William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

it because he would be able to find a buyer.
    They weren’t going to! They knew he would take half, so they were going to try to sell it themselves. Then all Monk would get would be the carving back, and a handful of petty thieves. It would stop the robberies for perhaps a week or two, but what was that worth? Instinctively he turned towards Orme and saw his face for an instant in the faintest light from the thieves’ candles. The defeat in him twisted inside Monk as if he himself were responsible for the failure.
    Another rat squeaked and ran, claws rattling on the wood. Then there was a different sound: softer, heavier. Monk’s heart pounded in his chest and his mouth was dry. Orme turned the same instant as he did, and both saw the shadow of a man blend into the sagging walls and disappear.
    Monk swiveled around the other way. To his right Butterworth was rigid, listening. He too had heard something and was straining his eyes, but not to where Monk had seen the man disappear. Butterworth was staring at least fifteen feet away.
    Monk was freezing. His hand clenched on the hilt of the cutlass was like ice, clumsy, all thumbs. His body was shaking.
    He had been right the first time. There had been ten, but one of them had left, betraying his fellows. To whom?
    The answer was already emerging into the pool of candlelight in what remained of the room. A grotesquely fat man stepped forward, his distended stomach swathed in a satin waistcoat, his bloated face wreathed in smiles, his eyes like bullet holes in white plaster.
    Silence gripped the thieves as if by the throat.
    “Well!” said the Fat Man in a voice little more than a whisper. “What a pretty piece of work.” Monk was not certain if he meant the betrayal or the ivory.
    One man squeaked half a word, then stifled it instantly.
    The Fat Man ignored him. “Discipline, discipline.” He shook his head and his massive jowls wobbled. “Without order we perish. How many times have I told you that? If you had given that to me, openly and honestly as we agreed, I would have sold it and given you half.” His mouth hardened. He stood motionless. “But as I have had to take the trouble of coming for it myself, and bringing my men with me, I shall have to keep all of it. Expenses, you see?”
    No one moved.
    “And discipline…always discipline. Can’t have things getting out of control. No!” He barked the last word as one of the thieves made to stand up, his hand going to his waist for a weapon. “Very foolish, Doyle. Very foolish indeed. Do you imagine I have come unarmed? Now, you know me better than that! Or perhaps you don’t, or you would not have tried such a stupid piece of duplicity.”
    But the man was too angry to heed a warning. He drew a dagger out of his belt and lunged forward.
    The Fat Man shouted, and the next moment the shadows came alive. There was a melee of heaving bodies, flying arms and legs, and the candlelight on the sudden, bright arcs of knives and cutlasses. It took less than a minute to realize that the Fat Man’s followers were getting the better of it. There were more of them and they were better armed.
    Orme was staring at Monk, waiting for the word.
    For a sick, blinding instant Monk wanted to escape. How many men could he lose in a swordfight in the candlelight, with the thieves and the Fat Man’s men against them?
    Then his mind cleared. What were the odds to do with anything? They were policemen. They wore the queen’s uniform. The Fat Man would take the carving and the police would have stood by like cowards and watched. Monk knew exactly how many men he would lose then—all of them.
    “Forward!” he said, and charged, heading for the Fat Man.
    The next moments were violent, painful, and terrifying. Monk was in the thick of it, and at first the cutlass felt strange in his hand. He was not sure whether to stab with it or hack. A thin man, scrawny but surprisingly powerful, swung at him with a cudgel and caught him a glancing blow on the arm. The pain of it jerked him into reality and hot anger. He swung back with the cutlass and missed. A knife tore the flesh of his right shoulder, and he felt the hot blood. This time his cutlass did not miss and the jar of its blade on bone rocked him.
    But beyond the first taste of bile in his mouth, there was no time to think what he might have done. Orme was to his right, in trouble, and Clacton beyond was struggling. Jones came to his rescue. Where was the Fat Man?
    Monk turned