Captain Adam (32 page)

"That can wait till morning," said Goodwife Bingham. "Lillian, back to the kitchen. We're going to have a wash."

"No, no," Adam cried. "Tomorrow morning may be too late. We must get this while the memory's fresh. I think Lil could walk right there— now. She'd never be able to do that tomorrow."

"Now see here. Captain Long. We're monstrous grateful for all you've done, but Lil don't go out in the dark any more—not even if she was to be escorted by a company of the Queen's horse!"

"I'll go, sure," said Lillian.

Adam rose.

"Ma'am," softly, "it's not a time to hide under the bed. We've got a chance to break up this gang, if we act fast. We won't be long. And once we've found the place we'll bring Lil right back."

"She don't go out," said Mrs. Bingham.

Lillian, munching her sugar bun, looked from one to the other.

"Ma'am, if nobody ever does anything about this, if they don't ever do more than that cowhearted Lamson, you'll have it all over again. We're near 'em—let's get 'em! Your own husband told me this morning, right here in this room, that if that gang ain't cleared out soon they'll be snatching the babes right out of bed!"

"He's right, Mary," Hal Bingham said. "We got to go now."

"She don't leave this house!"

"It ain't just Lillian, ma'am, though it's her we're thinking of first. But there's others. There's other mothers, too. We may not get these villains, ma'am, but we're bound by our faith in the Lord to try."

"He's right, Mary," Hal said.

The woman gave in suddenly. She sank to a stool, and for the first time she wept. Elbows on knees, head in hands, she rocked a bit, while the tears streamed down her face. She began to moan.

Hal Bingham put a hand on his daughter's shoulder and he leaned close to Adam.

"Come on," he whispered. "Before she changes her mind."

The last to leave, Adam Long looked back from the doorway. Good-wife Bingham still sat on that stool, her shadow enormous on the wall beyond. She only rocked or swayed a little, but the shadow swung halfway across the room and back. Her moans were low.

There were few to see the curious walk these two men took with the child, no one really to watch it. Respectable London had shuttered itself in. The streets were deserted. There was no fog, and it was warm for that time of year. The air was oddly light and unsure of itself. It would stiffen erratically, waxing ominous, slamming a loose shutter, kicking up a whirlpool of dust and tiny sticks; then immediately afterward it would die, leaving silence.

They stayed close to Lillian, who was clear-eyed and cool. Lillian mostly looked down as she walked. She had probably looked down while walking with the strangers. She did not hesitate. The thing was so fresh in her mind that she could follow her instinct, not talking, letting her body take her. She did not go fast, but neither did she waver.

They had walked perhaps half a mile, and had made a dozen turns, some right, others left, when in the middle of a small somnolent street Lillian pointed.

"That's it."

She appeared not to have the slightest doubt, and the house fitted her description.

There was nobody in sight up or down the street. No light showed.

"What d'ye think we ought to do?" Hal Bingham breathed.

"Knock up the nearest magistrate. Who is he?"

"Man named Nixon. A right 'un, they tell me. But he might not be willing to smash in the door just on a little girl's say-so."

"If he won't do it," said Adam, "I'll go dovm to the schooner and order my whole crew up here, and we'll do it."

He examined the door closely, to see if he could make out any sort of name or number. There was none. He stepped back.

"You're positively sure now, Lil, my beauteous?"

"I am pos-i-tive-ly sure," Lillian said with great aplomb. "They got me all the way up on this stone before I broke away. I was standing here—"

She had passed in front of Adam and stood between him and the door.

Then this happened: The door was opened a few inches, and a hand came out. The hand grabbed Lillian by her dress. The door was opened a little wider, and Lillian was yanked in—out of sight. The door was slammed shut. There was the sound of a bolt being thrown.

Lillian had not made a squeak, hadn't had a chance to. The thing had happened in the blink of an eye.

Adam threw himsclt against the door. He couldn't so much as quiver it. There was a latch, which he rattled frantically. There was no keyhole, no opening of any sort.

