‘Eight hundred miles,’ Killigrew corrected him.
‘Why, I’m willing to bet the case gets thrown out of court before the first week is out!’
‘I wish I shared your confidence. It would help immensely if I could produce the real murderers.’
‘And you think those two gentlemen that Mr Tabard sent done it?’
‘One in his mid-forties, with wavy black hair and dark eyes, the other in his thirties, tall and well built, with blond hair and blue eyes?’
Leventhal nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yur, that sounds like them. They came in here only yesterday.’
‘They’re Russian spies.’
Leventhal’s jaw dropped. ‘Rooshians! Oy gevald! Mr Killigrew, you must believe me, I had no notion… I thought they were English gentlemen; if I’d known they was Rooshian spies, I’d’ve thrown ’em out of here in short order, I can tell you! Why, like as not I’d have set the crushers on ’em!’
‘Like as not they’d’ve killed you before you got the chance,’ Killigrew told him. ‘Where can I find them?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t give me an address.’
‘Is that usual for your customers?’
‘It is when they want illegal documents!’
‘Tabard said something about a Prussian passport. I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking who this passport is intended for?’
‘I thought it best not to aks.’
‘But they must have given you a description?’
‘Age, thirty-three; height, six foot one; dark hair, grey eyes. The passport’s to be in the name of Niklaus Hergerscheimer.’
Given that the name was almost certainly as false as the passport itself would be, Killigrew was not all that interested in that. ‘Presumably you must have given them a date as to when it would be ready by?’
Leventhal nodded. ‘Nearly four months from now.’
‘Four months! They can’t be in much of a hurry.’
‘It’s a specialist job,’ protested the printer. ‘First I’ve had to get hold of a real Prooshian passport to use as a template.’
‘You mean that some pickpocket of your acquaintance has been waiting down at the docks for some poor devil to arrive from the Zollverein, so he can steal one?’
‘One pickpocket! An ’ole team of them, more like. We was gonna return the passport when we’d finished with it; or hand it in at a police office, anyhow. I suppose you’re going to report all this to the crushers?’
‘And have them kill the trail stone-cold dead by arresting you and your pickpockets?’ Killigrew shook his head. ‘It’s not you I’m after; it’s the men who murdered Miss Maltravers. What arrangements did they make to collect the passport?’
‘I’m meeting them at ten o’clock on Saturday the thirtieth of June at a place of their choosing. I hand over the passport and they give me the balance of the gelt they’re paying me.’
‘Where?’
‘All right, all right! Hold your horses! I’m just coming to that, aren’t I? If you’d only let me finish, I was going to tell you that I’m going to meet them at the—’
One of the window-panes shattered, throwing shards of glass across the shop and carrying the sound of a gunshot in from the street.
Chapter 5
The Great Globe
Killigrew threw himself down behind the display in the window, his heart pounding. Drawing a revolver from the pocket of his greatcoat – he had started carrying it at all times since Nekrasoff and Ryzhago had turned up at his rooms – he glanced across to where Leventhal had been standing behind the counter, but there was no sign of the printer.
‘Mr Leventhal? Are you all right?’
There was silence.
And then a voice came back from behind the counter: ‘Some schtarker takes a shot at me, how do you think I feel?’
‘But you’re not injured?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’d better tell me where you arranged to hand over the passport.’
‘What, now you want me to tell you?’
‘Later might be too late.’
There was silence from the other side of the counter while Leventhal considered the implications of this. ‘I’ve got a better plan,’ he called back at last. ‘Why don’t you deal with the schtarker with the gun, and then I tell you?’
‘If you told me now, there’d be no need for the… um… schtarker… to shoot you.’
‘You going to tell him that?’
Killigrew was too busy listening to reply. It was not that everything had gone quiet outside, quite the opposite: the passers-by who had been shocked into silence by the sound of the shot had now resumed their street-cries and conversations, as if nothing had happened.
‘Whoever it was, I think he’s gone,’ he told Leventhal.
‘Why don’t you stick your head up and find out?’
‘Why don’t you stick yours up?’ Killigrew replied testily.
‘Because I’m not a naval officer. I don’t get paid to get shot at.’
‘I’m only on half-pay.’
‘Good! Maybe you’ll only get half-shot!’
Tentatively, Killigrew raised his head above the level of the display. A second pane was shattered as a bullet splintered the chipboard inches from his nose. He ducked back down hurriedly.
‘I think he’s still there,’ said Leventhal.
Killigrew did not bother to dignify the comment with a reply.
‘How about you, Mr K?’ called Leventhal. ‘You still there?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m not going anywhere.’
Outside, after some initial screams – the people in the street realising that the first shot had not been their imagination, someone really was shooting out there – all had fallen silent, the street suddenly deserted. The scene had an air of unreality about it. This is going to make an interesting couple of paragraphs in my memoirs, Killigrew thought ruefully. The Battle of Bedford Street: How I was pinned down in a Covent Garden printer’s shop.
‘You want to know something?’ called Leventhal.
‘Is it pertinent to our current predicament?’
There was a pause. ‘I think so, yes.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘I don’t think it’s me he’s trying to kill.’
