Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Chapter 8

  The Barndoor Skate Saloon was just close enough to the docks to be somewhat disreputable, but not so near as to prevent a gentleman such as Allan Tambling from paying a visit despite the slovenly air. A woman wearing a great deal of makeup called to us from her post near the door. “Hey, gents, buy a lady a drink? I’ll make it worth yer while. One at a time or both at once, whatever ye prefer.”

  I removed my hat and gave her a little bow. “No thank you, ma’am, but I wish you well in your night’s endeavors.” She was still crinkling up her brow and trying to determine my meaning when we passed through the door and into the saloon.

  Griffin chuckled. “My, my. I remember a time when you would have all but died from embarrassment from such a salutation.”

  “Then clearly my association with you has done nothing to refine me,” I replied.

  To my surprise, his smile faltered slightly. “I never intended to drag you down to my level.”

  What strange mood rode him tonight? “I rather like your level,” I said. “And if I’ve become a bit more worldly, surely it is to the good?”

  Instead of answering, he said only, “Keep close, unless there seems reason for us to split up.”

  The saloon itself seemed fairly typical of the few I’d seen: tables crowded with mostly male clientele and the occasional woman, a long tin-topped bar to one side, and frightful growls and yells from a corner in the back indicating a rat pit. The cartilaginous skeleton of the saloon’s namesake hung on the wall behind the bar. No one paid us any particular attention; apparently, various sorts of strangers wandered in and out of this neighborhood on a regular basis.

  Griffin led the way to the crowded bar. The bartender, a round man with an excellent mustache, gave us a smile as he wiped down a glass. “What can I get you gents?”

  “A beer for each of us,” Griffin said with a smile of his own. When the barkeep deposited the foaming glasses in front of us, Griffin reached into his vest and pulled out a small picture in a frame. “If you don’t mind my asking, do you recognize the man on the right?”

  I leaned in, as curious as the barkeep. The picture showed Ernest and Allan standing together with a woman I didn’t recognize. Griffin must have taken the photo from their uncle’s house. Had he gotten Ernest’s permission, or simply helped himself?

  The bartender squinted at the photo. “Ain’t that the one I read about in the papers? The one who went crazy and murdered his uncle?”

  “So the police believe,” Griffin said noncommittally. “We’re trying to retrace his steps. Apparently, he ate lunch here on Saturday. Do you remember him?”

  “He was here? The madman? In my bar?” The barkeep’s eyes lit up. “I guess we’re all lucky to have escaped with our lives, eh? I wonder where he sat—maybe I can charge a little extra to drink in the same chair as the lunatic murderer!”

  “You don’t remember him?” Griffin prompted.

  “No, sir, but Saturday is right busy for us. Fellows come in as soon as they get paid and start drinking, straight on to midnight. My help had to go home sick, and I was in such a rush, I wouldn’t have known it if my own mam came in for a drink.”

  I had the feeling he wouldn’t let such a minor detail interfere with an attempt to make money from having an accused lunatic in his bar. By closing time tonight, there would no doubt not only be the “murderer’s chair” scheme in place, but he’d probably be selling some concoction as the “murderer’s drink.” The most expensive he had on hand, I assumed.

  “But you’ve seen him in here before?” Griffin prodded.

  “Not that I recall, no.”

  I had a feeling our visit would prove a waste of time. Griffin seemed to come to similar conclusions. “I see,” he said. Pulling out his card, he handed it to the barkeep. “If you remember anything, don’t hesitate to contact me.”

  I expected him to try questioning some of the regular customers, but instead he seemed content to sit and finish his beer. Trusting he had some plan in mind, I did the same. When we were done, however, Griffin simply left a tip, slid off his chair, and led the way outside.

  The prostitute, thankfully, had left, no doubt having found more favorable prospects. “That’s it?” I asked Griffin, once we had passed beyond the amiable gaslight in front of the saloon. How long would it be until that damnable electric light penetrated even a place such as this?

  “Not what you expected?”

