Herne the Hunter 22

by John J. McLaglen

  Herne carefully opened the door at the far side and heard the sound of voices further into the house.

  He tried to figure out where they were coming from and finally pinned them down as from straight ahead, in the room he thought must be the main gambling room.

  After a few moments, the voices stopped and he heard a door shutting. Everywhere else seemed to be still. He flicked the safety thong from the hammer of his Colt and went forward.

  After last night the room was strangely empty. The faro tables, the bar, the roulette wheel on the balcony—most of the signs that there had been perhaps a hundred people crowded there had been removed. The surfaces had already been cleaned, glasses and plates removed, the carpet had been swept.

  Herne hesitated for a while, waiting for the voices to return. When they didn’t, he crossed between the poker tables and set foot on the stairs. The carpet was deep beneath his boots and swallowed most of the sound he made.

  He saw the door behind the wheel through which Daniels had made his appearance. He set his hand to it, knowing that it would be locked and it turned. For a second his breath caught and the skin at the back of his legs went cold.

  He turned fast and looked down across the huge, empty room.

  The door swung silently open and he went through.

  The desk was polished mahogany, papers stacked at neat intervals. Against the left-hand wall a glass-fronted bookcase held leather-bound volumes in unison display. In the opposite corner, behind the desk, a floor safe stood sturdy and solid. Herne pushed the door to at his back and looked round the office again, wondering if there was anything he could make use of while he had the chance. He guessed that Daniels had to keep some kind of ledger, some record of sums of money that were lost and owed.

  Quickly he went round to the other side of the desk and began pulling open drawers, feeling through papers and envelopes. He drew out several long, leather-backed books and threw them onto the desk top. Lines of figures, single and double, written neatly in small red or black characters, page after page after page. He ran his finger down the columns, searching the writing alongside for some mention of a name he would recognize—either Cassie or Veronica Russell.

  Book after book he saw nothing and his concern about being caught prevented him from proceeding with any real method. If he didn’t see what he was looking for in a couple of pages of one ledger, he pushed it aside and searched several pages of the second and so it went on. After a few minutes, he turned away and dropped into a crouch before the safe.

  The handle was cold and hard against his hand and refused to budge at his touch.

  ‘Well, now, if it isn’t yourself once again. And wasn’t I say in’ you was persistence itself?’

  Herne whirled round and found himself staring down the barrel of the Irishman’s gun. His hand was close to his own Colt but at that range, even against a small pistol, he knew better than to take a risk.

  ‘Wonderful stuff, this carpet, ain’t it. Allows a body to go wherever he wants without bein’ heard by a soul. And here’s you, caught in the act of robbin’ the boss’s safe. Tck, tck, tck.’ He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and rolled his eyes and motioned with his gun for Herne to stand up.

  ‘Careful now! Be awful careful. We wouldn’t be wan tin’ any accidents, would we? Not before you’ve had a chance to explain the meanin’ of what you’re doin’ tryin’ to get into that safe that don’t belong to you.’

  He smiled and motioned for Herne to take a couple of steps away from the desk.

  ‘I think we’ll be havin’ that little beauty you got there by your side,’ he said, eyeing the Colt. ‘I think you could take her out with the finger an’ thumb of your left hand and set her on the desk here. Nice and easy, now. I have to confess I ain’t too good with guns myself and my finger just might squeeze a fraction too hard against this trigger and then we don’t know what might happen, do we? Now be a good feller and do like you’re told.’

  Herne judged the distance between them, tried to figure out his chances if he sprang forward and tried to dive under the gun, grabbing for his own pistol as he did so.

  He didn’t think the chances were so good.

  He reached across the front of his gunbelt and used the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to lift up the Colt by the grip, then swivel it round, lean forward and set it to rest on the ledgers that were still open on the desk.

  ‘There now, wasn’t that the simplest thing you ever done?’ The Irishman smiled and waved Herne right back against the wall, so that he was standing alongside the safe. Slowly, he came forward and lifted Herne’s Colt from the desk and backed off towards the door again.

  ‘Sure, isn’t it a heavy old thing you’ve got here. I never could get along with guns like this on account of them bein’ too much for a little feller like me to carry. If I had this in my pocket the whole side of me’d be weighed down to the floor and I’d be needin’ both hands to lift it up, never mind fire it. But you bein’ big like you are I don’t suppose you’d have any of that kind of trouble.’

  He jerked the gun in his hand and the smile that had been toying with his mouth disappeared. ‘Turn around! Now! Fast!’

  Herne stood facing the wall as the Irishman came up close behind him. He felt the end of the pistol barrel pushed up against his neck, poking through the strands of hair above his collar. With his other hand, the man started patting him down, searching for some other weapon.

  ‘We don’t want to deliver you over to the boss and find you’ve got some little toy hidden away, do we? That wouldn’t make it look as if we’d done our job well at all.’

  The hand moved around his waist, up both sides of his shirt, finally along and between his legs.

  ‘That’s all right, then. Now we can see what Mr. Daniels has in mind for burglars and sneak-thieves and the like.’

