Rebel Fire (25 page)

“I still want to kill them myself,” Rubinek muttered, like a spoiled kid who had been denied a biscuit.

“At least we've got Booth and this thing,” Berle said, raising the box he held to eye level and staring at it balefully. “Let's hope that's enough.” He sighed. “Okay, let's get this over with.”

Berle led the way down the veranda to where Sherlock noticed a round table had been set up in front of a pair of French windows. A white tablecloth had been placed over it, and there was a decanter of what looked like orange juice, a plate of bread rolls, and seven glasses sitting in the centre. Seven wrought-iron chairs, painted white, were arranged around the table. A white parasol had been stuck through a hole in its centre, providing shade from the burning sun.

Parasol.
The word stuck in Sherlock's mind as they walked down the veranda towards the table. It reminded him of something, but he couldn't remember what. That was the trouble with memory, he thought—it could only hold so much information. If only there were some way of deleting all the memories a person didn't need and replacing them with the important ones. Perhaps he ought to just write down everything that might be important to him in a notebook, or a set of notebooks, listed alphabetically so he could find things quickly when he needed to.

He was just trying to distance himself from what was going on by thinking about something else, but his attempt was broken when Rubinek pushed him towards one of the chairs with the barrel of his revolver. “Sit,” the man growled. Sherlock obeyed. Matty and Virginia were placed on either side of him, then Berle and John Wilkes Booth sat to Virginia's left and Rubinek sat to Matty's right.

That left one chair, Sherlock noticed. Presumably that was reserved for the mysterious Duke.

“My father will track us down if you don't release us,” Virginia said.

“Your father's the big guy in the white suit?” Berle looked from Virginia to Matty and then to Sherlock. “He's not father to all of you, is he? I'd not seen you all together before.” He looked more closely at Matty. “We took you because we thought it would stop him from coming after us. Shows how much we knew. We should have taken the girl.”

“He still would have come after you,” Virginia said. “That's what he does. He doesn't take orders well.”

Berle was about to say something, but the French doors leading into the house from the veranda suddenly opened. Two servants in immaculate black tailcoated jackets held them open while another figure emerged into the sunlight.

The man was tall—over six feet, Sherlock estimated, and probably closer to seven—and painfully thin. Everything he was wearing was white—tailored suit, waistcoat, shirt, boots, broad-brimmed hat, and gloves—with the exception of the band that encircled the crown of his hat and the bootlace tie that hung down from the collar of his shirt and disappeared behind his waistcoat. They were both made of black leather. For a moment, Sherlock thought that his face was either incredibly pale or covered with white makeup, but then he realized that the man was wearing a mask of porcelain that was so exquisitely made that it looked like a fine-featured, sensitive face. The hair that emerged from beneath the hat and fell around the edges of the mask was so blond that it was itself almost white.

The eyes that stared through the holes in the mask were not white, however. The irises were so dark that they were almost black, but the area around the irises was bloodshot. The effect, set against the pristine whiteness of the mask, was to make the eyes seem as if they were glowing red.

The man's wrists, emerging from the cuffs of his shirt, were almost impossibly thin. Sherlock wondered if it would be possible to break his bones just by shaking his hand. Not that the man was extending his hand to be shaken. Both of his arms were pulled away from his body as he moved, with black leather leashes leading away from his wrists into the darkness of the house. And something was pulling those leashes tight.

He stopped just outside the doors. Sherlock thought he could see something moving behind him, at the ends of the leashes, but he wasn't sure what. Some kind of dogs, presumably, but big.

“Dr. Berle,” the man said from behind the mask. His voice was light, high, and almost whispery. “Captain Rubinek. Mr. Booth. And our distinguished guests, of course. I am afraid I do not know your names. Please, in the interests of polite conversation, would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves.”

“I'm Virginia Crowe,” Virginia said.

Matty scowled. “Matthew Arnatt.”

“Ah,” the man said. “A friend from across the sea.” He glanced at Sherlock with his red gaze. “And you, sir? Who are you?”

