Текст книги "Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

The note then detailed Adams’s enrollment of Captain Bates in a scheme involving the abstraction and transfer of a number of documents. The names of Ffoulkes, Otway, and Jeffords were mentioned; others were involved, Bates believed, but he did not know their names. Ffoulkes had been drawn into the conspiracy by the offer of money, Bates believed; Otway and Jeffords by the threat of exposure.

Bates had stolen various documents from several offices in Whitehall; he was well known there and his presence passed without remark. He had given these documents to Adams, who, he presumed, was collecting information from his other cat’s-paws, as well.

The attack upon Adams was a sham; the plan had been for Bates to meet him privately by the river near Lambeth, where Adams would pass over a small chest containing all the documents.

A boat would be waiting. Bates would create the signs of a struggle, wound Adams slightly for the sake of conviction, and then go aboard the boat, which would carry him to France, where he would deliver these documents to Mrs. Ffoulkes’s brother. The chest would contain not only the official documents but also the evidence of Bates’s gambling debts, Mrs. Tomlinson’s letters, and a sum of money. Once safely in France, he might destroy the former, send for Mrs. Tomlinson, and live in peace.

Adams had told me that Otway and Jeffords were to burgle his house for the look of the thing, then make themselves scarce, but that he would keep hold of the documents himself until they were given me. I learned later from Otway that Adams had men in hiding, who sprang upon him and Jeffords the moment they had entered the house. Meanwhile, he proceeded to our rendezvous, where other men of his employ were already waiting.

These emerged as soon as I had done my part of wounding Mr. Adams slightly, scratching his arm with a knife as agreed upon, and seized me.

I do not know what became of the documents themselves. Adams had with him a small chest, but this was knocked over in the struggle and proved to be empty. You will know what followed.

The statement ended abruptly.

This was signed by Captain Michael Bates, his signature witnessed by the governor of Newgate, and—a final touch of Bates’s sardonic humor—one Ezekial Poundstone, hangman.

Grey folded the sheets carefully together. It was a brief, clear statement, but possessed of a sufficiency of detail—names, dates, places—and the nature of some of the documents Bates had removed at Adams’s behest.

He stood looking into the pond for some time, quite unaware of where he was or what he was looking at.

Plainly, Adams’s plan had been to have Bates, Otway, and Jeffords blamed for the theft. He could not have expected what had actually happened—that the theft would be hushed up, the conspirators condemned for unnatural vice rather than theft and treason—these being, of course, quite natural vices.

What had been Ffoulkes’s part in the matter? Presumably, to conduct the negotiations with France, using his wife’s relatives as the go-between with Louis’s spymasters. But when had Ffoulkes shot himself? It seemed so long ago, and Grey’s memory of anything further back than yesterday was still undependable. He did recall one thing, though, and going hastily into the house entered the library and rummaged through the drawer into which he was inclined to decant miscellaneous papers, until he emerged with a smeared and worn-edged broadsheet, the faint smell of coffee still in its creases.

He hastily unfolded Bates’s statement to check a date. No, Ffoulkes had shot himself a few days before the arrest of Bates, Otway, and Jeffords.

The theft would have been discovered very shortly; Adams could not delay in executing the part of his crime designed to shield himself from blame. But what of the other part? The delivery of the stolen material to France? With Ffoulkes dead, that pathway might be closed.

He folded the letter again, and thrust it into his pocket. These were all questions that could wait. The important thing was that he now had a tool that might be used to open up Bernard Adams like a keg of salt herring. Someone in authority would need to see this letter—but not just yet.

“Nordman!” he called, going to the hallway. “Call the coach, please—I’m going out.”

Bernard Adams’s house was not grand, but it was elegant; an Inigo Jones jewel, set in its own small private wood. Grey was not of a mind to admire the scenery, but did observe a small stone building, a little way from the house, whose ornaments showed it clearly to have been originally a Catholic chapel. Adams was not Catholic, though—could not have held such positions in the government as he had, if he were.

Not openly Catholic.

“An Irish Jacobite,” Grey murmured to himself, appalled. “Jesus.” Positions in the government. Adams’s rise to power had begun with his appointment as secretary to Robert Walpole—and Grey saw, as clearly as though the scene was taking place before him on the drive, the picture of the tall, ailing prime minister, leaning heavily on his secretary—his Irish secretary—coming down the path to visit the widow of the late Duke of Pardloe.

Clenching his jaw so hard that his teeth creaked, he bounded up the steps and pounded on the door.

