by John Booth
The maid placed the breakfast tray at the bottom of his bed and backed away. As she ducked under the butler’s arm he clipped her head with his free hand. The girl uttered a small cry of pain as she disappeared from sight.
Tom was planning to ask about Laura, but the butler left the room and the door swung shut behind him. Tom heard a bolt being pushed home and knew he was locked in again.
4. Cover Up
“You get a better breakfast than we do,” Tricky accused as he reappeared from behind the tapestry and made a beeline towards Tom’s tray.
“And I would like to point out that I am bigger than you, and a lot hungrier,” Tom replied making it clear with a sweep of his arm that the breakfast was for one. “Do you know where Laura is?”
“Your girl’s next door. She’s pretty without ‘er clothes,” Tricky said, completely oblivious to the shocked look Tom gave him. “I’ve bin watching ‘er on and off all morning.”
Tricky made a rapid hand gesture suggesting he had been doing more than just watching Laura. However, Tom knew that he had more important things to worry about than Tricky’s perversions. He shoveled his breakfast into his mouth as fast as he could. Once he had eaten, he would do something about the situation. His first priority was to talk to Laura and find out what she knew.
“How do I get to Laura?” he asked Tricky with a full mouth. The buttered toast was particularly delicious and it was a shame to rush it.
“There’s a passage through the wall. Lots of secret passages in this old ‘ouse they don’t know nothin’ about.”
“Show me,” Tom said as he wolfed down the last of his toast.
Tricky led him to a spot behind the tapestry. Tom was still naked but was far too concerned about the situation to worry about such minor matters. Tricky pushed a piece of the panel that looked much like all the other s and Tom heard a distinct click. A large section of paneling in front of Tricky opened up like a door.
They looked into a stone-floored passage beyond, which on the right became steps leading down. To the left of the passage another set of steps led up, so in effect the passage inside the wall was little more than a short landing. Tricky pulled an iron lever inside the passage. A door swung open on the other side to reveal the back of yet another tapestry.
“That’s ‘er room,” Tricky whispered. “I’ll wait ‘ere.”
Tom stepped through the passage into the other room.
“Alice is watching ‘em and she’ll let us know if any one comes our way,” Tricky whispered urgently. So if I calls, you come running.”
Tom nodded. He slipped along the back of the tapestry and stuck his head out around the side. Laura was standing by the window looking out. She was as naked as the day she was born and Tom had to admit that Tricky was right about one thing, she was a truly delightful sight.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Tom said softly, keeping his torso safely hidden behind the tapestry.
Laura glanced over her shoulder in Tom’s direction before returning her gaze to the window. “So it was you back there. I thought I had heard something moving behind it. I fear we are being held prisoner for some unknown reason.”
Tom grinned.
“Trust you to figure it out without any help. We are apparently being put up for sale along with some magically gifted children. It seems that James Saunders is a member of an organization called the Brotherhood, which is the same outfit Snood worked for.”
Laura nodded without glancing back. Tom found it difficult to keep his eyes above her waist. The sight of the luscious curves of her bottom had produced an inevitable effect and he hoped there was no obvious bulge showing in the tapestry.
“If we had known that all we had to do to flush out the traitor was to come back to London, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.” Laura paused and glanced in his direction again. “And pray tell me, why you are not coming out from behind that tapestry?”
“Err, I’m a bit naked, I’m afraid.”
“And what do you think I am currently wearing, a ball gown?”
“I take your point.”
Tom stepped out from the tapestry, using his hands to try to prevent her from seeing the state of his manhood. Laura examined him with her eyes, starting with his face and working her way down.
“It would appear that you have been up for some time, Thomas.”
Tom moved forward to stand behind her and therefore out of her gaze. He stared over her shoulder and out of the window to try and see what Laura found so interesting. Laura reached back and grabbed Tom to pull him closer.
Tom’s voice rose an octave as he stepped forward to avoid irreparable damage to an important part of his anatomy.
“That’s not my hand,” he told her, though it was certain she knew.
Laura smiled as she stared out of the window. She continued to hold Tom and squeezed when he made an attempt to pull free.
“I do beg your pardon. I was, of course, reaching for your hand. Though I must confess the consequence of my mistake has proved an enjoyable experience. I trust my fingers are not too cold for you?”
Tom gave in as he realized Laura was not going to let him go and that she had captured exactly what she sought.
“Ver-ve-very enjoyable on my part,” he admitted, “j-j-just a trifle unexpected.”
Tom tried to recover his poise. Why did Laura always do this to him?
“As you seem to be well informed, perhaps you would care to tell me what is going on? And how did you get into my room? I checked the room for doors and there certainly isn’t one behind that tapestry.”
“I had a visit from a young lad called Tricky. He showed me the way.”
Tom quickly conveyed the information Tricky had told him. He told her what little he knew about the secret passages and how Tricky’s gift made it easy for the boy to find them. He also told her about the upcoming auction.
Laura let go and turned to face him. Tom wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or disappointed by the removal of her hand.
