Beyond Compare

by Candace Camp

  She let him get several steps in front of her. Her heart raced as his figure walked away from her, soon swallowed up by the darkness of the poorly lit street. She was all alone in the wretched street with who knew what sort of criminals lurking about. Fear twisted through her, but Kyria shoved it down.

  Taking a deep breath, she started forward into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 11

  Rafe strode along, his ears stretched to hear Kyria’s artfully shuffling and stumbling progress behind him. When he reached the door of the tavern, he paused and sneaked a careful look to his right. Kyria was leaning against the side of a building and coughing as if her lungs might come up. That, he supposed, would do as much as anything to keep everyone away from her.

  Rafe opened the door and went inside. The tavern consisted of a single, low-ceilinged, dimly lit room, with a pockmarked bar against one wall. A loutish-looking barkeep stood behind it, glowering around the room, and several disreputable types leaned against the bar, drinking their ales. The remainder of the area was littered with tables and chairs in various stages of dilapidation, and more than half of them were filled with men, each more criminal in appearance than the one before.

  Rafe, adopting the hard countenance and steely gaze he had employed in more than one Western saloon, made his way to an empty table against the left-hand wall. It was not far from the door and afforded a good view of the rest of the room, especially the doorway. It was the barkeep himself who ambled over a moment later and loomed above him.

  Rafe looked up and locked gazes with him challengingly. The barkeep was the first to give in, finally barking out a belligerent, “What yer want?”

  “Pint of ale,” was Rafe’s equally terse reply.

  They stared at each other again for a time, then the barkeep shuffled away. At that moment the door opened, and Kyria stumbled in. She reeled across the room, stopping at one table, then another, trying to cadge a drink and being brusquely repelled in each instance. Rafe watched her, his whole body tensed, waiting for the moment that he might have to come to her defense.

  But no one did more than snarl at her, and after a few moments, the bent and twisted old crone stopped in front of him. “Buy a poor gel a drink, mister?” she asked, her voice roughened and tinged with the East End.

  He scowled at her, but Kyria sank down into the other chair at his table, continuing to plead. Finally, with an irritated jerk of his head, Rafe raised his hand to the barkeep and signaled for a drink.

  “Thankee, kind sir, thankee,” Kyria said, scrabbling for his hand and trying to pat it.

  “Behave,” Rafe muttered, and jerked his hand away, schooling himself not to smile into her laughing eyes.

  “Awr, now, don’t spoil all a gel’s fun,” Kyria retorted in her gravelly voice, adding in a murmur, “Have you seen anything?”

  “Nothing’s jumped out at me. Just looks like a room full of shady types.”

  “We’re here before him,” Kyria said with satisfaction.

  The barkeep brought two glasses and slapped them down on the table, casting a glare at Kyria. After he left, Kyria lifted a glass and stared down at it.

  “This smells dreadful,” she whispered. “And I’m positive this glass has not been washed.”

  “Pour a little on your dress,” Rafe suggested. “It will add to your aroma.” He took a drink and repressed a shudder. “I think we’ll be pouring a few of these on the floor tonight.”

  They made a show of drinking and surreptitiously poured part of their drinks on the floor.

  “What shall we do?” Kyria murmured, picking up her glass as if in a toast, sloshing a good bit more of it out.

  “Wait,” Rafe suggested, “and see who comes in.”

  With a nod, Kyria settled in, her eyes turned toward the door, and their vigil began.

  Time crept by. They watched as the patrons of the tavern got progressively drunker. Each person was given a careful scrutiny, but there was nothing to any of them that seemed out of the ordinary for a place like this.

  After managing to pour the contents of two glasses on the floor, Kyria laid her head down on her arm and pretended to pass out in order to avoid having to deal with any more liquor.

  Rafe watched as two fights developed and took their course, deftly snatching away their drinks as two of the men reeled into their table and careened off. People entered and a few exited, but none appeared to be looking for anyone.

