The Providence Rider (22 page)

“One month of waiting
bothers
you, Mr. Smythe? Here on this warm island? Really it does? My, my!” She touched her throat. “Such ingratitude, I would be ashamed.”

“Ingratitude my ass,” Smythe growled. He reached to refill his glass, which evidently had already been refilled several times. “I know my place here, and it’s far better than
his
!”

“I want to know,” spoke the soft and echoey voice of the nearly-invisible Adam Wilson, “when Matthew Corbett is going to be killed.”

Matthew had been lifting the glass to his mouth. The jolt that went through him almost caused a regrettable spillage.

“That Chapel disaster lost us all some fine young recruits,” Wilson went on. “He had a hand in that, and he caused the loss of one of my best men. I want to know when revenge will be delivered.”

Matthew was thinking furiously. Ah yes! He remembered! One of the older men captured at the Chapel estate during the Queen of Bedlam affair had been an expert on finances, and had been serving as an instructor.

Mother Deare’s voice was as steady and direct as her fierce stare: “The professor decides that, Mr. Wilson. Not
you
.”

“I’m only voicing my wishes, Mother Deare,” spoke the slender man, who even as he shrugged his shoulders seemed again to be vanishing away.

A clattering on the stairs announced the arrival of Jonathan Gentry, clad in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and stockings. Unfortunately he appeared to be under the influence of his own making, for his face was flushed and sparkling with sweat and the tail of his shirt was hanging out beneath his waistcoat. He came staggering down the staircase, gripping hard to the oak bannister, and at the bottom he hesitated and felt forward with one shoe as if he feared the floor was made of ice and might crack under his weight.

“Oh Christ,” Madam Chillany breathed beside Matthew. “He’s in one of his states.”

Assured that the floor would hold him, Gentry released his death-grip on the bannister and approached the table, in a circuitous sort of way. He walked as if he were dancing to an unheard tune. Matthew thought Gentry’s steps would be appreciated by Gilliam Vincent.

Mack said, “Come on and sit your arse down—”

“Ya stumblin’ arsehole!” Jack supplied, and the two brothers laughed as if they were the very kings of wit.

The devilishly-handsome though nearly-incapacitated Gentry just gave a feeble smile, a comma of dark brown hair sweat-stuck to his forehead. His remarkable green eyes were not so luminous; tonight they were darkened and bloodshot. Matthew watched as Gentry searched for his place at the table, and no one helped him. Matthew thought that whatever freight the doctor was carrying, the castle of Professor Fell must weigh most heavily upon him for he had surely drunk or inhaled something potent to deaden his nerves.

“You’re next to me,” Matthew spoke up, and Gentry narrowed his eyes to focus and came staggering around the table to claim his place.

“Thank you, M—” Gentry caught himself and smiled dazedly. “My friend,” he said, as he lowered himself into the chair.

Sirki emerged from the door at the far end of the room, presumably to make sure everyone had arrived, and then he went away again without a word to the guests. Matthew noted the East Indian giant was wearing black robes and a black turban tonight, and for some reason that fact sent a disturbance rippling slowly through him like a wave about to shatter itself against a rock.

In a few minutes the feast began to arrive, brought in by a squadron of servants. The theme—no surprise here to Matthew—was nautical. Seafood stew was served in clay bowls shaped like boats. Platters of clams wafted steam up through the candlelight. A glass bowl contained bits of raw fish mingled with onions and small red peppers that nearly seared Matthew’s tongue off at first taste. Puff pastries filled with crabmeat and a white wine cream sauce came piled on a blue plate and were quickly gobbled down by the Thackers before anyone else could get their fair share. Then came whole fish grilled, baked and steamed. A swordfish laid out on a wooden slab still had its beak and eyeballs. The pink tentacles of an octopus dripped puddles of butter. The wine flowed and the guests consumed. Matthew watched Mother Deare watching everyone else. From time to time someone gave a grunt as they ate something particularly pleasing to them, but otherwise there was no conversation.

Then Jonathan Gentry, his face and suit jacket smeared with oil and butter, withdrew from a pocket a small bottle of green liquid and poured it into his wine. He drank it down with relish, after which he began trying to carve a piece of mackerel with the edge of a spoon.

“What are you drinking?” Aria asked him, with notes of both wariness and disgust in her voice. “Something of your own making, I presume?”

“My own making,” he said, and nodded. “Yes, my own.” He smiled at nothing, his eyes heavy-lidded. “I am a
doctor
, you know. I am a
physician
. And a very able one, in fact.” He turned the heavy lids toward Matthew. “You tell her.”

