Tales of Old Brigands Key Read Online Free Page A

the
lantern room and studied the cable to the beacon lamp. It occurred to him that
the wiring from the distribution line to the transformer to here were all fine.
So the problem hid in here.
    The
rain that had come tonight came in with a little bit of touchiness. There had
been lightning strikes off over the Gulf. So most likely lightning had struck
the lighthouse and knocked out the equipment.
    But
the tower was equipped with lightning rods to take care of that, and there had
been no thunderclap. One that close to his house would have made him jump out
of his skin.
    Something
else was wrong.
    He
spotted it.
    At
the junction of the cable to the electric motor, a second wire had been spliced
in, skillfully hidden under the main cable. It ran just a few inches over the
steel floor and was attached in a dark corner.
    Awareness
dawned in him.
    The
whole room was steel, and wet with rain. If the power came back on... but it
couldn't. He'd thrown the shutoff to be safe.
    Unless...
    He
heard a hiss and a crackle. His hand, gripping the rail, burned like fire, and the
muscles in it squeezed tight. A shot of electricity blasted him, and his heart
clenched like a fist. He couldn't release his grip.
    His
mind fought for consciousness as the current surged through him.
    He
shook violently. Vaguely, he smelled flesh and hair burning.
    A
last thought flickered. Roy had wired the lighthouse. Roy... kid wasn't so
hopeless after all...
    *
* *
    Chief
Toomey thumbed a notepad and poked around and asked questions, hoping to sound
like he understood the technical jargon. Two or three locals tried to convince
him the light keeper's death wasn't no accident. Stupid island hicks. He knew
better, even if he didn't know how electricity got stuffed into wires and what
made it move. He knew people and motives. Killers don't go around killing with
wires when bullets are so much more reliable.
    Oswald
Denton, the town drunk—one of them, anyway—was particularly insistent, or
deluded. He lived in a wine bottle, but swore a blue streak that he'd seen a
man that night fiddling around with the switch at the base of the lighthouse.
That was goddamn silly. Who'd be out in the rain fiddling with wires? Nah, it
had to have been a lightning strike. Besides, Toomey pointed out, who in the
whole county even had the smarts to rewire a building to kill? Electricity was
new, and not unlike magic. You'd need a goddamn magician.
    A
week later, an electric boy moseyed over to the island to investigate the
wiring and render his professional opinion. He said it was all up to snuff.
Nobody had tampered with anything.
    Oswald
Denton had the gumption to claim he'd seen the mystery man again, fiddling
around in the dark, fiddling with the switch, and climbing the lighthouse to
fiddle around in the lantern room. "Changing things back the way they
was," Denton claimed. "Don't you see, it's the perfect murder. You kill a man with something nobody understands.
Folks understand guns and knives, but got no idea what electricity is and how
it gets inside their house." Denton grumbled and belched and wandered off
to Bill's Tavern.
    Stupid
old drunk.
    Toomey
closed the case. Mary Shelley purred and rubbed his leg. He ignored her but she
followed him home anyway and basked in the electric warmth of his house. That
was progress.

A stormy sea. A ship runs aground, a
frenzied group of salvagers rushes to plunder it. But
what if the ship transports not wealth from England, but horror?
    The ghastly crimes of Jack the Ripper
still haunt the Western psyche, more than a century after the horrific slayings
in Whitechapel. The murders were never solved, the killer never caught, yet the
reign of terror suddenly ended. Why? Might he have fled? And fled to his
homeland?
    — kp

The Wreck of
the Edinburgh Kate
    Brigands Key, January, 1890
    D eputy John Fells
Sanborn watched Emma's economical, sure movements as she ladled bean soup into
his bowl, avoiding eye contact. He wrestled with what he