Chapter 27
At first, Faith’s words prompted him to sternly deny her. Any time money and someone’s livelihood was threatened, there might be danger. Then he caught a true look at the depth of purpose in her stance and the set of her face.
If he wanted her to understand him, this was a good place to start. As he’d told her earlier, he loved the way she approached life, how she thought. He could trust her not to jump to the wrong assumption, couldn’t he? If not then maybe they weren’t right for each other. This had to be faced sometime.
“Very well.” He ushered her, hand on elbow, toward Tom’s automobile, a red-and-black, open-top Model T, parked all by itself on the road, except for a half a dozen donkeys that looked liable to chew the tires any minute. Tom ran ahead, shooing them away. “As long as you promise to stay back where I tell you to stay. We’re messing with a man’s business, with what earns him money, and things may get nasty.”
She lifted an elegant eyebrow at him, peeking from under that little boater hat, and he had to resist the impulse to kiss her. “I shall stay where you tell me to, sir. Will you tell me more? Where are we going?”
The sand crunched underfoot. How much should he say?
“Might be best if you wait until we’re by ourselves.” He opened the back door to let her in.
“Of course.”
The drive along the pyramid road didn’t take long. Tom dropped them off then drove off ahead as they walked to the Thomas Flyer. A fine layer of sand covered her upholstery and yet another swirl of sand gusted in as they approached, hissing as it hit metal. Once the motor was cranked and they were both inside, he found his two pairs of motoring goggles.
“Let me help you with this, Faith.”
She hesitated. He knew she recalled the last time he’d given her goggles and smiled. “Blushing, my dear?”
“Never, sir. It is the heat from walking through the sand.”
“Liar.” He kissed her ear when he wrapped the straps across her hair and she turned to meet his lips. The gentle exchange, with soft embrace of lip to lip made him hard almost instantly. He rubbed his nose on hers. “No more, sweetheart. We have other things to do.” The metal tongue of the buckle at the back fitted into the fourth hole and he slipped it in, settled the goggles properly onto her head, pulled out a strand or two of hair that might be caught too tight.
“Thank you.” Even looking at him through goggles, she captivated him and tugged painfully at his heart.
“You’re welcome. I’ll explain on the way.” To his surprise, when he put his own goggles on, her slender fingers met his at the back, which only served to make his heart ache more. Damn woman. Where they were going, what they were about to do, he needed to be in control.
“My turn,” she whispered.
It pleased him though, to let her fasten the buckle while their fingers brushed and tangled. Her perfume made memories stir, made him remember how her body gave under his touch.
* * * *
The number of pedestrians and donkeys, bicyclists and camels on the road gave him an excuse for a while, so he could gather his thoughts before answering her earlier questions.
“We are going, Faith, to a brothel owned by Mr. Sydney Smythe, where we aim to rescue a woman from his clutches.” He glanced across, saw the little frown lines above the goggles.
“A brothel? Although that sounds very moral of you, I fail to see why. There must be a thousand women in brothels and though some are no doubt unhappy there, why this lady, why now? Is there something special about her?”
Was that anger he heard in her tone? Ah, was she jealous? Or more likely, did she think he’d been dishonest earlier?
“I don’t personally know this woman.” He firmed his jaw, and every other muscle that might betray him, and kept his eyes on the road while steering around a stalled camel and its gesticulating owner. “The card Smythe gave me...it said–” The steering wheel cut a hard line across his palms as he gripped it tighter. “Beth will suit you. Unbroken, as yet. There was a terrible incident and it propelled me into doing some research into his affairs. Sydney caters to those with a taste for flagellation and bondage...and a taste for virgins or those new to the trade. He doesn’t care if the woman likes it or not.” This time he didn’t look across at her. For once his courage failed him. “Sometimes they die.”
“What? How can that be allowed? My God! My God...” She said the last quietly. “There’s more though, isn’t there?”
He forced his grip to loosen. How had she come to ask that? He steeled himself to reveal nothing. Saying this to her was agony. “Yes. That terrible incident–I once missed the chance to...I was guilty by omission of letting a woman die. I knew she was being abused and I did nothing.”
“Nothing? That seems unlikely. I know you, sir...Leonhardt. I don’t believe you would do nothing.”
Hell. The confidence she had in him. He shot her a hard look. “Very well, I tried a little, and then gave in when I thought things were being handled properly. I was wrong and she paid for it. I should have pushed, found out for certain. There was a man of great influence involved. No excuse still. If I’d intervened, she would have lived.”
He waited, breath jammed up in his throat, for her recriminations. If he was wrong about her, they would come. Please, no.
