Free Time Rovers 03 Madman's Dance by Jana G Oliver

blanket over his shoulders. The story was plain to see: everything they’d had was gone, pawned for food and warmth. All because the man had dared to ask Hugo Effington a question.
    Keats felt the anger stir in his soul, his bones. It was fortunate the bully was dead.
    “Why are ya here?” the woman asked warily.
    “We’re wondering what it was that caused Mr. Effington to do this to him,” Keats replied as evenly as he could.
    The name evoked an immediate reaction from the crippled man. His eyes rose and his mouth worked without producing any sound.
    Keats knelt next to him. “I’m sorry for bothering you, but I have to know what happened that night. What made you ask Effington about that load?”
    The man’s eyes grew wide, but the mouth wouldn’t work right. “Bl…bl…”
    “Ya’ll not get much,” his wife said.
    “Was it in barrels?” Keats asked.
    The man reached over with his good hand and gave Keats’ arm a squeeze.
    “Yes,” the wife translated.
    “Was the top of the load rum?”
    Another squeeze. Yes.
    “What about the bottom ones?” He immediately cursed himself. The poor wretch couldn’t answer such a complex question. “Were the bottom barrels different?”
    Squeeze.
    Gunpowder?
    “Do you know Desmond Flaherty?”
    Squeeze.
    “Was he there?”
    A nod this time.
    “Stttttopped…”
    “What? I don’t understand.”
    The man’s wife cut in, “That Flaherty fellow kept him from bein’ beat to death.”
    Keats shifted his questions to the wife. “Do you know where this warehouse was?”
    “Near the docks, that’s all I know. They brought him home on a piece of planking.”
    “Effington is dead. Someone killed him.”
    There was a thick wheeze. The drooping corner of Dillon’s mouth vainly tried to angle upward into a pathetic smile.
    As Keats rose he pulled out all the money he had with him, about two quid. He placed it in the woman’s hands. “We did not come to visit you, do you understand? If Flaherty learns what we’re about, there could be trouble.”
    The woman nodded, her eyes riveted on the coins in her hands. “I never seen ya.”
    “Good.” Keats placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, sir.”
    The barest of nods was the only response.
    “I don’t think Flaherty did that poor blighter any favors,” Clancy observed once they were on the street. “Livin’ like that…” He shook his head in dismay.
    That could have been me.
    Flaherty had taken after him with a vengeance the night Keats had discovered the wagonload of gunpowder, striking him a horrific blow that had ended his ability to go en mirage and nearly cost his life . That rage hadn’t been there when they’d next met in Whitechapel. Flaherty had appeared weary, unwilling to kill him though the anarchist had ample opportunity. Then there was Dillon. Why would the anarchist get involved? That was out of character for a man who’d cut Johnny Ahearn’s throat.
    “Something’s changed him,” Keats murmured. But what?
    ~••~••~••~
     
    Cynda’s visitor didn’t look familiar. He wasn’t young or old, but he looked fuzzy around the edges. She blinked her eyes to clear them. Still fuzzy.
    “Do you know me?” he asked. She shook her head. His face seemed to fall. “It’s a sad day when you don’t know your own brother.”
    Brother? Did she have one? Cynda frowned, picking through the clouds in her mind.
    “Jane has always been very simple, and we’ve been embarrassed about how far she’d fallen. She was on the streets and…” he trailed off.
    “Ah,” the attendant responded, nodding sympathetically. “She’d be easy pickin’s for some of them out there.”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Still, ya’ve come for her, and that speaks well of ya.”
    “Thank you.”
    Come for me? Cynda stared at him until her head began to hurt again. It was no use. She had no idea of his name. Still, maybe it was all right.
    An attendant walked her back to her cell, saying something