The King of Shadows, page 44
Reuben read it silently. Then, to Mac who had just put another log on the flames: “Here we have it.”
“Have what?”
“An answer. I’ll read: Dear Mr. DeKay, it is with great personal interest that I write you to inform you of success in the matter posed. According to my sources, the true purchaser of the racing horse Powderkeg as well as the other animals you noted is an individual known as ‘Gentleman’ Giles Buckner, who in July bought a rather large estate and stable south of London. Buckner—and you will understand why I do not refer to him as he does himself—has been of late active in the area of Southampton, where he has influence over the docks and shipping there. I say ‘influence,’ if one takes that term to mean throttling other shipping companies by brutal force, including—this is not substantiated but highly suspected—arson, namely the burning of the Simms and Watney nautical goods warehouse last April. He is also— and this is my personal interest—said to be involved with a syndicate known as the Three Corners, which I have come up against in the past and from which I have received death threats toward myself and my new bride. I am to understand that Buckner represents one of the three, but who the other two are I do not know. Suffice to say that the Three Corners is a vicious assembly specializing in extortion, blackmail and—I am sorry to say—murder for hire. This is as much as I can discover at the present, though it appears to me that Buckner has planted himself, his third wife and their daughter on this estate with the intention of assaulting the London social bastion which so far he has been unable to do. It seems he wishes that others view him as much of a ‘gentleman’ as he calls himself, though his history is rough-and-tumble in as many back alleys as you might fear to imagine. That is all I can report, except for the fact that wedding Buckner carries its own danger, as both his two ex-wives perished in suspicious circumstances. I thank you for your faith in my abilities and for your generous contribution to the fortunes of the Herrald Agency, and I shall report further if I learn further. Your servant, Richard Herrald.”
At the end of this, Mac didn’t know what to say. It just came out: “Gulp.”
“Indeed. So this is who now owns one of the greatest and fastest horses in all of England! And knowing this, we’re going to have to sooner or later look him in the face!”
“Should Pell know?”
“Oh God forbid!” Reuben shook his head. He deposited the letter back in the envelope and intended to put it somewhere for safe keeping. “We don’t want Raymond disturbed over this. Bless him, he’s out of it. The Three Corners … ‘Gentleman’ Giles Buckner … no, God no … we need to hold all this to ourselves, and hope that outside some exclusive party he wishes to strut around in we don’t have to deal with him. Ever.”
The next season came, and the news leaked out to the racing society that Owen Kilkerry—who had garnered, for some reason, the cognomen of “Limey”—thought Nemesis was ready to take every cup and trophy that currently sat on a polished oak shelf. The news also circulated that Titan Partnership had purchased the great Powderkeg—as well as several other notable steeds—and established an estate and stables between London and Sutton to the southwest, though the identity of the titans in question was not yet known. To that inquiry, Mac and Reuben kept their mouths shut.
The season’s opening gala was held at Lord Ringgold’s family castle, attended by more than two hundred guests including Reuben, Mac and Mac’s interest at the moment the lovely and vivacious Melissa Sheffield. No titan made an appearance, which Mac thought may have been because Powderkeg was not running the following afternoon or that Giles Buckner was not yet ready to spring himself into unfamiliar social circles. The first race of the season was won by Ringgold’s best horse General Victory, with Nemesis coming in second. It was noted by all that both horses had entered new speed records in the books for the mile and quarter.
Nemesis gave a third place showing at the next race, at Kennington’s muddy field after a driving rain. Kilkerry pulled the horse from the season’s third race for a period of more extensive work sessions on the practice track, during which Powderkeg won easily at Balton Heights. The fourth race at Parmenter saw the following horses registered to compete: Nemesis, General Victory, His Honor, No Layabout, Ever More, Ben Brown, Upholder and a late entry of Powderkeg, which caused a run at the betting tables.
When all was said, done and run, Nemesis had beaten the field, with Powderkeg a length behind and General Victory a poor third. For that action, the DeKay Estates earned approximately five hundred pounds.
