Bad River by Ralph Cotton

Author:Ralph Cotton [Cotton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Earlier in the night, James Radlear Claypool had woken up and discovered his head and entire body were now hairless—even his eyebrows were gone—and half of one ear was missing. He’d realized he was in a bed in the Frenchman Hotel, a bed that smelled of burned hair, urine and charcoal. He’d pulled on one of his boots, which rested on the floor, but the other would not go on his foot. He would light a lantern and see about it.

No sooner had he considered it than he walked out the length of chain around his ankle and fell just close enough to the door to strike his forehead and raise a painful welt. He clasped both hands to his head and struggled to hold back a cry and a curse. He writhed for a moment on the floor, then dragged himself onto the bed and looked at the iron shackle on his right foot.

What the hell . . . ? Am I under arrest? No! He thought about it as he stared at the chain. The shackle on his ankle required a key to open it. So . . . He looked around the shadowy room. There wasn’t a key in sight. Then he looked down at the floor and saw that the other end of the chain was simply hooked around a leg of the bed.

Well, that’s crazy. . . .

He held his head and shook it slowly. After a moment, it came back to him. He had told Irish Mike Tuohy that he had a habit of walking in his sleep under certain conditions. Mike, under his instructions, had shackled him to the bed for his own safety.

“All well and good,” he’d told himself, raising the leg of the bedstead and freeing the other shackle.

But now he was feeling better. It was time to get his fingers back in the pie. He had watched the streets and not seen Sims, Jack Swift or any of their men. He intended to find out why.

His first stop would be the doctor’s house. The doctor’s housekeeper, Irena, always heard things Claypool might find helpful. Next stop, Father Lawrence’s rectory. Nothing happened in Bad River that the doctor and the retired priest didn’t know about. He congratulated himself on his good thinking and felt around on the chairs and furniture for his newly clean clothes. Mike Tuohy had sent them out to be washed, beaten, rinsed and hung outdoors to dry in the sunshine. The process should have gotten rid of the revolting odors left from the outhouse overflow, the dynamite blast and the smell of burned hair. Holding his nose close to his singed gray shirt, he realized the odors were still there, only a bit milder.

He had been knocked down and out for . . . what? Three days? Four? Okay, he wasn’t sure, but for a man who made his way through the world by gathering and sharing important information, he’d been left flat on his back too long.

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