The Reluctant Assassin (17 page)

Albert Garrick had mixed feelings on the subject of the Orient Theatre. On the one hand he was too much in love with his memories of the performer’s life to ever let it go, and on the other it caused him great pain even to gaze on the mechanics of his once-famous illusions.

He trod the boards now, tightening a rope here, adjusting a mirror there. Each contraption brought a rueful smile to his thin features.

Ah, the Chinese water bowls. How the crowd had cheered in Blackpool. Lombardi, they cried. Lombardi, Lombardi.

It occurred to Garrick that with his improved physicality, no illusion would be off-limits to him.

I am more supple now and could escape from a seltzogene if need be. The Great Lombardi could be the most famous illusionist on earth.

It was a tempting notion, to travel the courts of Europe, dazzling tsars and kings. To have jewels strewn on the tail of his velvet cape.

So many possibilities.

Garrick retired to his larder, preparing a simple meal of cheese and meats, which he consumed standing, with a crust of slightly hardened bread and a flagon of watered beer.

Of course I would need an assistant. This time I will choose wisely, and not show so much kindness. It was my own soft hand that spoiled Riley.

Garrick returned to the Orient’s stage, pulling his velvet cape from its peg and wrapping it around his shoulders. Then, as a sentimental comfort, and because he felt somewhat alone, the magician placed the original Lombardi’s silk top hat on his head.

Assistants are troublesome creatures, he admitted, often developing their own personalities. Their own wants and preferences.

Sabine had also caused him considerable pain. Had her treachery not forced him to quit performing altogether?

But she had been so beautiful. So perfect.

Garrick felt a tiredness come over him that he could not ignore, so he settled into an armchair that was positioned on a low circular dais center stage and decided to allow himself a few hours’ sleep before he began the hunt for Riley and Chevron Savano.

And, as they often did, his dreams turned to Sabine. His first, beautiful, perfect assistant. Perfect until . . .

In the beginning it had seemed to young Albert Garrick that his life had entered a new phase, edging away from the horrors of his youth. He was gaining mastery over Lombardi’s works and growing into the Italian’s boots very nicely. Not a single engagement was canceled, and Sabine seemed more than satisfied to renew her contract.

Garrick was besotted, and he showered the girl with tokens of his esteem, which she accepted with squeals and hugs, calling him
her Albert
and kissing his cheek. Garrick was content for the first time, and even his nightmares of blood and cholera grew infrequent and seemed somehow less potent when they did occur.

Unfortunately for young Garrick, Sabine’s heart was colder than the baubles she loved so much, and her intention had always been to ditch her employer at the first sign of a better prospect.

In the summer of 1880, a young Albert Garrick—the Great Lombardi now—was second on the bill below the wellknown Anglo-Irish dramatist and actor Dion Boucicault at the Adelphi, when Garrick noticed Sabine’s flirtatious manner as she fraternized with young Sandy Morhamilton, one of the lighting boys. This vexed and puzzled Garrick, as generally Sabine had no patience for the crew. But a little investigation revealed that young Morhamilton was no hand-to-mouth pauper; he was, in fact, the heir to a large coffee-trading company and was spending a year at the Adelphi to exorcise the theater from his system.

And if I have uncovered Sandy’s true identity, so too has Sabine
, Garrick reasoned. He began to keep watch on the pair, discovering a talent for lurking that would serve him well in later years. Day by day his heart was broken as the woman he had worshipped for years gave her attention to a dolt, a high-born halfwit.

Garrick’s love curdled into a hate that turned inward, souring his very soul. The entire affair blossomed tragically on the third Sunday of June, during the matinee. As he was preparing to insert the steel blades into their slots for the Divide the Lady trick, he noticed that Sabine’s gaze was directed to the gantry above the stage. To his amazement, the trollop actually blew a kiss skyward. Garrick leaned close to issue a stern admonition and, almost incredibly, he saw his rival reflected in his beloved’s eyes.

An irrepressible fury consumed the young Garrick and he slammed the center blade into the slot without reversing the handle, which meant that Sabine had no chance of avoiding the sharp steel when it eventually fell.

