The Golden Flask Read online

Jake and the Englishman fell together into the stream, the Segallas dropping by the wayside. The patriot had just spotted a jagged rock to thrash his man's head against when he felt his leg warm considerably. This sensation was followed by a strong, sharp poke, which the patriot spy recognized only too well — his enemy was endeavoring to stitch his name on Jake's leg, if not his abdomen, with a small but still considerably sharp knife.

  The Englishman's head was thrust three times on the stone, each time harder than before, so that with the third blow his brains burst in a gruesome mess from the skull. Jake jumped to his feet as the man's ghost ran from him.

  The patriot had just enough time to duck as the candle-bearer charged straight at him. The maneuver sent the man flying face-first into the stream. It also brought Jake within reach of the dead man's discarded knife, which he appropriated before wading after his prey.

  While his first approach had ended in a comic flip, the Englishman aimed quickly to redeem himself. He had equipped himself with a hatchet, and took two quick swipes at Jake to halt his advance. Knee-deep in water, the two men faced each other in the moonlight oblivious to all else around them.

  Hamilton, meanwhile, had managed to take a few strides for his horse, where his pistol sat waiting. Egans got there first, shoving him aside and grabbing at the saddle holster for the gun. Though of average height, Hamilton could extend himself when enraged, and he was rarely so hot as he was now. He flew headlong at the man, knocking the gun from his hand just as the lock was pulled back. The woods exploded with the misfired shot, but neither Hamilton nor the adopted Oneida was injured. Egans slipped and the pair rolled in the mud beneath the animals' hooves, the horses pulling and yanking at their tied reins.

  Fury aside, Egans was more than a match for Hamilton. But Hamilton was persistent. They continued to grapple together, until the white Oneida spotted the fallen pistol a short distance away. Then began a desperate game of leapfrog, each man trying to reach the weapon first.

  Meanwhile, Jake and his opponent thrashed back and forth on the creek bed. Twice the American took a feint with his knife, falling back under the weight of a vicious flail from the Englishman's ax. On his third try, Jake's luck seemed to run out — he slipped on the muck and fell backwards in a tumble. In the next instant, the Englishman fell upon him, hand curled back with the heavy hatchet.

  The weapon fell aside harmlessly. Jake had employed a simple ruse to take his enemy off his guard, plunging his knife full into his stomach as he charged. He held the hilt firmly as the man first pushed then pulled, triumphant charge turned to desperate retreat.

  On his knees in the water, Jake levered the blade through the man's organs, holding him tight with his left hand. No lover's grasp was as sturdy as this death grip; by the time he let the man collapse backwards into the moonlit water, his soul had long since escaped its earthly bounds.

  And now Jake turned his attention to the shore where Hamilton was deep into his own hard struggle. Egans's superior skill and strength were showing; he managed to grab the pistol from the dirt and brought it back in a crash across Hamilton's head.

  Jake scooped up his Segallas and spun its barrels to fire, but both bullets whizzed wide of his mark. Oblivious, the white Oneida pulled Hamilton's empty pistol back for a second blow as a hammer when Jake crashed into his back. Knocked to the ground, Egans managed to tumble around and spring to his feet, and Jake found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

  It took a moment for him to realize the weapon had already been fired. By that time, Jake was diving to his right, out of aim. The Indian smiled brightly and leapt to the nearby horse.

  Jake took a step to give chase, but Hamilton caught him by the shirttail.

  "Our mission is too important to risk following him," he said between winded puffs for air. "We've already lost too much time."

  * * *

  "That's quite a little pistol you have there," said Hamilton when he had caught his breath. "It fires four shots?"

  "Two, then you have to twist the barrel around to fire two more," said Jake, inspecting the dead men's bodies for papers or other signs of their mission. He found nothing incriminating besides a small collection of coins, which he left in their pockets. "The bullets are small but effective at close range. These were poisoned by an old acquaintance."

  The irony encased in the last word escaped Hamilton. The poison had been supplied by one of Jake's most severe enemies — the now-deceased Keen.

