by Anna Elliott
“The only one I’ve found—other than the front door.”
“And Farooq is still in there?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think this is where he’s keeping all of the weapons?”
“Let’s hope so.” Otherwise this afternoon of tramping over half of London after Farooq had been a waste of shoe leather.
“We’d better get a look inside, then,” Becky said.
“First we’d better make sure we don’t fall straight into Farooq’s lap if we do.”
Becky frowned, thinking, then said, “All right. What if I go around to the front and knock on the door?”
“And you’ll say what to Farooq when he answers it?” From what Flynn had heard about him, the leader of the Sons of Ra wasn’t likely to invite unexpected visitors in for a cup of tea.
“I won’t say anything—I won’t stay to talk to him, I’ll just knock and then run away. But he’ll come out to see who it was, and that will give you a chance to find out whether it’s safe to try and get in through the window.”
“All right.” Flynn had to admit it was more sensible than a lot of Becky’s schemes. “Give me a minute to get up there.”
The rusted pail wasn’t strong enough to hold him, but he’d spotted a hefty piece of lumber, more than long enough to reach from one side of the narrow alley to the other. He leaned the board up against the back wall, so that one end was braced against the building behind Farooq’s, and the other end stopped just under the window.
Becky eyed the arrangement. “Don’t fall.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
The board did wobble, but by the time Becky had vanished around the side of the building, Flynn had managed to crawl up on hands and knees so that his head was on a level with the window pane.
He couldn’t see much, since the room inside was even darker than it was out here in the fog. But at least no one shouted at him to get down—or worse.
The building wasn’t too big. Flynn’s guess was that it had once been a counting house belonging to a merchant or one of the shipping firms that did business at the wharf here. It was starting to look a bit tumbled-down now, as if it had stood empty for some time before Farooq took charge. The inside of the window had cobwebs stretched across it, and now that Flynn was closer to the roof, he could see that it was missing tiles in spots.
But more important, now that his eyes had adjusted, he was pretty sure that there were at least two rooms inside, and that the one he was looking into was a small back room. Across from the window, he could see a door—which was pulled tight shut—and stacks of crates on the floor.
From around the front, he heard Becky’s knocking, and drew in his breath. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
He’d heard Dr. Watson say that once, and it had struck him as a neat way of putting it. A bit flowery, maybe, but then Dr. Watson was an author and liked to use big words.
He dug his pen knife out of his pocket and wedged the blade under the catch on the window. It was as old and worn as the rest of the building, and snapped up with barely any effort. Flynn shoved the window up and scrambled inside, hanging by his hands from the windowsill so that he could drop to the ground with as little noise as possible.
He still made a thump, and he froze, listening. He didn’t hear any voices, which was good. Becky must have kept her promise about not hanging about to talk to Farooq when he came to the door.
But then, a second later, he heard something else: footsteps, from outside the room, but coming closer.
Flynn’s pulse hammered and he tried to think out what he was going to say if—when—Farooq or someone else walked through the door. That was, if he got a chance to say anything, and whoever found him didn’t just greet him with a bullet to the head.
He’d already seen the words stamped on the crates in here: Mauser. Gewehr 98. Guns, all of them. But at least the wooden crates offered some cover. Flynn ducked down behind a pile and plastered himself to the floor, holding his breath. The hiding place wasn’t going to be much good if Farooq decided to have a good look at all his nice new toys here, but it was the best he could do.
He heard the sound of the doorknob turning, and he shut his eyes, wondering if it would do any good if he prayed that Becky would decide to knock on the front door again.
A voice called out from somewhere in the front room.
Not Becky. The voice was a man’s, and it said something in Arabic. Something with Marhaba in it. Flynn knew from his talks with his friend the Persian artist that meant Hello.
The knob stopped turning, the footsteps went away again, and Flynn breathed out. Maybe there was something to this prayer business after all.
CHAPTER 4: ZOE
Mr. Morgan and Lord Sonnebourne were arguing. The room she shared with Safiya was directly above the downstairs parlour, and Zoe could hear their voices from below.
Her heart quickened. The men’s voices were rising. And more importantly, Mrs. Orles was still downstairs, gone to use the inn’s bathing chamber to wash off the stains of travel.
Zoe listened for a moment for the sounds of footsteps on the steps leading to their room, and when she heard nothing, she pushed back the woollen rug that covered the floor and lay down, pressing her ear against the bare wooden boards.
The men’s voices came through, the sound muffled but the words clear:
“This is an unnecessary and foolish risk!”
That was Mr. Morgan speaking, his voice high with exasperation.
He was older than Lord Sonnebourne, as well as smaller than his lordship, and running to fat, with grey hair combed forwards to cover not nearly enough of his otherwise bald head.
Zoe supposed she ought to credit him with courage for standing up to his employer, if nothing else.
“I left everything—gave up everything—to come with you!” Morgan went on. “I demand—”
“Demand?” Sonnebourne’s voice hadn’t risen; indeed, Zoe had to press her ear closer to the floorboards to hear it. But his tone still made an involuntary shiver run the length of her spine.