Garrick’s fury was replaced by cold satisfaction and, with a shake of his bloodied glove toward the young Morhamilton, he fled through the stage door and into the night, never to return to the Adelphi, though superstitious theater folk swear that the Red Glove still haunts the stalls, searching for the man who cuckolded him.

Albert Garrick was never prosecuted for his crime because, ironically, he was found guilty of a lesser one. Two days later the destitute magician attacked a sandy-haired youth outside the Covent Garden Theatre and beat him half to death. His sentence gave him the choice of a fair stretch in Newgate or a spot in the Queen’s army, on a train leaving for Afghanistan that very evening. Garrick chose the latter, and by nightfall he was squeezed into a troop carriage on his way to Dover, without anyone ever realizing that Albert Garrick’s hat fitted snugly on the Great Lombardi’s head. He arrived among the Afghans just in time for the great battle of Kandahar and covered himself in bloody glory. Garrick was offered a commission and could have made a career for himself in the army, but he reckoned there was more coin to be made if he struck out as an independent.

Garrick was not alone in the Orient. In fact, a band of dyed-in-the-wool knaves had been lodged there for the past couple of days, waiting for Garrick to return from his mission in Bedford Square. These were no ordinary kidnappers, but a trio of superior punishers handpicked for the grisly mission. Their boss reckoned them the bloodiest in his stable and trusted them with this contract, which was bringing in a considerable pocket of chink for the brotherhood.

“One body only?” Mr. Percival had asked, the most experienced of the three, a man who often boasted of having performed at least one killing on a different continent for every decade of his life.

“Yes, but an exceptional body,” his boss had assured him, “and worthy of your combined talents. Take no half measures with this cove, lads, or you will find yourself looking down Old Nick’s throat. When he returns from his own bloody work, just wait for him to bed down, then do the business. You wait as long as it takes. Got it?”

The men nodded with feigned sincerity and pocketed their advance guineas; but once the big man was gone, they congratulated each other for landing such a soft job.

“We are the luckiest of beggars,” Percival had confided in his confederates. “This Garrick mug will have his entrails on the boards by dusk, and we will be scoffing mutton stew for supper.”

So now Percival and his two mates roused themselves from behind Row F of the Orient stalls and walked crabwise to the aisles. One took the left, the second went right, and Percival himself advanced straight down the center. Apart from the delay, events could hardly have turned out peachier for the intruders. This cove Garrick, far from being a specter of death, as advertised, had actually plonked himself center stage for a wee nod. The brave trio intended to flank their mark, then close in with diverse blades.

Percival hefted a short-handled chopping ax that he’d purchased in a supply store in California and later used to punish a teenage boy for pointing a finger at him. The second man, known simply as Turk, wielded a curved scimitar that had been in someone’s family for generations until Turk nicked it. And the third man, a Scot with unusually short legs, had a baling hook slotted between his fingers that had seen more eyeballs dangling off its tip than hay bales. The Scot, Pound, also carried a pistol, but bullets were costly and a wide shot could startle their mark into action, so best to do the job quietly with blades.

These men had worked together before and had developed a system of nods, whistles, and signals that precluded any chatter on the job. Chatty assassins did not last long in London. Percival was the captain, so the others looked to him for their lead. With two jabs of his ax, he directed them to the wings. Garrick would undoubtedly fly to one side or another should he somehow detect Percival’s approach. This was unlikely in any case, as Percival made about as much noise as a leaf floating across Hyde Park. Turk and Pound resigned themselves to the fact that the kill itself would be Percival’s, as it generally was.

Percival mounted the stage bridge and crept across the orchestra pit, enjoying the weight of the ax in his hand, relishing the
thunk
it would make chopping a wedge out of the mark’s skull.

Four more steps, then it’s mutton stew for me and the lads. Three more steps.

Percival sprang onto the stage proper, and he knew that at this distance there was not a man or animal on earth who could escape the deadly arc of his swing.

I could fell a bear from this distance, he thought.

He raised the ax high and brought the blade down with terrific force. It struck nothing but chair, slicing through the padding and biting deep into the wooden backrest.