  Rafe was beginning to wonder if their intruder had lied to them about meeting his employer at the Blue Bull when the door opened and a man entered who caught Rafe’s interest. The new customer was wrapped warmly in a dark-blue pea coat, a luxuriant beard and mustache covering the lower half of his face. He walked slightly hunched over, his hands shoved into his pockets, and as he walked, his eyes roved over the crowd.

  Rafe’s pulse quickened, and he nudged Kyria with his elbow. She opened her eyes and watched with a narrowed gaze as the stranger crossed the room and sank into a chair. He turned toward the bar and lifted a hand, and there seemed to Rafe that there was an unconscious arrogance in his gesture that did not fit with the man’s humble attire.

  The barkeep ambled over, and when he reached the table, Rafe saw a subtle shift in his attitude. He bent down in a way that for that brusque man indicated a certain subservience, and he returned in a few minutes with a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

  A mistake, Rafe thought, pleased. The man had dressed to blend in, but he had given away his affluence with his attitude and a full bottle of good whiskey. No one who could afford that would normally be frequenting a place like the Blue Bull. There was also the fact that even though he glanced around the room now and then, he also kept looking at the front door of the tavern.

  “I think we have him,” Rafe muttered to Kyria, and went up to the bar to order another drink, strolling past the new customer as closely as he could without drawing attention.

  When he returned to the table, Kyria groaned and made a show of waking and rubbing her face, looking around, then returned her head to the table, facing in Rafe’s direction.

  “Did you see him?”

  “As well as I could,” Rafe murmured, propping his chin on his hand to help cover the slight movement of his mouth. “This place is damned dim, and he’s got his cap practically down to his eyes. The rest of his face is hidden by the beard.”

  “False?” Kyria asked.

  “I’ll wager.” Rafe sighed. “And with the way he walked and those bulky clothes, it’s hard to get a good guess as to even his height and shape.”

  “Is he foreign?”

  “He’s dark for an Englishman,” Rafe said. “I’m not sure if that means he’s foreign. He isn’t the dealer who visited us, that I’m relatively certain of. There’s a scar near his eye, and it draws his lid down in an odd way.”

  “A disguise, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It could be real—or as real as your salt-and-pepper hair.”

  He took a drag of his drink and firmly refrained from wincing. Kyria stirred restlessly in her chair.

  “Shouldn’t we go talk to him?”

  “Wait till he leaves and we’ll brace him outside. This isn’t the best place to be if he starts to fight.”

  Rafe kept a surreptitious eye on the stranger, who began, after a few more minutes, to grow somewhat fidgety. The man looked around the room more carefully, then returned his gaze more noticeably to the door. Finally, after thirty minutes or so, with a disgusted twitch of his mouth, he stood up and began to walk toward the door.

  Rafe tapped Kyria on the arm, and she once more went through a performance of raising her head and looking blankly around, although this time, she ended it by draping herself over Rafe’s arm. Their quarry was almost to the door by this time, and Rafe stood, Kyria rising quickly beside him. They started toward the door, and Kyria abandoned her drunken shuffle in the excitement of the moment.

  As the stranger stepped outside, he suddenly grasped a man who was enteri
ng the tavern. With a twist of his body, he deliberately propelled the newcomer through the doorway and into the group nearest the door, resulting in a commotion of spilled beer, raised voices and flying fists.

  “Blast!” Rafe swore.

  He and Kyria sprinted to the door, but they wasted precious seconds while Rafe shoved a couple of the combatants aside. They stumbled out the door and looked up and down the street, seeing, a good half block away, their fleeing suspect. Rafe tore off after him, with Kyria in hot pursuit. The man skidded around the corner of a building, and the next thing they knew there was a loud pop, and the sound of something small striking the brick behind them.

  Rafe swore again and, grabbing Kyria, ducked into the nearest doorway, the stench of which was enough to make her gag.

  “Was that a gunshot?” Kyria asked, covering her nose and mouth in an attempt to breathe without smelling the odor. She tried not to think about what they might be standing in.

