Which was the last thing she heard before something the size of a cement block hit her square in the chest with the speed of a freight train.
• • •
Chevie may have been strong and quick, but she was also small and light. The blow from her mystery attacker knocked the FBI agent over and set her skidding across the floorboards, picking up dozens of splinters in the process.
The pain was so huge that Chevie wondered if her lungs had been crushed, and she was relieved when her breathing started up again.
“Oooh,” she groaned, a blood-string swinging between her lip and the ruined shards of her Timekey on the floor.
I am stranded here.
“No fair.”
“Golgoth! Golgoth!” chanted the Rams, stamping their boots to set the floorboards a-jumping.
Chevie raised herself to all fours, wondering if her skull was fractured, thinking, Where is this Golgoth guy? Can Victorians do invisible?
She struggled to her feet, shaking her head to extinguish the stars in her vision, casting around for her attacker. There was no one in the fighting arena but Otto Malarkey.
“Where is he?” Chevie asked blearily. “Point me toward Golgoth.”
Malarkey touched two fingers to his lips, a gesture of guilt. “I am afraid, princess, that I am Golgoth. My old circus strongman name.”
Oh, crud, thought Chevie. “But I’m fighting for you!”
Malarkey removed the fingers from his lips, wagging them at the assembled Rams. “I said they could pick any Ram, and the clever bleeders picked me. After all, who better? Now I must choose between purse and pride.”
Let me guess, thought Chevie. Pride wins.
“And in that tussle, pride wins every time. I must sacrifice my wager to save my position.”
Chevie adopted a boxer’s stance, dipping her chin low behind raised fists.
Not that it matters much. With those hands, Malarkey could punch straight through my guard. I will have to rely on my speed.
The crowd’s attitude shifted from raucous encouragement to quiet, feral anticipation. There was much at stake here. Both combatants were being tested, but while Chevron was fighting for her life, Malarkey fought to prove himself loyal to his men, and he knew that there would be more than one Ram praying for him to fall and leave a vacancy for the top position.
The contestants circled each other with wary respect. Chevie’s ear was ringing with what she couldn’t help feeling was the Star Trek theme tune, which was extremely distracting. Malarkey rolled his shoulders and danced light-footed back and forth in a complicated jiglike routine that was almost as distracting as the ringing.
After a minute or so of sizing each other up, both fighters attacked at the same moment, to a tumultuous roar from the Rams. Malarkey’s swiftness was limited by his sheer bulk, and only his eyeballs could move with sufficient quickness to capture Chevie darting under his ham-fist to punch him twice in the solar plexus. Which had about as much effect as throwing a snowball at Mount Everest.
Punches not working, Chevie realized, straightening her fingers and jabbing them into Malarkey’s kidney. It does not matter if a man is as big as a house and made from red brick: if he gets a solid poke in the kidneys, it is going to hurt.
Malarkey roared and reflexively jerked his torso, which bumped Chevie into the human cordon around the fighting arena.
Rough hands tousled her hair and one cheeky so-and-so even patted her bottom.
“See that? What she done with her fingers there?” said one Ram, behind her.
“Fingers? I coulda sworn she used her thumb,” replied his comrade.
“Nah, dopey. Four fingers, held stiff, like so.” And the Ram demonstrated the move on Chevie, sending her lower back into spasm and giving Malarkey enough to time to get a grip on her neck.
Game over, thought Chevie, as her feet left the ground.
She chopped at Malarkey’s forearm and pinched the nerves in the crook of his elbow, just as Cord Vallicose had assured her would break the grip of the biggest son of a gun on this green earth. Apparently he hadn’t taken Victorian crime bosses into account.
Malarkey laughed in her face, but Chevie thought she detected a spark of relief in his eyes.
“You had help, Otto. Remember that when you’re gloating on your throne.”
Malarkey squeezed her windpipe, choking off the accusation along with her air. Chevie hung on to his arm, taking the strain off her neck, trying to avoid spinal damage, but already the lack of oxygen was blurring her vision and draining the strength from her limbs.
“Riley,” she croaked, though she knew the boy was under guard outside the throng. He could neither see her nor help her if he did catch a glimpse.
Malarkey drew back his free hand. “This pains me greatly, little maid. Yes, I prove my physical supremacy once again, but it will cost me a pretty pound to honor all the chink bet against you, not to mention the fact that I lose me own wager. I bet on you, girl, and you let me down.”
Malarkey clenched his fist, his knuckles creaking.
“I won’t kill you,” he promised. “And you should wake up with most of yer teeth and marbles.”
Chevie tried to draw away, but she was held fast. The ringing in her ears changed from Star Trek to something more strident. A simple bell. Was her subconscious trying to tell her something?
Malarkey cocked an ear, and Chevie thought for a second that he could hear what was inside her head; then the Ram king called, “Shush! Shut yer babbling gobs. Can you not see I am listening?”
Silence fell almost instantly, except for Mr. Skelp, who was just waking up.
“Wot’s occurring, m
ates? I remember having me porridge this morning and then . . . nuffink.”
Malarkey took three steps into the crowd and silenced Skelp with a boot to the chin.
“I said quiet, you dolts!”
There was dead silence, except for the curious ringing.
Malarkey’s eyes widened as his mind connected the noise with an object. “The Telephonicus! ’Tis the Telephonicus Farspeak!”
A chorused Awww rose through the Hidey-Hole’s ballroom, and all the heads swiveled, lemminglike, toward Malarkey’s throne. On a walnut parlor table stood a device, carved from ivory, in two parts: a base and cylinder, connected by twisting cables. The device jangled with each ring.
Malarkey summarily hurled Chevie into the arms of the throng.
“Hold her. Not too tight now, boys. No one hurts the maiden but me.”
He ran to the Telephonicus Farspeak and delicately answered the call, little finger raised like a duchess taking tea.
“Helloooo,” he said, his accent a little more refined than usual. “This is Mr. Otto Malarkey speaking from the HideyHole. Who is it on the hother end?”
Malarkey listened a moment, then pressed the earpiece to his chest and hissed to the Rams.
“It’s Charismo. I can hear him so clear, like he’s a fairy in my ear hole.”
No one was particularly surprised to hear that it was Charismo’s voice emanating from the earpiece, as it was Mr. Charismo who had installed the Farspeak in the Hidey-Hole. Even so, at the mention of his name, several of the villains blessed themselves, and a couple of the Catholics genuflected. A few more Rams formed triangles with their thumbs and forefingers, an ancient gesture to ward off evil.
“Come now, brothers. Mr. Charismo is a friend to the Rams,” said Malarkey, but his words sounded forced and hollow.
Malarkey listened some more, his face falling. When Charismo had finished speaking, Malarkey nodded as if that could be transmitted over the phone line, then replaced the ivory earpiece in its holder on the base.
“Well, Rams,” he said. “There’s good and bad in it. Mr. Charismo has heard somehow of the Injun and the boy. He instructs that we deliver them direct to his residence. There is not to be a mark on either, he says.”