Coming Up Roses (26 page)

They sat in the tavern for forty-five
minutes, pretending to drink beer, and carrying on a desultory
conversation. Rose, miserably uncomfortable, felt as though she
were choking to death and about to melt into a puddle of sweat.
Worse, she was beginning to think this had been a futile effort and
would come to naught, and then she’d have to live with the
knowledge that she’d wasted an entire evening, nearly killing
herself in the process, and not even rescuing Bear at the end of
it, which might have made the discomfort worth it.

She was feeling grotesquely unhappy and was
about to call it a night and force H.L. to leave with her, when all
of a sudden he seemed to stiffen slightly. He relaxed almost at
once, then spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

“
Don’t turn to look, but I think our
quarry just came into the room through the front door.”

Being casual about it even though her heart
had almost jumped out of her chest at H.L.’s words, Rose glanced in
the direction he’d indicated. She stifled a cry of amazement.

There he was! He was huge, too: A sunburned,
barrel-chested ape of a man with a black moustache, grizzled dark
hair, a beer belly, and a wooden leg. He swaggered up to the bar
and knocked on it with a fist the size and color of a roasted
turkey. She heard him bellow “Rye!” at the bartender.

“
He’s with the man Milk-Eye Pete told
me to watch for, too,” H.L. said under his breath. Rose heard the
quiver of excitement in his voice.

“
I see,” she said. “What should we do
now?”

“
Wait,” he told her. “Wait until they
leave. Then we’ll have to follow them.” He gave her a wink. “Are
your tracking skills well honed?”

“
They certainly are.” She meant it,
too. She wasn’t going to allow those two evil-looking scoundrels to
get away with snatching one of
her
friends.

Chapter Thirteen

H.L. hoped Rose could stay awake long enough
to follow the kidnappers if they ever left the tavern. She looked
as if she was about to fall face-first onto the dirty table,
overcome either by fumes or sleepiness.

He hardly blamed her. She probably wasn’t
used to staying up until all hours of the morning, like he was.
Plus, he imagined there wasn’t much oxygen in the tavern, since it
was filled as full as it could hold with smoke. This was definitely
an unsavory place, and he thought Rose was a real trouper to have
stood it so well for so long.

“
You doing all right?” he asked,
leaning over the table and whispering.

The room had thinned of company in the couple
of hours they’d been there, waiting for black-mustache to leave the
place. Unfortunately, old blackie seemed determined to play cards
and drink for the rest of his life.

“
I think I’m going to die of
suffocation if we don’t get out of here soon,” she muttered. “But I
guess I’ll last a while longer.”

“
Good.” He reached over and gave her
hand, which was resting on the table next to her now-flat
beer—which probably didn’t hurt it any—a pat. “You’re a real sport,
Rose Gilhooley.”

“
Thanks.” She didn’t sound
overwhelmingly grateful for his praise.

H.L. chuckled. He really liked Rose Ellen
Gilhooley. She was a trump. Better than a trump, really, when he
put together what he’d learned about her as they’d sat here
pretending to drink.

He’d used his time to good purpose,
persuading Rose to consent to be interviewed in order to pass the
time. After taking out his notebook and jotting a few things in it,
he’d surveyed the room and decided nobody was paying any untoward
attention to his scribbling, from which he surmised that literacy
wasn’t an entirely unknown quantity in this vicinity. He kept tabs
on people’s reactions to his activity for almost an hour, but
finally gave it up when he realized nobody cared what anybody else
did in this place, as long as it didn’t involve them. After that,
he’d openly taken notes as he and Rose talked.

H.L. had been surprised at some of the things
Rose had told him about herself, and not surprised about others.
His overall impression was of a gallant, big-hearted, big-spirited
girl who’d had to shoulder responsibilities far greater than most
young people of either gender were expected to do at far too early
an age. He admired her. A lot.

She’d been embarrassed when he’d asked her
about her education, or lack thereof. He’d tried hard to let her
know he didn’t think less of her for not being well educated.
“Hell, that’s not your fault,” he’d told her at one point when he’d
become impatient with her self-abuse. “You had better things to do
with your time.”