  “No, I rather thought you’d badger or charm everyone in the saloon until you came upon someone who’d seen something.”

  “I might yet,” Griffin admitted. “If we make no headway otherwise, I’ll return on Saturday, during the hours Allan was here. But I hope to have him freed by then.”

  The fog had thickened while we spoke to the bartender; the street lamps cast only faint golden halos in the gloom. Objects seemed to appear suddenly from the murk, only to slink back into it once we’d passed. A cab rattled past, the bright clink of harness and clop of hooves muffled by the heavy mist. Our path had taken us nearer the docks than I liked, and I realized with a start I heard the lap of the ocean.

  “Griffin, this isn’t the way home.”

  “I know,” he said in a low voice. “We’re being followed. Don’t look!” he added, when I would have cast a glance over my shoulder. “I hope to lose them on the wharves, so we can see who has such an interest in our doings.”

  My heart beat rapidly. Could our pursuer be connected to Griffin’s case? Perhaps even the mysterious person who had knocked at the door before—presumably—murdering Victor Bixby before Allan’s eyes? Or a simple footpad, or even a policeman?

  Griffin led the way past the warehouses lining the waterfront. Mounds of crates and barrels awaiting receipt or transfer turned the area into a maze. Nets and lines formed added obstacles. The air stank of fish.

  “Not much farther,” Griffin murmured. “Just past this pile of crates up ahead, we’ll duck off to the right and—”

  Two men stepped out from behind the very stack of crates, blocking our path.

  “Drat,” Griffin said in an almost conversational tone.

  Both men were roughly dressed and had the look of sailors about them. One lacked an ear, while the other sported exotic tattoos on his face. No doubt they knew this part of town far better than Griffin, and had slipped ahead of us, while their fellow came up from behind.

  Griffin took his revolver from his coat and held it at his side. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “Out for a stroll?”

  Footsteps approached behind us, and I turned to see the third man emerge from the fog. I took him for the leader, as he said, “You know what to do, boys. The dweller in the deep will feed on their corpses tonight.”

  With chilling howls, all three drew wicked knives and charged us.

  ~ * ~

  Griffin fired, but the shot merely grazed the head of one of the men. He would have fired again, but was forced to leap to the side to avoid the slash of a heavy knife.

  Then I could pay no more attention to his struggle, because the third man rushed at me, knife raised. Weaponless, I dodged around the other side of a stack of sacks, hoping to keep my skin intact for at least a few more seconds. A docker’s hook lay atop the sacks. I snatched it up.

  My assailant lunged at me. I yelped and jumped back, trying to swing the hook at his head at the same time. The tip of his knife parted my shirt and left a long rent in my vest. My wild jab with the hook kept him from gutting me.

  “Going to make things hard on yourself?” he asked. “Why? Just close your eyes and the ocean will sing you to sleep.”

  I ran onto the pier, in the vague hope I might find some way of defending myself, or at least fending off his assault. The boards thudded beneath his boots as he chased me. Damn it, nothing but nets in need of mending, brushes with half the bristles missing, and an abandoned bucket of pitch.

  My shoes slipped on boards gone slick from fog and foam. I fetched up against a piling and fell,
the rough wooden pier stinging my palms, the hook flying out of my reach. The rogue laughed, a horrible sound, and I rolled onto my back to see him running at me with his knife extended.

  I grabbed the bucket of pitch and threw it at him with all my strength, shouting the secret name of fire.

  The pitch burst into flame, sticky gobs of it striking my attacker. He let out a truly horrific shriek, his knife falling to the ground as he frantically tried to beat out the flames. The gooey tar stuck to his skin, spreading with every movement of his hands, and within seconds he lay writhing in agony on the pier.

  The one-eared man ran toward us, whether to help his friend or to kill me, I didn’t know. Silently hoping this would work, I wrapped my arms around the piling I leaned against and concentrated on the waves below.

