“Hear, hear” went up the cry.
“We must find him and kill him.”
Lenox’s blood chilled. He understood very little of what Butler was saying, but here was tangible proof of what they had known from the start: that this Society was capable of murder.
“Yes, but where is he?” said a member from the side of the room.
“We know that he has left Oxford.”
Returned to London? They were obviously talking about Canterbury-but did that mean that Canterbury wasn’t Lysander? Where was Lysander?
“Where would he hide in London?”
Butler waved his hand. “The key is Dabney.”
“No!” said several people at once, and several excited side conversations broke out.
“Can we end this farce?” said the man at the side of the room. “The solution to our problem is here with us, isn’t it?”
Butler said mildly, “I thought it might not hurt to discuss our plans before that, but yes, as you wish.” He turned to the door. “Friend, step in!” he shouted.
And with a sickening thud Lenox realized what had happened.
But our junior friend has handled it, hasn’t he? All’s set up just at this moment, isn’t it?
Tomorrow, then. Meet me here tomorrow at five in the afternoon.
Can we end this farce? The solution to our problem is here with us, isn’t it?
The man obviously had a brightness and quickness that were going to waste in his job. The perfect spy, in other words.
It was Hallowell.
“Oh, Lord,” Lenox said softly, unable to help himself. He tried to signal out the window for Jenkins, but didn’t know if it had worked.
“Come in, come in,” Butler said genially. “Where did you say they were?”
Hallowell’s voice was loud and clear, with none of the frightened quiver it had when he had left them to hide in the room. “Behind the curtain and the wardrobe respectively, Major.”
“Thank you, Lance Corporal,” said Butler. “Will you do the honors?”
“Dabney, run!” Lenox shouted.
His words were cut off as the bullet struck him.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Lenox fell out from behind the curtain and into plain view, and although he was in pain he was conscious. It was obvious that there was some commotion at the door, a thudding. He saw Hallowell move the gun toward the wardrobe where Payson was concealed, and then saw somebody burst into the room and tackle the doorman.
It was Dallington.
Following on his heels were Jenkins and half a dozen police constables. Lenox reached futilely for his gun while the twenty-two members of the September Society raised their hands in bewilderment.
It only took a moment for Jenkins to calm the situation down, despite Butler’s and Maran’s repeated, slightly hysterical claims that Lenox had trespassed on private property and that he was a burglar. At the same time, Dallington rushed over to Lenox and kneeled beside him.
“Where did they get you?” he said. His eyes were rimmed red with a hangover, but he seemed alert and energetic.
“How did you get here?”
“Look, Lenox, I’m sorry about yesterday. I don’t even remember seeing you. A relapse. It won’t happen again.”
Lenox laughed wryly. The pain was starting to become more intense. “Don’t mention it. How did you find us?”
“McConnell.”
Just then Lenox saw McConnell rushing up, a look of deep concern on his face and his battered leather medical bag in his hand. “Charles, good God, you’re shot! Where did they get you?”
“My chest, it went just between my chest and my left arm.”
McConnell tore away the shirt and then breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the Lord, Charles, only a grazing wound. Painful, but you’ll survive it.”
Dallington was everywhere, pointing out various members of the September Society, directing Jenkins and the constables, barking at Hallowell as he searched his pockets.
As McConnell went about bandaging the detective up, Payson began to come out, but Lenox motioned him to stay behind the cupboard. Jenkins came over and had a word: Everybody in the room would be taken as a witness, to begin with, except for Hallowell. He would be charged with attempted murder-and, if Lenox had anything to do with it, the murder of Bill Dabney. What had Payson said about the man he had seen running from Dabney’s body? Dressed as if he were a valet or a waiter, graying hair. The description matched.
After the bandage had gone on securely, Lenox stood up and staggered to the couch, where he sat down heavily.
“We still have something to do,” he told Jenkins, who had just come over as the members of the September Society filed out.
“What?”
“Canterbury. I know where he is.”
“Where?”
“I don’t want to say too much, in case I’m wrong.”
But he knew he wasn’t. There was a surprise left in the case yet, even after all this drama.
“I’ll have to stop off and see my brother to get the address. George,” Lenox went on, calling to Payson, “you had better come, too.”
“George?” said Jenkins, and as Payson emerged from his hiding place an astonished Dallington said, “Payson! Good God!”
Payson said, “Is that you, Dallington? Haven’t seen you since last fall. How did you come to be mixed up in this?”
“Gentlemen,” said Lenox, “George Payson.”
Briefly Lenox explained the past week of the lad’s life.
“What a blow to Dabney’s parents,” said McConnell, grimacing.
Payson looked down at his feet. “I wish I could have done it all differently,” he said. It was the final hint of a reproach anyone made.
Questions all answered-Jenkins in particular had a few points he wanted cleared up-about fifteen minutes later Lenox, Jenkins, McConnell, Dallington, and Payson left. Jenkins had given his constables detailed instructions about the care of the prisoners and witnesses at the scene, and McConnell had checked on Lenox’s wound and reluctantly pronounced the detective fit to move.
