Read Online Death and the Arrow by Chris Priestley - Free Book Online

heard came from a hollow-eyed woman near the bar, sitting with a baby at her breast.
    “There’s our boy,” said Ocean, pointing to the corner of the room.
    Sitting at a table opposite the door was the man they had come to find. He was no longer dressed as a soldier of His Majesty’s army, but wore a shabby black coat, threadbare at the cuffs, bald at the elbows. His head was bare and covered in a fine stubble; his forehead sparkled with beads of sweat. On the table in front of him, his hand rested on a loaded pistol. He never took his eyes off the door as they walked over.
    “Are you Sergeant Quinn?” asked Dr. Harker.
    “If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be asking. What do you want?”
    “May we sit down?”
    “You may dance like the Queen of the May so long as you do not block my view.” The three men sat down. Tom could not help following the sergeant’s gaze toward the open door and the light that leaked in from it.
    “We are seeking information,” said Dr. Harker. “We believe you may be of some assistance.”
    “I find that very hard to believe,” said the sergeant. “But ask away. It passes the time, and I’ve wanted for company these last days.”
    “A friend of ours was killed. We seek his killer.”
    “Do I look like a wise woman? How would I know who killed your friend? I never saw one of you before this day and I have only recently returned to these shores.”
    “It was a recent murder,” said Ocean.
    “Even so...,” said the sergeant. “What business is it of mine? I know nothing about it.”
    “This friend of ours, he had a Death and the Arrow card on him when they found him.” For the first time, the sergeant looked at Dr. Harker—but only for a second before returning to his vigil.
    “You know something of the Death and the Arrow murders, do you not?” said Dr. Harker.
    “Some,” said the sergeant, pulling a Death and the Arrow card from his pocket.
    “If you know the killer,” said Tom, “please tell us where we can find him.”
    “If I knew where to find him,” said the sergeant, “do you think I’d be sitting here waiting for him?” With that he ripped the card into pieces and tossed them onto the table next to the gun. “And here I wait. Man or Devil or the Reaper himself, I’m ready.”
    “But you think you know what he is, don’t you, Sergeant Quinn?” said Dr. Harker.
    “And why would you say that?”
    “Because you identified the body. You saw the arrow and you had seen many like it before, had you not, when you served in the Americas?”
    “Who... Who are you to tell me what I know?” said the sergeant.
    Dr. Harker reached inside his coat and, with a flourish that made everyone round the table leap back in astonishment, he produced the tip and broken shaft of the arrow given to him by Dr. Cornelius.
    “It was a Mohawk arrow, was it not?” he shouted, and drove the point of the arrow deep into the tabletop.

A ROBBERY IN AMERICA
    Tom, Dr. Harker, Ocean, and the sergeant all stared at the arrow tip jutting from the grimy wooden planking. The blade picked up the yellow glow of a nearby candle and shimmered as it trembled back and forth.
    “This is the arrow that was taken from the first victim—from Bill Leech’s body,” said Dr. Harker. “You knew him, did you not?”
    “That I did,” said the sergeant, mesmerized by the arrowhead. “That I did. He was trouble to me alive as well as dead. He was no more born to soldiering than I was to play the fool. Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s the rest of it.” Onto the table he tossed a broken arrow shaft with a set of feathered flights.
    “It’s a perfect match,” said Tom.
    “You broke this off, did you not,” asked Dr. Harker, “when you identified Bill Leech?”
    “I did. I knew that workmanship, that heathen craft. I’d seen Mohawk arrows aplenty in my time.”
    “But not in London.”
    “No,” said the sergeant. “Not in London, that’s very true. You’ve