The Eagles Legacy

Chapter Eight

Rex Theater—New York, N.Y.

Rosanna (as LADY MARGARET): (sitting on the

ground of Castle Carrick, cradling Andrew’s, as

Lord Dumbarton, head in her lap) Oh, noble

Lord, were that I a man, that with claymore

and dirk I could have joined you in your

noble fight. You won, noble knight, you won,

for all those of the evil clan of Hutchins are

now dead. Ahh, but the sad thing is that,

even in your final victory, you gave your life.

(Takes Lord Dumbarton’s claymore sword and

holds it over her head) And with that sainted,

but Pyrrhic victory, I vow by all that is holy to

keep the name Lord Dumbarton forever in

my heart.

(Curtain closes)

The theater erupted with applause and cheers. Duff stood in the wings where he could see both the actors on the stage, and the audience, all of whom were now on their feet. It had been Duff, in his capacity as stage manager, who signaled the curtains closed, and now he brought his hand down again.

“Curtains open,” he hissed loudly enough for the stagehands to hear him, but not so loudly as to be heard by those in the audience.

The curtains opened again and all the secondary players rushed out to take their curtain call, their appearance onstage in inverse order of the significance of their roles. Finally, the last curtain call had been taken, the curtains closed, and the troupe gathered backstage.

“Wonderful performances from all of you,” Andrew said, congratulating all the actors and actresses. “We will meet here tomorrow at six, one hour before curtain rise. Don’t be late.”

The actors, still up from their performance, laughed and exchanged comments on the play as they headed for the dressing rooms to get out of costume and makeup.

“Oh, Julie, you were just wonderful,” one of the “nobles” said to the beautiful young woman who played the daughter of the Laird Carrick. “I have been in the theater for five years now, and have never seen an actress who, in her very first role onstage, performed it with such mastery.”

Duff chuckled to himself as he overheard the conversation. The young lady was certainly adequate to the role, but he knew Phillip Cain to be a notorious “ladies’ man,” and he knew that he was using flattery to attain his goal.

“Duff, will you be taking dinner tonight with Rosanna, me, and some of the others?” Andrew asked.

“I would like to, Andrew, but I think I will stay and work on the forest flats. I noticed during the play that they were not holding their position as well as they should.”

“Very well,” Andrew said. “But if you finish earlier than you suspect, please join us at Delmonico’s.”

“I shall,” Duff replied.

Duff waited until all the actors and stagehands were gone. Then he made certain that all the house lights were turned off and the backstage lights were on. He looked up at the flys to examine the flats that were used for the forest scene and saw at once where the problem lay. Lowering one of the flats, he took it to a work area offstage and placed it across two sawhorses. All he would have to do is adjust the frame to take out the warp.

Across the street from the theater, Malcolm, Roderick, and Alexander watched as the patrons left the theater. The theatergoers were talking about the play they had just seen.

“I swear, Rosanna MacCallister just gets more beautiful as she gets older.”

“It’s all makeup. I’ll bet she isn’t that pretty.”

“Makeup can’t make you more beautiful. It just enhances what is already there.”

“I liked the fight scene in the second act. It looked so real.”

“Of course it looked real. It’s called acting.”

“When are we going in?” Alexander said.

“When we are sure that everyone has left,” Malcolm said.

“They’re all gone now. You can tell that.”

“Don’t get so anxious. We need a plan,” Malcolm said.

“We have a plan. He killed our brother, and we are going to kill him. That is our plan,” Alexander said.

The lights outside the theater went off.

“Now,” Alexander said, starting across the street. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, it won’t take a minute to come up with a plan as to how we are going to do this,” Malcolm said.

“I don’t want to wait another minute. I want to kill him now,” Alexander said.

By now the three men were under the marquee and all the way up to the double doors that opened into the lobby.

“It’s locked,” Roderick said when he tried the door.

“I’ll take care of that,” Alexander said. He took out a pocketknife, opened it, then slipped it in between the doors. It took no more than a couple of seconds for him to overcome the lock and open the doors.

“Quiet,” Malcolm whispered as he closed the doors behind them.

“What if he is already gone?” Roderick whispered.

“He hasn’t gone. There are lights on back there, see?” Alexander said. “And he’s the stage manager, which means he would be the last to leave.”

The three men moved quietly through the darkened theater until they reached the stage. Then, climbing onto the stage, they stepped through the curtains and crossed the stage before moving into the backstage area.

That was when they saw Duff working on something with a plane.

Duff leaned over to see if he had leveled the edge of the flat.

“Duff MacCallister, we have come for you,” a familiar voice said from the darkness.

The voice was familiar, because it was the voice of Alexander Somerled.

Startled at hearing Alexander’s voice here, in America, Duff turned toward the sound, but saw nothing in the darkness. He was at a disadvantage, because while Alexander was cloaked by the darkness, he was well lighted.

“Alexander Somerled,” Duff said. “Have you come alone?” Duff moved away from the flat to the properties locker. Alongside the properties locker was the light control panel.

“I am with him,” Roderick said.