Laura put her hands against Tom’s chest. “I wonder how Saunders is going to explain our disappearance to Trelawney. And why did they take our clothes?”
Tom shook his head. He had no answer to either question.
The Thames is a tidal river all the way up to London Docklands and some way beyond. Downriver of the docks the estuary widens and large mud flats are exposed whenever the tide is low.
On a dirt road that ran by the banks of the river a group of people had gathered. They stood looking out across the mudflats towards the central channel of the river.
The tide was low and the stench was overwhelming. Until very recently, the Thames had been the repository for all of London’s considerable human waste. Even though a massive public works program had created the world’s first city sewage system it would be years before these particular mud flats lost their malodorous air.
James Saunders was one of those gathered there. The stiff wind blew his large handlebar moustache across his face making it look lopsided. He ran his eyes over the two young people facing him, who for their part stared back sullenly. The young man and woman were remarkably similar in build and appearance to Tom and Laura and wore the clothes Tom and Laura had worn the previous night. Behind the young couple, two large and unkempt men stood restlessly, waiting for their moment to arrive. One of the men wrung his hands together as if in anticipation and licked his lips.
The young man and woman had just changed into Tom and Laura’s clothes at the request of their benefactor, James Saunders. They were recruited in response to an advert in the London Times some weeks before. They were promised good wages for doing nothing much in the way of work, which suited them down to the ground.
“What do you want of us now, sir?” the girl asked. Her name was Sally. For the past two weeks, she and her companion, Ben, had been paid for turning up to a small office in the city to search through a collection of old newspapers for the occurrence of certain names.
E
very day they had received a new set of names and searched the same papers yet again. Neither of them thought their work served any purpose, but the money was so good they never questioned it.
“Will you be wanting us to come here everyday, sir?” Ben asked. “It’s cold and we will need to buy better coats if that is the case. I know where we can buy some, for no more than ten shillings… each.”
Saunders waved away the request.
“You won’t be coming back here again.”
Sally shivered and glanced at the men waiting behind her. She had never seen them before they drove them here, but she knew their type. They would slit someone’s throat for the money to get drunk for a night. She smiled at them in a seductive way, but neither responded. She wondered if Ben would be more to their tastes. Sally and Ben had done many disgusting things to keep a roof over their heads and a meal in their bellies and she knew he would be amenable if it kept them safe.
“Why did you want us to put on these clothes, sir?” Sally asked, her teeth chattering. “Are we to be introduced to gentry?” She rubbed the cloth with her fingers. The material was finer than anything she could have afforded. The clothes fitted so well it was almost as if they had been made for her. That worried Sally. She knew she was not the kind of girl tailors made clothes for.
Saunders stepped away from her and made a beckoning gesture to the men.
“Are we to show your men a good time?” Sally turned her head to watch the men moving closer and then returned her gaze to Saunders.
It was the last question she ever asked. The men pulled bully clubs from their pockets and one hit Sally about the head, knocking her out. Ben tried to run away, but stopped when he realized that the only escape route would be onto the dangerous mud of the estuary. He put up his hands in surrender and when they made him turn his back; he too was knocked unconscious.
Saunders watched impassively as the men dragged the unconscious teenagers to the very edge of the flats. Each took out a butchering knife from inside their coats. First they slit their victims throats and held their heads out over mud until the blood ceased to spurt. The man butchering Ben cut off his head with a single blow of his blade while it took his companion five blows to sever Sally’s head from her body.
The heads they dropped into muslin sacks to be disposed of later.
The men rolled the headless bodies out onto the mud. Saunders nodded his approval on seeing the task completed to his orders. He handed over two small heavy purses and waited until they had laboriously counted the coins inside them.
“Good to do business with yer, guv’ner,” the bigger of the two said and smiled, revealing black and rotting teeth.
“Dispose of their heads a long way downriver.” Saunders said curtly. “If they are ever found, you’ll end up joining them.”
“Don’t worry yerself. They’ll not be found,” the other man promised, his eyes fixed on Saunders jacket at the place he knew the man concealed a gun. The two men stepped back, hands still holding their knives. There was danger for them in this moment and all three of them knew it.
Saunders backed away from the men and mounted his horse, never once allowing the men to escape his sight. The men split up to present a more difficult target, should he decide to attack them. Saunders pulled his horse’s head around and kicked the animal into a gallop, heading down the track they had come towards London.
“I thought ‘e might top us,” the bigger man said to his companion.
The other picked up the sacks containing the heads.
“He needed these gone,” he said sagely. “And we don’t know who he really is anyway.”
“He pays good though.”
They stepped towards their coach and the one with the bags threw them into the back of the coach where they landed with a dull thud.
“Southend should be far enough.”
Sir Ernest Trelawney woke in Hobsgate to the news that Tom and Laura were missing. He sent a telegram to James Saunders to investigate the matter and report most urgently on any trace of the missing youngsters he might find.
While he waited for news from Saunders, Trelawney felt there was something useful he could do, and rang for a servant to take a message to Miss Burns, Miss Drew and Mr. Tompkins to come and see him at once.
