The blast of the double shot took most of Merda’s skull away. The small man seemed to fold up as if made of flimsy paper and blow before the wind, the staring eyes beneath the cratered skull now truly dark and dead.

Julian sat up. He coughed up blood.

Matthew offered him the smoking pistol. “Here,” he said tonelessly, and when Julian took the weapon he began walking away.

Julian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and regarded the result. “Where are you going?” he asked, his own senses stunned and sluggish.

“To fetch a doctor,” Matthew answered.

Firebaugh didn’t get far, maybe only a hundred yards before his borrowed boots cracked through the crust into boggy earth that stopped his progress as surely as a pair of leg-irons.

“On your feet,” Matthew commanded when he reached the man by easily following his tracks. He could hear in his voice—as the doctor could—that something had changed about him. Something was different, and this difference had perhaps become complete in just the last few minutes. Was this change for good or for bad? At the moment, it was difficult to say.

“Oh yes,” Matthew added, as he stood over the doctor and found himself wishing Firebaugh to try to run a bit more so he could take the man down like a sack of dirty laundry. “They don’t call me the Monster of Plymouth for no reason.”

The rope that wound up tying Firebaugh’s arms behind his back in the most uncomfortable position possible was the cord that had previously held up his breeches. With Firebaugh trussed and the yellow cravat of the formerly living Miles Merda stuffed into his mouth, the doctor was secured enough so that Julian could sleep under the blanket that Merda had used to stay warm in the baggage compartment, and thus Matthew got his balls under himself—as either Julian or Hudson Greathouse might say—and continued on as driver.

When two more hours had passed and the road seemed to go on forever across the moors, Matthew knew he was near passing out. So it was with great relief that within the following half hour he steered the team toward the lamps of a coaching inn made of white stone and at least twice the size of the Autreys’ cottage, which would hopefully mean featherbeds and a chance to bathe. They had stopped here briefly with the Turlentorts on the way in to London, but the stop had hardly seen them out of their coach.

How to explain the situation to the innkeeper Edmond Varney and his wife Ann, when they as loyal helpers to the riders of the roads came out wearing coats over their nightclothing and shone their lanterns upon the battered faces of their newest visitors?

How indeed?