  “Yes. He’s firing at us,” Rafe replied.

  “Damn! He knows who we are. How?”

  “My guess is he realized it when we stood up and started for the door after him. We may have been less than subtle.” Rafe paused, then went on, “He may not know exactly who we are. For all I know, there may be any number of people who are interested in his activities. But he knew that we were following him.”

  Rafe paused, listening. There was a clatter of horses hooves and carriage wheels on the cobblestone street. Rafe peered around the doorway to see a carriage disappearing at a good clip down the dark street.

  “I think he’s gone.” Rafe stepped cautiously out. He glanced down the street in the direction the carriage had gone, then back up to where it must have come from, when something caught his eye.

  A figure stood in the opening of a nearby alleyway, cowled and robed all in white. Rafe sucked in his breath, and in that instant the figure disappeared.

  “What the hell!” Rafe started forward, and Kyria followed him.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “There was the strangest-looking…” Rafe hurried over to the alleyway where he had seen the figure and peered into it. It was pitch-black inside, and he could see nothing beyond a few feet. He wished he had a lantern. Frowning, he turned. “Nothing. It’s gone now.”

  They started toward the side street where their own carriage waited.

  “We should have left first,” Kyria opined. “Then we could have waited outside for him to emerge and talked to him then.”

  “It would have been wiser,” Rafe agreed. He glanced at her and smiled. “Next time we lie in wait for someone, we’ll have to remember that.”

  “Who do you suppose he was?”

  Rafe shrugged. “The man who wants your reliquary—or someone who is acting as an agent for that man.”

  Kyria sighed. “We’re no better off than we were.”

  “Well, we did get a look at the man.”

  “Yes, in disguise,” Kyria retorted. “Could you even tell how tall he was?”

  “He wasn’t short. Exactly how tall…” Rafe shrugged.

  “He wasn’t Mr. Habib,” Kyria said. “At least we know that. Which would seem to indicate that there is more than one person after the reliquary.”

  “Yes. Although I suppose he could be an associate of Habib’s.”

  “Sid did say he was foreign,” Kyria conceded. “On the other hand, it could be that there are two people working separately.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t see how this is helping us much.”

  “We still have the barkeep,” Rafe said. “Sid told us that it was he who arranged the meeting, right?”

  “True.”

  “So I can question the barkeep and see if he can tell us who our man was.”

  “He obviously seemed to know him.” Kyria’s face brightened.

  They reached the carriage and climbed into it. Rafe looked at Kyria and said, “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to go home now and leave me to question the man.”

  “You certainly could not,” Kyria said cheerfully.

  “It won’t be pretty.”

  “No. It wasn’t pretty being threatened by Sid and Dixon, either,” Kyria retorted. “And you might need help. I can’t in good conscience leave you here by yourself to face the barkeep.”

  The two of them sat in the carriage, waiting for the minutes to pass, having agreed that it would serve their purposes better to confront the barkeep after all the customers had left.

  It was some time before that occurred, and Kyria had dozed off once or twice, then jerked awake to find Rafe, irritatingly enough, sitting there wide-awake, one corner of the window curtain pulled aside, gazing out at the tavern door.

  “How can you do that?” Kyria asked, squirming in her seat and blinking to keep her eyes open.

  “Habit I picked up in the war. Reconnaissance. Never lost it—comes in handy sometimes.” He stiffened slightly and leaned forward. “I think it may be closing. There’s a stream of them coming out.” He pulled a watch out of his pocket and glanced at it. He looked at her. “You ready?”

  Kyria nodded, and they slipped out of the carriage and moved quickly down the street. As they approached, the door opened, and a final two customers staggered out. Behind them in the doorway stood the barkeep. He started to close the door, but Rafe was there before he could do so and braced his arm against the door, shoving it back.

  “Ere, now,” the barkeep said gruffly. “We’re closed. Go ’ome.”