5. Events in Motion
Sir Ernest Trelawney sat at a long oak table in the Hobsgate training school for spies looking grim and depressed. Belinda Mann sat beside him. She was his secretary and most trusted confident. She looked as though she was close to tears.
“The students you asked to see are waiting outside,” Nan Hobbs said in her poshest voice.
“Send them in please,” Trelawney said.
Camilla Burns, Daisy Drew and Arnold Tompkins marched into the room and stood at attention. Daisy was the youngest of them at nineteen years old. Camilla and Arnold were twenty. To Trelawney, all three looked much too young to entrust a dangerous mission to, but his premonitions drove him and he felt he had no choice.
Trelawney studied each of the three young spies in turn. He was about to place a great deal of trust in them. The task he was about to give them would probably decide the fate of Laura Young and Thomas Carter.
Camilla Burns was a Grade 4 Empath, of medium height, dark brown hair, brown eyes and a little stocky. She was not good looking in a conventional sense. There was far too much character and determination in her face for that. Camilla, Cam to her friends, had built a reputation in the school for playing the fool. However, when the chips where down, she had performed far better than the other students and staff in the school. Trelawney would have killed for twenty agents just like her.
Daisy Drew stood in the middle of the three. A Grade 4 Precog, she was an unlikely candidate to end up in a school for spies. She was tall and slim almost to the point of starvation and slouched to disguise her height. Trelawney had learnt how she had taken command in the school when she needed to and that it was her actions that saved the day when the enemy struck.
Trelawney had known both of Daisy’s parents well; they had worked for MM3 until their deaths. Trelawney looked at Daisy a little closer and saw that she had her mother’s eyes.
Lastly, there was Arnold Tompkins. A Grade 5 Farseer who could do little more than see the world around him a little better than most. He had saved Tom and Laura’s lives with an incredibly accurate throw of a cricket ball. Arnold had not been visible in the recent crisis at the school except for that one act. Trelawney knew the young man was still grieving over the death of his brother, lost in the Crimea campaign.
“Please, sit down,” Trelawney said gravely, indicating the high wooden chairs in front of the three students. They sat and pulled their chairs to the table. “I am sure you are wondering why I have brought you here so soon after we last talked.”
Trelawney paused, what he was about to tell them was most secret. When news got out there would be severe repercussions, most of which would fall on his shoulders.
“Laura and Tom are missing, believed kidnapped. I have my best man in London looking for them. However, I fear he will not find them.” He paused while they took that in.
“I believe this kidnap was organized by enemies working within MM3. They somehow discovered the driver I alerted to take Tom and Laura from Paddington Station to the MM3 Headquarters. Charles Drake was a seasoned agent and a good man, not in any way a fool. And yet someone managed to kill him in his own home.”
“That there were no signs of a break-in tells me that he knew the man who killed him. Drake was not a man to let a stranger into his home without taking adequate precautions. He was an exceptional agent for most of his life, and he was not a young man. Spies do not live to old age by being fools.”
“Believe me when I tell you that Drake was not a man to be so easily killed and he must have been taken by surprise by someone he trusted.”
“Therefore, I find myself in a position where I can no longer trust anyone at MM3 Headquarters. Even my most loyal agents migh
t say something to the traitor in our midst, and so spread word of my intentions.”
Cam straightened up at these words, while Daisy nodded as if none of it was that surprising, Arnold just looked eager.
“That is where you three come into the picture. I am going to give you a large amount of money and send you to London. Your job is to find the trail that leads to Tom and Laura. Do not contact me unless you have located them and require additional forces. I will send any information I receive to a post office box in London for which I will give you the key.”
Cam stared at Trelawney with a mix of shock and concern written on her face.
“How can we find Tom and Laura in a city the size of London? Assuming they are still in London?” Cam considered the task impossible, much as she wanted to recover her friends from whoever had taken them.
“Don’t worry, Camilla,” Daisy said with surprising confidence. “We will find their trail and follow it.”
“Will we find them alive?” Arnold asked urgently. “Have you seen that too?”
Daisy shook her head and Trelawney frowned.
“No, the future is too blurred. There are too many things that could change. But some young people will help us, I think.”
Daisy stopped talking and her friends knew that she would tell them nothing more of the future she had seen. To be aware of the future could change it. Her judgment on what to say and what not to had saved their lives recently and they trusted her.
Trelawney handed over a small valise to Cam. “The train to London leaves in an hour. A coach will be ready to take you to the station in half an hour. You will have things to pack, I expect.”
It was a dismissal and the students hurried out of the room and back to their dorm as fast as their legs could carry them.
Trelawney looked at Belinda and sighed, “Have I just sent those three to their deaths as well?”
“Do you believe Tom and Laura are dead?” Belinda asked. “The Prince has sent word of an encounter on the train with a Hungarian assassin. Despite the assassin’s best efforts, they defeated him easily and we already know from what has happened here that those two are not easy to kill. The Prince said that Tom and Laura had encountered this assassin before, though neither of them thought to mention that fact to us.”