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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

Pellegar stood up and Julian retreated two paces. “Easy, sir,” Pellegar said softly. “We wish no violence.”

“That’s up to you.”

“Indeed.” Somehow, Matthew didn’t like the way that was said. He watched as the count reached behind his head with both hands and unhooked a clasp at the back of his neck. He offered to Julian a small gold chain draped around the fingers of his right hand, an equally small key dangling in the air. “My regards,” he said, his bruised mouth twisting.

Julian reached out to take the key.

Count Pellegar dropped it before Julian’s hand could get there.

In the instant that Julian’s eyes left Pellegar’s face to follow the key down, the count exploded into action.

His left hand clamped to Julian’s gun hand to twist the pistol aside, while the right hand made half-a-cup and slammed with terrific force into Julian’s chin. His tricorn went spinning off. At nearly the same time, Baron Brux picked up the bowl of fruit and flung it at Matthew, who suddenly found himself being assaulted by apples, clementines and parsnips to the head and shoulders; but right after them came Brux himself, who moved not like a drowsy joker but like a deadly juggernaut. Matthew realized his own gun was reduced to being a club, for he neither wished to murder anyone nor to fire a shot that would bring the management … but even as he prepared to bash Brux across the head with the implement the baron kicked up and out, the force of the violet-colored slipper knocked the pistol from Matthew’s hand, and then the small table Brux had picked up in his rush across the room crashed across Matthew’s right shoulder in a blast of breaking furniture. Stunned by this unexpected onslaught, Matthew fell to his knees.

Equally stunned was Julian, who in the few seconds after the half cup of a hand had made the stars shoot fire in his brain had taken a blow to the center of the chest that robbed him of breath and a following strike to the left side of the neck that paralyzed his arm on that side. His pistol was lost. It dawned on him through his pulse of pain, as it did at the same time to Matthew, that the bizarre costumes of these two had disguised the fact that they were highly trained military fighters and possibly assassins in their own right.