Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (25 page)

Crowe looked sideways at Verity.

'Drop the subject,' he said.

Verity ignored him and addressed himself to Lucifer and Bull-Peg, who now stood grinning at him from just behind Dacre.

'You men! Take your chance now and go! If you think to have them two girls below as your reward, you ain't got a hope of cheating the gallows. There ain't a dealer or a bawdy-house you can sell 'em to. They'll be watched for at every port down the river, every house in New Orleans, even in Havana or Mexico. Drop it all and run while you got the chance. Half an hour more and your goose is cooked.'

Lucifer's fat pale face creased and dimpled with a girlish snigger. Bull-Peg's mouth opened in wide, soundless mirth.

'Don't he force the pace, though?' said Dacre, appealing to the world at large against Verity's aspersions. 'And ain't I always paid my way in yaller boys - dollars or sovs? Miss Maggie and her Khan bitch ain't to be sold anywhere. There's two shallow keeping-places dug for them, just out there in the dark, to hold 'em when the sport's done. Dammit, look at the time! They ain't no business to be still alive now!'

Crowe intervened.

'Lieutenant Dacre, sir! The United States Treasury has no interest in any crime committed outside American jurisdiction. Its exclusive concern is with the preservation of confidence in the currency. Apart from that, sir, the gold is nothing to us. Name your place, sir, and the right to the gold shall be conferred upon you in exchange for the release of those three young women whom you now hold. Let the place be beyond the reach of our law, sir, where you may be safe. Let the agreement carry indemnity for any crime committed by you upon American soil. Your own part shall be merely the agreement never to reveal the fact of the robbery.'

Dacre shook his head, slow and wondering.

'Deuced elegant!' He turned to Lucifer, 'Damme, but ain't it a pretty sentiment, though?' He surveyed Crowe once more. 'Why, sir, you put a proposition beyond all reason. I have the whores and I have the gold. Now you propose that I shall give up half of what I own so that I might keep the rest. Plain robbery, sir, ain't it?'

Lucifer simpered and added his own explanation.

'Miss Maggie and tawny Jennifer got to be hunted presently. Naked on the little island, to prevent evasion. Dragged for with dog and whip, right to the finish. Bull-Peg ain't never done that before, not all the way. He got a right to it once, eh, cap'n? He been so worked up about it, he ain't even been able to take nourishment the last day or two.'

Verity looked at the two creatures standing behind Dacre and saw the eyes of mania in each face, Lucifer's soft with a womanly spite, Bull-Peg's with the eager fury of homicide. For the first time, he reconciled himself to inevitable death in the remote swamps of the Mississippi.

'Take them,' said Dacre, 'and do as we arranged.'

He stepped forward so quickly that Verity had no time to react as Dacre drew the Colt revolvers from his prisoners' belts, tossing them over the side of the boat and into the dark water. There was a movement behind the two sergeants, Cowhide tying their wrists, acting as escort with Bull-Peg and Lucifer.

Cowhide pushed his prisoners down the little companion-way to the engine-room at the centre of the ship. The polished steel of the pistons shone with sleek and dormant power, the faint whisper of steam indicating that the
Anna
had been kept in readiness for instant departure. At either side of the engine-room was a small iron door giving access to the interior of the paddle-boxes. Bull-Peg opened one of these and stepped through, followed by Cowhide. Dacre and Lucifer kept their guns unwaveringly on the two sergeants. Then Verity was ordered through the door. He stooped and straightened up on the other side, finding himself between Cowhide and Bull-Peg.

The space within the box was almost filled by the broad, intricate ironwork of the upper half of the red-painted paddle-wheel. The inside surface of the iron box was un-painted, a dark oval space about eight feet high. A narrow ledge, enabling a man to inspect the wheel, ran round the inner perimeter of the box, just above the black, sluggish water in which the lower half of the wheel was submerged.

Cowhide and Bull-Peg led Verity to the outward-facing round of the great wheel, the sergeant glancing about him for any means of escape. But they had tied his wrists before bringing him down and Cowhide's gun was at his back. There was hardly a way out of the paddle-box, other than through the door into the engine-room. The space between the wheel and the inspection board was so narrow that, even left to his own devices, a man would need to manoeuvre carefully to slip down into the water and dive clear of the ship.