“Sherlock Scott Holmes,” Sherlock replied.

“Another British visitor. How … entertaining.”

Sherlock's attention was drawn to the hands that held the leashes. There was something wrong with them, and it took him a moment to work out what it was. There were fingers missing from both hands—the little finger on the left hand and the fourth finger on the right hand, but the gloves had actually been tailored without those fingers, so there was no empty finger hanging loose or any material pinned back.

There was something else strange about the hands as well. They were as thin as the rest of the man, but there were lumps pushing at the material of the gloves. What did those hands look like, beneath the gloves?

“You have us at a disadvantage,” Sherlock said, switching his attention back to the man's porcelain mask and trying to keep his voice calm. “May I ask what your name is?”

“I am Duke Balthassar,” the man said, his voice as dry and papery as autumn leaves. “That's ‘Duke' as in a first name, not ‘Duke' as in an honorific like ‘Count' or ‘Prince.' Now please, help yourselves to orange juice and bread rolls. I assure you, the juice is perfectly fresh and the rolls are still warm from the oven.”

Virginia reached for the decanter. “Let me pour,” she said.

Duke Balthassar moved out further into the sunshine. The leashes in his hand pulled tight, and then reluctantly two animals were pulled out onto the veranda.

For a moment, Sherlock didn't know what they were. They looked like sleek brown cats, but their heads were at a level with Duke Balthassar's waist. Their eyes were black, and their tails flicked restlessly as their gaze moved from person to person.

Virginia spilled the orange juice on the white tablecloth.
“Cougars?”
she breathed.

“Indeed,” Balthassar said. He sounded pleased. “I would say ‘Don't let them scare you,' but that would be bad advice.
Do
let them scare you.”

“I didn't know,” Virginia said, and Sherlock could hear the tremor in her voice, “that cougars could be tamed.”

“Tamed?” Balthassar said. “No, they cannot. But like all creatures, humans included, they respond to fear. And they fear me.” He said something in a foreign language, and the cougars scrunched themselves down on the veranda, settling with their heads on their paws.

Sherlock could see the teeth in those not-quite-closed mouths. Those teeth could bite a man's hand off his arm, and the claws that he could see, barely sheathed, could rip the arm itself out of the socket. “How do you make a cougar fear you?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“The same way you make a man fear you,” Balthassar said. One of his black-clad servants pulled the remaining chair out, and he sat daintily, crossing his grasshopper-thin legs. “A mixture of pain and examples of what will happen to them if they do not obey you. They have a memory. They remember the examples, and they act accordingly. Or you dispose of them and start again with another animal, and the act of disposal, if it is done properly and if it lasts for long enough, itself acts as an example of what will happen if the new animal does not obey you. You can leave the body lying around for quite some time.”

There was silence around the table for a moment as everyone watched the cougars.

“I like your train,” Matty said eventually.

The porcelain mask did not move, but Sherlock sensed that the man was smiling underneath. “You are very kind. It proves useful if I need to attend meetings in New York or elsewhere. I do so hate having to take a carriage to the nearest station. The roads are bumpy, and there is so much dust. It's far more preferable if the train comes to me.”

“How did you arrange that?” Sherlock asked.

“I provide the train company with a great deal of business,” Balthassar explained. “I am an entrepreneur. I have a number of travelling exhibitions and circuses, taking exotic animals around this fine country, and those exhibitions and circuses travel on our own trains. When I told them I wanted a spur line put in, and signals that would allow me to divert any train to my house, they agreed.” He paused. “Eventually. After I provided some examples of what would happen if they did
not
agree with me.”

Sherlock tried to imagine what kind of examples Balthassar was talking about, and then he tried not to. The pictures were too vivid.

“So you diverted this train because your men were on board?” Virginia asked.