“Leave
Mr. Spade
alone,” came Aria’s quiet command, emphasizing the name.

“What’s he saying?” Mother Deare asked, interrupting her consumption of tentacles.

“He’s sayin’ he’s a fuckin’ asshole,” said Jack Thacker, and he grinned drunkenly at Fancy, who had eaten half of a boatbowl of seafood stew before she had again left the room on her silent voyage.

“I’m saying I am a doctor. A
healer
,” Gentry replied, with as much dignity as a grease-smeared drug fiend could muster. “That is who I am. And this,” here he held up the bottle, which still contained a few drops of green, “is the medicine I have given myself tonight. I call it…” He paused, seemingly searching for what he called it. “Ah, yes. Juice of Absence.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mack muttered in his wine, and then he took hold of Fancy’s hair and began to gnaw on her throat. Not to be outdone, Jack attacked the other side of her neck.

“Oh dear me,” said Pons, who had been fed his entire meal and had his mouth and chin wiped by his special Toy.

“Juice of Absence,” Gentry repeated, his face slack. His eyes appeared to be sliding inward. “It removes one. Takes him away. It eases the mind and deadens the nerves. It causes one to leave this realm of unhappy discord, and enter another more pleasant. Yes, it is of my own making.” He stared blankly at Aria. “Somewhat like my life, isn’t it?”

“A disgusting mess, you mean?” she asked, her brows uplifted.

Gentry nodded. Suddenly there was nothing handsome about him at all. He just looked to Matthew like a pitiful man trying to hold onto something that had perhaps slipped his grip many years before. Down the table, Pons was being fed by Toy, Mother Deare was carefully watching Gentry, the Thackers were feasting on Fancy’s throat, and Minx was sipping her wine in stiff-backed silence. Up the table, Smythe was tearing into a piece of swordfish, Wilson ate small bites of the raw fish concoction and kept pushing his glasses up because the peppers were making his face glisten with sweat, and Sabroso leaned back in his chair and drank not from a glass but from a fresh bottle of red wine that he had uncorked with his teeth.

But Gentry in a way sat alone, and Matthew found he could no longer look at the man.

Instead Matthew stared across at the Thackers, and seeing the suffering expression on Fancy’s beautiful and tortured face as the two brutes ravished her he felt the words come up from his soul to his throat and he was powerless to secure them from leaving his mouth.

He said,
“Stop that.”

They continued on, unhearing.

“You two!” Matthew said, louder, with the flush of righteous anger and redhot peppers in his cheeks. “I said…” And again, louder still:
“Stop that!”

This time they heard. Their mouths left the Indian girl’s throat, leaving red suction marks and grease trails. Their glittering eyes in the foxlike faces found him, and yet they grinned stupidly as if they had never in their lives heard anyone give them a command and really mean it.

“Nathan?” Aria’s voice was very small and very tight. “I think—”

“Hush,”
he told her, and she hushed. He focused his attention on the girl, who just that quickly had begun to leave the room once more. There was something he had to find out, and it had to be now. “I saw you sitting on the rock today. I thought…that’s a pretty girl, who sits alone.”

There was no response whatsoever. Her face was downcast, her disarrayed hair hanging in her eyes.

“A pretty girl shouldn’t sit alone,” Matthew continued. He felt sweat gathering at his temples. It was hard to avoid the deadly stares of the Thacker brothers; their silence seemed equally as deadly. “You know,” Matthew said with an air of desperation, “coming from New York’s winter to this island, I feel like a walker in two worlds.”

Again…nothing.

Mack’s mouth opened: “What
shit
are ya goin’ on about—”

“—boyo?” Jack finished, and he started to rise threateningly from his chair.

It was wrong, Matthew thought. Something was wrong. What was it?
Think!
he told himself. She didn’t respond to the name Walker In Two Worlds. Why not? If she was the same girl who’d crossed the Atlantic on the ship with he and Nimble Climber, then…why not?

“I think your head needs fixin’,” said Mack Thacker, who likewise started to slide from his chair.

“Straightenin’ out,” said the brother with the gray wisp in his hair, his teeth clenched and his fists the same. “Gentlemen! Please restrain yourselves!” Mother Deare’s voice was a shade shrill.

“Let them fight!” said Smythe, with a satisfied grunt. “Give us some entertainment while we wait!”