‘Of course it’s you he’s trying to kill. Obviously he thinks you’ve got some vital piece of information that will help me, and he’s trying to stop you from passing it on.’
‘If he wants to stop me from giving you a vital piece of information, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to shoot you? Besides, they still want this passport, don’t they?’
‘Good point.’
Killigrew looked around for something – anything – he could use to get him out of this situation. Short of sending the marksman a calling card or an invitation to a ball, there was not a lot that was going to be much help. ‘Have you got a stick?’
‘A schtick?’
‘You know: something long and thin.’
‘Would a straight-edge do you?’
‘Perfect!’
‘Coming your way!’ A steel-edged ruler came flying over the counter to land a couple of feet from where Killigrew lay. He pulled it closer to him under the heel of one half-boot, then took off his hat and put it on top of the stick, slowly lifting it into view in the window. But the mystery marksman was not falling for that one.
Killigrew raised an eye to the bullet hole in the chipboard display. The street vendors and passers-by had scattered. He scanned the first-floor windows of the shops on the other side of the street. Seeing they were all closed, he lowered his gaze to where—
Another shot drilled a second bullet hole a few inches to the left of the first, and he ducked down instinctively, but this time he had seen the puff of smoke from a long, thin barrel protruding over the top of the barrel organ.
An expert rifleman, he knew, could reload his weapon in twenty seconds; and while this one had not actually killed anyone yet,
he was coming pretty close. Still, twenty seconds was twenty seconds. Killigrew picked himself up and dashed out into the street.
Another shot came in his direction before he had even crossed the pavement, soughing within an inch of his head. He threw himself flat. So the marksman had a winger; that was something he had not counted on. How long until the first rifleman reloaded? He thought he still had a few seconds. The shot had come from somewhere near the bottom of the street – Bedford Street inclined down towards the Stand – so Killigrew picked himself up and ran to where a water cart was parked near the top. No sooner had he reached it than the first marksman fired again. The bullet chipped the cobbles at Killigrew’s feet: the man was aiming at his legs, exposed between the wheels of the cart. Looking over the top of the barrel on the cart, Killigrew could now see the second marksman, reloading his rifled musket where he sat on top of a carriage parked towards the bottom of the street.
Killigrew levelled his revolver at the man on the carriage. He was not much of a shot, but he might be able to…
He caught himself. At that range, all he was likely to do was hit one of the innocent passers-by walking down the Strand.
He tucked the revolver back in his pocket and grasped the handles of the water cart, pulling it back off the chock wedged under one wheel to stop it from rolling down the street. He edged it around, and after giving it an initial shove it was a question of letting gravity do most of the work. He kept hold of the handles to guide it, but soon he was running to keep up. The man on the carriage squeezed off a shot at him, drilling a hole through the barrel that splashed two streams of water across the cobbles.
When Killigrew was less than ten yards from the barrel organ, he let go of the handles, tripped, and rolled on the cobbles. The water cart smashed into the organ, which in turn smashed into the marksman who had moved around the side of it. All three went over with a discordant crash.
Killigrew rose up on one knee. He was now far enough down the street to take a shot at the man on the carriage without being in danger of hitting anyone on the Strand. He squeezed off a couple of shots, splintering the coachwork of the carriage. The other marksman jumped down from the driving seat and ran down the street.
Leventhal emerged from his shop, brandishing what looked like a roller from one of his printing machines. Killigrew indicated the man who lay dazed and groaning amidst the wreckage of the barrel organ and water cart.
‘Tie him up and wait by him until the police get here.’
Leventhal looked disgruntled. ‘You’re the sailor; why don’t you tie him up?’
Killigrew proffered his revolver, grip-first. ‘Very well. Take this and go after the other one.’ He nodded to where the second man had almost reached the Strand.
Leventhal’s eyes widened. ‘Other one? All right, all right! I’ll get some string!’
Killigrew thrust his revolver back in his pocket – only a half-wit looking to cause a fatal accident ran with a gun in his hand – and sprinted down the street after the second man. When he reached the Strand, he stood on tiptoes, searching the heads of the crowds. There was no sign of his quarry. He jogged a short distance towards Charing Cross, looking about, until his eye was caught by a commotion on King William Street, which branched off to his right. A blind bootlace-seller sprawled on the pavement, his wares scattered across the cobbles, and the little girl who had been selling lucifers and fusees with him shook her fist after a figure running up towards Chandos Street.
Killigrew broke into a run, jinking in and out of the shoppers in his path. At the top of King William Street, the marksman made a sharp left on to Adelaide Street. By the time Killigrew had reached the junction, the man was already fifty yards off, ducking down the side of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields before he reached the Strand again.
Killigrew’s only chance of catching him lay in trying to guess where he would go next. He was heading for Trafalgar Square, but Killigrew guessed his quarry would not try running across the square: it was too open, and it would probably not occur to a killer in a hurry that his pursuer would not dare risk a shot in that crowded place. So he would have to turn right, up St Martin’s Lane.