“Sir?” The butler was an Irishman; so much was obvious from the one word.

“Your master. I wish to see him.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, sir, the master’s gone out.”

Grey seized the man by one shoulder and thrust him backward, stepping into the house.

“Sir!”

“Where is he?”

The butler glanced wildly round for assistance, and looked as though he was about to shout for help.

“Tell me where he is, and I’ll go. Otherwise…I shall be obliged to look for him.” Grey had worn his sword; he put a hand on the hilt.

The butler gasped.

“He—he has gone to meet the Duchess of Pardloe.”

“He– what?” Grey shook his head, convinced that he was hearing things, but the man repeated it, gaining confidence, as Grey seemed not about to run him through.

“The Duchess of Pardloe, sir. She sent a note this morning—I was there when the master opened it, and, ah…happened to see.”

Grey nodded, narrowly keeping a grip on himself.

“Did you happento see where the meeting was? And when?”

“In the Edgeware Road, a house called ‘Morning Glory,’ four o’clock,” the butler blurted.

Without a word, Grey let go of his sword and left. He felt dazed and off balance, as though someone had suddenly pulled a carpet out from under him.

It couldn’t be—but it couldn’t notbe. No one but his mother would use that title. And to use it to Adams was a direct challenge. It must be her. But how had she got back to London, and what in God’s namedid she think she was doing?

Gripped by fear, he ran down the drive toward the street where he had left his carriage waiting. Morning Glory. He knew the house; it was a small, elegant house belonging to the Walpole family. What…?

“Edgeware Road!” he shouted to the coachman, ducking inside. “And hurry!”

Morning Glory looked deserted. The shutters were closed, the fountain in the front court dry, the court itself unswept, carpeted with dead leaves. It had the look of a house whose family had gone away to the country, leaving the furniture under sheets, the servants paid off.

Neither was there any sign of a coach, a horse, or any living person. Grey mounted the stoop softly, and stood for a moment, listening. The place was still, save the cawing of rooks in the bare-limbed trees in the garden.

He took hold of the doorknob; it turned in his hand. Slowly letting out the breath he had been holding, he opened the door and stepped warily inside.

The furniture wasunder sheets, he saw. He paused, listening. No voices. No sound, save his own breathing. He knew the house, had been here now and then, at musicales—the present Earl of Orford’s wife sang, or thought she could.

The doors off the foyer stood open—all but one. That one led, he thought, to the library. He put a hand on his sword hilt, but decided against drawing it. Adams was a slight man, and twenty years Grey’s senior; he wouldn’t need it.

He set his hand on the doorknob; it was white china, painted with roses, and a pang went through him at the cool slick touch of it on his hand, but there was no time now to think of such things. He eased the door gently open—and came face to face with the barrel of a pistol, pointed directly at him.

He flung himself to the side, seizing a chair, which he narrowly stopped himself from throwing at the person holding the gun.

“Jesus!” he said. He stood frozen for an instant, then, quivering in every limb, set the chair slowly down and collapsed onto it.

“What the devil are you doing here?” his mother demanded, lowering the pistol.

“I might ask you the same thing, madam.” His heart was pounding in his chest, sending small jolts of pain down his left arm with every beat, and he had broken out in a cold sweat.

“It is a private affair,” she said fiercely. “Will you bloody leave?”

He paid no attention to her unaccustomed language.

“I will not. What were you intending? To shoot Mr. Adams on sight? Is that thing loaded?”

“Of course it is loaded,” she said in exasperation, “and if I’d meant to shoot him on sight, you’d be dead at the moment. Will you go away!”

“No,” he said briefly, and rising, reached for the gun. “Give me that.”

She took two steps back, holding the gun—which was not only loaded and primed, but cocked, he saw—protectively against her breast.

“John, I wish you to leave,” she said, as calmly as she could, though he saw the pulse beat fast in the hollow of her throat, and the slight shaking of her hands. “You mustgo, and now. I will tell you everything, I swear it. But not now.”

“He isn’t coming.” That much had dawned on him. It was nearly half past four—he had heard the bells strike, just before his arrival. If Adams had meant to come, he would be here. The fact that he was not…

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Adams,” he repeated. “It isBernard Adams who killed Father?”

Her face drained of all color, and she sat down, quite suddenly, on a sofa. Her eyes closed, as though she could not keep them open.

“What have you done, John?” she whispered. “What do you know?”

He came and sat down beside her, removing the pistol from her hand, gone limp and unresisting.

