The Providence Rider Read Online Free Page B

considered among the highest blessings in the world.
    In the departure of Berry and Effrem, Hudson Greathouse leaned lightly on his stick, cocked his head to one side and gave Matthew a grin that was also half-cocked. “Brighten your candle,” he advised. “What’s wrong with you?”
    Matthew shrugged. “I suppose I’m not in a festive mood.”
    “Well, get in one. My God, boy! I’m the one who can’t dance anymore! And I’ll tell you, I could shake my shillelagh in my younger days. So use it while you have it!”
    Matthew stared at the floor between them. Sometimes it was hard for him to look Hudson in the face. Because of greed and a bad decision, Matthew had allowed Slaughter to get the drop on them. Greathouse got along fine on his walking-stick, for sure, and sometimes he could get along just fine without it if he was feeling more like a stallion than a gelding, but being stabbed four times in the back and then three-quarters drowned had a way of aging a man, of slowing him down, of thrusting the bitter truth of mortality in his face. Greathouse of course had always been a man of action, and thus knew the pitfalls of putting himself in harm’s way, but Matthew still blamed his mendacity for the darkness that sometimes passed across Greathouse’s face like a shadow, and made the man’s deep-set black eyes seem yet more ebony and the lines around them more numerous. To be certain, a diminished Hudson Greathouse was still a force to be reckoned with, if anyone dared try. Not many would. He had a ruggedly handsome, craggy face and wore his thick iron-gray hair in a queue tied with a black ribbon. He stood three inches over six feet, broad of shoulders and chest and also broad of expression; he knew how to conquer a room, and at age forty-eight—having turned so on the eighth of January—he possessed the canny experience of a survivor. And well to be so, for the wounds and the stick had neither made him put quit to his work with the Herrald Agency nor made him any less desirable to any number of New York females. His tastes were simple, as attested to by his gray suit, white shirt and white stockings above unpolished black boots that knew how to kick a tail or two, if need be. Matthew mused that Mr. Vincent should consider himself lucky to have gotten out of the room with just an insult, because since Matthew had saved his life Greathouse was the finest of friends and the fiercest of protectors.
    Yet, still, there was the nit to be picked.
    “Are you that much of an idiot?” Greathouse asked.
    “Pardon?”
    “Don’t play dumb. I’m talking about the girl.”
    “The girl,” Matthew repeated, dumbly. He glanced to see if he was still the center of attention from Doctor Jason and the beautiful Rebecca, but the Mallorys had moved to a different position and were conversing with the ruddy-faced sugar merchant Solomon Tully, he of the Swiss-geared false choppers.
    “The girl ,” said Greathouse with some force behind it. “Can’t you tell she’s got it set for you?”
    “What’s set for me?”
    “It!” Greathouse’s scowl was a frightening thing. “Now I know you’ve been working too much! I’ve told you, haven’t I? Make time for life .”
    “My work is my life.”
    “Hm,” said the great one. “I can see that carved on your gravestone. Honestly, Matthew! You’re young ! Don’t you realize how young you are?”
    “I haven’t thought.” Ah, yes! There was the quick glance from Rebecca Mallory again. Whatever she was thinking, Matthew knew he was never far from it. Of course, owing to events revealed to Matthew after the deaths of Slaughter and Sutch, it was clear to him that the Mallorys were somehow involved with the personage who seemed to be becoming a dark star on the horizon of Matthew’s world. That personage being Professor Fell, emperor of crime both in Europe, England and now desirous of a place of control in the New World, the better to spread his clutching tentacles like his