Killigrew took a short cut down the alley on the north side of St Martin-in-the-Fields. He had almost reached St Martin’s Lane when the marksman appeared, running across the mouth of the alley. Wisely, he had abandoned his rifle somewhere so it would not mark him out in the crowd. Seeing Killigrew bearing down on him from his right, he instinctively turned left, dashing through the traffic on the street to disappear into the alley at the back of the National Gallery.
Killigrew followed him, dodging between an omnibus and a hearse, and hoping the latter was not an omen. The hearse driver swore at him as his lead horses reared in fright, but Killigrew had already entered the alley. His quarry was just a dozen yards ahead of him now, turning right up Castle Street, and then left down Orange Street.
As fit as Killigrew was, his feet and thighs were staring to ache, and he was running short of breath. But his quarry could be in little better condition. The two of them turned right again, past the Sablonière Hotel into Leicester Square. The marksman ran straight across to the rotunda housing James Wyld’s Great Globe at the centre of the square, pushing past the people queuing to enter the portico at the north side. They shouted after him in annoyance.
Killigrew drew his revolver, holding it pointed in the air as he too pushed through the queue, shouting, ‘Excuse me, excuse me! Police business!’ That was more or less true, and if anyone did not believe him and summoned a real policeman, he would have no objection to a little assistance.
The marksman had already pushed over the attendant who was collecting entrance fees. ‘Fetch the police!’ Killigrew told the attendant, skipping over him. ‘Warn them he’s dangerous!’ Without waiting for the attendant’s reply, Killigrew followed his quarry into the circular passage that ran around the outer part of the rotunda, where a variety of maps, globes and atlases were on display.
Killigrew had visited the Great Globe with Araminta a couple of months after it had first opened, at the time of the Great Exhibition. Those had been happier days, a brief period when Britain did not seem to be at war with anyone, and he had squired her all around his favourite city in the world: Rules, Simpson’s, the Greenwich Tavern, the ballet, the opera, and of course numerous visits to the Great Exhibition itself to take in the thousands of items on display at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. She was gone now, and he had a job to do. He searched the crowds of people moving slowly amongst the displays, oblivious to the fact there was a killer in their midst. Two, if you counted Killigrew.
An idea occurred to him. He fired a shot into the floor. ‘Everyone down on the floor, now!’ he shouted.
A woman screamed. Instead of everyone dropping to the floor, they all started trying to run for the exits. Killigrew was almost knocked off his feet by the rush. Capital notion, Kit! he told himself wryly. He was going to lose his quarry in the crush…
No: there the fellow was, being swept into the globe itself by the people who went that way in an effort to escape the lunatic with a revolver. Killigrew went after him.
The Great Globe was… well, imagine the world turned inside out, and shrunk down to a fraction of its size. The interior was not quite spherical – Killigrew had read it was about sixty feet high and forty in diameter – but there was no telling if you did not already know that. The geography of the world had been modelled in relief on the interior surface of the sphere, at a scale of one inch to ten miles, and a series of four observation platforms rose up like a tiered wedding cake from the centre of the floor, so you could see all parts of the map other than the rough outline of what little was known of Antarctica’s geography on the floor. Strategically placed gas lamps struggled to illuminate such a vast space, and the place was dim.
While the visitors on the platform continued to peer at the sides oblivious to the commotion
in the passages outside, the people on the floor milled about uncertainly. A little boy in a sailor suit was crying, clutching at his nanny’s hand. Killigrew quickly slipped his revolver back in his coat pocket and searched the faces of the other people there for the cloth cap and rough features of his quarry, but all he saw were the side whiskers of gentlemen beneath stovepipe hats and the faces of women hooded by their bonnets.
‘There he is!’ a bearded gentleman exclaimed, and pointed an accusing finger at Killigrew. ‘That’s the feller!’
Footsteps sounded on the iron staircase leading up to the first platform. Killigrew looked up to see the man he was after pounding up the steps. Hearing the gentleman identify Killigrew, the marksman must have thought he himself was the victim of the accusation.
‘Police business!’ Killigrew pushed the bearded gentleman aside and ran up the steps after his quarry.
They reached the first platform, running alongside the railing to where the next flight of steps led to the platform above. A young man with a cane was sent sprawling as the marksman ran into him. Killigrew jumped over the young man before he had a chance to get up again.
Two more flights of steps led up to the topmost platform, slightly smaller than the one below to allow for where the sphere curved in at the top. Killigrew reached the top of the stairs in time to see his quarry cornered against the far rail.
‘Nowhere left to run!’ Killigrew shouted across, to the astonishment of the bewildered visitors there.
The man looked around desperately, and vaulted over the railing to land on the platform below.
Killigrew swore and ran halfway back down the stairs, vaulting over the banister and rolling on the platform in time to see his quarry running for the next flight. Those people who were still on the platforms tended to be crowded around the railing – no one had come to look at the middle of a platform (although the confrontation between Killigrew and his quarry was starting to draw their attention) – so the space there was relatively clear. Killigrew picked himself up and launched himself across, catching the man around the waist in a flying rugby tackle before he reached the steps. They slammed against the railing. Killigrew managed to land a punch in his quarry’s midriff, but then one of the visitors steamed in.
Killigrew and the Sea Devil Page 11