Chapter 6

"Good news! Very good news!"

Joshua Kingston read the telegram again and smiled. The girl was found. A week later, he received another message, telling him of another person seen walking the girl about; a redheaded man who looked a lot like Drummond.

His friend and business partner, Mr. Ashley, was there to hear the second piece of good news in the privacy of Kingston's study. He had been stung by that troublemaker a few years earlier and had wanted blood for it ever since. Mr. Ashley had a great deal of ill wind come his way over the wording of his tenant contracts. It had taken months to settle and had cost him fines and income.

"What business is it of a road tramp, however well born? What a man does when conducting his business is his own affair. How dare he interfere," Ashley said, frothing at the mouth over his past dealings with Drummond.

"And what would you have done about this?" Kingston said.

"I wanted David Drummond dead after the raid last month, the same as you. Didn't I give you men for the job? You can't know how furious I was to find out he wasn't there. Now, with this, maybe he was and got the girl away. If I got what I really wanted, it wouldn't have been that bungled massacre. A quiet assassination in a foreign country doesn't serve either. I want blood and I want to see it," Ashely shouted. "I want the ones who hero-worshiped the beggar to know that he is dead. His death needs to be a caution to any who might follow his example."

"Then what?" Kingston said, egging him on.

"I would get Drummond brought back to Ireland, hanged, and publicly displayed," Ashley said. "Hanging on a public road would suit me just fine. Didn't Drummond steal some papers from our ex-magistrate, George, a year ago?

"He did," Kingston said. "There were used to prove George guilty of public abuses."

Ashley grumbled. "Public abuses or not, that was highway robbery. Hang him on that charge."

"That will make the matter more difficult," Kingston said. More difficult for me, he meant. "The O'Donnell girl was a witness to what happened. We need her, too. If he disappears near the same time, it will look suspicious."

"Appearances be dammed," Ashley cursed. "I don't care what you do about the girl. You say the two may have been engaged? Well then, get him before you must make a widow of her. I just want to see that man hanged, and I want Drummond to know who brought him down. Don't let your people get ahead of themselves again. See to it, Drummond makes it back to Ireland alive."

When Asley left, Kingston sat back more comfortably in his chair. "Trust a thirst for blood to come up with the best plans."

He put pen to paper and sent his henchmen new orders.