They took McConnell’s carriage to Parliament, and Lenox dashed inside and had a word with Edmund. They came out a moment later together, and Edmund joined the miniature carnival. As they bumped along eastward, Lenox smiled inwardly. Only yesterday he had considered himself all alone in this endeavor, and now he was surrounded by friends and allies.
“I was stupid to trust Hallowell,” Lenox said. “From the beginning he was so eager to speak with me. I assumed he was simply bored with his job, but the Society must have seen me before I saw them, so to speak-must have had their handyman out to meet me for precisely such a scenario.”
“I wonder that you thought of it before he came in,” Payson said.
“Still, not quickly enough. It wasn’t a total loss, though, thanks to Dallington. We overheard them talking cold-bloodedly of murder. And if I’m not very much mistaken there are two serious financial crimes involved-one ancient and one ongoing-which we’ll learn about shortly.”
Pressed for more though he was, Lenox refused to say anything further in case he was mistaken. He had an idea of what had happened, but he knew the man calling himself Canterbury would be able to tell the story definitively.
If the West End part of London was unique in all the world, the height of cosmopolitan fashion, the East End was like the slums of Paris, of Cairo, of New York, of Vienna. There were the same narrow, darkened streets, the same low-lit pubs with their constant suggestion of imminent violence, the same ragpickers and children turning cartwheels for halfpence. They were coming into Gracechurch Street now, in the ward of Bishopsgate. Though it was violent and falling to pieces, Lenox had a peculiar affection for it and visited from time to time, for one reason: It was more or less the epicenter of the old Roman settlement of Londinium. The basilica, or public church (the biggest of its kind north of the Alps), and the forum had both run along it in those ancient days, and while they w
ere gone Lenox could still picture them. At its pinnacle in the second century A.D., Londinium had been a civilized, fascinating, and cultured outpost of the empire. It was one of Lenox’s favorite subjects within Roman history, combining as it did the remote and the familiar.
The carriage turned up Cannon Street and into Eastcheap. When they reached a low-slung red building with two torches blazing out front, Edmund nodded his head to his brother, and the carriage halted.
The ground floor inside the building was undivided, one large room with its roof held up by beams. In one part was a gin bar, where men and women flirted with each other and drank. In another was a curtained-off area where the same women could conduct their business. To the back of the room was a stairwell, which led to the rooms upstairs. At the center of it all, a wizened old woman with a monocle and a cat on her lap presided over the scene, collecting money from the girls, monitoring the bar for any arguments that might get out of hand, and barking commands to two large men who kept it all in order.
Lenox and Edmund went to her and had a whispered word. At first she shook her head furiously; then Lenox pointed to Jenkins, and the woman threw her hands up, as if conceding the point, and told them something.
The two brothers went back to the group.
“On the third floor. I’ll lead, if you’ll stick by my side, Jenkins. I doubt you’ll have any cause to use your shackles, but it’s not impossible. George, come up beside me, won’t you? You’ve met Canterbury before, I believe.”
There were two doors on the third floor. Lenox led the way to the right and knocked.
“Hullo?” There was no response. “Hullo? Canterbury? We’ve a large group here. George is here.”
There was a shuffling in the room.
“I’m going to come in,” said Lenox. “We don’t mean you any harm, I promise.”
Lenox turned the doorknob, and they all crowded around him to see inside. It was a large, drafty, out-of-sorts room with a bed, a desk, and a chair as its only adornments. A man- dark hair, average height, a military bearing, with a scar on his neck-sat in the chair. He was holding a revolver.
“Stand back!” he said. “Who-why, is that Charles Lenox?”
“It is.”
“And Edmund? Good Lord! No wonder you found me here. My old haunt. Who have you brought, though?” The gun, which he had let fall to his lap, rose again.
“Please, please-the Society are all in police custody.”
A great burden seemed to lift from Canterbury’s face. He exhaled. “Thank God,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Not yet.” Lenox turned around. “George, come here, won’t you?”
Payson came to the front. “Hullo, Mr. Canterbury,” he said.
“No, george,” said lenox softly. “I’d Like to introduce you to your father.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Lenox and Edmund’s own father had been a good man, one who took care of his land, ruled judiciously over local disputes, served in Parliament for fifty years, and loved his wife and his two sons. When Lenox was young he had admired in his father the high seriousness of purpose, the goal of service to Queen and country, that had defined his public life. Now he wasn’t sure that he didn’t admire something else more: his father’s good spirits, his cheerfulness, his ability to make things seem better. What had once almost seemed frivolous to Lenox, when he was young and serious himself, had now come to seem heroic, a putting of others before one’s self. It was strange to him that his perception of his father went on changing even after the old man’s death.
Greeted with his own father, Payson showed the shock in his face. “How do you do?” he said feebly.
The father rose. “I didn’t know whether or not to tell you, George,” he said. “I had to make amends here first.”
It was Dallington who said, “Perhaps we should withdraw.”
So he, McConnell, Lenox, Edmund, and Jenkins went into the hallway for about ten minutes and studiously ignored the muffled voices through the door. At the end of that time the younger Payson came out, tears on his face, and invited them to come back into the room.
“How did you know?” he asked Lenox straight away.