Powderkeg was absent the next race at Montgolf, but the crowd was thunderous as Nemesis and Proud Timothy flashed forth from the field and under the blazing blue July sky galloped neck-and-neck … this one now edging onward … now falling back and the other surging under the whip … neck-and-neck again around the far turn, the blurred hooves beating the earth, all the elegant hard-carved muscles at work, the jockeys in their bright colors and leather caps arched forward like arrows themselves … and now a racer seems to lower his head and give a mighty leap, and hear the crowd shout as they see the dark brown horse with the red mane and tail flying toward the finish line … and that will be another six hundred pounds in the DeKay treasury, thank you very much.
“Apple?”Mac asked, when they’d gotten Nemesis at home, rubbed down and relaxed and in his stall. He held it out.
The horse stared at him in silence for a few seconds. Then he gave a snort, turned away and began eating his preferred oats.
“Is it me?” Mac inquired. “I understand you take apples quite readily from Owen and from my father too, for that matter! I’ll have you know,” he said, leaning against the door, “that I once regretted that shilling I paid for you. And look at you now, all rumbly-tumbly with yourself. Feeling quite the star of the moment, are we?”
A swish of the red tail was the only response.
“If you don’t realize it,” said Mac, “you are the star of the moment. Well done.” He took a bite of the apple and started to toss it into the hay as he usually did but decided it was only the waste of a good apple, so he ate it himself as he left the gallery.
Two afternoons later, a coach turned onto the curving dirt drive that led from the main road to the DeKay mansion. It stopped with a view of the pasture where some of the horses played and the practice track where other horses worked, and after a time its own equine team pulled it smartly up to the front steps.
Mac was standing at the railing of the practice track, timing runs with the silver pocket watch specially constructed for this purpose in London when he heard, “Sir? Master Mac?”
He turned to find the houseman Hardy approaching. “Yes, Hardy, what is it?”
“I’m asked to fetch you to the house, sir, at your father’s request. A visitor has arrived by the name of ‘Buckner’.”
Mac turned away to the task of timing one of their new acquisitions, the mare Bountiful, in the quarter mile. Only fair, but worthy of work. He felt his jaw clench and his stomach roil. So the titan at last has come to stride across this hallowed earth, he thought. And perhaps with the desire to grind it under his heel?
He snapped the watch shut, grimly said, “All right,” and followed Hardy to the house.
Thirty-eight
When Mac walked into the room that his father used as an office, his first thought was that the three visitors there were far from gentlemanly for none of them stood up from their chairs, as Reuben did. Mac had been taught as a measure of respect that one always stands for a man or a woman entering a room; obviously these three were deficient in their manners.
“Mr. Giles Buckner,” Reuben said, motioning toward the lump that occupied the chair before his desk. “My son Maccabeus, Mr. Buckner.”
“Pleased,” the man replied in a voice that sounded as if he gargled with sharp blades. He gave a nod but remained firmly entrenched in the black leather. “And it’s ‘Gentleman’ Giles Buckner, to be correct.”
“Sir.” Mac returned the nod but his expression remained impassive. He saw that the other two men had taken their chairs and pushed them into the corners of the room where they might have full observance of the chamber. The other pair of the Three Corners? No, Mac decided; these two were burly professional bodyguards. One had sleepy eyes in a moon-shaped face that likely belied his attentiveness, while the other with a hooked nose and a shaved head quickly scanned Mac and then returned to his task of cleaning his fingernails with a small knife.
“A handsome lad,” said the so-called gentleman, who inserted a peppermint stick into a corner of his wide mouth. “I’ll bet he has no trouble getting under the skirts.” This was delivered to Reuben, indicating his observations of Mac were done.
“Have a chair, son,” Reuben offered, and as Mac took the remaining seat at the right side of the room Reuben returned to his own behind the desk. “Mr. Buckner has come to us with a proposition you should hear.”
“What might that be?”
Buckner twisted his squat neck around for perhaps two seconds to aim his small dark eyes at the younger man before returning his full attention to the elder, “What it is,” he said stiffly around the candy stick, “is a generous offer for that horse of yours.”
