Artful: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Harry,” he whispered, “as I live and breathe.”
    “You do neither,” Sanguine Harry reminded him. “Get out of the coffin, you lazy good-for-nothing.”
    “Coffin? Why am I in a coffin?” He put his hand to his throat. “What’s wrong with my voice? Why are you sideways, my dear?”
    “You strangled. You took the short drop and sudden stop.”
    “Did I?” said Fagin, and then slowly the memories crept back to him. “Ah. So I did. So I did.”
    “Come here, you old fool!” said Harry. He reached over, gripped Fagin’s skull firmly with either hand and then snapped the dead man’s head upright, a movement that was accompanied by a very distinct crack. Fagin let out a cry of pain and then slowly , experimentally moved his head this way and that. It flopped a bit, but otherwise appeared to be in normal, functional order.
    “Thankee, Harry. You was always a kind one, you was.”
    “I was never anything of the sort,” Sanguine Harry retorted. “And if you believe that, more fool you. Come. Come quickly .” He returned to the alley, retrieved the body of Sowerberry, tossed him into the coffin, then shoved the coffin back into the hearse and secured the door. Then he clambered back into the driver’s seat, Fagin slowly climbing up to sit at his side. Snapping the reins, Sanguine Harry continued the route upon which the late Mr. Sowerberry had been engaged.
    “I thought I was done for, my dear, I truly thought I was,” said Fagin, his hand going to his throat. “I wasn’t sure that I, in my frail condition, could possibly survive. Not in the full light of morning. Eight in the a.m. An ungodly time to ask someone to give up their life, even if they had one to give up, which was not the case with me. Still, at least I had the black hood on; that was a blessing,” he said, speaking of the typical headwear placed upon the condemned so that he was allowed that small measure of dignity and so that the onlookers did not gaze upon the final death agonies as reflected in the condemned’s twisted countenance. “Kept the sun from doing me a treat, it did—”
    “Shut yer yammering mouth,” ordered Sanguine Harry. “There was no sun that morning. Darkness and clouds. Even the Lord didn’t want to waste His time looking down upon you, nor does your brother, nor do I . Yet here am I, the only one forced to looked at your wrinkled, ghastly hollow of a face, so at the very least, spare me the endless array of useless verbiage that spills out of your mouth like sewage from a pipe!”
    Fagin attended to keeping quiet for as long as he was capable, which happened to be just over a minute, and then he asked contritely, “My brother is put out with me, is he?”
    “The right honorable Mr. Fang almost wishes that the noose had torn your fool head off.” And then, with something almost akin to sympathy, Sanguine Harry emphasized belatedly, “ Almost .”
    “Well . . . that’s something, I suppose, isn’t it, my dear? That my beloved brother allows for some small joy that I’m not bereft of my head?”
    “It’s not as if you were putting the damned thing to any useful purpose. What were you thinking, Fagin, to let yourself wind up in such a folly?”
    “It weren’t my fault, Harry—I swear to the living God what made me and turned His back on me, it weren’t,” Fagin said with such urging that he sounded not unlike a plaintive child. “They were lookin’ for a scapegoat, is what they wanted, and that’s no lie. Nancy, poor Nancy, old Sikes gave her what for. Murdered her in cold blood he did, and he died by his own hand, and that’s not what the mob wanted—no, it wasn’t. They wanted a warm body that they could hang for themselves to believe that they and they alone had brought proper vengeance to the situation. And who do they turn to as the object of their hatred and receiver of their unjust justice?” He thumped his chest in indignation. “The Jew. Always the Jew. You dislike the way of