wall to wall with crates, some with engravings which read ‘ham’, ‘three-year old cheddar’, and ‘Vintage (No. 32)’. But the barrels marked with ‘pickles’ were stuffed with oddities—notes like shredded paper piled to the brim and nearly overflowing. As his murderer advanced he happened to knock against it with his elbow, sending a small torrent to fly listlessly to the hard stone floor. As they fell away Bailey noticed at once the stocks of rifles sticking from the barrel like trees out of the earth. His heart skipped with sudden, unexpected hope. Alas, with his assailants still pressed unyieldingly over him he could not, for the life of him, get at them just then.
But suddenly there came a sound which perked all their ears at once! It fell into the cellar with the crack and rattle like what you would expect from throwing an especially heavy brick against wooden planks. His would-be murderer stalled, looking all about himself nervously.
“What was that?”
Again the noise was repeated, even louder than before. It now resembled nothing so much as a battering ram at the door. They all of them turned towards the source in alarm.
“Great scowls!” cried the orange-haired man in a fright.
The cellar doors were being forced from the outside by an irresistible force. Before their very eyes it shuddered with the strength of the blow falling upon it from the other side, the very wood itself straining to hold back the immense strength of the attacker. With an iron groan the hinges, well-worn from age and use, gave way one after the other. Following a pop of pins and screws they were forced through, and the doors were thrown inwards.
But no light, however faint, came through the opening, a haphazard slant of space now wholly blocked by the outline of a titan over which a blanket of darkness fell in the form of an all-encompassing shadow. A gust of wind billowed around this towering figure from the in-rush of air through the narrow spaces, at once knocking out the flame on the end of the matchstick in the innkeeper’s hands.
“Lights!” he cried in a hoarse, desperate panic, “Lights!” But even as he struggled to put action to his commands the long shadow shortened, flying down the staircase and falling over them in a terrible rush.
For Bailey there was little to see but much to hear. As he stretched out his ears to listen he was at once bombarded by the very real sounds of a battlefield swirling around him, throwing the small space into utter bedlam. There were footsteps slapping against the stone floor at every turn, panicked cries ringing in his ears as a stumbling, lumbering form crashed into their midst. There was no missing the telltale whistles of swinging limbs, and the growling, guttural language of curses being bitten out from between gritted teeth. All pretenses for discretion were abandoned, all caution thrown to the wind. There was a man in the cellar, an unknown quantity of gargantuan proportions brimming with unchecked wrath. Such was his immense size that everything gave way readily before him. Crates splintered and cracked, the very walls shaking seemingly with his every step. A rifle snatched up in Archie’s hands was wrestled away and broken over a knee, before out flashed the knives embellished by voices crying out here and there in astonishment and pain. For the effects of blades and blows seemed to this titan altogether irrelevant. He appeared to be shielded from any and all harm by his immense strength. And his anger, with which he swiftly overcame his aggressors in a short and bloody row, was insatiable. They were many and he was but one man, but alas in the darkness of the cellar it was to their disadvantage that they could not properly aim their blows without fear of marking up one of their own by accident, whereas he was free to do as he pleased, readily crushing every limb, body, or noggin which came his way.
It ended soon enough. And when at last the cries of the battlefield gave way to sullen silence, punctuated here and there by the ragged breathing of the injured, dying and triumphant, there was the sound of a match being struck. Having made no move against the intruder Bailey was spared the wholesale destruction he wrought, and in the faint light he now managed a good, long look on his timely rescuer as he was being helped to his feet. Looking on him one was reminded of every story heard about the giants of fairytales and folklores, for his legs were tree trunks, his waist a wide bulwark over which his shoulders loomed like the back of a mountain reaching into the clouds. The grooms and the innkeeper lay strewn about his feet like broken toys after the tantrum of a large, angry child.
In the silence of the cellar Bailey heard the giant’s labored breathing, saw faintly his shoulders sagging from weariness. He came up, a massive hand wrapping around Bailey’s arm, pulling him to his feet until at last they were face to face. A black mask obscured his features, covering him from crown to chin save for where the mouth and nose and eyes were cut away, showing thick cracked lips through which his breathing escaped in short, ragged gasps.
That’s when Bailey noticed he was all over with wounds.
“Gods, man!”
“Tis nothing to fret over,” replied the giant. His voice was of a strangely high pitch, the throat of a mouse buried inside the
body of an elephant. “Come. We must get you to safety.”
There were knife slashes aplenty, along with here and there a purplish bruise and a terrible open wound or two; and many more unseen as likely as not, for Bailey’s keen eyes did not miss the telltale shamble in his footsteps, the hand pressed over some unseen grievance and the very real observation that for the immense frame of the intruder he walked on distinctly favoring one leg over the other. His triumph over the Fun Friars’ Gang was not without cost, and privately Bailey anticipated he must have been insane to do what he did.
“I have been following these criminals for weeks now,” the giant told him as they pushed their way back towards the cellar entrance, his voice shaking with excitement. He seemed to be eager to hold a conversation with the man he rescued if only to hear his own assurances that he was unhurt, and with a hopeful desperation for a listener who would justify his actions. “I thought they were a cult of sorts with interests in kidnapping and arson, but tonight I learned they are also forgers and gunrunners. You are very lucky, sir, for I was not going to move on them until I’ve found their client. In all likelihood these guns, at least, are meant for the deep