They pushed him back against the wheel and he felt leather cuffs close tightly round his wrists and heard the tiny rattle of the chain which was attached to them. He was spread-eagled against the wet, iron ribs of the wheel, wrists and ankles held tight and immovable. He was able to lodge his heels on one of the iron ribs to ease the pain of hanging from the wrist-cuffs and anklets, but otherwise he was helpless. Cowhide's eyes directed his attention to the row of sharpened spikes, short and spaced at a distance of two or three inches. They projected inward along the bottom of the paddle-box to prevent weed or timber being carried up by the wheel. For a man tied to the wheel as it began to turn, they were the means of tearing first his clothes from his body, then his skin in deep and bloody furrows, finally inflicting wounds from which he would die quite quickly. A man who was lucky would drown from the repeated immersions. If not, the spikes would kill him, perhaps, after they had harrowed him fifty or a hundred times.

'Lis'n me!' gasped Verity to Cowhide. 'You got one last chance. Turn approver. Be a evidence. Else it's your neck they'll stretch.'

Cowhide looked dumbly at him with wide brown eyes, then shrugged and edged away. Presently Verity heard them attaching Crowe to the other side of the wheel, above the spikes which edged the box there. His mind worked at the problem. There would be an hour before the wheel began its first, ghastly turn. It would take that long to dispose of Maggie and Jennifer. But what use was such respite to a man who could move neither hand nor foot? And what use was it to an officer whose duty was to save the young women's lives?

The iron door to the hull clanged shut, the last ray of the oil lamp was extinguished. In the cavernous darkness, every drip of water sounded like the wakened echoes of a tomb.

16

'Mr Crowe! Can you move at all?'

'Fingers and toes,' said Crowe, gasping with the exertion. 'What about you ?'

'Same here. How long do you think we got, then?'

'Sure as hell wish I knew. Not that it makes much odds if we can't get these goddam cuffs off. They're a sight too snug to slip off, and the bastards have fixed them so there's nothing to work them against. They're leather with a steel chain running through two eyelets. They use 'em in madhouses when necessary.'

'Do they now, Mr Crowe? Do they?'

There was a silence between the two men for a moment, the water dripping irregularly from the iron ribs of the paddle-wheel into the dark river below. Then they heard shouts of laughter and the hollow baying of the bloodhound.

'Saints in heaven!' said Crowe softly. 'They really mean to hunt those two young women naked to their deaths! Your Lieutenant Dacre isn't just a villain. He's a criminal lunatic!'

' 'ad crossed my mind, Mr Crowe.' 'There must be something. . .'

'I was just thinking about my frock-coat, Mr Crowe. Very decent sort of coat, 'ad it a year or two.'

'Oh, God!' said Crowe, as if despairing of his companion.

'Mr Crowe, they never bothered to empty the pockets.'

'They wouldn't have to, would they? Tied like this, you can't get your hand within two or three feet of the pockets.'

'Very true, Mr Crowe. All the same, I think I shall try to undo the button at the front.'

'With no hands?'

'Deep breaths, Mr Crowe. A swelling of the diaphragm and abdomen. You try it too.'

'We aren't all built the same way, Mr Verity.'

'Indeed not, Mr Crowe. All the same, you must often have wished you'd got a decent bit of flesh about you. You don't want to be skinny in this world, not if you can help it.'

There was a pause. Then the metallic resonance of the paddle-box was woken by the straining howl of Verity's exertions as he pumped the air in and out of his lungs. The button of the frock-coat, never very securely attached, creased the worsted cloth on either side. Verity paused after a few minutes, exhausted by the exertion, and then presently the howl of deep breathing began once more. Almost at once, Crowe heard a cry of triumph.

'That's it, Mr Crowe!'

In the little world which the two condemned men now shared, even the trivial defeat of a button was greeted with the jubilation appropriate to a great military victory.

'Now what, Mr Verity?'

'Well, Mr Crowe, I ain't making any promises. But in the side pocket of the coat, I got my pocket-knife. Course, I can't get a hand near it. But I might, be able to wriggle against this wheel so as to work the coat up mc back. All right? Now, if I turn the fingers down just this minute, I can touch the top of my head. So if I could sort of work the coat into a pile on the shoulders, I might get at the pocket.' 'Go on, man! Try it!'

