Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 13 by Marvin Kaye

Author:Marvin Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sherlock, holmes, mystery, magazine, ellery queen, alfred hitchcock
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

ONLY THE DEAD, by Gordon Linzner

Wind tore at Paddy McGuire’s threadbare ulster, drove stinging rain into his face, as he hurried across the Great Bridge. He pulled his cap more tightly onto his head and reached again beneath the coat for the cudgel tucked in his belt. Its heft should have been more reassuring.

Electric lights, first on any bridge in the world, made his shadow lengthen and shrink, lengthen and shrink, on the wooden walkway. A dozen years after the bridge opened, connecting two of the country’s greatest cities, and Paddy still marveled at that yellow glow.

But not tonight. Never had the sky seemed so dark, the city behind so looming, the choppy waters forty yards below so black and threatening. The boards beneath his feet trembled with the vibration of a passing elevated train. He thrust a hand into his right coat pocket, fingering anew his latest prize. Perhaps it was only the October night’s bitter cold, but the metal seem to burn against his flesh.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Up here he could see he was no longer being followed. In the dark, twisting streets near the fish market, footsteps echoed all around, shadows shifted in every corner. That drunken Lascar had not been as alone as Paddy’d thought, though his fellow sailors had not been close enough to save him.

Other footpads in New York’s Five Points district mocked Paddy’s frequent journeys to Brooklyn. Inefficient and corrupt and loath to cooperate as the police were on both sides of the East River, however, they occasionally captured a felon. By shifting between jurisdictions, Paddy had extended his career long past that of many of his fellows.

A gust of rain blinded him; he wiped his eyes. When he blinked them open again, what he saw made him gasp.

A crowd was racing at him from the Brooklyn side, less than twenty yards away, faces contorted in panic. A woman in the lead slipped and fell, to be trampled by the others. Paddy felt a sharp pain in his ribs, and struggled for a moment to breathe.

Yet, most disturbing, there was no of sound. The woman’s cries, the mob’s shouts, were apparently lost in the pounding rain and shrill wind.

Paddy leapt to the side of the walkway to pull himself onto one of the cables, out of harm’s way. As he reached up, he saw a wheelbarrow, a workman still gripping its handles, plunge off the far tower. What the devil was the man doing up there in this storm? Paddy froze, distracted. His hand slipped on rain-slick steel. He fell backwards onto the walkway.

Now the crowd was almost upon him, though he still could not hear them nor feel the boards tremble under their approach. He covered his head and curled up, presenting as small a target as possible, tensing for the impact of trampling heels.

A minute passed.

Two.

“Are you well, sir?”

Paddy opened one eye. A man wearing a long frock coat, holding a top hat in place with one hand, stood over him.

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