  "Effective. The men seemed to be farmers."

  "That's just their dress. They are British soldiers, except for the one they called Egans."

  "Why would a white dress as an Indian?"

  "Possibly adopted as a boy. Or simply a renegade. It doesn't make much difference, at the moment."

  Under different circumstances, Jake would ride to the nearest militia unit and alert them of Egans's presence. But there was no time to alert anyone or even bury the dead men. He restored his pocket pistol to its hiding place and dragged the bodies to the side of the road. Then he bowed his head.

  "Don't tell me you're praying for them," said Hamilton, incredulously. "They're the enemy."

  For every hard inch of callus applied to Jake's body by these years of struggle, another part of his inner self had softened. Enemy or not, he could not help but feel remorse at the death of a fellow human being.

  Someday, this growing well of sorrow might prevent him from fighting, despite the great justness of his cause. For now, he merely finished his silent memorial and walked to where Hamilton was sitting on his horse. As Egans had made off with the animal Jake had been riding, their remaining horse would have to be pressed into double duty. Fortunately, they were to change mounts only a few miles down the road, and then press on to New Paltz, where another fresh pair awaited.

  Jake grabbed hold of Hamilton and hauled himself up behind him. "If you have any influence with this horse," said the spy, squeezing onto the saddle, "ask him to avoid the bumps. My ribs feel as if they've just been broken again."

  "I'm afraid we've only just met," said Hamilton, spurring the stallion.

  Chapter Four

  Wherein, a carriage and traveler stop along the road, with unpleasant consequences.

  Helios had not long strung his bow in the eastern sky — nor had the sun been up very long — when a mahogany-paneled carriage happened to pass on the road near where Jake had placed the bodies. As the patriot spy had surmised, the dead men quickly caught the attention of these passers-by, and an order was given from within for the driver to halt.

  The large, gilded wheels skidded to a stop in the dirt as the horses were curled back sharply at the bit; though he had held his position as driver and guide only a short while, the Indian whose hands were wrapped around their reins knew his master was best obeyed promptly.

  Even so, the door had swung open before the carriage stopped. As if caring little for his fine, bright blue jacket and buckskin breeches, the vehicle's occupant dashed into the swirling dust. His energy belied his age, which was now past fifty. Though he had lately spent considerable time recuperating from a variety of wounds, he sprung forward with great energy to inspect the dead men. Brandishing his walking stick, he waved it over them as if it were a bishop's scepter, imparting some blessing to the already vanquished souls.

  But the man had not stopped to administer Christian niceties. He was instead a connoisseur of death, congenially interested in examining the nuances of each individual tragedy, hoping to increase his already considerable stock of knowledge on the subject. For the man who now pushed the bodies back and forth like so many laboratory specimens was no less than Major Dr. Harland Keen.

  The very same man Jake had seen fall over the Cohoes Falls to the bottom of the Mohawk River less than a fortnight before.

  * * *

  The reader is entitled to some explanation for the shock of that last line, and we shall here deliver it as succinctly as possible, to avoid losing the thread of our present tale.

&nbs
p; As a young man, Harland Keen had left his native London to tour the world, gathering the esoteric knowledge that would supplement the skills he learned at Edinburgh and render him among the most brilliant practitioners of the medical arts in Europe. He had not yet become the evil-hearted assassin who would eventually forget his fraternity's oath against causing harm, though already his character shaded toward Life's darker vales.

  It was during a stay in Venice that he came upon an old woman, reputed of Borgia stock, who had gained great fame as a reader of the Egyptian cards. On a cloud-besotted day on an obscure piazza overlooking the Grand Canal, the woman plucked the Magician from the deck and nodded approvingly. But then she found Temperance inverted, and crossed severely by the Moon. Keen himself shuddered when the next card of her divinatory layout proved to be Death, mounted aboard a white charger with the red rose as his banner.