“I had assumed for a long while that Geoffrey Canterbury was a man named John Lysander, a member of the September Society.”
“Lysander!” spat out the elder Payson.
“It never quite added up. Why would he have been helping you? But there was the description to go on, and in particular the scar. Which I assume you’ll tell us about, George? Why the two of you had identical scars? When Lady Annabelle came to me it was the first thing I remembered about you. To have forgotten it so promptly was shameful on my part, though in my defense I believed you to be dead… and then while you and I were hiding at that meeting, Payson, we heard Butler mention ’an old friend unexpectedly returned.’ It was then that I remembered the scar, and combining that fact with the pocket watch… it simply seemed inevitable once I started to think about it.”
“Hardly inevitable, I should have said.”
“But why this sudden interest in the son of a long-dead man? They must have hoped to draw your father out by threatening you, killing you, whatever they planned to do. At any rate, I remembered that your father had once haunted this famous Eastcheap establishment, and guessed that if he were to lie low it would be here.”
“Famous for it,” said Edmund. “He was here night and day.”
“Voluntarily then, involuntarily now,” added James Payson. “This is the only place in London that I know inside and out, besides the Beefsteak Club.” He laughed. “And that might have been conspicuous.”
“I couldn’t remember the address or the name, but Edmund did, and so here we are.”
“And all extremely anxious to discover the origin of this entire horrible matter,” said Jenkins.
The elder Payson sighed and lifted his eyes to the half-ring of men standing around him. His hand was in his son’s.
Then he spoke. “It’s a simple enough story,” he said. “Or rather, two simple enough stories, one old, one new, the two of them intertwined. Any Englishman who has left this island for the wider empire can tell you that terrible things are done in the name of the Queen, bless her. A little less than twenty years ago, just after you were born, George, and just between the Anglo-Sikh wars, I took part in one of those atrocities.
“My battalion and I were monitoring an area along the Sutlej Frontier in Punjab, and if I never lay eyes on it again it will be too soon. There were about thirty thousand troops there-it was our most important strategic position in India, you see, geographically, politically, and culturally-and we always got by far the best of the few little local skirmishes. We had won the first Anglo-Sikh war handily, and though the locals resented us we ruled with a firm hand. As a result, I and the other officers led an idle life there. Each of us had a small house and four or five native servants, and there was always a card game or a drink to be had in the officers’ mess. Despite the heat, which none of us liked, it wasn’t a bad kip.
“I was still pretty wild then, I’m afraid-Edmund and Charles remember me from Oxford-and my best friend in all of India was another like me, a man named Juniper. He wasn’t in the army, though. He was an orphan, all alone in the world, with a few hundred pounds he had inherited, and when he came of age he set out for Lahore to make his fortune. The two of us drank together, hunted together, and even lived in the same house for some time together. They called us the twins, because there was some slight resemblance between us and because we were so inseparable.
“As you can gather, it wasn’t too bad a life. I had a close friend, all the gin I wanted, some shooting, and a game of cards most evenings. But then one day I did something foolish.
“I was chappy enough with John Lysander at the time, and one evening the two of us and an official of the East India Company attached to our battalion-a lad named Simon Halloran, as green as he could be-decided to venture into the strictly Punjabi part of Lahore.
An adventure, we figured. Well, at the first teahouse we stopped into we were kidnapped by (you’ll scarcely credit this) a group of about ten boys, all of them armed to the teeth. They blindfolded us and led us out into the countryside. I’ve always had a keen enough sense of direction, and though they tried to turn us around and confuse us I knew which way we were going. Mark that-it comes back in a moment.
“Well, it was a hairy enough situation. The head of the village these boys belonged to searched us all over and eventually decided to send a message to the Queen by killing one of us. As you can no doubt guess, it was Halloran-nonmilitary, I suppose. He cut Halloran’s throat right in front of our eyes, and for good measure gave Lysander and myself identical cuts, to mark us out as dangerous to his fellow tribesmen.”
Payson’s hand went to his throat.
“It raised a terrible ruckus back at camp, as goes without saying, and as I knew where this village was we received permission to go capture this headman who had decided to kill Halloran. Well, we did go back, and-well, the less we say of it, the better.” His eyes looked ghostly as he said this. “We’re not allowed to take back anything in this life, and we did what we did, you see.
“In the end it was three nonofficers who came across the village headman. My batman, Major Butler’s batman, and a clever lance corporal named Hallowell. They came and fetched the officers-all of us bloody and exhausted, about twenty-five of us-and when we entered the tent we saw that somehow this small village had amassed an absolutely remarkable treasure.
There were chests of rubies, bags of uncut diamonds, gold, silver, piles and piles of the stuff. Most spectacular of all was the largest, purest sapphire I’ve ever seen, perhaps the largest sapphire in the world. As large as a hawk’s egg.”
Softly, Lenox muttered, “September’s birthstone.”
The elder Payson turned to him. “Yes, that’s right. Welcome to the little joke. This raid took place in September, and the name must have seemed inevitable. In any event, there was an instant unanimous decision. We would take it, never tell the army, and retire back to England rich men. All of us officers, and the three nonofficers, too.
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