“I know that Father was murdered,” he said gently. “I’ve known since the morning you found him. I was there, hiding in the conservatory.”

Her eyes sprang open in shock, the same light blue as his own. He laid his free hand over hers, squeezing gently.

“When did you come back?” he asked. “Does Sir George know?”

She shook her head blindly. “I—three days ago. I told him I wanted to be in London for the marriage of a friend. He will come back himself in a month; he made no objection.”

“He will probably have objections, should he come back to find you dead or arrested.”

He breathed, feeling his heart begin to slow.

“You should have told us,” he said. “Hal and me.”

“No.” She shook her head, closing her eyes again. “No! He would never have let it rest. You know what Hal is like.”

“Yes, I do,” Grey said, smiling despite himself. “He’s just like you, Mother. And me.”

Trembling, she bent her head, and buried her face in her hands. A constant fine tremor was running through her, like the shifting of sand beneath one’s feet as the tide goes out, terra firmamelting away.

“I have lost a husband,” she said softly, to her feet. “I would not lose my sons.” Lifting her head, she gave him a quick, desperate glance.

“Do you think I know nothing about men? About you and your brother in particular? Or about the general?”

“What do you mean?”

She made a small sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.

“Do you mean to tell me that I might have told you this—any of you—and expected you notto go straight out in pursuit of the matter, regardless of the threat?”

“Well, of course not.” He stared at her in incomprehension. “What else could we do?”

She drew a trembling hand down her face, and turned to the wall, where an ornamental looking glass hung.

“Would it be better if I’d had daughters?” she asked the mirror, in apparent earnestness.

“No,” she answered herself. “They’d only marry men, and there you are.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, plainly collecting herself, then opened them and turned to him, composed.

“If I’d known who it was,” she said firmly, “I would have told Hal. At least,” she amended, “I would have told him once I’d decided how best to deal with the matter. But I didn’t know. And for him—or later, you—to go charging into danger, with no clear notion where the danger lay, nor how widespread the threat might be? No. No, I wasn’t having that.”

“You may have a point,” he admitted reluctantly, and she gave a small snort.

“But you did find out.” It occurred to him, with a sense of awe, that she had never been reconciled to the duke’s death—that she had been waiting, patiently watching, all this time, for an opportunity to discover and destroy the man who had killed him. “How did you discover Mr. Adams’s name?”

“I blackmailed Gilbert Rigby.”

Grey felt his mouth fall open, and swiftly closed it.

“What? How?”

The ghost of a smile crossed her lips.

“Captain Rigby—I suppose I must call him ‘Dr. Rigby’ now—gambles. He always did, and I kept an eye upon him. I knew he had run through most of his family’s fortune, when he sold the town house his father left him, last year. He’s using some of the funds donated for the Foundling Hospital now. And so I asked Harry Quarry to make inquiries, very quietly—and to buy up his debts.” She reached toward a leather case that lay on the table beside the sofa, and flipped open the cover, to show a sheaf of papers. “I showed him them, and told him I would expose him if he did not tell me who had killed Gerard.”

What had he told Dr. Longstreet? Had she known which man it was, she would have killed him, I assure you.

Grey felt shock, but no particular surprise.

“And he did.”

“I think it was a relief to him,” she said, sounding faintly surprised. “Gilbert is not a bad man, you know—only weak. He could not bring himself to tell the truth at the time; that would have cost him everything. But he was sincerely appalled at what had happened—he said that he did not know for certain that Bernard Adams had killed Gerry, and had managed to keep his conscience dormant all this time by telling himself that Gerry must have committed self-murder. But faced with the truth—and with those—” she cast a sardonic eye toward the leather case, “he admitted it. He still has something to be lost, after all.”

“And you don’t?” Grey asked, piqued at the thought of her planning to face Adams by herself.

She eyed him, one brow raised.

“A great deal to lose,” she said evenly. “But I am a gambler, too—and I have a great deal of patience.”

He picked the pistol up, and carefully uncocked it.

“Did you calculate the odds of being caught?” he asked. “Even if you could prove that Adams killed Father—and Gilbert Rigby’s admission is far from proof—you’d very likely be hanged for murder. And what would Sir George think of that?”

She looked surprised.

“What? What do you think I am?”

“You don’t want me to answer that, Mother. What do you mean?”

“I mean I didn’t intend to kill him,” she said indignantly. “What good would that do? Beyond the minor gratification of revenge, what would I want with his miserable little life?” she added bitterly.

