Agent Provocateur

PROLOGUE:

June 21, 1897

Just Before Midnight

“Okay, Strangways. Toss out the shovel.”

Herron Strangways hurled the shovel from the grave he had just dug for himself at gunpoint.

The man motioned with his pistol. “You next. Out of the hole.”

The second murderer demanded, “Why git ‘im out once he’s in it?”

“He might duck down when I shoot, dunce. Let’s make it easy on us and not waste more than one shot. Get up here, Strangways.”

Herron hadn’t thought to dig steps for walking up out of a grave. Squirming over the rim of the pit, he toyed briefly with the idea of diving for the shovel, knocking the first man’s pistol away with it, and braining the other fellow.

Unfortunately, the men were standing too far apart. Only one actually had a gun trained on him, but both men were armed. Herron might take one of them to the grave with him, but the other would kill him just as dead. Besides, he’d thrown the shovel too far away.

“Kneel on the ground with your head over the hole. It’ll be cleaner.”

Reaching into his inner coat pocket, the second murderer stepped toward Herron. “Let me do ‘im Jake.”

“You had the first go yesterday – and your performance was less than adequate. I get first crack today.”

“That wasn’t fair. I didn’t get a clear shot at ‘im.”

“You get first shot next time. We agreed on the strict rotation.”

The second man drew a greasy deck of playing cards from his dungarees. “Cut you for him.”

The man with the gun rolled his eyes. “Just stand by and apply the coup de grace. I doubt we’ll need it. I’ve potted smaller birds with one bullet.”

“Hey!” said Herron, “Don’t I get a blindfold and a cigarette?”

“This is not a firing squad, Mister Strangways. It is an execution.”

“Yeah,” echoed the other man, snorting a chuckle through his nose, “where do you think you are, a firing squad or sumpin’?”

“You’ve wasted enough of our time. Besides, I do not smoke, so I have no cigarettes on me. And my friend has none ready-made. Just try to relax. Stare into the pit and it’ll all be over before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“And I’ll do the cootie-grah,” said the other.

As Herron knelt and extended his head over the hole that would be his home for the rest of eternity, he realized the man with the twisted moustache had been right about one thing – if only one.

No cavalry was riding to rescue him at the last moment. Neither Jessup, nor the Major, nor that Inspector Chubb who had been trying to get him jugged for the last two days, could help. No one on earth knew where he was except the men who had brought him here expressly to kill him.

After three days of almost constant movement, Herron felt he deserved a good, long rest. He was just about to be put to one.

His only hope was that she would get through with the key to the whole mess.

Not that it’ll do me any good. And the “key” to the whole mess hadn’t made sense, even when they cracked the code. Herron was literally and figuratively going to his grave in the dark.

As he heard the large pistol being cocked, Herron decided—yes, on the whole, this was a particularly rotten Monday.

And the week-end had not been much fun, either.