“And so am I, Deputy Malcolm,” a third voice said.

“Deputy Malcolm, is it?” Duff replied. “Well, you have wasted a trip, Deputy Malcolm, for you have no jurisdiction here. You cannot arrest me.”

“It is not for to arrest you we have come, Duff MacCallister, but to kill you,” Alexander said.

Reaching his hand up to the light control panel, Duff turned off the backstage lights. As soon as the theater went dark, he grabbed the claymore sword, the same sword Andrew and Rosanna had handled onstage. And though it was used as a prop, it was a real claymore sword, fifty-five inches in overall length, with a thirteen-inch grip and a forty-two-inch blade.

“What the hell, where did he go?” Malcolm asked.

“Where is he?” Roderick asked.

“Shoot him!” Alexander shouted. “Shoot him!”

“Shoot where?” Roderick asked.

Duff picked up a vase and tossed it through the darkness to the opposite side of the room. When it hit the floor, it broke with a great crash.

“Over there! He’s trying to get away! Shoot him! Shoot him!” Alexander yelled at the top of his voice.

All three men began to shoot in the direction of the sound of the crashing vase. The flame patterns of the muzzles illuminated the room in periodic flashes, like streaks of lightning.

The flashes of light enabled Duff to come up behind them.

“Here I am, boys,” he said.

The three men turned toward him, but with a mighty swing of the great claymore sword, Duff decapitated the two Somerled brothers. Malcolm, who had managed to avoid the blade, pulled the trigger of his pistol, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He turned and ran.

Duff heard the side door open and close. He waited for a long moment, listening to see if Malcolm had actually left or if he had just opened and closed the door, pretending to leave. When he heard nothing, he turned the lights back on.

The two decapitated Somerled brothers lay on the floor, their heads a few feet away. Alexander’s head was looking up; Roderick’s head was facedown. There was a great deal of blood surrounding the two bodies and Duff knew that he was going to have his work cut out for him tonight.

The first thing he was going to have to do was get rid of the bodies. He did that by putting both bodies and their heads in a pushcart that had been part of the properties of a previous play. Dropping their guns in there as well, he pushed the cart down the alley for at least a full mile away from the theater before dumping the bodies behind a trash container.

Returning to the theater, he worked for the rest of the night cleaning the bloodstains from the floor and the cart. It was nearly dawn by the time he went home to change clothes and wash up.

When he returned to the theater the next day there was no sign of the grisly event that had happened the night before. The show went on as usual with the audience just as appreciative, and the players and theater company blissfully ignorant of the fact that two men had been killed in this very place.

It was not until the next day that the newspaper carried a story of the fate of Alexander and Roderick Somerled, though as yet the two men had not been identified, so the author of the story could only surmise as to who they were and what had happened.

From the New York Herald:

A Most Ghastly Find

The bodies of two decapitated men were found yesterday morning in the alley behind Gimlin’s Pawn Service. The two heads were found with the bodies, but officials are uncertain as to which head belongs to which body.

Charles Gimlin, proprietor of the shop behind which the bodies were found, notified the police after he discovered the bodies while taking out the trash. He says they were not there on the night before, and he is certain that he has never seen either of them. No one has yet identified the two bodies and the police say there has been no missing persons report filed that could account for the men.

One theory advanced is that they may be sailors only recently arrived and, looking for some nefarious activity, found themselves in Chinatown. Two pistols were found with the two bodies, and the theory thus advanced suggests that while in Chinatown the two men were intemperate in their behavior and in so doing made enemies of a Celestial. It is well known that a Chinaman, being heathen, will, when provoked, often cut off the head of the person who has offended him.

Police say that this being the most probable event, this case will in all likelihood never be solved as no Chinaman will tell on one of their own, and to White men, nearly all Celestials look alike.

Duff spent the next two days anticipating the return of Deputy Malcolm. He realized that the fact that Malcolm did not return right away did not mean he wasn’t going to come back. Finally, after the paper came out, Duff made up his mind. He could not stay here any longer, for to do so would endanger not only Andrew and Rosanna but the entire theater company.

Duff had no choice now; he was going to have to leave. He didn’t want to run; he liked this job. And if the danger was only to him, he would not have run. But he had already seen what had happened to Skye—she was an innocent victim who was killed only because she was too close to him.

He had no wish to see something like happen again. That’s when he told Percy Fowler, first assistant to the stage manager, to ask Andrew and Rosanna to meet him in the sets storeroom.

“You wanted to see us, Cousin Duff?” Andrew asked. Rosanna was with him.

“Yes.”

“Well, couldn’t we have picked a more comfortable place to meet?” Andrew asked. “The green room perhaps? Or my dressing room?”

“I think here is better,” Duff said. “What I have to say isn’t for anyone’s ears but the two of you, and I would not burden you with it if I did not have to.”

“Burden us?” Rosanna asked. “Burden us with what?”

“With the real truth of why I came to America.”

“I thought you said it was because Skye had been killed,” Andrew said.

“Aye, that is true,” Duff said. “She was killed by the sheriff and two of his deputies, Gillis and Nevin.”

