Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Piles of wooden crates stood on the pavements outside lower-class shops, where wagons had made daytime deliveries. The deeper they pressed into the recesses of Drury Lane, which dwindled gradually in width as well as respectability, the meaner and shabbier grew the houses and the residents walking the pavements. Pubs spilled piano music and alcoholic fumes into the streets, where roughly clad working men and women gathered in knots to talk and laugh harshly and stare with bristling suspicion at the well-dressed ladies and frock-coated gentleman passing in the company of a liveried servant, with an older man and younger woman of their own class controlling a leashed dog.

Malcolm made mental note of where the pubs lay, to locate potential witnesses for later questioning, and pressed his arm surreptitiously against the lump of his concealed pistol, making certain of it. Margo, he knew, also carried a pistol in her pocket, as did Philip Stoddard. He wished he’d thought to ask Shahdi Feroz whether or not she was armed, but this was neither the time nor the place to remedy that lack. Preternaturally aware of the shabby men and women watching them from shadows and from the lighted doorways of mean houses and rough pubs, Malcolm followed the eager dog and his mistress, listening to the click of their footfalls on the pavement and the scrape and scratch of the dog’s claws.

Whatever Benny Catlin’s motive, whether flight from trouble or the threat of deadly force taking him deeper into danger, it had carried him the length of Drury Lane. The dog paused briefly and sniffed again at a dark spot on the pavement. This time, Mr. Shannon was not able to explain away the spots of blood so glibly. Margo clutched at Malcolm, weeping and gulping back evident terror. Malcolm watched Shannon wipe blood from his hand again, knowing, this time, it must be Benny Catlin’s blood, and was able to console himself only with the fact that not enough had been spilled here to prove immediately fatal. But untended, with wounds of unknown severity . . . and perhaps in the grip of footpads who would kill him when they had obtained what they’d forced him here for . . .