Gaslamp Gothic Box Set

by Kat Ross

  John raised the lantern high. I pointed the pistol and fired, but I was panicky and the shot went wild. Shards of brick flew from the tunnel wall.

  Brady dropped down, landing on all fours. He grinned at me.

  I took a deep breath and steadied myself, using two hands this time like Myrtle had taught me.

  Brady sprung.

  I aimed the pistol at his forehead and squeezed the trigger.

  I missed again. Worse than missed.

  The bullet ricocheted off the tracks and hit John in the chest.

  That moment is still frozen in my memory like a bug trapped in amber. John crumpling to the ground, a red stain spreading across his shirt. Billy’s screams. My own ears ringing from the deafening retort in the confined tunnel. The weight of the pistol as it was knocked away.

  And then Brady’s hot breath on my cheek as he pinned me underneath him and raised his knife.

  The edge was pitted and scarred from his scratchings. But it was the point he planned to use.

  Some part of me had known all along that we were going to die down here. I only prayed it would be quick, but from the excited light in his eyes, I feared he intended to take his time. He placed the point of the knife against my cheek.

  Then I heard the click of a hammer being cocked.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” an ice-cold voice whispered in Brady’s ear. “Don’t you even twitch.”

  Brady froze.

  “Easy does it.” The barrel of a revolver jammed against Brady’s temple, pushing him away.

  I coughed and rolled over. I felt unclean where he had touched me. John lay in a pool of blood, his eyes closed. I ran to him and gathered his limp body in my arms.

  “Get against the wall,” the voice commanded.

  Brady complied. His demeanor had changed dramatically. The Hunter had retreated, leaving the fearful schoolboy in his place.

  I pressed a shaking hand to John’s neck and nearly wept in relief. He still had a pulse. I examined the bullet wound. It had lodged in his shoulder. I pressed down, trying to staunch the flow.

  “Hang on, Billy!” I called out. “I’ll come for you in a minute.”

  It was quiet. Then I heard a hoarse but somewhat calmer boy call back, “Thankth, Mith Pell!”

  My savior picked up the lantern from where John had dropped it. He was one of the dandies from the train. I remembered his purple cravat, tied in a looping bow. Then I caught his dark eyes and felt like a perfect fool. It was James Moran. I’d been too focused on Straker to pay them much attention.

  “I followed you, Miss Pell. If you’re anything like your sister, I expected you’d be playing a double game.” He aimed the pistol at Brady, cowering just a few feet away. Then he shot Brady in the leg. My former client shrieked. Shards of white bone jutted out of his thigh and my stomach churned.

  “It’s too bad we don’t have more time,” Moran said lazily. “I could do this all day. But I think I’d better just put you out of your misery.”

  Brady sobbed. I felt no pity for him, not a shred, but this was wrong somehow.

  I let go of John and jumped between them. Moran looked up at the ceiling and sighed in annoyance.

  “The police are on their way,” I said. “Do you really want to be here when they arrive? He’ll hang for what he did. It’s a worse end in many ways.”

  Moran considered this.

  “But that’s no fun,” he said at last.

  “Then you’ll have to shoot me too.”

  Moran regarded me with an unreadable expression. “What makes you think I won’t?”

  “Because that’s no fun,” I said.

  His lips quirked in an almost-smile.

  “I suppose it’s not, at that.” He lowered the gun a fraction. “Tell me something, Miss Pell. How did you know? About the quill? And the piano?”

  “Much can be learned about a man from his hands, Mr. Moran. The overlapping stains on your right forefinger, for example. The half-healed welts at your wrist where the strings keep snapping because you apply too much pressure. It’s quite a distinctive injury, if one knows what to look for. Elementary, really.”

  Moran gazed at me for a long moment. Then he laughed. “As if one wasn’t bad enough,” he muttered cryptically.

  “If you want to do something useful, go cut his bonds,” I said, pointing to Billy.

  He put the gun away. “I’ll leave that to you. I’ve played the hero enough tonight. It doesn’t really suit me.”