  Even a reader unfamiliar with the portents must sense the message the cards foretold. As the reading proceeded in a progressively darker vein, Keen felt his anger grow. He had never been superstitious, yet something in the woman's manner convinced him not only to believe what she said, but to take it as a curse rather than an objective interpretation of Fortune’s wheel. He pounded the table and upset the cards, demanding to know what, if any, good news she had for him.

  "You shall not die a water death," proclaimed the woman. "You cannot be killed by water."

  Suddenly, he was seized by a fit. "Let us see if the same is true of you," he shouted, picking the woman up and throwing her into the canal.

  Immediately, he repented, threw off his boots and coat, and dove into the dark water to save her. But despite the long hour he searched in the putrid stream, he could not retrieve her body.

  The full explanation for the dark roiling of his soul is perhaps more complicated, involving other choices and decisions as well as personal reverses. But it is nonetheless true that his path took a severe turn that afternoon. The woman died without relatives. Keen found himself not only free but in possession of her considerable texts and potions, and in a few hours gained knowledge his instructors at Edinburgh could not have dreamed in a lifetime.

  His career progressed, and at length he returned to London and became doctor to the highest elements of society, including the king himself. Despite his fame, his experiments brought him disrepute. He was accused of heinous crimes before King George III exiled him to America, in exchange for his life. By then, he had joined the king's secret department, sworn to carry out assassinations and other assignments in utter secrecy.

  Once a member of the department, there is no resignation short of death. Keen continued to carry out assignments under the direction of General Bacon, who besides being the intelligence chief was the king's personal representative at the head of the clandestine order of assassins.

  A few months after his arrival in New York, Keen was given the red-jeweled dagger signifying a mission — and told to kill Jake Gibbs and his friend Claus van Clyne. The doctor was bested by the pair below the great iron chain that spans the river at Peekskill, but he did not despair. Instead, he traced the two men north, and as they worked on a mission among the Mohawk he struck again.

  Keen believed van Clynne perished in a burning building, where he had left him tied and gagged. In fact, the Dutchman had escaped through a basement passage used by an earlier occupant as a beer cellar.

  Jake, meanwhile, proved harder to find, let alone kill. Keen joined forces with the local Mohawks, and was able to trick the American spy into a meeting just above the Cohoes Falls. The two men fell upon each other and engaged in a death struggle. Keen, aided by drugs that increased his stamina and natural strength, throttled Jake, then had him bound and gagged, placed into a canoe and sent tumbling over the falls.

  But the doctor himself became tangled in the tackle trailing from the boat, and plunged over in the torrent. The canoe, loaded with heavy supplies, sank at the foot of the falls — as Jake had seen.

  Jake saw this because he had not been fooled by Keen, but rather played the trick back to ensnare the doctor. With the aid of a confederate ... ah, but we do not wish to give the plot away to those who have not read the adventure. Suffice it to say Jake watched Keen fall, and observed the commotion on the riverbank below as the doctor's Indian allies debated what to do. By the time Jake left to complete his mission, Keen had been underwater ten minutes at least; no one, he thought, could have survived the tumult without drowning.

  But he had not counted on the Borgia curse or prediction — whichever it might be. Nor did he know that Keen had found a pocket of air within the overturned canoe. The British assassin reached the shore intact. His Indian cohorts were dumbstruck to see him. As fooled as Keen by Jake's plot, they assured him the white man had died, and after a lengthy search produced a blond scalp to back up their claim.

  The hair now rested on the bench of Keen's carriage. He was fully confident that it belonged to his nemesis. But how to explain that one of the dead men bore the unmistakable signs of having been killed by a poison few men besides Keen himself could concoct?

  A poison that had been on the bullets when Gibbs stole his Segallas pistol back in their fateful fight before the falls?

  There might be many theories. Perhaps one of the Indians had managed to find the gun on the body and then used it here.

  But why? The man's rough outer clothes were not exceptional, but he had on a silk undershirt. That and his pocketful of coins suggested he was an English agent, but not a robbery victim.

  Very few people in this province would not ransack a body before death. Keen knew full well Gibbs was one. He felt his blood rising against the rebel's sham virtue.