“No. I meant to make him confess the crime”—she nodded toward the table, and Grey saw that besides the leather case containing Rigby’s debts, there was a portable writing desk, as well—“and then let him go. He could leave the country if he liked; he would be exposed, he would lose everything that mattered to him—and I could give Gerry back his honor.”

Her voice trembled on the last word, and Grey brought her hand on impulse to his lips.

“I’ll see it done,” he whispered. “I swear it.”

Tears were running down her face, but she took a deep breath and held her voice steady.

“Where is he? Adams?”

“Running, I think.” He told her what Adams’s butler had said. “As he hasn’t come, he probably supposes that you dohave proof. And there’s this—” He fumbled in his pocket, turning out the usual assortment of trifles, among which was Captain Bates’s postmortem denunciation.

She read it in silence, then turned back to the first page and read it again.

“So he’s gone,” she said flatly, laying the papers on her knee. “Taken the money and fled to France. I frightened him, and he’s gone.”

“He hasn’t left the country yet,” Grey said, trying to sound encouraging. “And even if he should escape—plainly he haslost his position, his reputation. And you did say you don’t want his life.”

“I don’t,” she said, between clenched teeth. “But this”—she smacked the papers with the back of her hand, sending them to the floor—“is useless to me. I don’t care that the world knows Bernard Adams for a criminal and traitor—I want him to be known as my husband’s murderer; I want your father’s honor back!”

Grey bent to pick up the papers from the floor, and rising, tucked them back into his pocket.

“All right,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I’ll find him.”

He hesitated for a moment, looking at his mother. She sat upright, straight as a musket barrel—but she looked very small, and suddenly her age showed in her face.

“Will I see you…home?” he asked, not sure where her home might be. The house in Jermyn Street had been closed; should he take her to Minnie’s house? His heart sank at thought of the hubbub thatwould cause.

“No,” she said, obviously having thought the same thing. “I have a carriage; I’ll go to the general’s house. You go.”

“Yes.” But he didn’t go, not at once. Thoughts, fears, suppositions, half-baked plans were whirling through his head. “If you should need…help…if I am not nearby—”

“I’ll call on Harry Quarry,” his mother said firmly. “Go, John.”

“Yes. Yes, that—” A sudden thought struck him. “Does Quarry know? Everything?”

“Certainly not. He would have told Hal at once.”

“Then how did you induce him to…” He nodded at the leather case. To his surprise, his mother smiled.

“More blackmail,” she admitted. “Harry writes erotic verses—very elegant, really. I told him that if he didn’t do what I asked, I’d tell everyone in the regiment. It was all quite easy,” she said, with a certain degree of complacence. “It is possibleto deal with men. You just have to know how.”

Grey was so flabbergasted at the revelation of Harry Quarry’s identity as the Sub-Genius that he barely noticed where he was going, and in consequence had walked a good quarter mile before remembering that he had left a coach waiting in a side street near Morning Glory. He turned back, hurrying, trying to think where to start in pursuit of Bernard Adams.

He thought it very likely that his mother was right; Adams was bound for France. That being so, though—would he take ship from the nearest port? Grey could quite possibly catch him up, if that were the case; he had no more than an hour’s start, perhaps two. But what if he meant to travel overland, take ship from a more distant port, to confuse pursuit?

Was he expecting pursuit, though? He was presumably acting on the supposition that the duchess had proof of his actions, but it would take more than a day or two for her to make that proof—had it existed—known to anyone who might take action.

And if he did notexpect pursuit—but he had left his house abruptly, without pausing to pack any personal belongings. That argued precipitate flight…

Caught up in these musings, and half-running in his anxiety, Grey mistook the side street where he had left his coach, became convinced that the coachman had become tired of waiting and left, realized his mistake, and went back. By the time he found the coach, he had sweated through his shirt, his arm was throbbing, and his chest had begun to burn. He seized the door of the coach, swung it open, and stepped in, then halted, startled to find someone already sitting inside.

“Here’s hoping I find your honor well,” one of the O’Higgins brothers said politely. “The devil of a time ye’ve been about your business, and you’ll pardon my sayin’ so.”

Grey sank onto the squabs, wiping a sleeve across his sweating forehead.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waitin’ on yourself, to be sure.” He leaned out the window and called up to the coachman, “On, me boy. Where I told you, and be quick, now!”

“And where is that?” Grey was recovering his breath and his wits, and eyed O’Higgins warily.

“The regimental offices, to be sure,” the Irishman said. “That’s where he’ll be.”

