Hold The Dark: A Markhat story by Frank Tuttle Read Free Book Online Page A

grey spring jacket, one of the new ones that reach a hand’s width below the knees and turn rain like a duck. A new black narrow-brimmed crease-brow hat adorned sir’s well-combed head, a new white shirt showed the lean, toned lines of sir’s muscular torso, and sir’s threadbare trousers rested at the bottom of a plain brown shopping bag happily provided by Rogers of Rogers and Rogers, Gentlemen Clothiers.
    My army jacket lay folded atop the pants. Atop it was a second new hat—grey, this one, in last year’s style, but still quite dashing nonetheless.
    I stepped, blinking, back out into the street and set out. I was too busy looking for Nervous Hat to worry about how I would explain to Ethel Hoobin that I’d needed to buy a new hat and coat to find his sister. I’d decided I wouldn’t try at all at about the time I spotted my Nervous Hat a stone’s throw ahead of me, standing on tiptoe and doing little hops so he could see over the crowd stopped at an intersection.
    He was looking north. I grinned and pulled my hat down and sauntered toward him. The traffic master waved him across, and I had to trot to keep up, but I made it.
    I stayed a steady forty feet back from him for four blocks. He darted and hopped and gave every indication of being in frantic pursuit. Even passers-by lifted their eyebrows and occasionally turned to watch his antics.
    Nervous Hat looked right at me a half-dozen times. But he wasn’t looking for me, which was another mistake. He was looking for my old army jacket and my old tan pants and the hatless shape of my head from a distance. So when he saw my new jacket and the rakish angle of my fine new hat he looked right through me and went back to his hopping darting frantic act.
    I pondered this. If he was in some way associated with my interest in Martha Hoobin, who might his employers be? Or, if he was acting alone, who was he?
    He was young, about Martha’s age. Well if not elegantly dressed. Possessed of an aura of bungling good-natured innocence.
    I wondered if he’d ever given Martha a swan-shaped silver comb, of good if not artful workmanship.
    We entered the shade of the towering blood-oaks a block from the Velvet. Nervous Hat actually peeked around from behind one of the trees while he rested, and a little boy who’d been watching him from the other side jumped up at him and said, “boo”.
    I nearly laughed out loud. Nervous Hat brushed the kid aside and stamped off toward the Velvet, like he knew that’s where I had been headed. That bothered me. If I’d doubted Nervous Hat and Martha Hoobin were connected somehow, I didn’t doubt it anymore.
    We left the shade, and he eyed the Velvet stoop and finally settled down at a vacant table at a sidewalk café named, cleverly enough, The Sidewalk Café. I switched hats, waited a bit, got a table myself, had a snack while he drank coffee and stared at the Velvet.
    I toyed with the idea of sending over a sandwich or sauntering over and joining him, just to see how he’d handle it. Finally, I decided that he wasn’t moving for at least an hour, at which time his waiter would toss him back onto the sidewalk when the lunch crowd arrived.
    So I paid, left a nice tip and folded my bag into a parcel under my arm and went off in search of Rupert. I passed a few feet from Nervous Hat, barely restrained myself from wishing him a good morning, got a good look at his hands. But he wasn’t wearing a signet ring, didn’t have his house or initials embroidered on the lapel of his jacket, wasn’t doodling his dastardly plans down on his napkin, so I passed by wordlessly and crossed the street well away from the Velvet.
    Rupert wasn’t on duty yet, when I reached the intersection at Mayben and Oldloop. I spied another jeweler, wasted a good ten minutes convincing the man I wasn’t a tax assessor for the Regent, learned nothing. I repeated this process twice more before the Big Bell clanged out noon from the Square, and Rupert appeared on his