Matthew was the only one who saw Minx Cutter slide the knife out from under her waistcoat. He was feverishly fixated on something he was trying his damnedest to recall. It was Walker’s name. Something…something…

He caught it. Walker In Two Worlds had not been called that when the Indian crossed the Atlantic. As a child, he’d been known as—

“He Runs Fast, Too,” said Matthew, staring at the girl. And then, realizing he sounded like a complete fool but not caring very much: “Speaking of Indians.”

Fancy lifted her head, and she looked not only across the table at him but across a divide of space and time. For a brief few seconds their eyes met and held, and he thought he saw something within hers awaken like a brief flicker of flame or the dance of a spark. Then she gazed down upon the table once more, and whatever there had been—
might
have been, Matthew thought—was gone.

The Thackers appeared about to climb over the plates and glasses to get at their victim of the evening. They glared at him like dumb beasts, their faces reddened and eyes glinting green. They were done with fish, and now they wanted meat.

Matthew lifted his chin and awaited what was to come. He was ready to do whatever was needed to survive, which meant using a knife, a broken bottle, a chair, a candelabra. But he thought that indeed Fancy had shown a reaction to that name, and if this was the same girl who had crossed the ocean with Walker he reasoned that he owed his departed friend a final favor.

He decided that if it was the last thing on earth he did, he would free Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone from these two animals.

The room shook.

Just a fraction, perhaps. Overhead the chandelier swayed an inch or so, back and forth. Matthew saw the wine in his glass tremble. It was over and done within a couple of seconds, but Matthew was left with a sick feeling of motion in his gut.

“Damn it!” growled Smythe. “There’s another one!”

The concealed door in the wall at the far end of the room opened. Sirki emerged, pushing before him something covered up with a brown tarpaulin. There was the noise of rollers on the chessboard floor.

“Gentlemen!” Mother Deare was addressing the unruly Thackers. Her voice was hard, the voice of a woman who has known plenty of hardship and has dealt it out aplenty herself. “Be seated before Professor Fell!” she commanded.

Sirki pushed the covered object to the head of the table. By the time he’d reached it, the Thackers had grumbled curses at Matthew and resumed their seats. Matthew saw Minx return the knife to its safe place beneath her waistcoat. Jonathan Gentry poured the last few drops of Juice of Absence into his wine and drank the concoction down, thirsty perhaps for a sense of removal from the scene before him. Cesar Sabroso quietly cleared his throat. Adam Wilson seemed to be there even less than before. Fancy darted a quick glance across the table at Matthew. Toy blotted Augustus Pons’s lips and whispered something into one of the blackmailer’s ears, which surely had heard their share of secrets.

Matthew waited, his eyes slightly narrowed and his jaw set.

Sirki whipped the brown tarpaulin off. Revealed underneath was a man in a chair, set upon a polished wooden platform with rollers on the bottom.

But yet not a man, Matthew realized.

It was the image of a man. A portrayal of a man. A facsimile, and that was all.

The chair was made of red leather, with gold-colored nailheads decorating the armrests. The man was made of…who could say? Certainly not flesh and blood, for the stillness of the figure. It was a dummy, Matthew thought. A life-sized poppet. Likely stuffed with hay and sawdust?

This figure of Professor Fell sat stiffly upright with its arms upon the rests and its feet spaced equidistantly upon the platform. It was a thin and wiry-looking construction, dressed in a white suit with gold trim and whorls of gold upon the suit jacket and breeches legs. It wore also a white tricorn, likewise trimmed in gold, white stockings and shiny black shoes with gold buckles. It wore flesh-colored fabric gloves and—most remarkably and startling—a flesh-colored fabric cowl that covered the face and head, yet showed the faintest impression of nosetip, cheekbones and eyesockets.

Matthew’s thought was:
What the hell is this about?

He was answered in another few seconds, when Sirki removed a rather large key from a pocket of his robe. He inserted it into some opening at the back of the chair and turned it a dozen times. He threw a lever. With a sound of meshing gears and the rattling of a greased chain, the figure in the chair began to move.

It was a smooth motion, for a machine. For Matthew realized it was a majestic and almost-unbelievable creation he’d read about in his newspapers from London but had never seen or thought he would ever see. It was something called an automaton.

The right hand came up to press an index finger against the chin, as if measuring a thought before speaking. The right hand came down again, upon the armrest. Was there a twitch of the head, as a few ragged gearteeth moved through their circles? Yes, now the head was turning…slowly…left to right and back again, taking view of everyone at the table.

“Welcome,”
spoke the automaton, in a tinny voice with a hint of a rasp and a whine,
“to my home.”

