The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [339]
Second by second the air got more and more charged; then Knox, his forehead bleeding, gathered his wits, looked up at his boys, and shouted, “Well? What the hell’re you waiting for?”
At that the storm finally broke. In a solid, screaming wall the Dusters rushed forward, and the sailors did likewise. Both sides mixed it up so fast that the use of pistols by either group became pretty near an impossibility from the start. It’d be a contest of fists and sticks, that much was obvious, and it’d likely take up the whole block we were standing on: we had to get away fast.
“Run!” I told Mr. Moore, who nodded and, together with the detective sergeants, started to dash west. Miss Howard and the Doctor, though, hung back, waiting for Cyrus.
“Cyrus!” the Doctor commanded, as Miss Howard covered our big friend with her Colt. “Come with us, nowl.”
But Cyrus was way beyond taking any orders: as soon as the brawl’d erupted he’d reached out to grab Ding Dong by the shirt, then literally lifted him off the ground and thrown him about six feet behind the line of our sailors, where he wouldn’t be able to get any help from his pals. Hitting the ground hard, Ding Dong’d dropped the stick he was carrying, and Cyrus quickly kicked it away. Then he pulled Ding Dong to his feet and said;
“No sticks, no knives, no guns—and I’m no fourteen-year-old girl, either. Now let’s see how you do.”
With that he started to pummel the Duster, who had to work hard to cover himself and get in a few shots of his own.
Sighing once, the Doctor turned to Miss Howard. “We’ll have to leave him, Sara—there is the matter of accounts to be settled. He’ll be all right, but we must go!”
Nodding reluctantly, Miss Howard turned her body west but kept her eyes on Cyrus—and it was a good thing she did, being as just as we started to move away two Dusters managed to break out of the brawl further up the street and ran over to try to give Ding Dong a hand. They were both carrying metal bars wrapped in burlap, and Cyrus had his back to them: once again, it looked like he might get blindsided by the gang.
Miss Howard, though, smoothly spun back around toward the fight, then raised her Colt and, holding it steady with both hands, let off two rounds, their explosions echoing off the buildings and the cobblestones thunderously. When the smoke of the shots cleared, the two Dusters with the metal bars were lying on the ground, each one clutching at a shattered kneecap. Miss Howard smiled and, seeing that Cyrus was now pretty well having his way with Ding Dong, turned to follow the rest of us.
Catching me staring at her in amazement, she said only, “I told you, Stevie—there is nothing like a bullet in the leg to make men mind their manners.” Then she pushed me along toward West Street.
The howls of rage and pain from the brawl were now filling the whole neighborhood; and as the six of us ran around the corner to Bank Street, it began to sound like Hell itself had opened up on Bethune Street. Even the longshoremen on the waterfront were keeping clear of the action, and the residents of the neighborhood stayed locked up very tight in their homes: we could hear bolts being thrown on doors as we passed by on our way to Greenwich Street. But the overall effect of the battle turned out to be a helpful one, for as we turned north again and approached Bethune Street, we didn’t catch sight of a single Duster: they’d all gone to join in the “fun.” This left us an open road to Libby Hatch’s place from the east, and in just a few more seconds we’d reached it.
“I doubt,” the Doctor said breathlessly, “whether knocking will prove useful. Detective Sergeants?”
Marcus quickly produced his crowbar, and wedged it into the jamb of the door just to the right of the knob.