“But I don’t understand,” Rosanna said. “Why would the sheriff and his deputies want to kill such a lovely young girl?”

“It was not she they intended to kill, but me,” Duff said. “Earlier in that same evening, I happened upon two of the sheriff’s sons, Roderick and Donald, as they were attacking Skye with the intention of having their way with her. I interrupted their scheme and, in the fight that followed, killed Donald.

“After I took Skye back to her father, I vowed to turn myself in to the sheriff and plead self-defense. Skye, wonderful girl that she was, and truly in love with me, accompanied me so that the sheriff might hear the truth of the events. She did this because she knew that Roderick would have told his father a much different story.

“While on the road to the sheriff’s office, we were set upon by Sheriff Somerled and Deputies Malcolm, Gillis, and Nevin. Without so much as a by your leave, they began shooting at us, and the bullets struck and killed Skye. In a rage, I killed both of the deputies, but the sheriff and Deputy Malcolm ran from me. I then stowed aboard a ship and made my way here.”

“And here you shall stay,” Andrew said, “for if ever there was a killing that was justified, this was it.”

“Aye, and I would have been happy to stay here for a long time. The work is good, and the company is most agreeable,” Duff said. “But two nights ago, the sheriff’s other two sons and another deputy found me here.”

“But what? How? How did they find you?” Andrew asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Where are they now?” Rosanna asked. “Well, never mind that, they have no authority here. And we can secure a good lawyer for you who will help you defend yourself.”

“The situation has grown more complicated,” Duff said.

“In what way?” Andrew asked.

“Perhaps you read the article in the paper this morning of the two bodies found in the alley some distance from here?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. “You are talking about the two men that were killed in Chinatown.”

“’Twas not Chinatown where they were killed, but right here,” Duff said.

“Here where?” Andrew asked, confused by Duff’s comment.

“Here, in the theater. The two men are Roderick and Alexander Somerled. They and Deputy Malcolm confronted me here in the theater on the night I stayed to work on the flats. They came not to arrest me, but to kill me, and they began shooting. I managed to turn out the lights and with the advantage I had in the darkness by knowing the theater, I was able to turn the tide on them. I killed the Somerled brothers, but Malcolm got away. Then, in order that I not get anyone in the theater in trouble, I moved their bodies. But as I think about it, I know that isn’t enough. Somehow Deputy Malcolm traced me here, and he can come again, and that would put the two of you in danger.”

“Don’t worry about that. We will face the danger together,” Andrew said. “It is not as if we have never faced danger before.”

“No, I must leave. I have brought enough hurt to people that I love as it is. I will bring no more.”

“Where will you go?” Andrew asked.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I will just go.”

“He can go to Falcon,” Rosanna said.

“Yes!” Andrew replied enthusiastically. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself. Duff, you must go find our brother Falcon. If there is anyone in the world who can help you now, it would be Falcon.”

“I thank you kindly, but I’ve nae wish to bring my troubles to anyone else.”

“Don’t be silly, everyone brings their troubles to Falcon,” Rosanna said. “He thrives on it.”

“Trust me, Duff, he will welcome you with open arms. And I will write a letter of introduction for you.”

“Where would I find him?” Duff asked.

Andrew smiled. “In Colorado. Oh, have you money?”

“I have some money that I brought with me, and I am owed two weeks’ salary from the production company,” Duff said. “But I hesitate to wait for it.”

“You need not wait. I know how much is due you. I will pay you now,” Andrew said. “Come to my dressing room, I will give you the money and the letter of introduction.”

“And,” Rosanna said.

“And?”

“Don’t you remember? The Black Watch thing?”

“Oh, yes,” Andrew said. “We were going to wait and present this to you at the close of the production of The Highlander, sort of a thank-you reward for a job well done as stage manager. But, if you are leaving now, we may as well give it to you.”

Duff followed Andrew and Rosanna to Andrew’s dressing room. There, Andrew gave Duff the one hundred dollars he had due in wages. Then he removed the contents of a box. It was the uniform jacket and kilt of the Black Watch, complete with a sgian dubh, or ceremonial knife.

“We thought you might like to keep this with you,” Andrew said.

Duff nodded, then put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “’Tis family ye are, and family ye will always be,” he said. “I thank the both of ye, for all that ye have done.”

Percy Fowler was hiding behind the flats. He had no idea why Duff MacCallister wanted to speak to Andrew and Rosanna, but if by listening to their conversation he could realize some advantage for himself, he would do so. As soon as he brought the MacCallisters into the storeroom, he moved quickly so as to be out of sight, and here, he heard every word they said.

Percy had been working in this theater through five previous productions, and he had been told that, with the next production, he would be elevated to the position of stage manager. That didn’t happen when Duff MacCallister arrived. Both Andrew and Rosanna had insisted that their cousin be given the job, and because they were highly regarded by the producer of the play, their request was honored. Percy had been angered by being cut out of a job that was rightly his, but there was nothing he could do but accept it, for he knew of no other occupation that paid as well.

Now he was privy to some very secret information, information that he might find some way to turn to his advantage.