Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller (10 page)

“Are you alright?” I said between coughs, nose buried in the crook of my arm.

“Get off,” she said. “Can't breathe.” I rolled off her into a pile of rubble and peered out into the looming darkness, for there was no light source now, and yet I could see shades of black, see that thick, churning dust, like demonic spirits flying to and fro.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” I said.

“I'm not sure . . . I don't think so.”

It would soon become clear that we'd both been spared injury beneath the lip of the marble fountain bowl—with the exception of my right foot. Protruding from cover, it had been walloped by falling debris. No bones had been broken, but it was sore and would prove hobbling.

Nearby us, a man screamed in pain, his cries so foreign to the normal human vocal register that I had no idea who it was producing them. I'd heard nothing so wrenching since the trenches of Europe.

At a further distance I heard the tumble and crash of a late-to-fall object from Noah's deadfall trap, something on the scale of a hippopotamus, and beyond that, the wretched coughs of other men, at least a pair.

“Noah Langley has made his escape,” I told Miss Buxton. “We should make ours.”

“Escape?” she said. “How can you even think of it with a man in such torment nearby? Have you no measure of Christian charity?”

It is not for nothing we exalt them
, I thought of womankind, and I felt privileged to witness such empathy—such selflessness, goodness—in what had to be one of the very darkest and most dangerous hours of Miss Cora Buxton's life.
At the same time, her intent to render aid struck me as foolhardy, and another thought occurred.
It is not for nothing we husband them too.

“If it's one of the robbers, then I feel no charity towards him of any kind. On your feet, you're coming with me.” I struggled to mine, casting away some debris first. The dust suffered me another coughing jag.

“No,” she said meanwhile, “I will not come.”

“Oh yes, you will.” I fished my hand down beneath the fountain bowl, latched onto Miss Buxton by the wrist, and hauled her out.

The injured man's awful wail—mixed with spasms of coughing and loud gasps for air—kept on. I still could not identify him by his cries. Women, of course, own keener senses. (Or is it their keener senses own them?)

“It may be the police officer,” Miss Buxton said, standing. “In fact, I'm sure it is.”

“In which case, he'll need a doctor post haste, and very likely a hospital. So we shall escape now, and bring back—”

“Escape how?” she said. “We'd never remove half that barricade at the front door before the robbers would be upon us.”

“Only if they're still able-bodied.”

“If they are not, then . . . then I could safely remain here and nurse Patrolman Cox, while you fetch a doctor and the constabulary.”

“But there's no way of knowing the extent of their injuries—or lack of them—without revealing ourselves.”

“You go,” she said after some thought. “I'll remain behind and do what I can for that poor, suffering policeman—in the hope that the doctor you fetch won't arrive too late. And there may be others buried in the wreckage here to be ministered to.”

Exalted womankind
! I thought again, while at the same time angered by this one's obstinacy. “I will not leave you here with these murderous scoundrels. You are coming with me if I have to spank you and sling you over my shoulder.”

“Brute! Why not drag me by my hair? Neanderthal!”

“Ssh!” I cautioned. “Do you wish to be overheard?”

“That may just suit me, actually.”

“Oh, you're impossible.” A new gambit hit me then. “On second thought, go ahead. Go right ahead. Render aid to Patrolman Cox as best you can. Meanwhile, I wish you to call out for help periodically, once or twice per minute. I will lurk nearby, waiting on the men who approach. Now to find some object sufficient to bash in a skull . . .”

“Mercy! No more killing, please!”

“Ssh! This is war, Miss Buxton, if you haven't recognized it as such yet.”

“War? Must it be war?”

“It's them or us. Believe it.”

“Perhaps . . . perhaps you're right. But we are outnumbered.”

“That depends on the casualty count.”

“And if each of the robbers are uninjured?”

“Don't fret,” I said, “not even then. For I've only just come from war, and doubt very much the same can be said for our opponents, given their knavery, their conduct, their lack of honor. I'm an Army-trained First Lieutenant with gobs of experience on the battlefield, including hand-to-hand combat. Black Jack Pershing himself pinned the Distinguished Service Cross to my chest. We've a fighting chance, to say the least.”

“But you are one-armed now.”

“Three quarters of me is a far sight better than—”

“And they have a gun.”

“Unlikely. Odds are the avalanche buried it.”

A source of light hit us from behind. I turned to find a flashlight aimed from ten or twelve yards away, white dust swirling in its beam, enough to dim the rays. Howard's voice rang out.

“It doesn't always pay to play the odds, Mister Trenowyth!”

The flashlight's beam leapt overhead to one of the Moroccan chandeliers. A pistol shot rang out, and great shards of glass rained down.

The Second Casualty

The glass projectiles missed our heads by two or three feet, exploding on the debris. Some fine particles peppered my face, and Miss Buxton cried out. Had I not the care of her, I would've dived for cover and taken my chances alone against the robbers, engaged the enemy on a battlefield as foreign and unknowable as the moon's surface. Instead, I called to Howard.

“We surrender!”

He approached, stumbling over the rubble, flashlight aimed at me. “Hands up high, where I can see 'em, Trenowyth.”

“One hand, I can do. Two presupposes a miracle.”

“Cormac!” he shouted. “Willie! Brady! Any sign of Langley? I've got the others.”

“Brady's not here,” answered the other mick from somewhere behind a six foot high mound of deadfall that now stood between ourselves and the base of the staircase. It seemed to pain Cormac to call out. “He's upstairs . . . chasing after that damned nutter . . . I'd be after him myself, only I'm hurt, Howie. Bad.”

“I warned you about him,” Howard said.

