Peter and the Sword of Mercy by Ridley Pearson EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Ridley Pearson
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fiction
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DISAPPEARANCE
London, 1902
JAMES SMITH, SURROUNDED BY A THRONG of home-bound commuters,
climbed the steep stairs leading out of the South Kensington Underground
station. Reaching the top, he felt the chill of the night air and pulled his
overcoat tighter around him. He got his bearings and started toward
Harrington Road. As he passed a newsstand, his eyes fell on a blaring black
headline in one of the evening papers:
FOURTH DISAPPEARANCE
LINKED TO UNDERGROUND
James stopped and examined the illustration accompanying the story. It
was a drawing of a middle-aged businessman in suit and tie, a man who
looked like many in the crowd flowing past James now. James already
knew the details of the story. Two nights earlier, the man had stayed late at
his job at a bank on Surrey Street. He left the bank at 8:30 and was last seen
by a coworker descending the steps to the Temple Underground station. The
banker’s usual route home was to ride the train to Westminster, where he
would leave the Underground and board one of the new motorized
omnibuses for the rest of his journey.
But he never reached his home. As far as the police could determine, he
never emerged from the Underground. He was the fourth passenger to
vanish this way in the past two weeks.
All four of the missing had been on the District Line—the same line
James had just ridden. And while Londoners were generally a stoic lot,
James had sensed an unusual level of tension in his fellow passengers—
wary glances, an uneasiness as the train rocked its way through the dark
tunnel, a general eagerness to get back up to the street.
James was not a fearful person. By the time he was twelve years old, he
had survived ordeals more deadly and frightening than most people, of any
age, could ever imagine. In his current job he was routinely exposed to
London’s dark and violent underworld. He remained calm in the face of
danger; he was viewed by his coworkers as an exceptionally levelheaded
man.
But even James had felt something in the tunnel. He wouldn’t call it
fear, exactly. But there had been a feeling at the back of his neck as the train
rumbled along a particularly dark stretch of track, and a jerk of his head
when he thought he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, something through
the window: a quick and fluid movement; a shifting shadow.
It was nothing, he’d told himself. A trick of the light. But the image had
stayed in his mind—the flicker of shadow. It awakened memories he did not
welcome, memories that had slept for more than twenty years—memories
of other shadows, in another place.
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