Read Online The Queen of Bedlam by Robert R. McCammon - Free Book Online Page A

concerned that he was well-protected by the stupidity of the law. He did not deign to glance at Matthew, but smiled falsely and kept up a conversation with the aged but greatly respected Dutch physician Dr. Artemis Vanderbrocken, who sat on the pew in front of him.
    “Pardon me, pardon me,” said someone who stepped into Matthew’s line-of-sight and leaned over the pew toward Magistrate Powers. “Sir, may I have a moment?”
    “Oh. Yes, Marmaduke, what is it?”
    “I was wondering, sir,” said Marmaduke Grigsby, who wore spectacles on his moon-round face and had a single tuft of white hair sticking up like a little plume atop his otherwise-barren scalp. His eyes were large and blue and above them his heavy white eyebrows jumped and twitched, a clear sign to Matthew that the printmaster of New York was nervous in the magistrate’s presence. “If you’d come to any further conclusions about the Masker?”
    “Keep your voice down about that, please,” the magistrate warned, though it was hardly necessary amid the returned hullabaloo.
    “Yes sir, of course. But…do you have any further conclusions?”
    “One conclusion. That Julius Godwin was murdered by a maniac.”
    “Yes sir.” The way that Grigsby smiled, all lips and no teeth, told Matthew the questions were not to be turned aside so quickly. “But do you believe this presumed maniac has left our fair town?”
    “Well, I can’t say if-” Powers abruptly stopped, as if he’d bitten his tongue. “Now listen, Marmy. Is this more grist for that rag of yours?”
    “Broadsheet, sir,” Grigsby corrected. “An humble broadsheet dedicated to the welfare of the people.”
    “Oh, I saw that yesterday!” Now Solomon Tully showed an interest. “The Bedbug, is it?”
    “For the last issue, Mr. Tully. I’m toying with calling it the Earwig next time. You know, something that bores in deeply and refuses to let loose.”
    “You mean there’s going to be another one?” the magistrate asked sharply.
    “Yes sir, absolutely. If my ink supply holds out, I mean. I’m hoping Matthew will help me set the type, just as he did the last time.”
    “He what?” Powers glared at Matthew. “How many occupations do you have?”
    “It was an afternoon’s work, that’s all,” Matthew said, rather meekly.
    “Yes, and how many slips of the quill happened the next day because of it?”
    “Oh, Matthew could work us both into our graves,” Grigsby said, with another smile. It faltered under the magistrate’s cool inspection. “Uh…I mean, sir, that he is a very industrious young-”
    “Never mind that. Grigsby, do you know the kind of fear you’ve put into people? I ought to put you out there in the stocks for inciting a public terror.”
    “This lot doesn’t look very terrified, sir,” said the printmaster, holding his ground. He was sixty-two years old, short and rotund and stuffed into a cheap and ill-fitting suit the color of brown street mud-or to be more charitable, the good earth after a noble rain. Nothing about Grigsby seemed to fit together. His hands were too large for his arms, which were too small for his shoulders, which were too bulky for his chest, which caved in above the swell of his belly, and on down to his too-big-buckled shoes at the end of beanpole legs. His face was constructed with the same unfortunate proportions, and appeared at various times and in various lights to be all slab of a creased forehead, then overpowered by a massive nose shot through with red veins (for he did so love his nightly rum) and at its southern boundary made heavy by a low-hanging chin pierced by a cleft the size of a grapeshot. His formidable forehead was of special note, for he’d displayed to Matthew his ability to crack walnuts upon it with the heel of his hand. When he walked he seemed to be staggering left and right as if in battle with the very gravity of the world. Snowy hairs sprouted from the curls of his ears and the holes of his nose. His teeth had