“Aye, you did.”

Betwixt the miserable howls of Patrolman Cox, a rumbling came from the mound. Howard's flashlight beam captured Willie clambering over one side of it, his counterfeit uniform no longer denim blue, but ash white. The omnipresent dust had powdered his entire face white too, as well as the hair atop his head. And it soon became evident, via the flashlight beam's locomotion, that we all shared the same albino coating, like members of some primitive tribe.

“At war, are we?” Howard said to me after he'd handed Willie the flashlight and begun searching my person for weapons. “I wonder, did you win that medal Pershing pinned on you by surrendering without a skirmish?”

“Spare your taunts, I won't be bated.”

“Hmm. I'd say this soldier deserves an execution at dawn. Wouldn't you, Willie? But then why wait for dawn?”

“Spare me your threats too.”

“Who's making threats, Trenowyth? You'd only slow us down as we go after Langley. How's about I off you right now?”

“You won't,” I said. “You have use of me.”

“Do I?”

“For the time being.”

“Okay, okay, I'll play along. How're we supposed to use you?”

“Help me!” Patrolman Cox cried. “Help me! Someone! Please!”

“One thing's for sure,” Howard said. “We've no use for that copper—what's left of him—and I can't take anymore of his squealing. I really can't.”

“Don't be thinking it, Howie,” Willie said. “Nigger's one thing, but a white man! A cop!”

“Do it, Howie!” Cormac called from the far side of the mound. “Shut his gob!”

“Dissension within the ranks,” I said. “Not a good sign.”

“Shaddup,” Howard told me. But I wouldn't.

“I hardly need mention why it would be unwise to kill a police officer.”

“I said shaddup!”

“For it's a guaranteed trip to the electric chair for each of you men, if caught, no matter who does the actual kill—”

“I can't feel my legs!” Patrolman Cox called out. “I can't feel my legs!”

“I should go to him,” Miss Buxton said.

“Stay put,” Howard said.

“I won't.” She started off in the direction of the policeman.

“Then you'd rather watch as I put him out of his misery?”

In a moment, Miss Buxton was at my side again, gripping my arm with both hands. Howard traded the gun for the flashlight with Willie and walked off, leaving us in the dark.

“Don't be a fool!” I called to Howard, who did not answer back.

Willie pressed the barrel tip of his revolver hard against my ribs. “Too late, he's made up his mind.”

Howard rooted through the debris with the beam of his flashlight. He picked up and examined a brass statue about one-foot tall, depicting a horse and rider, perhaps a Remington. He turned back to us and—with a hammy, theatrical air—delivered a famous line of scripture from the Book of Revelations.

“ 'I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him.' ”

He cackled at his own wit—or what he took to be wit—and disappeared from our sight behind an outcropping of debris. Miss Buxton and I clutched each other and listened . . .

I do believe I shall spare myself—as well as you, Doctor—a description of what we heard next. I will simply report that when Howard returned to us Patrolman Cox had been silenced forevermore.

A Bluff

“So spill, Trenowyth.” Howard's flashlight beam blinded my vision. “What can you do for us? What keeps you breathing another minute?”

“For your information,” I told him, “I've a damaged heart, and I'm well on the way to killing myself on my own—through opium and sundry other foul habits—so forgive me if I don't exactly consider you a threat.”

“Don't care if you live or die, huh? Not sure I buy it.”

“Your opinion is meaningless to me.” But in truth I did not wish to die just then. I'd suggested otherwise so that the robbers—
alias
dictus,
the murderers—would not feel complete dominance over me. And there was Miss Buxton to consider.

“What about the woman?” Howard said.

“No harm comes to her while I help you. That's my side of the deal.”

“And our side?”

“I can crack Noah Langley's codebook for you.”

“Bullshit!” He gripped my shirt buttons just below the neck.

“You're forgetting I'm a former military officer.”

“How could I forget? You mention it often enough.”

“I mention it now because, during the Great War, every American military officer assigned to the warfront went through formal training in cryptography and cryptanalysis before shipping overseas.”

“Training in what?” He released his grip.

“In secret codes, you damn fool. We used trench codes to communicate in the field every single day. We devised them ourselves, decoded them from our allies, intercepted them from our enemies, and cracked them.”

“No shit?” he said.

“No
merde
whatsoever.”

But in truth the part about cracking codes was practically pure
merde
, a bluff. The science has become highly complex in our modern era, the province of logicians and mathematicians, not Army field officers. I possessed only the most rudimentary skills and knowledge of the game.

An Opportunity

So the bluff bought time, extended my life—and presumably Miss Buxton's—for some indeterminate period. Minutes? Hours? More? It all depended on how well I played my hand, on whether I could somehow gain the upper hand.

“I'll need the lantern,” I told Howard when he handed me Noah's codebook. We'd trudged up and over the deadfall mound to the base of the staircase so that Cormac's injuries could be attended. Willie had found Noah's lantern whilst scrounging through the rubble in search of the laughing Buddha. He lit the flame with a match and handed it to me. I sat down near the bottom of the stairs, resting my wounded foot, opened the codebook, and pretended to concentrate on its arcanum . . .

“Somebody pull this thing out of me!” Cormac said.

He lay writhing on one side, harpooned through his raised shoulder by a thin metal rod of the kind used to reinforce concrete blocks. The rod, honed to a spear point at both ends, exited through his armpit. About a dozen more sharpened rods surrounded him, so that I wondered if Noah had stolen them all from a construction site during one of his nocturnal trips through Harlem. No doubt he'd inserted the rods high atop his deadfall trap—along with other weapon-like bric-a-brac—to render it even deadlier.