She pictured Morgan swallowing convulsively; certainly his voice sounded husky as he continued, “There may be a battalion of British soldiers waiting for us at the dock.”
“If so, we shall receive a warning when we reach Tripoli,” Sonnebourne replied, “and we can change our course accordingly.”
Tripoli. That was at least a definite name of a city. But obviously not their final destination. Zoe shut her eyes, wishing that she could reach through the floorboards and drag the information she wanted to know out of the men below.
How much longer did she have before Mrs. Orles finished bathing and came upstairs?
“Is that telegram from London?” Morgan asked.
“Yes. Holmes is dead. Or so he would have us believe. The Egyptian girl’s brother demands her release.”
From the sound of his voice, Sonnebourne was smiling.
Morgan snorted. “And you mean to comply?”
“Clearly not.”
Morgan grunted. “I still say we should kill her. It is a confounded nuisance carrying her about, keeping her drugged in this way. And by the time her brother learned of her death, our operations in London would already have come off. We could drop her body in the harbour, where it would not be found until we were well away—”
Zoe ignored the qualm of sickness that sprouted in her stomach at the sound of Morgan’s growing enthusiasm for the plan.
Alistair Morgan might not frighten her as much as Lord Sonnebourne. But he was like one of the lower-ranked wolves that snarls and whines and cringes around the alpha of the pack: contemptible, but no less dangerous for all of that. And he certainly shared one characteristic with his employer: an utter disregard for human lives other than his own.
“Enough.” Sonnebourne cut Morgan off shortly.
“But she has no further value—”
“She does have value. Value to me.” Sonnebourne’s voice so
unded almost purring as he went on. “I hope you do not imagine that because I have allowed you to accompany me on this journey, you are privy to all of my plans? Or that you are in any way essential to them?”
“No … that is, yes … I mean—” Morgan sounded flustered now, and more than a little afraid.
As well he might. If Zoe was certain that Sonnebourne had no particular regard for her own life except for the leverage it gave him over Holmes, she was equally certain that he would dispose of Mr. Morgan just as easily and without regret if it suited him.
She’d read Sherlock’s files on Sonnebourne in London, at the start of all of this. Those who cast their lot with his lordship tended to drastically reduce their life expectancies.
“Good. I have booked our passage on one of the steam freighters at anchor in the harbour,” Sonnebourne said. “It will stop in Tunisia, then in Libya—”
Zoe heard the creak of a footstep on the stairs and her pulse skipped.
Please, please.
“—then in Alexandria,” Sonnebourne went on. “And from there, we will travel by rail to—”
The floorboards on the landing outside the door creaked.
Zoe jumped up, kicked the rug back into place, and was sitting calmly on her own bed when the door opened.
But she’d had just barely enough time to catch Sonnebourne’s final words: to Cairo.
CHAPTER 5: ZOE
The same red-cheeked serving girl was clearing the supper things away from their small table.
“Per favore!” Zoe caught the girl’s attention before she could turn to the door.
Safiya had eaten a few mouthfuls, then almost collapsed face first into her plate of lamb stew. She would have slid straight off her chair and onto the floor if Zoe hadn’t been there to catch her and help her back to the narrow bed where she now slept.
For the first few days of their journey, Zoe had kept a close watch on the young Egyptian girl who was an unwitting hostage to her own good behaviour. If she could find a chance of speaking to Safiya … if the two of them could form some plan of escape …
But Zoe had long since given up that idea. Mrs. Orles and Mr. Morgan saw to it between them that Safiya was dosed with enough opium powder to keep her drowsy and compliant. She slept almost all of the time, although they had to let her wake occasionally to eat and drink.
But on those occasions, the Egyptian girl merely chewed her food and drank from her cup like one in a trance, then fell back asleep again. Zoe wasn’t even sure that Safiya spoke English—she certainly didn’t understand any Italian—and she was even more helpless than Zoe was currently. Assistance from her was impossible.
Once you have eliminated the impossible, commented Sherlock, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the solution.
Zoe refrained from commenting sourly that again, that was easy for him to say. At the moment, she needed all the advice and encouragement she could get, even if it was only from a figment of her own imagination. Because she could think of very few things as improbable as the success of the scheme she had in mind.
She spoke to the serving girl in rapid Italian. “Per favore, aspetta solo un momento!”
Please, wait just a moment.
Her one slight advantage over her captors was the fact that, being Italian by birth, she spoke the language far better than they did.
The serving girl looked at her in surprise. She was young—no more than seventeen or eighteen, but Zoe thought the girl looked reasonably intelligent. And she certainly kept the rooms of the inn scrupulously clean. Zoe had already seen under the room’s two beds, and there wasn’t so much as a particle of dust on the bare oak floorboards.
“Come ti chiami?” she asked the girl. What is your name?
The girl looked still more surprised that Zoe had bothered to ask, but she said, “Valentina, Senora.”
“Please, then, Valentina, I need to send a telegram.”
“A telegram?” Valentina’s brows wrinkled.
“Yes. There is a telegraph office nearby?” Zoe asked. There must be. Brindisi, as a busy port city, had ships from all over the globe sailing in and out of its harbour every day, bringing business that necessitated communication with the rest of the world.
