Onyx City (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 3) by P. J. Thorndyke

house. He looked as surprised as his employer had been at seeing Lazarus alive.
    Westcott looked down at the journal in Lazarus’s hands. “I’ll be taking that back, thank you very much.”
    The two thugs advanced. Lazarus seized the lamp from the desk and swung it at the head of the first man who got near. The man ducked it and swung his fist into Lazarus’s gut, making him double over. The journal fell from his hands. The second man seized it and passed it to Westcott while the first attacker—Lazarus’s friend from before—landed blow after blow on him, alternating his left and right fists.
    Lazarus tried to block and dodge, but the ferocious tempo of the man indicated that he was expressing his frustrations at having failed to kill him the first time.
    “All right, that’s enough,” said Westcott in Siamese.
    Lazarus gasped for air. He was lying on the carpet, his left hand gripping the corner of the desk. Blood trickled from his nose and between his lips. His ears rang.
    “Get him upstairs,” said Westcott. “And don’t let any of my household see him. They’re suspicious enough about what goes on here. I’ll be up in a few minutes and then we shall put an end to Mr. Lazarus Longman once and for all.”
    The Siamese men grabbed Lazarus under the shoulders and after hauling him to his feet, dragged him from the room. The carpeted stairs banged against his knees and toes as they took him up first one flight and then up a second set, leading to the attic.
    A bare room with a single chair in the centre awaited him. Several boxes covered in sheets loomed like ghosts in the shadows. A small window was set in the slanted ceiling, and through it Lazarus could see that it had started to rain. Fat drops drummed on the glass, making the dark little room seem totally isolated from the outside world. Opposite the window was a small door set into the brick wall that Lazarus assumed led to the water cistern.
    Lazarus was shoved roughly into the chair. While one of the men stood guard by the door through which they had come, the other began rummaging around in a battered leather chest for some rope with which to bind their captive.
    Lazarus wasn’t about to let himself get tied to a chair for the pleasure of anyone, and so was on his feet in an instant, grabbing his chair by its back and swinging it with all his might onto the head of the man by the door.
    The chair splintered into fragments and Lazarus jammed his knee into the man’s groin as an added weakener. The man at the chest came charging towards them and Lazarus turned, gripping his man in a neck hold, and hurled him into his accomplice. The two men went sprawling and Lazarus made for the door that held the cistern.
    He had an idea that, as in many terraced London houses, the attics of all in the row were connected by a long corridor. This had been remarked upon in the papers as a dangerously easy opportunity for burglars but in his current predicament he desperately hoped that it was the case here.
    He flung open the door and squeezed himself behind the cistern, peering into the gloom. He thanked his stars to see a long, narrow corridor vanishing into the darkness, brick-lined on one side. There was no floor and so he hopped from rafter to rafter as he heard his enemies squeezing into the space behind him.
    His plan was to find the door to an attic in one of the neighboring houses and then descend, terrifying the house’s occupants and a maid or two if need be, to street level and then be out and away. He flung open the first door he came to and stepped into a cluttered box room filled with a child’s toys, luggage cases, a dress-maker’s mannequin and other paraphernalia. He made for the door and cursed when he found it locked. He could hear the approach of his pursuers down the passageway and looked around desperately.
    He saw the window and was up at the latch in a flash, heaving up the sash. He managed to squirm through the aperture just as the first