“Indeed. They had cabled ahead to tell me they were on board, and with several precious cargoes.” He glanced across at John Wilkes Booth, who was staring at a glass of orange juice as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “Mr. Booth here is one of them. I have been waiting for some time for him to return to this once-glorious country. I have plans for him. Another cargo was unloaded earlier and is even now being introduced to its new surroundings.” He switched his gaze to the box that Berle was holding on his lap. “And I believe that this box contains the final one. Am I right, Dr. Berle?”

Berle nodded, and licked his dry lips. “You are, Duke. Do you—?”

“Not yet, Doctor. I have been waiting a long time for this particular package to arrive. I want to savour the moment.” He paused and looked around the table. “I do, however, note the absence of the estimable Messrs Ives and Gilfillan,” he said mildly. “Where are they?”

Sherlock knew that he had two choices: he could either let Berle tell Balthassar that Gilfillan was in custody and Ives was dead, or he could admit it first and take the initiative. He decided to take the initiative. “Mr. Gilfillan is in prison back in England,” he said. “Mr. Ives I killed just now by knocking him off the train.” He stared at the twin eyeholes in Duke Balthassar's mask. “Oh, and I also disposed of a steward on the SS
Scotia
who tried to kill me as well. He was being paid by Mr. Ives.”

A silence settled over the table, broken only by the rumbling breath of the two cougars. They watched Sherlock intently. Somehow they knew that there was a battle for dominance going on between him and Duke Balthassar.

“How very enterprising of you,” Balthassar said eventually. “Why exactly did you kill them?”

“Maybe I wanted to set an example to your other servants,” Sherlock said levelly. “To make them fear me.”

Balthassar laughed: a clear, high-pitched sound that made the cougars cringe backwards. “How
very
enterprising,” he said. “I think I like you, Master Sherlock Scott Holmes. Not enough to keep you alive, but I do like you.”

“Ain't you goin' to do anythin' to him?” the big man, Rubinek, demanded.

“For that?” Balthassar asked. “No. If they were stupid enough to let a child get the better of them then good riddance. They have saved me the trouble of dealing with them myself. No, young Master Sherlock here will not see the sunset, but not because he thinned the ranks of my servants. No, he and his friends will die because I have no use for them here.”

Silence fell across the veranda.

“So,” Balthassar said quietly after a few moments, “now that we have all become acquainted, and now that you're comfortable and you have refreshments, please be so good as to tell me how much the authorities know about my plans.”

“We don't know anything,” Sherlock replied.

“You are wrong on two counts,” Balthassar said. “On the first count, you obviously know
something
, as you have managed to interfere with my schedules and to kill two of my staff. Children don't usually stumble into something this big, or if they do they back away very quickly. You, as I understand it, were first seen in the house in England where Mr. Booth was being … kept safe. That, at least, is where Mr. Ives and Dr. Berle first saw you. The question is, why were you at the house in the first place? Were you there by accident, or were you looking for Mr. Booth?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say something, but Balthassar gestured to him to keep quiet.

“On the second count,” he continued in the same level, pleasant tone of voice, “it doesn't matter
what
you know. The matter is of no interest to me. I have you all here, and none of you will escape. Within the next few hours, you will all die, and your knowledge will die with you. That I promise. No, the only important question is, what is known by the girl's father, and what is known by the authorities in England and here, in America?” He paused and turned the porcelain mask towards Sherlock. “Tell me, and tell me now, before I lose my patience.”

Despite the hot sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky, Sherlock felt a cold breeze blow across the veranda.

“If you're going to kill us anyway,” Sherlock said carefully, “then why should we tell you anything? It's not like telling you is going to save our lives. You've already said it's not.”

“A good point, well made,” Balthassar conceded. “This country is built on the principles of trade and negotiation. Very well; let me make you an offer.”

He turned the porcelain mask towards Virginia. “Please, extend your hand,” he said.

Virginia glanced at Sherlock, panic in her eyes. He didn't know what she should do: obey Balthassar or ignore him? Sherlock didn't know what the outcome of either action would be. Despite his pleasant exterior, Balthassar seemed to be walking on a knife-edge between civility and madness.