“He?”

O’Higgins rolled his eyes.

“Bernard Adams. A poor excuse for an Irishman, and him a wicked apostate, too,” he added piously, crossing himself.

Grey relapsed against the cushions, realization dawning.

“You read Bates’s letter.”

“Well, we did, then,” O’Higgins agreed, without shame. “Proper shockin’, it was.”

“Not nearly as shocking as you think,” Grey said dryly, beginning to collect himself. “Why do you think Adams is at the regimental offices? And come to that, how do youcome to be here?”

“Oh, I follied your honor, when you left Adams’s house,” the Irishman said, airily. “My brother having gone after Mr. Adams, when heleft, just afore you. Don’t be fretting, sir, even if he’s gone before we get there, Rafe will stick to him like a bur.”

“But why has he—”

“Well, the money, to be sure,” Mick said, as though this were obvious. “He hid it in our fortune-teller’s cabinet. And he’s gone to your brother’s office for to get it back—not realizin’ that it’s gone.” The Irishman grinned cheerfully. “We thought the least we could do to show our gratitude to your honor was lead ye to him.”

Grey stared at him, barely noticing the tooth-rattling bump of the carriage over rough cobbles as they hurtled through the streets.

“You found it. The money.” Something else occurred to him. “Was there anything else there—papers?”

“Oh, there were some moldy bits of trash wedged beneath the clockwork, to be sure; we burnt them,” O’Higgins said comfortably. “As to having found any money, I couldn’t say as to that, sir. But I will say that, havin’ had the chance to think it over, Rafe and me decided that perhaps the army don’t suit us after all. We’ll be for going back to Ireland, once this business here is done.”

The coach rattled round another corner and pulled to a stop, horses blowing, at the corner of Cavendish Square. It was late in the day; the regimental offices would be deserted. Which was, of course, what Adams had waited for, Grey realized.

Tossing money up to the coachman, he turned toward the building, to see a slouching figure detach itself from a patch of evening shadow and come toward him.

“Is he inside, then?” Mick asked, and Rafe nodded.

“Just gone in, not five minutes ago.” He glanced at Grey, then up at the building’s facade.

“No need to call the guard, I think,” he said. “Should your honor care to deal with the matter man to man? We’ll see he don’t get out, Mick and me.” He lounged against the doorjamb, looking most unsoldierly, but thoroughly competent, with a hand on his shillelagh.

“I—yes,” Grey said abruptly. “Thank you.”

The door was unlocked; he went in and stopped, listening. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, and emptiness murmured in his ears.

All the doors in the ground-floor corridor were closed. Hal’s office was upstairs. Almost by reflex, Grey drew his sword, the whisper of metal against the scabbard cold in the silence.

He made no effort to mute his own footsteps. It didn’t matter if Adams heard him coming.

The corridor upstairs was empty, too, lit only by the fading light that came through the casement at the end. A sliver of light showed to the right, though; Hal’s door was open.

What ought he to feel? he wondered, as he walked along the hall, bootheels steady as a heartbeat on the floor. He had felt too much, for too long. Now he felt nothing, save the need to continue.

Adams had heard him; he was standing by the desk, his sallow face tense. It relaxed as he recognized Grey, and put out a hand to the desk, to steady himself.

“Oh, Lord John,” he said. “It’s you. I was just looking for—”

“I know what you were looking for,” Grey interrupted. “It doesn’t matter.”

Adams’s eyes turned wary on the instant.

“I fear you have mistaken me, sir,” he began, and Grey raised the point of his rapier and pressed it to the man’s chest.

“No, I haven’t.” His own voice came oddly to his ears, detached and calm. “You killed my father, and I know it.”

The man’s eyes went huge, but with panic, not surprise.

“What? You—but, but this is nonsense!” He backed away hastily, hands batting at the blade. “Really, sir, I must protest! Who would tell you such a—such a taradiddle?”

“My mother,” Grey said.

Adams went white, pushed the blade aside, and ran. Taken by surprise, Grey went after him, to see him running full-tilt down the corridor—at the end of which stood the burly figure of Rafe O’Higgins, shillelagh at the ready.

Grey followed, fast, and Adams whirled, jerking at the knob of the nearest door, which was locked. Adams’s face went tight as Grey approached, and he pressed himself back into the doorframe, hands against the wood.

“You can’t kill me!” he said, voice shrill with fear. “I’m not armed.”

“Neither was the cockroach I stamped on in my quarters last night.”