'Nice and easy, Mr Crowe. If I do get it over too far, that pocket'll be upside down and the weight of the knife must bring it straight out and splash into the river. A man gotta have patience over this, Mr Crowe.'

'There isn't time for patience, Verity!'

'Slow and steady wins the race, Mr Crowe. There ain't but one way now.'

Verity began to work his back up and down against the iron ribs of the paddle-wheel. At first it was easy to raise the lower part of the coat by virtue of the horizontal gathering at the back. There was enough play between the wrist-cuffs and anklets for him to raise and lower his body six or eight inches. He felt the skirt of the long coat riding about his waist.

After that, the difficulties began. His own shoulder-blades seemed an obstacle in themselves and he felt the packed folds of the coat like an immovable bundle. From somewhere outside he heard a girl's cry, not a scream but the more chilling howl of abject suffering which might precede humiliation and death. Spurred on as much by this as by his own impending torment, he worked his back desperately against the strut of iron which ran just under his shoulder-blades themselves, Despite the damp chill in the iron vault of the paddle-box, he was astonished to feel sweat running down into the cavities of his eyes. But even the sweat felt as cold to him as the touch of a melting icicle.

Pressing his back hard against the bundled cloth behind him, he could feel in general outline the firm shapes of the contents of the pocket which was deep in the side of the coat. It was possible now to wriggle it up further so that it fell forward over his shoulder. Yet this was the point of maximum danger. If the cloth slid forward and the weight of the little knife escaped, it would slither out and plop into the water below him. After that, there was no more help.

Very cautiously, he worked his shoulders to move the pocket with its hard outlines until he could feel it twisted against the back of his neck. Then he had to lower his head forward and allow the cloth to fall so that it obscured his vision as it hung over his face. Before he could raise his head and bring the folded material within range of his finger-tips, he gave a cry of anguish, quickly stifled. A small, hard shape slipped from folds of the inverted coat and, beyond the reach of his tethered hands, fell lightly into the dark water below his feet and sank at once. He heard Sergeant Crowe utter an energetic obscenity. But it was not the knife, only a pocket-compass which he had brought with him on the assumption that they might be lost in the wilderness of the Mississippi swamps.

'Now, Mr Crowe,' he said gently, as if he might be talking to himself rather than to his companion. 'Now, Mr Crowe! Not a word to be spoke. Hold yer breath and pray.'

He wrenched against the leather wrist-cuff holding his right hand above him, pulling with all his weight, and tried to invert his fingers so that they scrabbled downward to reach the top of his head, over which the coat now hung. The tips of his three middle fingers just brushed the material.

'I shall do my best to catch the knife, Mr Crowe,' he said very quietly, 'but there's bound to be a slice o' chance-medley in it.'

'Get on with it!' said Crowe impatiently. 'I never knew anything in life that wasn't chance-medley, more or less.'

Bowing his shoulders forward as far as he could, Verity felt the movement of objects in the lining of the pocket. He could do no more than use his three middle fingers as obstacles to the folded pocket-knife when it slid free, to prevent it gliding down the worsted material and falling to the water. With his left-hand fingers he could not even reach the material at all. He paused, and took several deep breaths. Then there was nothing for it but to take his chance, his right wrist twisted so vigorously that the leather at the edge of the cuff had drawn its first blood.

He felt the gentle movement and, in the intensity of the stillness, almost heard the friction of the little metal oblong against the pocket lining. He sensed it gliding toward the touch of his fingers. He felt it, cold and hard, free of the pocket. Then he lost it and then, again, somehow blocked its path with his finger-ends. It was absurd that his own life and those of four other people must now depend upon his ability to hold and lift the steel oblong with the extreme tips of his fingers.

It seemed an infinite labour, pinching the knife between his fingers, raising it as he reversed the position of his hand again, and dreading to feel the smooth metal slip inexorably from between the numbed flesh. But in a moment more, his hand was upright again and the closed knife was in the firm grip of his palm. Then he began to struggle to hold it and simultaneously, to open it by the outward flick of his thumb. It would have been difficult under any circumstances but he had always kept the hinge of the knife well-oiled and the blade itself clean. After several unsuccessful attempts he paused.