  He turned to Brady, who was mumbling to himself. Moran said something too soft for me to hear but Brady shut up immediately. He seemed paralyzed with dread. It occurred to me that on some unpleasant level, Moran and Brady understood each other. They were kindred spirits.

  “Fine.” I turned my back on them both and picked up Brady’s knife. Then I used it to free Billy Finn. Nasty bruises marked his wrists and ankles. I guessed he’d had no decent food for days, though Brady had thrown him some rotten scraps. But Billy had served a different purpose than the other victims, and was otherwise unharmed.

  By the time I looked back, Moran was gone.

  I ran over to check on John. The bleeding had slowed, but he needed a doctor. I could see he was slipping away.

  “We have to carry him,” I said to Billy. How we’d ever get John through that horrible tube I hadn’t a clue.

  “I thought they were nightmares at first,” Brady whispered from where he lay slumped against the wall. “Just nightmares. But then I realized the truth…after I woke up standing there. I didn’t mean to hurt them.” His pale blue eyes fixed on me. “It’s inside me. Something.” His voice took on a whining tone. “It made me. I sent Elizabeth away. I did that. I did that!”

  “He’s barmy,” Billy said, retreating a safe distance away from his captor.

  “Yes, he is,” I agreed. “John!” I leaned over my best friend. “Wake up! You have to wake up.”

  He moaned.

  “That’s it,” I urged. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  There was so much blood. We were both covered in it. I looked down the long, dark tunnel, hoping to see the glow of lanterns. But there was nothing.

  “He don’t look so good,” Billy said, his poor thin face scrunched up in worry.

  Brady turned at the sound of Billy’s voice. His eyes narrowed in a kind of low cunning.

  “Come over here, boy,” he whispered. “I have something to show you.”

  Billy edged backwards. “Mith Pell?” he said uncertainly.

  And then a hollow boom rang out. Puffs of dust showered from the ceiling. Billy shrank against me and I gathered him up in my arms.

  It came again and again. A large crack appeared in the brickwork about twenty feet down. I heard faint shouts.

  “In here!” I screamed. “We’re here!”

  The booming redoubled in intensity. Moments later the head of a sledgehammer broke through the wall of the tunnel and a beam of pure, sweet electric light pierced the darkness.

  I didn’t dare leave John, but Billy dashed down the tracks and started to help, pulling the loose bricks away as the hole slowly grew bigger. As soon as it was a few feet wide, uniformed patrolmen began pouring through.

  I pointed to Brady. “He’s been shot in the leg,” I said. “But he can wait. This one needs a doctor right away. His name’s John Weston.”

  “We need a stretcher down here!” one of the policemen shouted through the hole. He looked at Brady. “That’s Mr. Hyde, is it?”

  “Yes. His real name is Leland Brady.”

  The officer stared at him with contempt. “Ain’t much, is he?”

  And he wasn’t, not anymore. Brady seemed shrunken, like a piece of fruit left in the sun.

  The tunnel rapidly filled with people. Several medics arrived. I squeezed John’s hand while they loaded him onto the stretcher.

  “We’ll need your statement outside,” a sergeant said to me calmly. He looked very interested as to what that might be.

 
“Of course.”

  One of the medics was crouching over Brady. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings now, staring into space with a vacant look, a strand of drool dangling from his chin.

  “You should tell that man to be careful,” I said. “He’s still—”

  Without moving his head an inch, Brady’s left hand whipped out and seized the medic by his neck. His right slithered into the open black doctor’s bag. It all happened almost too fast to follow. But then I saw the flash of a scalpel.

  In one hard motion, Brady slit his own throat.

  He fell back gurgling. The medic shouted in horror, struggling to free himself as Brady clung on with a death grip.

  “Get him off, get him off!”

  A wall of blue uniforms surged around the thrashing pair, shutting off my view of Brady’s last gruesome moments.

  And then the sergeant took me firmly by the arm and dragged me to the hole, which had been widened into a rough arch. “Get her out of here,” he said to the officers stationed in the basement storeroom beyond. They nodded and walked me up several flights of stairs to the street.

