Execution Dock - Anne Perry [150]
Monk would strike soon, and then the fighting would be swift and hard.
Hester was afraid for him, and for Rathbone as well. She had seen a horror in his eyes far beyond the cruelty or coarseness of the scene. He was struggling with some decision of his own that she did not yet recognize. She imagined that it could be a kind of guilt. Now at last he was seeing the reality of what he had defended, not the theory, the high words of the law. Perhaps some time she would even apologize to him for the harsher things she had said. This was not his world; he might really not have understood.
Now all that mattered was to find Scuff. She dared not let her mind even touch on the chance that he was not here, but held captive locked in some room on shore, or even dead already. That would be almost like being dead herself.
She followed Sutton through the doorway and found herself instantly in a passage so narrow the slightest loss of balance bumped her shoulders into the wooden walls. Sutton had already turned left towards the bow of the boat. Snoot was almost under his feet, but as always not making the slightest sound except for the faint scrape of his claws on the damp wood of the floor. The smell of bilges and the mustiness of wet rot were stronger as they went forward. Sutton turned abruptly left again and scrambled down a steep flight of steps. He reached for the dog, but Snoot slithered down, fell the last short way, and was on his feet again in an instant.
Here the ceiling was low, and Hester had to bend to avoid cracking her skull on the crossbeams. Sutton half-crouched as well. The smell was stronger here, and the dog's hackles were raised, his small body shivering and bristling in awareness of something deeply wrong.
Hester could feel her breath tight in her chest and the sweat running down her back inside her clothes.
There was a row of doors.
Sutton tried the first one. It was locked. He lifted his leg and kicked it hard with the flat of his foot. It cracked but did not give. Snoot was growling high and softly in the back of his throat. His sensitive nose picked up the odor of fear.
Sutton kicked again, and this time it gave way. It crashed open to reveal a small room, little more than a cupboard, in which cowered three small boys dressed in rags, their eyes wide with terror. They were comparatively clean, but the arms and legs poking out of their clothes were thin and as pale as splintered matchwood.
Hester almost choked with hope, and then despair.
“We'll come back for you,” Sutton told them.
Hester was not sure whether that was a promise or a threat to them. Perhaps their choice lay between Phillips and starvation. But she must find Scuff; everything else would have to wait.
Sutton forced open another door to a room with more boys. He found a third, and then a fourth that was right at the very stern, empty. Scuff was nowhere.
Hester could feel her throat tighten and the tears sting her eyes. She was furious with herself. There was no time for this. He had to be somewhere. She must think! What would Phillips do? He was clever and cunning, and he knew Monk, as it was his business to know his enemies. He found, stole, or created the right weapon against each of them.
Snoot was quivering. He darted forward and started to run round in tight little circles, nose to the floor.
“C'mon, boy,” Sutton said gently. “Don't matter about rats now. Leave ‘em alone.”
Snoot ignored him, scratching at the floor near the joints in the boards.
“Don't matter about rats,” Sutton repeated, his voice tight with grief.
Snoot started to dig, scraping his claws along the joints.
“Snoot!” Sutton reached for the dog's collar.
There was a