No one responded. Did the machine have human ears? No.

Matthew realized he was gripping his wine glass so hard he was either about to break the glass or his knuckles. Everyone else was taking this in stride; they had been here before and obviously seen this machine in action.

The left hand rose, fluttered up into the air with a racheting of gears and then settled back once more.
“There are important things to discuss,”
the machine said, with a slight tilting of the masked face.

Did the mouth move behind that opaque cowl? It was hard to tell in the flicker of the candlelight. The voice was high and metallic and otherworldly, and Matthew felt a chill skitter up along 

his spine.

“I shall hear your reports at the proper time,”
spoke the automaton, as Sirki stood several feet behind it and to one side.
“For now, with you all together, I have a request.”

A silence stretched. Had the gears run their course? Then the chain rattled and the head moved again and the right hand came up to press the index finger a second time against the chin, as if in studious contemplation.

“I am searching for a man,”
said the image of Professor Fell.
“His name is Brazio Valeriani. He was last seen one year ago in Florence, and has since vanished. I seek this man. That for the present is all you need to know.”
The finger left the chin and the head moved slowly from left to right.
“I shall pay five thousand pounds to the person who locates Brazio Valeriani,”
said the voice of the machine.
“I shall pay ten thousand pounds to the person who brings him to me. Force may be necessary. You are my eyes and my hands. Seek,”
it spoke,
“and ye shall find.”

“Pardon, sir,” said Mack Thacker, suddenly a docile child, “but who is he?”

“All you need to know I have told you.”
Once more the faceless head tilted to one side.
“That concludes my request.”

Matthew was amazed. It appeared the construction had human ears after all. And the figures the machine had just offered were incredible. At once new questions burned his brain. Who was this Brazio Valeriani, and why was he so immensely valuable to Professor Fell?

The automaton was still. The silence was heavy. Suddenly it was broken by the clatter of a glass overturning on the table, which made Matthew almost jump out of his chair. Jonathan Gentry’s hand must have gone nerveless due to the Juice of Absence, and now the good and drug-addled doctor held the offending hand before his face and examined the fingers as if they belonged to someone he did not know.

The gearteeth moved again. So did the head, tilting backward a few degrees.

“One of you,”
said the voice of the machine,
“has been brought here to die.”

Matthew was near wetting his pants. If his heart was running any faster it was going to tear from his chest and roll across the room.

“To be punished for your sin,”
the automaton continued.
“You know what you have done.”
The right hand lifted, the index finger beckoned, and Sirki withdrew from his black robes the wicked curved dagger with the sawtoothed edge. Then the East Indian giant strode forward, walking slowly and leisurely behind those guests sitting on the side opposite Matthew.
“You have betrayed me,”
spoke the tinny tongue of metal.
“For this you shall not leave the room alive.”

Sirki continued his stroll, candlelight gleaming from the knife’s inset jewels and edge of horror.

“I offer you a chance to speak. To confess your sin before me. In so doing, you will receive a quick and merciful end.”

No one spoke. No one moved but Sirki, who now rounded the foot of the table and crossed behind Adam Wilson.

“Speak,”
said the machine.
“I will not abide a traitor. Speak, while you have life in your veins.”

There was no speaking, though Aria Chillany drew in her breath as Sirki passed behind her, and already Matthew’s nuts had seemingly pulled themselves up into his groin.

Sirki continued onward. Behind Mother Deare he stopped, turned and began to retrace his steps. The knife was held low, at the ready.

“This involves the Cymbeline,”
came the hideous voice, which now held a note of taunting.
“You know nothing can be kept from me. Confess it now.”

No tongue moved, though perhaps even in this rough company hearts pounded and pee puddled.

“Alas,”
spoke the machine,
“your moment of redemption has passed.”
And then it added:
“Doctor Gentry.”

“What?” Gentry asked, his eyes bleary and saliva breaking over his lower lip.

Sirki’s progress stopped. Standing behind the good, drug-addled and doomed doctor, the giant swung his arm back and with tremendous force smacked the sawtoothed blade into the right side of Gentry’s neck.

He gripped Gentry’s hair with his free hand. And then he began to saw the blade, back and forth.

Matthew flinched as the blood jumped upon him. In truth, in any other arena he might have let out a bleat of terror but in this room it might be another kiss of death. But horror came quickly upon horror, as Gentry turned his head toward Matthew even as it was being sawed from his neck, and there was more puzzlement upon Gentry’s face than pain as the crimson blood flowed from the deepening wound. Matthew realized that the Juice of Absence was at work, and perhaps too well it had deadened the nerves and taken the doctor to a distant room.