  For an instant, nothing happened, and the running footsteps drew ever closer. Then, with an odd, rushing gurgle, a great surge of water poured over the pier, sweeping everything before it. I caught a final glimpse of the blazing man, the flames dying as he vanished over the side, followed by his cohort. The wave pushed at me as well, and for an instant I had the strangest impulse to let go of the piling. To ride the swell back into the ocean and dive deep…

  The surge receded, although the sound of the waves grew, the bay becoming as chaotic as if I’d reached down with a giant hand and splashed it. Distant cries and curses echoed from the docked ships, now pitching up and down in their moorings, their sides scraping against the piers or else snapping ropes as they sought to pull free.

  “Whyborne!”

  Griffin ran to me, hand outstretched, his shoes splashing in the puddles left from the wave. “My dear, are you injured?”

  “No.” I accepted his hand up. His face blanched at the sight of my shirt, and he peeled back the edges of the slice, peering at the skin beneath as if he hadn’t believed me. As for him, he had a scrape on the knuckles of his right hand, and blood on his coat. “What of you?”

  “The blood isn’t mine,” he reassured me. Smoothing my ruined shirt back into place, he tugged on my sodden coat. “Thank goodness for the freak wave.”

  “Er, yes.” I tried to look innocent, but my voice must have given me away.

  His hands stilled. “It was a freak wave, was it not?”

  “Well…not precisely.”

  “By which you mean not at all?” he asked in exasperation. “Damn it, Whyborne, you promised you would only experiment with the Arcanorum’s spells under my supervision!”

  “Perhaps,” I allowed. “But it saved my life just now. How can you object to that?”

  His face darkened. “I don’t. But for God’s sake, you’d just set a man on fire! Couldn’t you have done the same, or blown the other man off the pier, or something? How many spells do you truly need?”

  “The water spell comes easily to me,” I said through gritted teeth. I certainly wasn’t going to admit to him it wasn’t really supposed to. “I’ve done no harm, except to a man who meant to kill me. If you’d rather have come upon me gutted here on the pier, then say so.”

  He paled, no doubt envisioning the scenario. “No. No, of course not. But you lied to me.”

  “I kept certain things private,” I clarified. “Just as you kept private the fact you’ve been corresponding with Cousin Ruth.”

  He flinched, and I knew I’d won. “My correspondence with Ruth was purely innocent, from my perspective at least. You know that.”

  “Do I?”

  Griffin ran his hand over his face. “Very well. Let’s not argue. As you said, the spell kept you alive, and for that I am very grateful. We should leave, in case there are more of them about.”

  I had the grace not to show my triumph in my expression. “Who were the men who attacked us?” I asked, following him from the pier. “And what did they mean by ‘the dweller in the deep’?”

  “I don’t know.” The body of the tattooed man lay sprawled at the foot of the crates, a gaping hole in his chest where Griffin had shot him. Tattoos showed not only on his face, but on his forearms, emerging from beneath rolled-up sleeves. Griffin knelt by him and carefully lifted one wrist. “Ah. I thought I glimpsed that.”

  “What?”

  He twisted the limp arm around, exposing the lines of ink to my sight. There, on the dead man’s forearm was the same eye-like symbol Griffin had found in Bixby’s study.

  “They weren’t random attackers,” I said. “There’s some connection to Bixby’s murder.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Griffin let the dead man’s arm fall back to the dock and stood up, wiping his hands on his handkerchief. “Which, in turn, means there is something going on far larger than a simple theft for the antiquities market, or even the bloody death of Allan’s uncle. I fear our investigation has turned over a rock, and all the unpleasant things hidden beneath are beginning to wriggle into the light.”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “An unsolved murder, an occult symbol, a stolen relic…and now we are targets once again. Could this be the work of the Brotherhood?”

  “It does rather seem like their sort of mischief,” I agreed with a heavy sigh. “Very well. I suppose this means I have to visit my father.”

  ~ * ~

  The next afternoon, I knocked on the door to Whyborne House.

  Griffin had offered to accompany me, but I overruled him. If the Brotherhood were involved, I felt fairly certain Father wouldn’t kill me out of hand. I was less certain he would extend such protection to any one else, let alone my male lover.