Adams stood his ground for an instant longer, but as Grey drew within lunging distance, his nerve broke and he dodged away, rushed back past Grey, running for his life.

There was nowhere for him to go. The corridor stretched ahead of him, a long dim tunnel, lit only by the rainy twilight of the tall window at the end—a window that opened on thirty feet of empty space. Adams beat upon the locked doors as he passed, shrieking for help, but no one answered; the doors were locked. It was the stuff of nightmare, and Grey wondered briefly whether the nightmare was his, or Adams’s.

He hadn’t the strength to run himself, and there was no need. His chest pulsed with each heartbeat, and he could hear each single breath echo in his ears. He walked slowly down the corridor, placing one foot in front of the other. The hilt of the sword was slippery in his hand. He found himself drifting to one side or the other, so that his shoulder brushed the wall now and then.

The door just beyond Hal’s office opened, and a curious head poked out. Mr. Beasley, Hal’s clerk. Adams saw him and rushed toward him.

“Help! Help me! He’s mad, he’s going to kill me!”

Mr. Beasley pushed his spectacles up his nose, took one look at Grey, lurching drunkenly down the corridor with a sword in his hand, and popped into Hal’s office like a mole into its hole. He slammed the door, but was not able to lock it before Adams threw his weight against it.

Both men fell into the office in a tangle of limbs, and Grey hurried as fast as he was able, arriving in time to see Mr. Beasley lurch to the desk, hampered by Adams, who was clawing at his leg. The elderly clerk, now missing both spectacles and wig, snatched a letter opener from the clutter, and with a look of profound indignation, stabbed Adams in the hand with it.

Adams bellowed with pain and let go, rolling up into a ball like a hedgehog. Mr. Beasley, the light of battle in his eye, picked up Volume III of Histoire de la Dern м ere Guerre de Boh и mein both hands and brought it down on Adams’s head with some force.

Grey braced himself with one hand on the doorjamb, his feeling of being caught in an inescapable dream intensifying.

“Leave him to me, Mr. Beasley,” he said gently, seeing the old man, gasping for breath, looking wildly about for a fresh weapon. Mr. Beasley blinked, squinting blindly at him, but then nodded, and without another word, backed out into the hall, dived into his clerk’s hole, and shut the door.

“Get up,” Grey said to Adams, who was trying to crawl under Hal’s desk. “Get up, I said! Or I’ll run this straight up your cowardly arse, I swear it.” He prodded Adams in the buttock with the tip of his rapier by way of illustration, causing the minister to yelp in fright and bang his head on the underside of the desk.

Moaning and groveling, Adams backed out, and at Grey’s peremptory gesture, rose to his feet.

“Don’t.” He swallowed visibly and wiped a hand across his mouth. “I beg you, sir. Don’t take my life. It would be the gravest mistake, I assure you.”

“I don’t want your fucking life. I want my father’s good name back.”

Sweat was running down Adams’s face, and his wig had slid back on his head, showing a thin bristle of grizzled hairs beneath.

“And how do you propose to accomplish that?” he said, the news that Grey didn’t mean to kill him seeming to embolden him.

Grey stepped in close and fast, seizing the man’s neckcloth in his free hand and twisting. Adams went red in the face and clawed at him, kicking. One kick landed painfully on his shin, but he disregarded it. The neckcloth popped before Adams’s eyes did, though, and Adams sank to his knees, clutching histrionically at his neck.

Grey tossed down his sword, and drew the dagger from its sheath. He sank down on one knee, face to face with Adams, and gripping him by the shoulder, placed the point of the knife just below one eye. He was past threats; with a short, soft jab, he thrust the tip of the dagger into Adams’s eye and turned it.

He let go, hearing the thunk of the dagger as it fell to the floor, Adams’s shriek as a distant sound, muffled as though it were underwater. Everything swam about him and he closed his eyes against the dizziness.

He had to struggle to stand up; it felt as though two hundred-weight of sandbags rested on his shoulders. But he managed, and stood swaying, waves of hot and cold washing over him, the muscles of his breast on fire, his left arm a dead weight by his side.

Adams was curled into himself, both hands clasped to his eye, making a high, thin moaning noise that Grey found very irritating. Small drops of blood spattered the confusion of papers on Hal’s desk.

“My eye, my eye! You have blinded me!”

“You have one left with which to write your confession,” Grey said. He was very tired. But summoning some last vestige of strength, he raised his voice and shouted, “Mr. Beasley! I want you!”