  Police wagons jammed the corner of Broadway and Warren. I stood there for a moment in a daze. The moon hung low in the sky, but it was only half full now. Not a Hunter’s moon anymore. Then someone called my name.

  I turned just as Connor came hurtling into me. We clung to each other, his face pressed tight against my shirt.

  “They wouldn’t let me go down there,” he mumbled. “Billy?”

  “Billy’s fine,” I said, trying hard not to cry. “I just hope John will be too. Have you seen him? They brought him up a minute ago.”

  We caught the ambulance as it was about to pull away. It looked like Brady’s body was being taken out of the tunnel, for the police milling around on the street all started gawking at a white-sheeted form on a stretcher.

  “Please, let me ride with him,” I begged the driver. “I’m his…sister.”

  “Get in then,” he said brusquely. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  I jumped into the back, where John lay pale and still.

  “Hey! Connor!” Billy waved at us from the curb.

  “You go,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  Connor ran off, a glad smile on his face, and we raced through the night to New York Hospital.

  “I’m sorry I shot you,” I whispered to John. “But you can’t go punishing me by dying. It’s not fair.” The tears did come then, hot and wracking. I was wiping them away when John’s eyes opened.

  “Did they get him?” he asked weakly.

  “Yes. They got him.”

  John closed his eyes again. I thought he’d passed out but then he spoke.

  “You shot me.”

  “I know. I didn’t mean to.”

  “That means you owe me.”

  “Actually, we both owe James Moran. He saved us from Brady.” It was a debt I didn’t care to contemplate.

  “Moran?” He gave a goofy smile and I wondered if they’d given him a shot of morphine. “I don’t think I want a kiss from James Moran. I’m not fond of beard stubble.”

  I stared down at him, shaking my head. Even at death’s door, John couldn’t manage to be serious.

  “Come on, Harry.” He puckered his lips, eyes still shut. “Let’s have it.”

  I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the forehead, right between the eyebrows.

  “How’s that?”

  “I suppose it’ll have to do,” he sighed.

  Then he did pass out.

  Dawn was breaking when we finally arrived at the hospital. The attendants whisked John inside and left me in the waiting room, where a pair of irate policemen found me a few minutes later. They took my statement right there. I told the truth, except for the bit about Moran. I said I was the one who’d shot Brady. One good turn deserved another.

  They questioned me for nearly an hour, but in the end, they seemed satisfied. A single gun—Myrtle’s—was found at the scene. Brady was dead, and I had a feeling no one particularly cared to make sure the bullets matched. The main thing is that Mr. Hyde would no longer terrorize New York City. And the Police Department had carried out a heroic rescue of three potential victims. The newspapers would love it.

  I slumped down in my seat as Judge Weston, Mrs. Weston and the rest of John’s tribe came rushing into the waiting room, grim-faced and peppering me with questions until John’s mother could see I was on the verge of tears. She swept me into her arms and sharply ordered them to be quiet.

  “Can’t you see the poor thing is dead on her feet?” she said.

  Mrs. Weston had John’s brown eyes, although her hair was strawberry blonde, like Rupert.

  “I’m the one who shot him,” I confessed in a hollow voice. “It’s all my fault.”

  Mrs. Weston held me tighter, although she was crying a little too. “Well, it wasn’t on purpose.” She paused. “Was it?”

  “No! I was aiming for Brady.”

  “That’s the man who committed all those terrible killings?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head and muttered something about foolish children, but she kept her arms around me and stroked my hair. The judge had gone off to harangue the nurses for an update on John’s condition. His four brothers—Paul, Andy, Rupert and Bill—silently paced up and down. It was the first time I had seen them together without laughter or arguing or general mayhem. The minutes ticked by.

  Then the surgeon came out and told us that the bullet had been extracted. It missed John’s heart by two inches, his left lung by one. They’d decided to opt for a risky procedure called a transfusion, but it appeared to have worked. John’s pulse and blood pressure were no longer falling. It had been a very close thing. But he was young and fit. They expected him to recover.

