The Hangman's Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page B

aisle and out the front door, leaving Riley alone in a place where he was determined to forge brand-new memories.
    Riley’s preparations were interrupted by a clatter coming from the front of the house, tumbling down the center aisle, and mounting the stage itself. It was the stir of men entering the building and being none too genteel about it. These were men who cared not about such things as busted hinges or broken locks. It was in they wanted; and in they were coming, regardless of barriers.
    Riley had initially smiled, thinking the Trips were back and famished, but his grin soured when he saw what was barreling down the aisle toward him.
    “Rams,” he said. “With the king himself at the head of the bunch.”
    Riley fought his instinct to run and hide. Instead he squared his shoulders, threw back the specially tailored folds of his black fur-trimmed velvet cloak, and bowed dramatically.
    “Your Majesty,” he said, and confetti showered from the rafters, as though Otto Malarkey and his gang of thugs, bludgers, cads, nobblers, and all-around ne’er-do-wells had been expected.
    The Battering Rams were London’s premier gang of organized criminals, a title that had previously belonged to the Hooligan Boys, a bunch who had forfeited any claim to the term organized when they dynamited the eastern wall of Newgate Prison while the majority of their imprisoned war council was leaning against the other side. It was said that the bluebottles were shoveling Hooligan parts for weeks. The Battering Rams were an altogether cannier bunch. No rowdy, gin-soaked men of the moment, these. No, the Rams were more your seasoned criminals, in it for the long haul. Veterans, most of them, who had been blooded in the Transvaal or China. They appreciated a tidy battle plan, and they were prepared to follow a man with a bit of flair. And in Otto Malarkey they had found a tactical genius who had flair flowing out of his beloved pirate boots.
    Otto had never been a pirate as such, but he had smuggled taxables into Whitby under the famous smuggler clergyman Reverend John Pine, who had gifted Otto the boots from his deathbed. Malarkey learned the classics at Reverend Pine’s desk. He took strategy from Caesar and politicking from Cicero. For his renowned skill with the sword he had to wait till he was dumped into the island prison of Little Saltee, where he learned the gentleman’s art from a fellow inmate. When the Rams’ previous king, one of Otto’s brothers, perished in an ignoble wrestling match with a mountain gorilla, Otto inherited the Battering Rams’ horned crown. He had steered the gang to realms of ill-gotten gains they could never have dreamed of under previous Ram kings. Lately, though, it had to be said, the power had gone a little to Otto’s head and his trademark flair had taken a turn for the flamboyant.
    He was plowing his own fashion furrow and bringing quite a few of his hardened mates along with him.
    So now, when Riley unfurled from his theatrical bow, he was greeted by a front row half full of snorting, bristling coves who sounded and smelled like the Battering Rams he knew so well. But they looked like dandies from some ancient royal court, resplendent in powdered wigs and rouged cheeks, and in their midst sat Otto Malarkey himself, the most powdered of the lot.
    Riley spoke as he straightened. “Good evening, ladies and…”
    The traditional theater greeting stuck in his gullet when he noticed Otto twirling a lace parasol.
    “Ladies…and…”
    Otto waited politely for a moment, then whispered through a funnel of fingers like a prompter from the wings. “Gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen.”
    Riley forced a smile but was careful not to laugh. A display of mirth at this juncture could prove fatal. “Gentlemen, of course. Ladies and gentlemen. Apologies, Your High Rammity. I was not expecting an audience at this hour. Perhaps the advertisement chalked on the sidewalk outside was smudged by the passage of feet.