But
this
room, unfortunately, was where his head was being methodically—and somewhat joyfully, it must be said from the grim smile on Sirki’s face—cut off.

Augustus Pons gave a strangled gasp, though it was not his throat being opened. Toy was pressed up against his master like a second skin, or at least a second suit. The blood leaped and sprayed from the wound in Gentry’s neck, and though the body began to tremble and the hands to grasp and claw at the table yet the doctor’s face was placid and composed as if he were hearing the voice of a patient sitting at his knee.

And indeed, in the next moment Gentry asked Matthew with the gore dripping from his lips, “Tell me. What ails you?”

Across the table, Jack Thacker had recovered his nerve enough for a hollow laugh that Mack Thacker finished, with a ghastly chuckle. Between them, Fancy’s hair was in her face but her gaze was riveted to the tides of blood that flowed between the glasses and platters.

The right side of Gentry’s neck and his shoulder were both masses of red connected by darker threads and clumps, like a hideous suit coming apart at a crucial seam. The wound had the appearance of a gaping, toothless mouth. Matthew, to his absolute terror, could not look away.

Gentry’s eyes had seemingly sunken into a once devilishly-handsome face, now gone suddenly gaunt and sallow. When he spoke again, his voice was a hollow rasp. “Papa?” he said, addressing Matthew. “I’ve finished my lessons.”

The blade sawed back and forth, and forth and back. A sheen of sweat had risen upon the giant’s cheeks.

Aria gave the first burst of a scream but she choked it down. Her eyes were wide. The sapphires had turned to onyx. Toward the foot of the table, Adam Wilson leaned forward toward the carnage, his eyes alight behind his spectacles and his nostrils twitching as if entranced by the smell of so much blood. Cesar Sabroso, his mouth slack and eyes deadened, had hold of a wine bottle in each hand, gripping them like life itself.

Suddenly Gentry seemed to realize what was happening to him and he gave a shuddering cry and tried to rise but the giant’s hand was firm in his hair and just that quickly all of the doctor’s ebbing strength had run its course. The Juice of Absence was obviously a very potent formula. Gentry collapsed back into the chair, his head hanging to the left, and his hands twitched and jerked on the armrests as his legs kicked underneath the table and tried to run. Yet there was nowhere to run to.

“Oh,” moaned the mangled voice of a dead man, as the body whipped and spasmed, “Papa…I kissed…kissed Sarah today.”

A gush of nearly black blood met the next tearing of sawteeth. What came from the center of the thick red flood issuing out of Gentry’s straining mouth might have been a voice, and it might have been a pitiful cry for a life lost or a small handsome boy’s last boast:
“I think she likes me.”

The sawblade met bone and scraped with a noise that made Matthew’s hair stand on end. There was a crash as Minx Cutter’s chair went over; she had risen to her feet and was backing away. It appeared that she had reached her fill of this particular dinner.

“Leave here if you’re going to be ill!” Mother Deare snapped at her, in a not-very-motherly way at all. Minx took the stairs, but she did it at her own speed: a deliberate and almost disdainful walk.

Sawblade on bone. The kicking of Gentry’s heels against the bloodied floor. Matthew nearly rose to his feet and also departed the room, but it seemed to him that the tough-minded and grim-hearted Nathan Spade would have stayed it out, and so then should he.

But by the hardest effort did he remain in his place, for in the next excruciating moments Sirki cracked through the vertebrae and cut through enough flesh to tear the head off its streaming stalk. Sirki deposited the head of the formerly-living Jonathan Gentry upon the table in front of its former body, and as the sallow and sunken-eyed face continued to grimace and contort in its agonies of dying nerves the body slithered down under the table with all the boneless grace of a raw oyster.

There was silence, but for the dripping.

“Thus endeth the lesson,”
said the automaton, its right index finger pointed into the air.

It was Jack Thacker who spoke next.

“Professor sir?” he asked, in his nasally brogue. “Don’t we get dessert?”

The automaton’s hand lowered. With a noise of moving chains the mechanical head turned from side to side, as if seeking the speaker.

“Certainly you do,”
came the eerie metallic voice,
“and you have earned it. On the patio you shall find vanilla cake, sugared almonds and some very fine bottles of Chateau d’Yquem. My best for my best.”
The head nodded slightly, and the voice added,
“And I shall say goodnight.”