He’d seen the appreciation in her expression,
although she hadn’t voiced it. He’d also gotten the impression she
didn’t really believe him.

“
Annie has helped me with my reading,
writing, and ciphering,” she’d said, lifting that little chin in
her characteristic gesture of pride and defiance.

H.L. had experienced a mad desire to grab her
out of her chair and kiss her silly. Unfortunately, that desire was
becoming his constant companion these days. There was something
about Rose Gilhooley that appealed to just about every aspect of
his being, and he was getting worried about it.

She’d retrieved a big checked
handkerchief from a pocket an hour or so earlier, and had started
wiping her eyes at intervals. The smoke was hard on her. H.L.
wished he could remove her from this foul den of thieves and
cutthroats, but she’d never consent to go until they’d fulfilled
their mission. She wiped her eyes again now and muttered, “Do you
think that horrid man will
ever
leave?”

“
I’m sure he will.”

She allowed her gaze to drift around the
room. With a disgusted sneer, she said, “Maybe he’ll just pass out
like everybody else is doing.”

H.L. guessed he couldn’t refute her
observation. “I hope not. If he does, there may be a way to
intervene, although it would be risky.”

She eyed him as if she didn’t believe him.
“How?”

He shrugged. “We can get rid of his companion
and drag him off. Maybe say we’re taking him to his quarters or
something.”

“
That could be really dangerous. If
anybody else in here knows the man and where he lives, they’d know
we were lying.”

“
Yeah, yeah, well, let’s not borrow
trouble. With luck, he’ll leave pretty soon, and we can follow
him.”

“
If I can still see by that
time.”

H.L. chuckled. “You’ll do fine.”

“
A lot you know about it.”

Oops. She was getting crabby. H.L. hoped like
thunder their quarry would oblige them and leave the tavern in the
next little while, before she became unmanageable. He’d have liked
to walk up to the fellow and dump him out of his chair, but knew he
couldn’t do anything so drastic; not and live to tell the tale, at
any rate.

He was gazing blankly at the wall behind
Rose, trying to think of more questions to ask her about her life
with the Wild West, when she suddenly uttered a muffled cry.
“Look!”

When H.L. started to turn around, she grabbed
his shirtsleeve. “No! Don’t look.” Her voice was a harsh rasp he
could barely hear. “But he’s getting up.”

“
Maybe he’s just going to the bar
again.” God, he hoped not. What he hoped was that the villain was
finally aiming to depart this God-awful place. H.L. was beginning
to feel as if he were suffocating, too.

“
No! No! He’s not going to the bar. He
got his coat from the back of his chair. I think he’s actually
going to leave!”

She sounded so excited, H.L. hoped the
bastard wouldn’t disappoint her. “I’ll be discreet. I’m going to
turn around and pretend to look at the bar.”

“
Be careful,” she hissed.

He was careful. And he had to admit that his
own mood jumped up a few pegs when he saw that Rose had deduced
correctly. The son of a bitch was going to leave the tavern! Thank
God. H.L. didn’t know how long he himself could have withstood the
deadly atmosphere of the place, and he was used to doing stuff like
this. Poor Rose must be near to dying.

The disreputable-looking peg-legged person
snarled something to the man who’d come in with him. H.L. couldn’t
catch the words, but the voice fitted the man. It was rough and
gravelly and sounded as if it had been dragged over a rocky beach
several times before being presented to its present owner.

The man’s companion snarled something back.
He sounded as if he’d swapped voices with some old tar’s pet
parrot.

Pegleg evidently didn’t like what the other
man had said, because he leaned close and snarled something else.
Parrot-voice jumped to his feet and assumed a belligerent pose. He
looked sort of silly, since he probably weighed a hundred pounds
less than Pegleg and was a foot shorter, but he didn’t back down.
That signified extreme bravery or extreme stupidity to H.L., and he
had a feeling he knew which one he’d pick if anyone asked.