"Go down to the schooner and get the men! All of them!"

"The magistrate—"

"Blust the magistrate! Take too long to make out warrants! Tell Forhes to bring a spar!"

Hal Bingham ran away.

This street was paved, if somewhat sketchily. Adam had kicked a loose stone a moment before. He found it, prised it fully free. Holding it high in both hands, he started for the door again.

He stopped, dumbfounded. He lowered the paving stone.

The door stood open. Nothing but darkness showed beyond.

"Won't you come in?" said a voice from that darkness.

Adam looked up the street, down the street. He was alone. Yet minutes might count. If he ran he could be chased, hacked to pieces.

He dropped the stone. He drew.

"Now d'ye know, I think I will," he said.

A O He walked with his sword held before him at arm's length. JL CD The street was dark, but the darkness massed inside the

doorway was deeper and seemed solid, like a wall, or a pile of some black material—sand, loam.

The instant after the point of his sword had passed the threshold Adam jerked it back. Yet he himself sprang forward, crouching.

Something hit the floor with a thudding shock, just inside the threshold, about where his hand would have been had he followed the sword as he'd started to. The miss, he calculated, came from the right. So he skittered around that way, plunging into the dark as though into water, and stabbed blindly—once, twice. His steel met something soft. There was a high thin, piglike sound.

Adam whirled around, still crouching. Something slished past his left shoulder and touched his left elbow with as dainty a sting as a bee might have made. He cut, but hit nothing. There was a gasp—and the door was slammed.

Previously there had been at least a drizzle of light from the street. Now there was no light whatever.

Adam didn't move his feet, and he resisted an urge to reach out with both hands. He did not know this hall; but the man who had closed the

door, the man with the club, did. Adam swished the air—right, left, high, low—with his sword. He had a long reach.

A door was opened upstairs. There were steps up there. On Adam's right, high, a feeble light appeared.

"Henry! You get him?"

From a few feet in front of Adam: "No! 'E got John instead!"

"Look out, Henry!"

Adam had lunged instantly at the sound of the second voice, the one near him. As someone upstairs walked a hall holding a candle, the shadows of rail palings flicked erratically across the wall, one by one; but none of the light, yet, reached the entrance hall.

Adam's point met something, he couldn't tell what. He tried to retrieve the blade. It was stuck.

There was a screech of either pain or fright, probably fright.

Adam got the blade loose.

There was a scrabbly sound on his right, like that of a very large rat. Adam advanced in that direction.

He stumbled, but did not lose his balance. The man upstairs rounded the head of the staircase, the newel post there, and was holding his candle high. For the first time Adam could see something.

It was a lower step he had stumbled over. Immediately around him there was nothing. The door was shut, and there were no windows. There was no furniture or arras behind which a person might hide. Adam shared this space with a single man, or perhaps it was no longer a man, merely a corpse. John, the one who had tried to sandbag him, sat in a corner, hunched forward, his head averted, his hands, palms up, limp on either side. There was a great deal of blood.

The stair before Adam was steep but it was wide, and the railing on his right—there was a wall on the left—was low.

Halfway up this stair, sidling like a scared crab, was a smallish man, presumably Henry.

At the head of this stair stood the man with the candle. He was a very large man, even allowing for the tricks of light and for his altitude, allowing that is, for the fact that x'\dam looked up at him. He held the candle in his left hand. In his right was a rapier.

"You beefwit! Here—hold this!"

Henry had reached the comparative safety of the upper hall. He squirmed around behind the big man. He took the candle.

"Hold it," said the big man, "while I carve the whoreson."

There were three things Adam might do now, and he reviewed them in as little time as it takes a flea to jump from here to over there.

He could run. But he could be overtaken, even supposing that he got outside. Nobody would interfere with a brabble in a London street after

dark, unless the watch happened along, one chance in fifty. And the big man would doubtless be reinforced.

He could wait for the big man to start down the stairs, as in fact the man was about to do, and meet him halfway. Here he'd be at a disadvantage.