Percival’s brain could not understand how certainty had become uncertain.

“Magic,” said a voice. “All is not as it seems.”

Percival yanked the ax free and whirled toward the source of these mysterious words. There in the corner stood the mark himself, Garrick, wrapped in his conjurer’s cape.

“Do you approve of my cloak? It’s a little theatrical, but this is a performance, after all.”

He don’t know about the others, thought Percival. Else he would not be blathering on.

Percival whistled two notes, high and low. The signal for Turk to advance from the folds of velvet curtain that concealed him.

Turk made even less noise than Percival, as he wore silken slippers, which he called his murder shoes. He came up on Garrick from the rear and reached out for a shoulder, to steady the magician for the scimitar’s blade, but his questing fingers skinned themselves on glass instead of flesh and bone.

A mirror, thought Turk. I have been misled.

Terror sank into his gut like a lead anchor—he had the wit to know that he was done for.

The mirror image of Garrick reached out through the mirror and plucked Turk’s own sword from his hand.

“You will not have need of this,” said Garrick’s image, and he plunged it directly into Turk’s heart.

Turk died believing a phantasm had killed him. His final wish was that he could return as a spirit to this place in order to decipher the events leading up to his death, but unfortunately that’s not the way the afterlife works, especially for blackhearted killers.

Percival would have attacked then, but he was uncertain of his enemy’s position. He heard an ominous creaking behind him and turned to see a large set piece being lowered from the flies. The piece was circular and constructed of canvas stretched over a wooden frame. On the front were circles painted within circles.

“Stone me,” breathed Percival. “A target.”

“Stone you?” came a voice from the blackness of the stalls. “I fear you are missing the point, but not for long.”

Percival backed up until his shoulder blades bumped the target and his head sat squarely in the bull’s-eye. Before he could twig the implications, a veritable hail of blades hissed from the darkness.

I am done, thought Percival, and closed his eyes.

But done he was not; instead the various knives, forks, swords, and bayonets pinned him tightly to the target, drawing no more than a pint of blood from minor wounds.

Was this by accident or design? Percival knew not, but he took advantage of his still-pumping lungs to call to his final confederate.

“Damn the blades, Pound. Plug this cove.”

Pound rushed from his place of concealment and waved the barrel of his pistol around, searching for the mark. “Where are you, Garrick? Show yourself!”

By some device, Garrick appeared where he had not been a second before, his face pale in the stage lights, dark hair rippling over his shoulders.

“I am insulted by this attack on my home. Insulted, I say.”

“Quite yer jittering and stand still,” ordered Pound.

“That you may shoot me dead? An odd request. However, as you wish. Pull your blasted trigger, but take care—if you miss, I shall not.”

The cards were apparently all in Pound’s hands, but with his boss pegged to a target, he was nervous.

“Shoot him, man!” Percival urged. “A monkey could make the shot.”

Garrick spread his arms wide. “Make your shot, Scotsman. Unto dust.”

Pound blinked the sweat from his eyes, wondering how this job had turned into such a dog’s dinner.

“On yer knees, Garrick.”

“Oh, no, I kneel for no man.”

Percival strained against the knives that secured him. “Shoot him, Pound! Pull the trigger.”

“You are weak,” said Garrick mockingly. “A coward!”

Pound fired his pistol and a flute of blue smoke billowed from the barrel. The noise was deafening, and for a moment Garrick’s upper torso was wreathed in a flickering cloud.

When the smoke cleared, Garrick was revealed, hale and hardy, with no changes to his appearance but for the blood on his teeth and the bullet between them.

“Oh, my God,” breathed Pound. “He caught the bullet. This is no mortal man.”

“Shoot again, you fool!” cried Percival. “You hold a revolver in yer hand.”

Garrick spoke between his teeth. “One chance only. Now, you must stand still for my bullet.”

Pound was so confused that his feet were like anchors and tears streamed down his ruddy cheeks. “But you are without a pistol.”

Garrick rubbed his fingers before his mouth as though warming them, then spat out the bullet with such force that it penetrated Pound’s forehead and dropped him where he stood.