William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

Monk he pressed against him.
    Monk realized how wet he was. His legs were frozen, but his body was sweating. He could feel the perspiration run down his back and his chest.
    There was a noise ahead, a splash. He jerked around to face it. The right tunnel.
    “Rats!” Scuff whispered hoarsely. “ ’E’s jiggered up ’em rats. C’mon!” And without waiting to make sure, he plunged through the water.
    Monk drew in his breath to cry out “Stop!” but bit it back. Sound echoed down here. He had no idea how far ahead the assassin was, perhaps only a few yards. He ran, slipping and struggling after Scuff. The dim reflection on the water made Scuff’s small figure oddly elongated as it moved with a jerky, swaying gait.
    The light ahead was there again, bright and unguarded. Monk saw the assassin turn to face them, his arm lifted. There was a sharp crack, a spurt of flame. Scuff cried out and crumpled into the water.
    Monk lunged forward, pulling his gun out of his pocket. He fired it again and again even after the figure had disappeared and there was no light in the suffocating darkness except his own.
    He put his gun away and held the lantern high, staring at the stream, looking for the small figure. Scuff would be already floating, pulled along by the current, scraped by the sludge and filth. Monk saw him, lost him, and found him again. He bent over awkwardly, because there was nowhere to set the lantern, and picked up the limp body. Scuff’s face was white and wet, reminding him with a lurch of pain of Mary Havilland, but Scuff was far smaller, pinched and thin, the skin almost blue around his eyes and mouth. Thank God he was breathing, in spite of the blood that oozed through his clothes and stained them scarlet around his shoulder and chest.
    The assassin must be somewhere ahead of them, but the thought of leaving Scuff and going after him never entered Monk’s head. Clumsily, because of the lantern, and trying to carry Scuff gently with only one arm, he turned and began the long way back. He walked in the center of the sewer floor, where he could move the most easily. He had very little idea where he was, and his only thought was to find the way up towards help.
    He did not know how badly Scuff was hurt, but he could not stop here to find out. There were rats everywhere, and they would smell blood. Far worse than that, the assassin knew he had hit Scuff. The fact that Monk had not followed him would tell him that Scuff was not dead and that Monk was trying to get back up again, hampered by carrying a wounded child. As soon as he was certain of that, would he double back and try to finish Monk off? If the positions were reversed, Monk would!
    He was lost. There was a fork again: three ways, two ahead, one behind him. Which way had he come? Think! Scuff’s life depended on it! The water was flowing around his feet quite rapidly. It must have kept raining all day. What happened if it got harder, heavier? Flash floods, of course! Deep water. Enough to pull him off his feet, maybe even drown him and Scuff. Was it still raining? He could feel the panic rising inside him. He commanded himself to stop behaving like a fool, and think.
    Water flows downwards. On the way in, had he been going with the flow or against it? With it, of course. Down, all the time, down. So he had to go back against it now, upwards. It didn’t matter anymore where he emerged, as long as it was into the air and he could get help. Any opening would do.
    He started forward again. Scuff was growing heavy held on one arm, but he had to hold the lantern high in order to see. Its weight was pulling on the wound from the fight on Jacob’s Island. One good thing: If he was simply going up, and not necessarily retracing the way he had come, then there was no trail for the assassin to follow.
    As Monk trudged upwards, his mind was working. Why had the killer never gone back to Sixsmith for the second half of his payment, nor apparently to Argyll, either? Perhaps he had never expected to collect the second half; he might have asked for what he meant to have in the first payment. Maybe he feared that Argyll meant to kill him, tidy up the ends. Was he right?
    Rathbone would have to drop the prosecution or risk hanging Sixsmith, and Argyll would escape. Neither Mary nor her father would ever be vindicated.
    Monk shook his head to clear it. All that mattered now was getting Scuff up to the top before he died of shock and the cold. He wanted to look at