The girl bobbed her head. “Yes, at the post office.”
“Good.” Zoe let out her breath.
She had another slight advantage in that Mrs. Orles, Mr. Morgan’s former housekeeper, was no happier in her role as jailer than Zoe was to have her as a constant guard and watch dog.
Fear of Lord Sonnebourne kept her from outright abandoning her duties, but she took every possible opportunity to slip away for a few moments.
At the moment, she was out purchasing food for tomorrow’s journey, since the rations aboard the freight steamer were unlikely to meet with either her own or Lord Sonnebourne’s standards.
And if Mr. Morgan took it into his head to come upstairs and check on them during Mrs. Orles’ absence? Or if Lord Sonnebourne decided to come and continue what he had termed their most interesting discussion?
Because she was trying to keep up her courage, Zoe snapped that thought off before it could take root.
“I’ll give you the message I want to send,” she told Valentina. “I have it all written out here.”
She took out the message, which she had scribbled down on the paper wrapping she’d taken from a cake of soap during her own far too brief turn in the bath.
She had a single lira coin, too, which she had managed to extract from Mrs. Orles’s purse.
“Will you take this to the telegraph office and see that it is sent? You can keep any change for yourself,” Zoe added.
“Of course, Signora. I will see to it at once.” Valentina bobbed her head and flashed a smile, showing straight, even white teeth. “Grazie.”
“Thank you.” Zoe let out the breath she had been holding.
Just as the door opened, and Mrs. Orles stepped into the room.
CHAPTER 6: ZOE
Mrs. Orles looked from Valentina to Zoe, her eyes narrowed.
In story books, housekeepers were plump, matronly, comfortable souls with pleasant, motherly faces. Like Mrs. Reynolds, in Miss Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Or to choose a real-life example, like Mrs. Hudson.
Zoe had to banish that thought, because remembering anyone or anything to do with Baker Street right now felt like being stabbed with a sharp skewer. She would have sacrificed her Stradivarius to be able to instantly transport herself back to 221B.
Mrs. Orles, though, was young—in her early twenties at the most—with softly curling blond hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face.
Any outside observer would consider Mr. Morgan’s former housekeeper loveliness personified. But Zoe had ample time in the course of their journey to observe the lines of bad temper and selfishness that marked the corners of her mouth, and the icy coldness of her blue eyes.
Now Mrs. Orles’s eyes narrowed further as she eyed the paper in Valentina’s hand. Her lips, though, curved slightly upwards in an involuntary smile.
Mrs. Orles was delighted to have caught Zoe doing something for which she could be punished.
“Give that to me!” she snapped.
She spoke in English, but her extended hand made her meaning plain.
Valentina’s ready smile faded, and she looked in confusion from Zoe to Mrs. Orles.
“At once, I say!” Mrs. Orles tapped her foot in impatience. “Rapidamente!”
Looking worried now, Valentina put the message into Mrs. Orles hand.
“Now go! Partire!” The housekeeper pointed to the door.
The girl cast a quick, frightened glance at Zoe. Stupidity was in fact one of Mrs. Orles’ flaws; she had just managed to alert the maidservant to the fact that there was something wrong about their group of travellers.
That didn’t mean that Zoe wanted the girl dragged into it, though. She summoned up a reassuring smile. “Va tutto bene.” It’s all right.
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br /> Valentina still looked doubtful, but she bobbed a curtsy and went out. In ominous silence, Mrs. Orles read the message Zoe had scribbled down.
The package has been delivered to Brindisi and will be sent on to Cairo.
Another beat of silence passed, then another, and finally Mrs. Orles looked up.
She was still smiling, the faint, venomous smile that made her look like a poisoned tea cake: all loveliness and pink and white frosting on the outside, and all viciousness and spite within.
“Mr. Morgan warned you at the start of this journey what would happen if you made any efforts to escape,” she said. Her voice, too, was high and over-sweet. Her cold glance flicked to where Safiya lay deep in her drugged stupor on the bed.
Mr. Morgan had informed Zoe that any attempt to escape on Zoe’s part would mean that Safiya died. Zoe hadn’t doubted for a moment that he meant it.
Zoe’s heart was pounding so hard that it made her feel slightly sick. But she met Mrs. Orles’ gaze with a level look.
Sonnebourne might frighten her—nearly as much as Professor James Moriarty had, once upon a time. But she had met and dealt with far more intimidating villains than Mrs. Orles in her life.
“Touch her—or breathe one word of this to either Mr. Morgan or Lord Sonnebourne,” she told the younger woman, “And I’ll tell Mr. Morgan what actually happened to his gold and silver shaving kit that you claimed must have been stolen by a customs official.”
The housekeeper’s vacuously pretty face blanched, the skin around her eyes tightening.
At the outset of their journey, Zoe had wondered whether there was some sort of romantic involvement between the housekeeper and her employer. Or perhaps between Mrs. Orles and Lord Sonnebourne?
But a few days had made it clear that the relationship between Mrs. Orles and the two men was purely a business arrangement. And one didn’t have to look particularly hard to understand Mrs. Orles’s motivation.