  He stepped back fast, drawing the gun away from Herne’s head. Herne had been waiting for the moment, the second when the metal would no longer be pressed against him. He ducked and turned in the same movement, throwing out his left arm and diving forward.

  The Irishman’s finger jerked the trigger and a bullet tore through some fancy scrollwork near the edge of the ceiling.

  Herne’s head caught the Irishman below the jaw and snapped his head back, the force of his charge driving him against the desk and wheeling it round sharply. Herne threw a left-handed punch that clipped the Irishman’s shoulder and jumped over his sprawling legs.

  The little man went down awkwardly, kicking up with his right leg as he fell.

  The leg tangled itself between Herne’s and he stumbled, flailed his arms, finally lost his balance and crashed to the floor, rolling towards the door.

  The Irishman recovered himself more quickly than he might. He was back on his feet and his own gun had gone skidding across the carpet, but Herne’s Colt was still in his belt.

  He leaned sideways against the desk and set both hands to the butt, lifting the pistol up.

  Herne pushed himself up onto one knee, glanced at the Irishman, turned towards the door. A pair of legs all but blocked the way. His head started to arch back and something heavy came down hard to meet it.

  Herne’s mouth opened to an involuntary shout and he grabbed upwards and caught air. He had a blurred image of a giant shape bearing down on him, a voice echoed through his brain and whatever had hit him before hit him again.

  He melted into the carpet, splinters of light fragmenting behind his eyes for no more than seconds before a warm darkness enfolded everything.

  He came to gradually, only the throbbing pains at the back of his head telling him for sure that he was awake. Lines shook and shifted in front of him and refused to be still or join together in any way that he could understand.

  He tried to move his body and realized that he was sitting up. When he went to move again he seemed to be falling forward and there was a moment’s shock when he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to push his hands out in fr
ont of him and break his fall.

  Slowly, it dawned on him that he wasn’t going to fall.

  The reason he couldn’t use his hands was that his arms were tied fast at the back of the chair.

  Which was why he wasn’t going to fall either.

  He didn’t think much of it.

  He went back into unconsciousness.

  When he came round again his head ached instead of throbbed and there was a swelling at the back of his head the size of a large egg. Blood matted his hair. His eyes opened slowly, closed, opened again to stare down the barrel of the Irishman’s gun.

  Quinlan grinned at him and winked mischievously, moving the gun a shade to ensure that Herne had focused on it correctly.

  ‘There was a time when I thought you might not be comin’ round at all, but then I says to meself, he’s made of harder stuff than that. He’ll be back with us in a little while … and sure enough, here you are. Not exactly bright as the first light on the hills in the morning, to be sure, but looking pretty awake anyway.’

  Herne glared at him and wriggled his arms, testing that the ropes were still as tightly in place as previously.

  Quinlan winked again and got up from his chair; he knocked on the panel of the door and a moment later it opened and the big man came through, followed by Cord Daniels.

  Daniels had exchanged his velvet suit for a red shirt and black pants but he didn’t look any more at ease. His eyes were red as if he hadn’t slept as much as he should and his face seemed more swollen and blotchy than when Herne had seen him the previous night.

  He walked right over to Herne and slapped him hard across the face.

  Herne’s head jerked back and then faced the gambler again, staring at him hard.

  ‘Don’t try that again, Daniels!’ he said.

  Daniel’s arm swung and the hand cracked back and forth across Herne’s face, each slap echoing sharply in the confines of the high-ceilinged room, the ring at the centre of his hand breaking the skin and drawing blood.

  Herne grunted with anger and pushed himself to his feet, taking the chair with him. He dropped his head forward and rushed at Daniels, who jumped to one side and avoided the worst of the attack. Quinlan jumped between them and kicked at one of Herne’s legs and he lost balance, falling awkwardly to the floor and numbing his arm.

  The big man with the gold earring lifted the chair back onto its legs and Herne with it.

  Daniels gestured towards the Irishman. ‘Give me the gun.’

  Quinlan hesitated, but only for a moment.

  Daniels took the pistol in his hand and brought back the hammer; he slowly came close to Herne, close enough to rest the end of the barrel behind his left ear.

  ‘You aren’t in a position to threaten anyone. You’d best think on that and think hard. One more stupid move and this little thing’ll take a good part of your brains out and spread them all over the wall. You understand that?’

  Herne nodded, his head moving against the gun.

  ‘Good. Now let’s see if you can remember how to talk.’

  He motioned the Irishman over and handed him back the pistol, telling him to stand in the same position, the gun to Herne’s head. Daniels went back in front and cracked the knuckles of both hands by flexing them in and out.

  Herne wondered if he was meant to be impressed.

  He wondered if he’d ever get the chance to get his hands on his own .45, which was sticking up from the big man’s belt.

  He wondered . . .

  ‘What were you looking for in my office?’

  ‘I came to see you.’

  The hand slapped him high on the face and his head jolted against Quinlan’s gun.

  ‘Don’t mess with me! I haven’t the time or the patience to waste with trash like you. Now tell me the truth.’