But Pegleg didn’t pop him one, or even knock
him back into his chair. He only flapped a huge hand in the air in
a gesture of disgust, spun around on his peg, and stomped toward
the tavern’s doors. Parrot-voice sank back into his chair,
grumbling.

Rose and H.L. exchanged a glance. H.L. patted
the air with his hand to signify they should stay put for another
couple of seconds. “So as not to arouse suspicion.”

He saw Rose glance around the room and twitch
her mouth in a moue signifying disagreement with his order. He
glanced, too, and decided she was right. Nobody would know if they
left the place, mainly because they were either too drunk or too
occupied in playing cards to care.

Scraping his chair backward, H.L. decided to
take no chances. In case anybody was listening or watching, he
said, “Come on, little brother. It’s past your bedtime.” He
guffawed and sneered, to let everyone know he was joshing.

“
Sez you,” Rose mouthed as she, too,
got up from her chair. She sounded like a hoodlum from the back
slums, and H.L. almost smiled. H.L. shrugged into the jacket he’d
slung over the back of the chair.

Rose hadn’t dared to take her own jacket off,
for fear, H.L. presumed, that somebody would notice her shape.
Lordy, she must honestly and truly be smothering, he thought with
sympathy. It was more than close in the room. It was hot and
disgusting, and he wished he could offer Rose a warm bath and a
bed. Preferably with him in it.

God almighty, where had that come from? Irked
with his carnal side, which seemed to jump out and attack him at
the least favorable times, H.L. shoved it aside unmercifully. He
had to keep his wits about him now, more than ever. That one-legged
man was no one to trifle with.

“
I hope we didn’t wait too long,” Rose
said as soon as the tavern doors closed behind them. H.L. heard her
suck in a lungful of almost-fresh air. “Oh, my, I don’t think I’d
have lasted much longer in there.”

“
Keep your voice down,” H.L. reminded
her, although it was hardly necessarily. Her voice had suffered
greatly from the contaminated air of the tavern, and she could
scarcely scrape out a whisper at the moment. Nevertheless, he
figured her lungs would unclog eventually, and he didn’t want her
hollering or anything.

“
Right,” she said. “Be quiet now,
because I have to concentrate.”

H.L. watched her with interest. She had to
lean way over, since the night was dark and the fog was still as
thick as barley water. Gas lighting fuzzed weakly through the haze,
but didn’t penetrate far enough to illuminate the walkway.

“
Bother. It’s so dark out here.” Rose
inched along, searching the ground. H.L. couldn’t even guess what
she was looking for, but she apparently found whatever it was a
moment later.

“
Aha!” It would have been a cry of
triumph, if she’d been able to cry.

“
What?”

“
His tracks.” She pointed. “Clear as a
bell. All right, follow me.”

She sure didn’t waste any time. By the
time the
me
part of her
sentence hit the air, Rose had vanished from H.L.’s sight. He
rushed to catch up with her, suddenly panic-stricken by her
disappearance. He caught up with her at once. “Damn it, don’t leave
me like that!”

Shooting him a nettled look over her
shoulder, she snapped, “Keep up, then. There’s no time to waste,
and I have no idea how difficult it is to track people in the
city.”

In spite of her caution, she seemed to have
no difficulty whatever in following Pegleg. Down one dark alley
after another, she led H.L., until they ended up at a hovel
attached to a warehouse on the dock.

“
I know this place,” H.L. whispered to
Rose when she stood up from her stoop and pressed a hand to her
back as if it ached, which it probably did.

“
You do?” She looked around. There
wasn’t much to see. Row upon row of warehouses lined this section
of the dock area. Businesses stored excess goods here and the
owners of fishing fleets kept supplies here. During the day, the
place teemed with activity. At night, it was dismal and dreary and
dangerous.

“
He went in there.” Rose pointed at the
hovel. No lights were visible. Either the windows were covered or
no lanterns had been lit when the man entered the
building.

“
You sure? How can you
tell?”

“
The tracks lead right straight here.
And see? You can tell the door’s been opened within the last few
minutes.”