The Anubis Gates

Looking over his shoulder, Doyle caught a freeze frame glimpse of Horrabin only a giant pace away, his face grinning maniacally like a Chinese dragon and one white claw extended. Doyle leaped sideways into the street; he tumbled, rolling with only inches to spare out from under the hammering hooves of a cab horse, and then he scrambled to his feet and sprang up onto the step of a carriage and braced himself there with one hand on the window sill and one on the roof rail.

The carriage’s occupants were an old man and a young girl. “Please speed up,” Doyle gasped, “I’m being chased by—”

The old man had angrily picked up and poised a lean walking stick, and now with all the force of the first breaking shot of a pool game drove the blunt end at Doyle’s chest. Doyle flew off his perch as if he’d been shot, and though he managed to land on his feet he instantly fell onto his hands and knees and then rolled over a couple of times.

The ruin-faced, one-eyed old creature huddled in a doorway giggled and clapped his papier-mache hands silently. “Ah, yes yes! Now into the river, Doyle—there’s something I want to show you on the other side,” chittered the Luck of the Surrey-side beggars.

“God save us, he’s been shot!” shouted Horrabin. “Get him while he’s still got any breath in him, you dung beetles!”

Doyle was on his feet now, but every breath seemed to spread a crack in his chest, and he thought that if he started coughing now he’d die of it. One of his pursuers was only a few paces away, advancing with a confident smile, so Doyle dug into his pocket, fetched out the heavy bracelet and pitched it with all his strength into the man’s face, then without pausing to see what effect it had he turned and hobbled to the far curb, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into an alley.

“Tomorrow night’s dinner you all are unless you bring him to me!” shrilled Horrabin, froth flying from his vermillioned lips as he did a woodpecker tap dance of fury on the north sidewalk.

One of his beggars hurried forward but had misjudged the velocity of a Chaplin Company coach and went down under the hooves, and one of the front wheels had cut across his middle before the driver was able to wrench the horses and vehicle to a halt. By now all traffic had come to a stop in this section of the Strand, and drivers were shouting at each other and, in a few cases, lashing at one another with their whips.

Horrabin stepped off the curb and began poling his way through the confusion toward the opposite side of the street.

* * *

Doyle emerged from between two buildings and clattered down an ancient set of wooden stairs to a sort of boardwalk that ran along the top of the glistening riverbank. He hurried down to the end of one of the piers and crouched behind a high wooden box, and his breathing gradually slowed to the point where he could close his mouth. The river air was cold, and he was glad Copenhagen Jack didn’t insist that his beggars appear half-clad in cold weather—though it was an effective touch. He pulled his jacket and shirt away from his collar-bone—the knife cut was still bleeding pretty freely, though it wasn’t deep.

I wonder who the hell that was, he thought. It couldn’t have been one of Doctor Romany’s people, or Horrabin’s, for Jacky told me they definitely want me alive. Maybe it was some rival of theirs… or even just a solo lunatic hobo-killer, some prototype Jack the Ripper. Doyle gingerly touched the long cut. Thank God, he thought, that Horrabin’s man arrived when he did.

He rubbed his chest and then inhaled experimentally, filling his lungs. Though his breastbone stung, and he was doubtlessly developing the major bruise of his life—so far—there was no grating sensation; the vicious old man’s cane had probably not broken anything. He exhaled and leaned wearily against the box, letting his feet dangle over the water.

The yellow dots of lanterns on passing boats, and their reflections, stippled the blackness of the river like a Monet painting, and the lights of Lambeth were a glowing chain on the close horizon. The moon, a faint orange crescent, seemed to be balanced on the railing of Blackfriars Bridge half a mile east. Behind and above him to his right were the lights of the Adelphi Terrace, looking like some fantastic pleasure ship viewed from water level, and he could hear faint music from there when the breeze slackened.

He could feel another coughing fit building up in his throat and chest, but fear gave him the strength to suppress it when he heard a slow, heavy knocking coming his way along the boardwalk behind him.

* * *