“We have a number of horses,” said Mac.
This did not cause the gentleman to remove his heavylidded gaze from Reuben. “I want Nemesis. Two thousand pounds is the offer.”
Reuben was about to respond when Mac spoke up: “Nemesis is a stronger horse than Powderkeg, yet you paid three thousand for him, did you not?”
There fell a silence, broken when Buckner sucked noisily on the stick. “How did you know I purchased Powderkeg?”
He continued staring at Reuben. “That information has not yet been released. Ay?”
“I’m guessing,” Mac amended, thinking he may have overstepped the rail. “Last year a lawyer named Foy approached us about buying Nemesis. He mentioned that the offer came from—” Tread carefully here, he cautioned himself. “The same interest who bought Powderkeg and several other animals from Bertram Robey. Are you not one of the Titan partners?”
The square, red-cheeked face with its small blade scar that drew up one corner of the upper lip gave what might have passed, in ugly fashion, as a smile. “I am the Titan Partnership. And Foy no longer works for me. He had too big of a mouth.”
Mac had the impression that a storm cloud had just drifted past the room. He realized that there was something very odd about the man’s figure. Buckner—actually a small man but as compact as a bulldog—was dressed in a suit and waistcoat of pale gray, a dark purple blouse and violently red cravat, his gray tricorn with a crimson band sitting atop Reuben’s desk where he’d positioned it. The man’s hair was light brown, closely cut, with gray streaks shot along the sides. Mac judged him to be around fifty. What was it about the figure?
Then he caught it; Buckner’s scuffed right boot had a built-up sole and heel of not less than three inches and his right arm was noticeably shorter than the left. In fact, the right side of the man’s body looked to be compressed as if the hand of God—or Satan—had given it a great inward shove that broke bones and shriveled sinews. The left shoulder was greatly wider than the right, which must give the gentleman’s tailor quite a fit to fit. Mac wondered what this condition had done to him, and how it might have played out into the present-day ruffian he most certainly was.
“Powderkeg is the stronger horse,” the ruffian said, again addressing Reuben. “In the long run, that is.” Then he gave a rasp of a laugh and directed an “Ay?” toward the two bodyguards, who obediently laughed and then shut off the laugh like the sudden finish of a pump drawing up dirty water.
“Your opinion, sir,” said Reuben. “But—and I speak for my son as well—we will not sell Nemesis for two thousand pounds. In fact, the horse is not for sale.”
“Oh, come now! Everything’s for sale! We’re just nibbling around the price, aren’t we?” Buckner removed the candy stick and regarded the end of it, which had become like a sharpened spear, before he slid it back into his piehole. “We are men of business!” he said, and the dark eyes flared like coals under the flame. “Don’t insult me by saying that what I want isn’t for sale! We both know better! All right, then! Three thousand pounds, same as I paid for Powderkeg!”
“I speak for both of us,” Mac said. “Nemesis is not for sale today, tomorrow, next week, next month or next—”
“There’s a fine talker, ay?” Buckner had thrown this remark at the two bodyguards, who perhaps did not know how to respond and so remained as silent as sphinxes. “Listen to that boy go on!” The head swiveled around once more and the flat, emotionless gaze fell upon Mac, though something about it was as heavy as a sledgehammer driving a nail between Mac’s eyes. “Ohhhhhh, you’re very proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Sir?”
“Proud of yourself! Stealing that horse for a single shilling! The old man told me all about it!”
“By that, do you mean the gracious and much-respected Mr. Raymond Pell?”
“Yeah, him. So here we sit, and both of you lookin’ …” Buckner stopped and tried again. “Both of you looking,” he said, indicating to both Mac and Reuben that elocution lessons as well as a racing stable were part of this man’s attempt to solidify his status, “at one hell of a profit, and you say ‘no sale.’ Are you out of your heads?”