  I wanted to see him. They told me I had to come back tomorrow, that visiting hours began at ten a.m. and only immediate family would be permitted in his room. I said I’d wait. But then Edward arrived and ordered me to go home.

  “I’ll stay here, Harry,” he said stoutly. “If anything changes, I’ll get you straightaway. But you’re no good to anyone in this state. Go eat something.” He eyed me up and down. “You might want to put on clean clothes as well.”

  “Alright,” I said, not moving.

  He scooted over on the bench and put an arm around my shoulders. “You stopped him,” he said. “That’s what matters. Although I still can’t believe it was Mr. Brady! My money was definitely on George.” Edward seemed slightly disappointed. Then his face brightened. “Though I must thank you for introducing me to Virgil the Goat. The boy is extraordinary! He taught me how to palm a card so discreetly I don’t think even John Chamberlain’s dealers would detect it. I’m considering taking him into my employment. Just for parties, of course.”

  Edward walked me to the front doors and shooed me out.

  “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said. “And congratulations, Harry.”

  It was over.

  Sort of.

  The hospital was on Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, so I declined Edward’s offer of a ride and walked the few blocks home. It was the peak of the morning rush hour. I looked such an absolute fright that even my fellow New Yorkers, who made a habit of being unfazed by anything the great metropolis threw at them, gave me a wide berth.

  I hardly noticed. My brain swam with conflicting emotions—horror, guilt, relief, triumph. As I turned the corner on Tenth Street, I thought about this city. How all the bustle and money and flash and bright new electric lights hid other secret places. Dark places that were just a rabbit hole away. The poor souls who’d tumbled down there, never to emerge again.

  We’d closed one of those holes, sealed it tight, but others would open in its place.

  Mrs. Rivers threw the front door open and hugged me hard. Then she stepped back.

  “You can tell me all about it later,” she said. “Good luck, Harry.”

  I looked at the table ne
xt to the door. A small black hat with a blue ribbon had been tossed carelessly on top of yesterday’s mail.

  I went slowly into the kitchen.

  A severe-looking young woman sat in one of the ladder-back chairs. She had long raven hair and grey eyes that seemed to look right through you.

  “Hello, Myrtle,” I said.

  My sister just examined me in her entomologist way. As though she were deciding whether to pin me to her board or release me into the wild.

  I got ready to run.

  And then…

  Then Myrtle began to laugh.

  19

  Saturday, October 20th

  Cold rain pelted the windows of the parlor. Autumn had arrived with a vengeance, as it tended to do this time of year. October in New York often debuted with the feel of an Indian summer, but as Halloween approached, the temperature would suddenly drop and blustery winds would sweep in from the north, creating little tornadoes that sent newspapers flying and filled your mouth with grit if you got caught in one.

  The rain started two days ago and hadn’t let up since. I didn’t really mind. It was cozy in the upstairs parlor. Mrs. Rivers had baked a batch of oatmeal cookies, of which only a plate of crumbs remained. The steady downpour drummed against the panes as I wiggled my toes under an afghan.

  John sat in his usual place, perusing a nasty textbook on skin diseases. His left arm was still in a sling, but he’d learned to manage well enough with his right and the doctors promised it would be off within the month. Connor lay by the fire, chin propped in his hands. John seemed to be inspiring the boy to greater things, although his choice of reading material wasn’t exactly scientific: something called Risen from the Dead: Episode One, The Medical Student.

  I was busy putting the final touches on my report to the S.P.R. Uncle Arthur had promised to submit it for me, and I was almost done.

  We’d learned a few things since the events in the Beach Pneumatic Transit Tunnel. A watchman at Brady’s Maiden Lane office saw him leave on the nights of the murders (all save Anne Marlowe’s, when he crept out of his own home). Despite the heat, Brady wore a long overcoat which the man thought strange. He was also seen lighting a cigarette, although he had never smoked before. The coat no doubt covered the soldier’s uniform he had taken from Straker’s flat. Detective Mallory confirmed that Brady’s boots matched a set of prints found next to Anne’s body at the grain elevator.