Or he could rush to the top of the stairs and meet the man there. This was what he decided to do.

Four at a time he went up.

He had reached the third step down before his steel met the other's.

Adam cut in low, raising his blade as he straightened it into line. This forced the other point high. Not giving the man a chance to disengage, Adam went up another step. Both blades were out of line now, the points high. The hilts clacked together.

The men were so close that if either had had a dagger he could have finished the fight with his left hand. Neither did.

Recovered from his surprise, the big man pushed hard, trying to force Adam down the steps. But Adam made the top. He slithered his buttocks around the newel post and sprang backward, disengaging.

The big man attacked. He was fairly fast and had a long reach, but he was wild. He fought contemptuously—not as one who puts no value on his own life but rather as one who puts none on the skill of his adversary. That is, he fought like this at first.

Adam's riposte caught him high on the right arm, near the shoulder. It couldn't have hurt much, but the big man stepped back. He was panting.

"Get that candle over here! How can I see to slice the bastard!"

This upstairs hall was wide and the ceiling was high. When Henry got closer, timorously placing himself about midway between the men as far off on Adam's left as he could get for the railing, Adam for a wild moment thought of snuffing the candle. But he would not be lunging here under the watchful gaze of the man who called himself Carse. This candle was not held in a golden stick stolen out of a galleon, but in the hand of a highly nervous man who might and probably would move it or even drop it if he saw Adam switch his attack. Besides, what if Adam did put it out? What then? Even if in the dark he slipped past the big man and got downstairs and out, how would that help Lillian Bingham?

Adam thought of Lil's mother, the shadow that swung across the wall of the Hearth Cricket ordinary while the woman wailed. He attacked.

He did not go in full-length. He had plenty of time—and indeed the longer he could make this last the better—and he wanted to feel the big man out.

The big man's defense was weak. It could be that he wasn't accustomed

to parry, having always been the aggressor. When flustered, he really only had one counter. It would be easy to double-counter.

Adam nodded, and stepped back. Deliberately he put his blade under his left arm, undid all the buttons of his waistcoat, hiked up his breeches, took the sword again, and fell back into guard position.

He attacked.

He made the double-counter neatly enough and hit the big man again on the upper right arm near the shoulder, a much deeper wound this time. But the big man did not give ground. Instead, his blade straight-out, his arm stiff, he attacked.

Here was Adam's meat and gravy. Carse on Providence had spent many an hour teaching him various ways of disarming a man who attacked in this fashion—because, Carse had said, so many of 'em do, especially when they get excited.

Adam smiled. He might have been making the moves in time with directions called out by a master. In low; point high; catch the steel far down on your own; cut out and high until your point's in line again; flip it up.

Obedient as any goshawk to a whistle, the sword leapt from the big man's hand. It turned twice in the air, and fell on the floor at Adam's feet. Adam stepped on it.

The big man was no fool. He hesitated not an instant, but turned and ran.

Henry dropped the candle and ran after him.

There was a door at the end of the hall, a door Adam had not previously hoticed. The two kidnappers went through this, fast.

Adam got his foot in the doorway and pushed.

He might have forced it open, but the candle, on the floor, was guttering out. He ran to the candle, and the door was shoved shut and he heard a bolt thrown. He got to the candle barely in time.

He was about to pick the sword from the floor—not that he wanted it for himself but he didn't care to leave weapons behind him while he explored this house—when a sound from above caused him to straighten, his head lifted.

It could have been the crying of a child, perhaps a small girl.

Sword in hand, holding the candle high, he went upstairs.

He found nothing in the hall above but four doors, each locked. He heard the sound again—from a place still higher.

He went up to the next floor, the top one.

Here the crying was clearly audible, and it was that of a girl. It came from behind a heavy door that was bolted on the hall side.

"Is that yoti, Lillian?"

The sobbing ceased.

He pushed back the bolt. This could be a trap. He footed the door open, then stepped back, the candle held high.