  The butler, Fenton, answered the door. “Master Percival,” he said, his voice liquid with contempt. “I wasn’t informed you were expected by either Mr. or Mrs. Whyborne.”

  “I’m not,” I said shortly. As a child—and later, to be honest—I’d been terrified of Fenton. Now I mostly found him tedious. “I’ve come to see my father.”

  “He and Master Stanford are sequestered in the study. It is not a conversation open to interruption.”

  Stanford, in Widdershins? Not a good sign. Normally my older brother kept to New York, where he lived with his wife and children, while handling Father’s various business interests in the city. But if the Brotherhood were involved in this mess, his presence made all too much sense.

  Barging in would do me no good. “Very well,” I said. “Inform Father I’m here the instant they adjourn. In the meantime, I shall visit Mother.”

  Fenton glared at me, but could make no reasonable objection, and so stepped aside.

  The interior of the mansion had changed little since my childhood: dark paneled wood with the portraits of dead ancestors, relics from the Revolutionary War, priceless paintings, and antique vases. The house’s gloomy, ponderous air pressed down on me, seeping into my lungs with every dusty breath, as if I walked the halls of a mausoleum. I couldn’t imagine living here again; had I stayed any longer than I did, I should have gone mad.

  How did this compare to the farmhouse where Griffin had come to manhood? I had no doubt it had been simpler, the furnishings plain, no gilded candelabra or clocks encrusted with emeralds. But warmer? That I’d never questioned, and now even less having met his parents.

  Still, I’d always had at least one ally in this house. Mother lived in a room on the uppermost floor. Spacious windows let in plenty of light, the long curtains stirring in the slight breeze. Large bookcases lined the walls, their shelves groaning under the weight of paper and ink. A portrait of the Lady of Shalott hung above the fireplace; the lady had been modeled on my mother, painted shortly after my parents wed.

  Mother lay on her divan, wrapped in a dressing gown and reading a book. As soon as I entered, she set it aside and rose, an expression of welcome on her face which undid some of the tense knot in my chest. “Percival! What an unexpected pleasure. Have you brought Griffin with you?”

  Her hope to see Griffin brought a genuine smile to my lips, and I wished I could answer in the affirmative. We had never discussed it openly, but I felt certain she l
abored under no illusions as to the nature of my relationship with him. “I’m afraid not. His…well, his parents are visiting.” It wasn’t the real reason he hadn’t accompanied me, but it sounded better than I’m afraid Father might be plotting the end of the world. Again.

  She gestured for me to sit by her. “I see. And how is their visit going?”

  I settled on the divan, taking the opportunity to study her face. Although she’d had two children with no more effort than any healthy woman, she’d been stricken suddenly near the end of her third pregnancy, and had delivered my twin sister and myself early. My sister hadn’t lived long enough to even be named, and my life had been in question for some time after. Mother had never recovered from her illness, and I dreaded the day when she would inevitably succumb.

  At the moment, however, she looked as well as she ever did: too pale by half, her skin nearly translucent, the lines around her eyes deeply graven by pain. But those eyes were still sharp and fierce as a hawk’s, unchanged from my earliest memory.

  “They are under the impression Griffin lives alone,” I admitted. “I’ve met them, and they seem very kind, but they’ve brought a girl. Griffin’s cousin, but only by adoption. Griffin scoffs, but I think they wish him to marry her.”

  A sigh escaped Mother, and she put a hand to my arm, squeezing sympathetically. “I always feared a difficult path lay before you.”

  What did she mean? I’d always believed her the one person in all the world who would care more for my happiness than the gender of the person I chose to be happy with. Had I misjudged? Did she mourn the wedding I’d never have, the grandchildren who would never be born?

  I feared her answer, but I had to know. “Are you disappointed in me?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise—then she hugged me fiercely, with all the strength in her fragile body. “Of course not! My only regret is the age we live in makes your road a hard one, never that you walk it. Ancient Greece would have been more amenable to you, I think. But I am very, very proud of you, Percival. You must never doubt it.”