  But he was dead, wasn't he?

  The doctor saw the death wounds of each man before returning to the carriage, where his Mohawk assistant waited. The man had lived among whites for many years, and had acted as an interpreter during Keen's recent travels.

  "Clouded Face," said Keen, addressing him as he stood by the side of the carriage, "come down a moment."

  "Doctor, sir?"

  "Simply say 'doctor.' I am not a knight, nor do I aspire to be. Knighthood, in fact, is out of the question. Come down here."

  There was nothing specifically venomous in Keen's voice, yet the assistant trembled as he put down the reins. He slipped to the ground, then held his hands in a tangled, sweating knot before him, where they would be conveniently situated should he have to beg for mercy.

  "Clouded Face, you assured me Jake Gibbs was dead, did you not?"

  "Yes, sir, yes, Doctor, yes I did."

  "And you did that because of the scalp?"

  "I saw him go over the falls myself," said the assistant. "And heard the death wail. I kicked the body with the others on the shore below. You have the hair."

  "The ribbon is the same. The color, of course. But tell me . . ." Keen tapped the man's uncovered head with his cane. "Tell me if a scalp could be taken without a man being killed. Or if the wrong scalp could be taken and dressed with another man's ribbon?"

  "Impossible."

  "Let us try the first, then, and see," said Keen, producing a knife. "Your knot is convenient."

  The Indian made the mistake of starting to run. Until that moment, Keen had not completely decided to kill him — he was still largely a stranger to this country, and if Gibbs were truly alive, a guide would prove useful. But he could no more allow an assistant to run from him than he could let this Gibbs continue to live. He pointed his stick and pressed a hidden button near the end of the shaft. The ornate gold head flew off with a tremendous burst of velocity, striking Clouded Face in the back of the head. The man fell forward immediately, his brain pan shattered.

  "I think that I have my answer," said Keen. "I don't suppose it will be of much use to scalp you then, but I will do so anyway, for the practice.”

  Chapter Five

  Wherein, more of Mr. Egans's particular history is explored, with unsatisfactory results.

  While Ja
ke and Alexander Hamilton continued south, Claus van Clynne headed in the same general direction. But even though he took every shortcut he knew and urged his horse forward with epic entreaties and a few unvarnished threats, his progress was not half as sharp. Indeed, as the sun dawned, it found him just seven or eight miles south of the spot where Jake had left the dead Englishmen, on a dusty but sturdy road whose dips and turns ran somewhat in harmony with the nearby river.

  His lack of speed was partly caused by the fact that he had to stop every so often and search for signs of his friends and their direction; their trail was difficult to trace. But a more substantial portion of his problem was due to his horse's slow gait, which was in direct contrast to its advertised attributes. This was especially annoying as van Clynne had paid dearly for the animal. Under ordinary conditions the Dutchman would not have allowed himself to be so ill-used, nor would he have concluded a deal without several minutes', if not hours', worth of haranguing. He did not wish this taken as a sign of weakness, as he explained to the beast in great detail as they rode. Only the prospect of seeing General Washington and presenting his case made him accept the outrage as the price of doing business.

  Van Clynne's tongue was no less prolific because he was traveling alone; indeed, he found it easier to give full range to his feelings, as he was not constantly being interrupted by a companion. After he finished complaining of the high price of transportation, his topic naturally moved to the injustice of Jake's flight southward without him. Occasional jabs at the patrons, who unlike him had managed to keep the vast land holdings he was riding through, led to the subject of injustice in general, whereupon the British bore the brunt of the complaint.

  He soon turned to the Esopus Wars, the great conflicts of the seventeenth century during which the Dutch had tamed the native inhabitants near Kingston, only to find themselves tamed in turn by the English invaders. Without following the entire path of van Clynne's logic, let us say that it left him in a sympathetic, nay, charitable frame of mind when he came upon a dusty, Indian fellow traveler sitting astride a horse on the river road not far from Murderer's Creek.