Convicted Innocent(50)

* * * * *

Men began yelling.

Horace thought he heard a police whistle somewhere behind him in the tunnels; but that was as useful as wishful thinking for all the good it did them in the moment.

Lewis laid the fair-haired fellow low with a blindingly fast trio of kicks: one to the legs to knock him down, another to the chin, which snapped the man’s head back, and a third to the head for good measure. Caught completely unaware, the blonde went down and stayed down.

The other heavies scattered as the police sergeant rolled to his feet. His hands were free – how was that possible?

Ah yes, a knife, Horace noted. Apparently, the fellow had snagged one from his captors and then played dead (or almost dead) in order to cut through his bonds.

Another of the thugs fell in the space between one heartbeat and the next; a weasel-faced fellow fled around the pit and into a tunnel on the far side; three others – each burly and capable – formed a wheeling triangle around the policeman, their knives out and ready.

Another heartbeat.

Lewis, whose lips were clenched in a thin line, hesitated but a moment. Then he attacked his attackers.

The thug who’d stabbed David Powell fell first, hamstrung in both legs and unconscious.

Two more heartbeats.

The second large bruiser staggered back and then sat down heavily; he had no visible wounds, but seemed thoroughly addled.

Four heartbeats together.

The last one danced around the wary police sergeant, and managed to swipe a line of red down Lewis’s right forearm with his blade…before the tall policeman simply punched him in the chin. This fellow’s head snapped up and he fell backward, as straight as a board and out cold before he hit the ground.

In less than two-dozen heartbeats, Lewis Todd had nearly leveled the room.

(Somewhere in the tunnels behind the old detective, another police whistle shrilled faintly and Horace thought he might hear sounds of fighting. The whistle was far off, but closer than before. But not yet close enough.)

The police sergeant dropped to his knees beside the little clergyman’s still and crumpled form, and let out a brief, quiet, keening moan.

“Lewis,” Horace said, finding his voice. The detective hadn’t moved at all during the melee, his attention divided between Nicholas Harker and the remaining thug guarding Conway Duke.

“He lives,” the sergeant murmured, and then more sharply, “Innocent! Come here.”

The old man’s confusion only increased when Nicholas Harker took a hesitant step toward the policeman and priest, and then moved more quickly when Lewis made an insistent, beckoning gesture.

“Help him,” the tall policeman commanded when the young man reached them and knelt down.

Harker cast a frightened look back toward Horace and the others, but nodded. Lewis Todd pushed to his feet and stalked toward the old detective, Duke, and the single remaining heavy.

If Horace had ever seen an angrier, more determined expression on a man’s face, he couldn’t remember when. Whether by force of will or some power the detective had never encountered before, Lewis not only ignored the bloody wounds in his legs and one in his side (when had that happened?), but also managed to move with all the lethal grace and speed of a tiger at hunt.

The final thug took one look at those cold gray eyes and began swearing profusely.

“Throw down your weapon,” Horace said, wondering where on earth the magician was in all of the chaos. Had he miscalculated so badly?

The thug paused briefly in his swearing, exhaled in a huff, swore once more, and then lunged toward Conway Duke. In a trice, he had flung an arm over one of the uncle’s shoulders and under the opposite arm, pinning the unfortunate man to him, and pressed the blade of his knife across Duke’s throat. When Duke scrabbled at the imprisoning arm, a trickle of red bloomed under his chin; he ceased struggling at once.