  “I don’t want a drink,” Rafe told him, stepping into the tavern. Kyria slipped in after him. “I want information.”

  The man looked at them with narrowed eyes, his gaze going from Rafe to Kyria and back. “’Ere. Weren’t you in ’ere before?”

  “Yes, we were. But now I have a few questions.”

  “Get out. I ain’t answerin’ no questions.” He jerked his head toward the open door, but Rafe reached into his coat and pulled out one of his long-barreled Colts.

  “How about now?” Rafe asked.

  The barkeep simply stared at him, his hands falling to his sides. Kyria moved around Rafe and pushed the door to, then shot the lock home. Rafe gestured toward one of the tables.

  “Why don’t we sit down?”

  The barkeep glowered, but did as he suggested.

  “I got nothin’ to say.”

  “Don’t you want to hear the questions first?”

  “I’m not a gabster,” the other man said flatly.

  “Let’s try a little persuasion first.” Rafe reached into his coat again and came out with a wallet this time. “Kyria…”

  She took the wallet and opened it, peeling off a ten-pound note and laying it on the table before the barkeep. The man sneered. “I told yer, I’m no gabster.”

  Kyria put down three more of the notes before the barkeep’s expression became less stony. At the fifth note, he said warily, “Wot yer wantin’ to know?”

  “A pair of men—one named Sid and the other Dixon…” Rafe began.

  “Yeah, I know ’em,” the barkeep answered. “Sid comes in often enough.”

  “You set him up with a man—a foreign man, perhaps?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Who was that man?”

  The barkeep shrugged. “Din’t give me no name. Just said as ’ow he wanted a partic’lar kind of man for a partic’lar job. Sounded like Sid to me.”

  “And was he the same man who was in your tavern tonight? The one to whom you gave a full bottle of whiskey.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’im,” the barkeep said, sweeping up the notes on the table and leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms with finality.

  “Would fifty guineas loosen your tongue?” Kyria asked.

  He frowned, cupidity warring with fear on his face. “Not even a hundred guineas.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “I don’t know the gent’s name. I don’t want to know it, and that’s a fact. You look in his eyes, and they’re
cold as death. So I don’t ask and ’e don’t tell. It’s better that way.”

  * * *

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” Kyria asked as they walked back to the carriage, having left the barkeep sitting there with the stack of notes clutched in his hand.

  “I suspect so. Either he doesn’t know his name, as he said, or he’s too scared to tell it. Whichever it is, we won’t get any more out of him.”

  She sighed as he handed her up into the carriage. “What will we do now?”

  “There is still the antiquities dealer to watch,” Rafe replied. He stepped up into the carriage and closed the door, and they set off down the street. “We don’t know but he may be involved in this, too. The man we saw tonight could be someone Habib hired to strongarm you once he found out that an offer to buy the reliquary wasn’t going to work.”

  “Or, I suppose, the man at the tavern could be someone who was using Habib as an intermediary, trying first to buy the reliquary before stealing it,” Kyria said.

  “And we can talk to Dr. Jennings’s expert,” Rafe continued.

  “Nelson Ashcombe? I’d like him to see it, just to confirm that it is indeed the reliquary and that the remnant inside is authentic,” Kyria admitted. “But I don’t imagine he can help us much with identifying our thief.”

  “Ashcombe has been after the reliquary for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew the names of some other men who would be interested in getting it. He might even know which ones would not hesitate to steal it.”

  “That could be.” Kyria brightened a little as she thought of the avenues still left open to them.

  They rode home, discussing the events of the evening and pondering whether their quarry had known who they were when he ran from the tavern.

  Kyria, pulling the scarf from her head, took out the pins that held the false, dirty-and-graying locks to her own hair beneath, and also unwrapped the dirty shawl from around her shoulders and arms. She itched in several places, and she could not help but wonder if it was simply from the rough cloth of the things she wore, or if her old, dirt-smeared clothes had provided a home for various unsavory insects that might have lurked in the floors of the tavern.