Robert McCammon - Mister Slaughter

"My clocks? Twelve. Working on my thirteenth. I make three or four a year, depending on the complexity of what the client wants."

"What is that?" Matthew pointed to the half wagon wheel with the bat wings.

"Part of the inner workings of my thirteenth. I don't believe in bad luck-unlucky thirteen and all that-but with my client's permission I'm making a clock that will um flap its wings like a bat upon every hour. What you see diagrammed there are the rods that the hammers will hit to cause the wings to flap. I'm thinking of creating the entire thing out of black cloth draped around a wooden frame. With a black clockface and possibly red enamel numerals. My client, fortunately, is very open to my designs and already owns two of my creations."

Matthew just stared at him. "Why don't you make it meow? Like a black cat?"

"Well," Quisenhunt said, and studied his knuckles, "the nearest sound approximating that would be from a fiddle. When I get my self-playing fiddle perfected, then maybe so."

"Your self-playing " Matthew decided to let it alone. "I'm not so interested in your clocks," he said, "as in " "The thief trap, yes you said that. Then you know about my other interest?" Matthew nodded. "Farraday told me."

"Ah." Quisenhunt's wife had entered bringing a cup of pale yellow lemon water, which she offered to Matthew. "Take your drink, then," said the inventor, "and I'll show you my cellar workshop."

"It's awfully dirty down there," the woman cautioned.

"I think Mr. Corbett can handle a little dirt." Quisenhunt paused to light a candle, and then motioned for Matthew to follow.

Along the stairs that led down, Quisenhunt lit a succession of wall candles until they reached the bottom. Matthew had caught the odor of gunpowder as soon as the door was opened. As Quisenhunt continued to walk around and touch fire to a few more wicks, Matthew saw that they stood in a stone-floored shooter's gallery. A half-dozen pistols hung on wall hooks near the stairs. On the other side of the chamber were two canvas-covered circular targets, one large and one smaller, with enough holes in them to show the straw stuffing. Matthew thought Ashton McCaggers would have felt right at home in here with his own pistols and dress-maker's forms Elsie and Rosalind to shoot at.

"I have always been fascinated by firearms," Quisenhunt said when the last candle was burning and yellow light gleamed off the pistols. "These I've designed myself. Here, this is something I've been testing lately." He picked up from a circular table not a pistol but a short sword with an ornately-scrolled grip.

"It's a sword," Matthew remarked.

"Is it?" Quisenhunt made a couple of swipes through the air with his weapon. Then he turned toward the targets. Matthew heard a click as a cleverly-disguised striker was drawn. With a flash of sparks and billow of smoke the pistol barrel constructed along the swordblade fired. A hole appeared near the center of the larger target.

"Interesting," Matthew said. "Bringing a gun to a swordfight."

"That would be the idea, yes. The trigger is hidden in the grip." Quisenhunt showed it to Matthew, as smoke curled from the barrel. "I have high hopes for this, but unfortunately at present it does need work. The problem is keeping both sword and pistol equally-balanced."

Matthew thought a novice swordsman such as himself could benefit from the long reach of that particular blade. He saw a pistol hanging amid the guns on the wall that caught his attention. "May I?" he asked, and when Quisenhunt nodded he took it down. "What is this?"

"My pride and joy," said the inventor.

It was a pistol, Matthew saw, with three barrels-one atop two-but only a single striker. The wooden body of the gun was black and sleek, the barrels a steely blue. Heavy in the hand, but very well-balanced. It was, he thought, awesome.

"You prepare all three barrels at once," Quisenhunt explained, holding his candle closer so the light jumped off the bizarre and beautiful gun. "When the first barrel is fired, you cock the striker again and a gearwheel revolves the second barrel into position. Then, when that is fired, the striker revolves the third barrel into place."

"What do you call it?"

"A rotator."

"Ah." Matthew was definitely impressed. "And all three of these barrels really fire, then?"

"Well " Quisenhunt looked down at the floor and rubbed at a stone with his shoe. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I've had considerable trouble with the third barrel, which fires-by my calculations-with only thirty-six percent certainty." He shrugged. "But there's always room for improvement. You'll note that the barrels all share a single flashpan, so unfortunately the shooter does have to prime the pan between shots. If you'll open the compartment in the butt of the handle-it's the little brass lever there-you'll find three small paper cartridges, which hold the necessary powder for three applications to the pan. My intention with this was to speed the firing process as much as humanly possible."

"I'll say." Matthew heard himself sound like a dumbfounded schoolboy. "If you don't mind my asking, what would something like this sell for?"

"It's the better-working model of two in that configuration, but I wouldn't sell it. There's still a lot of work to be done."

Reluctantly, Matthew returned the rotator to its hook. What he would have paid to have a gun like that in the woods against Slaughter! His eye was snagged by another pistol, this one with a long barrel and atop the barrel a brass cylinder that looked to be a spyglass.

"Tyranthus Slaughter," said the inventor suddenly. "Yes! I do recall that name. He was one of the highwaymen they caught was it two years ago?"

"Two years and a little over four months. You made the exploding box for that particular purpose, correct?"

"Correct. High Constable Farraday and some of the town officials came to me to ask that I help them catch the highwaymen who were terrorizing the Pike. They knew of my interest in firearms, but being Quakers they wanted something non-lethal. Something that would startle the highwaymen, possibly daze them long enough to be overcome."

"I see. And do you always sign your work?"

"All my finished work, yes." Quisenhunt answered. "I'm proud of my creations."

Matthew took a drink of the lemon water and found it more sweet than sour. But even so, it did make the healing cut inside his mouth pucker. After his realization that Slaughter had successfully escaped Hoornbeck, Matthew hadn't known what else to do. He could search Philadelphia, of course, and he'd already been to the stables to ask for anyone of Slaughter's description, but essentially the trail had gone cold.

Except for one thing.

The exploding safebox that had held Slaughter's ill-gotten treasure. The safebox that bore, burned across its underside, O. Quisenhunt, Phila., followed by a number: 6.

Matthew said, "I know there's a striker device inside the box that ignites the gunpowder. And the hammer that falls makes the gunshot sound. But tell me how someone opens the box without the striker being tripped."

"Simple enough. The latches operate on springs. There are two versions of the triggering mechanism. In one, if the latches are turned any way but horizontally before they're opened, the mainspring is released and trips the striker. In the second, the latches have to be turned vertically, or the striker trips. The latches are designed to give some resistance; sort of an early warning to a potential thief, so to speak."

Matthew saw the intent, which was to blow smoke and sparks into the faces of the highwaymen, leading to-hopefully-a quick arrest. He recalled that the box Greathouse had opened-with some difficulty, as he remembered-had its latches turned vertically, which meant its 'safe position' would have been if the latches had been horizontal. Obviously, Slaughter had known which version he possessed. "How many boxes did you make?