* * * * *
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 b
oth 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.”