  Herne stared back at him.

  ‘It was.’

  This time the hand was lower and Daniel’s ring opened a cut at the corner of Herne’s mouth.

  ‘You were going through my books, accounts—what for?’

  ‘Maybe I was interested in how come you got so much money.’

  ‘More like you were interested in stealing some.’

  ‘You said I was looking at your books, not your money.’

  ‘Quinlan here says you were trying to get into the safe.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Irish voice, soft at Herne’s back.

  ‘You best speak up before I hand you over to the law, threatened Daniels.

  Herne shook his head and then wished he hadn’t as the pain throbbed harder.

  ‘You won’t do that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. If you were going to hand me over, you’d have done so already.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so certain.’

  ‘You don’t want the law coming in here and poking around where it don’t concern them.’

  Daniels laughed. ‘That’s all you know, cowboy. I’ve got half the police force of this town eatin’ out of my hand as it is.’

  ‘An’ the other half waitin’ to bite it off an’ spit it out along with the rest of you.’

  Daniels moved closer to him and Herne could smell the bourbon on his breath. ‘I’m losing patience, cowboy. You better tell me what I want to know. And you’re right, I won’t waste my time handing you over to the police. You’ll wind up floating in the bay with your throat cut.’

  ‘Like you did to Connors?’

  Daniels stopped short. The air seemed to leave his body and his face drained of blood. He stared at Herne as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. It passed inside a minute but there was no disguising the effect Herne’s remark had had on him.

  Daniels grabbed hold of the front of Herne’s shirt and twisted it tight, pulling him forward.

  ‘What’s this about Connors?’

  ‘Way I heard it, he was found the way you said—floating in the bay with the throat cut.’

  ‘Heard from who?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Daniels’ twisted harder and Herne couldn’t avoid the stink of his breath. ‘I say it does.’

  ‘Maybe I heard it from the man he used to work for.’

  ‘Russell.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Daniels hesitated a moment and let go Herne’s shirt. He backed off and stood staring down, his breath coming uneasily, noisily.

  ‘When you were here with Veronica last night I thought it was one of her jokes. Something she was doing to see how far she could push me without my getting annoyed and losing my temper. I thought you’d looked around the place and come back today to get what you could. But it isn’t like that, is it? You’re working for him, too, aren’t you? Working for Russell.’

  ‘I could be.’

  ‘And he’s hired you to do what Connors wasn’t man enough to do—’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Keep those two daughters of his out of trouble.’

  Herne didn’t answer, simply looked back into his face.

  Daniels laughed. ‘There isn’t any one man can do that. They’re far past any kind of taming now. Always have been, I’d guess. There’s something wild in their blood that no man’s ever going to quench. Sooner the old man gets used to that fact, the sooner he’ll quit wasting what’s left of his life worryin’ over them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Herne, ‘it wouldn’t suit your plans too well, would it?’

  ‘What the hell you talking about?’

  ‘If they stayed home nights and worked on their samplers, you wouldn’t be able to use them to get at the old man’s money.’

  Herne held himself tense for the blow, but it never quite came. Instead Daniels contented himself with a lot of glaring and heavy breathing and finally he sent the big man off in search of a bottle.

  ‘Look, cowboy,’ he said when he’d given himself a couple of large swallows, ‘I run a gambling place. If people want to come in here and lose their money, that’s their business. As far as I know anything
Russell’s daughters lose is theirs, not their father’s.’

  ‘Then why the notes?’

  ‘What notes?’

  ‘The ones you sent to Russell calling in what you say are gambling debts of Cassie’s.’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘That’s what the old man hired you for?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘That and not Connors?’

  ‘Why is it everyone around here’s so fired-up about what happened to Connors?’

  Daniels ignored the question and took another drink. The Irishman was getting tired of keeping the pistol to Herne’s head and the barrel was no longer touching his skin.

  ‘Why don’t you come out with what you want?’ Daniels said, getting as much bluster into his voice as he could.

  ‘Why don’t you get these boys of yours to untie me from this chair?’

  Daniels snorted with laughter.

  ‘’cause I’m gettin’ awful tired of talking while I’m sitting here trussed up like a turkey ready for Thanksgiving.’

  Daniels gave it a few moments and a couple of swallows’ thought. Finally he nodded towards the big man, who slipped a knife Herne hadn’t seen from the back of his belt and cut the ropes. Quinlan’s little gun was covering Herne from in front now, far enough away so that Herne couldn’t jump him, but close enough to blow a sizeable hole in him.

  Herne rubbed his wrists where the ropes had burned into them; touched the lump at the back of his head gingerly, feeling the scab that was forming over the dried blood. The small cuts from Daniels’ rings had dried on his face, but he could still taste the blood inside his mouth.

  ‘Okay,’ said Daniels, ‘let’s have it straight.’

  ‘All right. Russell hired me because of the gambling notes you’ve got on his youngest daughter. He doesn’t think they’re straight and even if they were, he isn’t going to pay them. Right now he ain’t feelin’ man enough to tell you that himself, so I’m doin’ it for him.’