The Styx by Jonathon King Read Free Book Online Page B

problem for you, eh, Byrne.”
    And there it was. Proof of what wouldn’t be said to him directly when his Pinkerton commander came and gave him this assignment.
    Harris was giving him that wink and a grin that meant he wanted the story from the origin. Byrne pretended he didn’t understand and simply nodded.
    “Oh, come on lad. At least show me this little piece of weaponry I’ve heard bragged on by men I’d have to admit aren’t easily impressed.”
    Byrne had already anticipated the inevitability of the request, and in a motion like a magician’s flick of a satin scarf, the baton flashed up in his hand with a whisper and was instantly in front of his face, bringing Harris’ eyes up to meet his.
    “I heard there were six men, big men mind you, lyin’ in the gutter outside Mr. Flagler’s house within less than a one minute round,” Harris said, focused on the short steel wand. “Boys said you never skinned a knuckle, never drew your gun.”
    “There were only four,” Byrne said, and then with a snap of his forearm, the baton telescoped to three times its length with a sound like a switchblade being opened. “And they weren’t that big.”
    The display did not make Harris jump, only his hand moved, tucking quickly into the thick breast flap of his coat.
    “Aye,” he said, now measuring the piece of steel from its tip to Byrne’s fist and then looking back up to the younger man’s eyes. “Let’s get you back to the caboose, lad, where we’ll have some breakfast and I’ll fill you in on the rest of your duties before he himself gets here.”
    Byrne jumped down from the steps onto the platform, landing lightly on his toes. He could feel the big Irishman’s eyes on the back of his shoulders and knew it was he who was now being measured. He retracted his baton and tucked it away in an inside pocket where it would be easily accessible.

C HAPTER 4
    I T was barely eight o’clock and the sun was already heating the back of Ida May Fluery’s indigo blouse. She could feel internal heat rise to the collar at her throat and spread up to the perspiration beading on her wide dark forehead. She was standing on the very same spot where she had so often stood—at the head of the cul de sac in the Styx, organizing if she needed to, greeting when she wanted to, and cajoling when she had to. But this morning there was no shade on the hard-packed sand in front of what had been her home. The tree cover was now blackened and bare, the sun streaked through still rising wisps of brown smoke. This morning Miss Ida was giving out prayers and consolation in whispers and small tight hugs to the residents of her community.
    Ida had not slept. She’d remained up throughout the night, helplessly watching until the flames that consumed every dwelling in the Styx had finally eaten all they could and then settled down as coals glowing like lumps of living, satisfied evil.
    Last night when word jumped across the railroad bridge to West Palm Beach that the Styx was burning, a handful of her neighbors made it across the lake before some official closed off access to the island, stating that only firefighters were allowed across. No one, of course, of any such capacity ever arrived at the site of the blaze. Ida was there. So too were a couple of the stable boys and three cooks who were on duty at the Royal Poinciana Hotel on the lakefront a mile or so away. The boys had made foolish attempts to run in close to the flames to rescue things they deemed valuable. The women simply stood and watched and wept. By sunup an assistant hotel manager, a southern white man of indeterminate age, had arrived and gently herded the onlookers back to the Breakers with the promise of food and clean uniforms and then with equally gentle words reminded them that they still had to report for work today.
    When the manager stood in front of Ida May she seemed to look straight through him.
    “Mizz Ida,” he said quietly, “ya’ll going to have to supervise