“Three thousand pounds at this stage is a pittance,” Mac answered. “You know that as well as we do. This season, if Nemesis keeps performing as strongly as he is at present, we will clear at least—”
“Does this boy do all the talkin’ for you?” Buckner fired across the desk. “I thought I was comin’ to jaw with a businessman, not a bleatin’ pup!”
Your back alley is showing, Mac almost said, but he kept it behind his teeth.
“Listen.” Buckner leaned toward what he assumed was the master of the house. “I am a reasonable deep pocket. I want Nemesis and I mean to have him. All right, Powderkeg is a damned fine horse and I’ve got the reins on those other good ’uns, but it ain’t enough.” He settled back, blinked a few times, sucked on the stick and went on. “It isn’t enough. It’s my thinkin’ … thinking … to build the best racing enterprise in the whole of this country. You don’t know me, but when I get it into my mind to do something it’s got to be the grandest, ay? I won’t rest until it is. Now … sure, over the years to come I’ll find horses the equal of Powderkeg, Nemesis, Blacklegs Bobby, Jupiter and as many as you might care to name … but I want ’em now. It’s my nature, and a man’s nature can’t be denied.” His face softened, if that was possible. Mac knew this man was trying to curtail his aggression and come at the challenge from a different angle. “You grandies here … you’ve made it already. Just look at this place you’ve got! And all those other estates I’ve seen … riches on top of riches. Ay? And sons and daughters gone to fine schools and everything that gives ’em in this world. Well gents, I came up the hardest way. My education was that if you was … if you were slow pickin’ a pocket, you got your fingers busted by the big boy who ran the outfit. My maw was a dreg of the street and my pap might’ve been any one of a dozen pugs or somebody what took her when she was lyin’ drunk. But I made myself. I had the choice to stay low or try to reach up, and I did it. Now I’m tryin’ … trying … to do the better for my family, and that’s the truth of it, ay? What more can a man do, but work for his loved ones?”
Mac let all that sit for a moment, and then he said, “My father and I understand your position, but I’m sure your daughter doesn’t want for anything we ‘grandies’ don’t have.” Instantly he wished his throat had closed up before he’d uttered that sentence, for he knew it was absolutely the wrong thing to say and Reuben’s frozen expression mirrored it.
Buckner kept sucking on his candy stick for the longest, most terrible time. Staring at Reuben, at last he asked calmly, “How did you know I have a daughter?”
Before Mac could formulate an answer, Buckner turned his chair with a massive jerk toward the younger man and then eased back into it. The three-inch-higher boot beat a small tattoo on the carpet. Buckner’s face was inscrutable metal.
“You,” said the gentleman, “have been askin’ around about me. From who?”
Mac’s mind raced. The flesh of his own face felt as if he’d been staring at close quarters into a raging fire. He grasped for anything. “I took a ride down to Sutton a few days ago,” he lied by the most dire necessity. “I wanted to take a look at the Titan Stables estate. I saw a young girl on the grounds.” Keep going, he told himself, lest his courage and mouth further betray him. “I assumed she was your daughter.”
“Did you?” Again there came that awful pause. Then was heard the crunch of Buckner’s teeth finishing off the stick. “How’d you know she wasn’t a servant?”
“She was well-dressed,” said Mac, who with the greatest effort of his life kept a composed demeanor. “Was I incorrect?” He plowed on: “I saw her only at a distance.”
The blade-scarred lip curled upward to show a tooth. “You should’ve knocked at the door. Should’ve come in and had a …” Up even more went the lip. “Spot of tea,” he said.
“I only wanted a look, not a visit.” And now Mac braced himself for the next incriminating questions, which might have been Don’t you think I’ve had the stables painted a fine new color? What would you call that shade? Or: What did you think of the new garden with those hedge sculptures? when there was no garden or hedges to be sculpted.
But instead, Buckner seemed to relax a little. He said, “Next time. I’d like you to meet our Jennifer, but if you have any idea of getting under her skirt I’ll cut your head off and feed your brains to the pigs.” Then he said, “Ay?” and gave a braying laugh that Mac thought made the walls shake and certainly trembled his bones.
