Dead water - Barbara Hambly [84]
Why no one had ever thought to disconnect the water-pumps from the engines and arrange for them to operate independently, January couldn't imagine. He'd suggested it to Rose, and she'd said, “My guess is the owners won't pay for a second engine. You have no idea how cheaply steamboats are built.”
Which, to January, sounded exactly like the sort of logic the blankittes lived by.
Whatever the reason, Mr. Molloy was pacing the Saloon like a caged tiger, a whiskey-glass in hand and face crimson with anger and impatience. “Where was he?” he demanded as Davis and January came out of the hallway into the Saloon. “Down with his yellow bitch? Any money she'll tell you he was with her last night.”
January opened his mouth to say, My wife isn't in the habit of lying, then closed it again, and made himself look at the floor.
There was something about, she'll tell you he was with her last night that brought the hair up on his nape.
As opposed to where?
He glanced across at Hannibal, still sitting at the card-table, and he saw the fiddler was both angry and scared.
Davis said, “Earlier today you told me you were in your master's stateroom all last night, sleeping, except that you woke once when you heard someone trying to force the door. Is that the truth?”
“Yes, sir.” January tried to keep the anger out of his own voice. “Maybe I should have gone after the man, but I didn't. It was pitch dark on the promenade and I was dead tired.”
“Yet you said you saw him when he opened the door.”
“He had a dark lantern, sir, shuttered. I could see there was someone there, but nothing of his face.”
“According to Mr. Molloy,” said Davis slowly, “when he returned to his stateroom at twelve-thirty, he saw that the door of Mr. Sefton's was ajar. Opening it—concerned lest there be a robbery in progress—he struck a match and found the room empty, though he says he saw your blankets on the floor.”
January opened his mouth, and closed it, fury rising like slow combustion through his chest to scald his face. Molloy lounged back against the bar, eyes on January's face, daring him to speak. Daring him to call a white man a liar in the presence of other white men.
Carefully, January said, “I don't know what to say to that, sir. I was in the room, and I was asleep. It wasn't you I saw unless you were out of the pilot-house at eleven, because I heard the leadsmen calling. In any case, the man I saw was small. He didn't fill the door, as you would, sir. Beyond that . . .”
“You telling me that ain't what I saw,” asked Molloy, with deadly softness, “boy?”
January took a deep breath and remained silent.
Hannibal said quietly, “Since my bondsman has better manners and more sense than to contradict a white man in this benighted country, I am telling you that wasn't what you saw, sir.”
Like a pouncing lion, Molloy crossed the distance between the bar and the card-table, dragged Hannibal from his chair by the front of his coat, and drove his fist hard into the fiddler's stomach. Davis was taken by surprise at this sudden violence, so it was January who caught Molloy first, the enraged pilot flinging Hannibal to the floor like a rag and whirling to smash January in the jaw. January staggered—Molloy was nearly his own height and twenty pounds heavier—and checked his own returning blow, braced himself as a second blow took him in the stomach.
Then Davis was pulling Molloy back, and January, gasping a little and with blood trickling from his nose, went to Hannibal's side.
“You're a lyin' goddam Orangeman and a whoremaster!” yelled Molloy, yanking against Davis's grip. “And no nigger lays a hand on me or on any white man while I'm in the room. You tell me I'm not a liar, Sefton, or before God I'll—”
“Mr. Molloy!” shouted Davis with the command in his voice that men achieve when they've governed troops in war. “This is not a barroom, nor is this a question of anyone's honor. This is an investigation of the facts leading to a man's death.