“Ah.” She closed her hand on his biceps through the coat sleeve. “Now that, I believe. Forgive yourself. Let it go. This, today, it seems to me, is your time to do. The past is gone. I’m glad you’ve let me come. You may need a woman...to help her.”
Amazed and stunned, he looked at Faith. A shout made him whip his head back to check the road and he narrowly missed a donkey-drawn cart loaded with men and women holding up bright umbrellas to ward off the sun. My God, indeed. She meant to get her own hands dirty, so to speak? What a woman. He smiled grimly.
“Thank you.”
The street with the brothel was wide enough for two cars to pass abreast. Tom’s car was parked to the left, near a table at the corner of a shop. Men and women clustered about the rectangular table, some sitting on timber chairs and some standing. All were either talking or eating, or both. No one spared the cars more than a glance.
On the opposite side of the street from where he pulled up beside Tom, was the brothel–a sandstone block building, a quiet frontage with no fussy awnings or lintels and no signage at all. The clue to its purpose was the man out the front. By a plain, blue-painted door, just visible past the hood of a parked black Packard with yellow-and-brass accents, stood a hefty, six feet plus guard, suit-clad, his arms and chest inflated by muscle.
“Sir.” Tom stepped closer, leaned down to speak in the car window. “I just saw the signal. Hasim is planning to come out a side door with her, and then out that alley.” He pointed to the alley opposite them. “He’s got a police constable waiting farther down the street in case we have trouble.”
“Good. Stay here, Faith.”
Already she’d been removing her goggles and now dropped them in her lap. She blinked and nodded.
How Hasim had done it he didn’t know. He’d probably pretended to be a client but how he’d sorted out the details of doors and so on...never mind, it was about to happen.
Quiet movement in the shadows of the alley pulled his attention. It was Hasim, with a shorter person beside him wrapped in a mauve cloth of some sort–as obvious as a red flag to a bull. Damnation, the guard would see.
“Come on, Tom. We’ll be needed.” He clenched his fist and felt the crack of knuckles. What he wouldn’t give for a good stout club. The guard was a tad less in height but he looked as if he lifted camels for practice on his days off.
“You take the guard’s left arm, Tom. I’ll take his right.”
The swallow from Tom was audible. “Sir. I’ll try.”
“Joking, Tom. We’ll just get in the way and hope he doesn’t see until too late. Try and be loud.”
They crossed the street at a saunter. Hasim, his arm tight around the woman’s shoulders
, looked up and saw them.
Time to begin. “Tom! Would you look at that! This is the place, isn’t it?”
“Sure! Sure. Uh, d’ya think they’ll let us back in after what happened last time?”
Good thinking. The guard had perked up at that and took a step their way. “Of course he’ll let us in, won’t you, man?”
It might have worked if the woman hadn’t stepped on the sheet and tripped as she went from the raised footpath to the packed-dirt road. The sheet dragged away, revealing a skimpy costume of white corset and lacy drawers. Her thighs were bruised in stippled and crisscross patterns of purple, black and deep red.
“Hey!” the guard swung away toward Hasim. “Where do you two think you are going?” He chuckled and pulled a brown truncheon from his belt, moving in with all the momentum and deadliness of an overloaded freight train. “My name is Lars und nobody leaves unless I say it is so.”
Leonhardt took one precise stride and sank a fist into his gut. The air rushed out of the guard’s mouth–a tainted long breath that smelled of onion, stewed meat and half-rotten teeth. He wobbled a moment but recovered. The truncheon swung up and across and caught Leonhardt’s forearm right on the bone. Pain speared up to his shoulder. At his hiss and slight retreat, Lars straightened and seemed to regain some of his fire.
“You two think you have me?” He swung again, the truncheon hurtling down from head height. Leonhardt blocked with his sore arm, taking the shock of the blow and hauling back to jab. Tom stepped in only to be sent sprawling by a casual elbow from Lars.
“You are all weaklings.” He sneered, and his other hand came up wielding a small knife, the blade glinting and weaving. “I could take you both in my sleep.”
One mistake and the knife might kill. “If you want, Lars, we’ll call in the policeman who’s down the road.”
“What? You are bluffing at me.” Lars grinned and lunged. Tires crackled across the road, the engine note soared loud and close, and for a second Lars dropped his gaze to look past Leonhardt’s shoulder.
Weak spots worked best when one thumped them repeatedly–a line from his pugilism handbook. Leonhardt punched into Lars’s middle, the same as before. The man’s face froze and drained from flushed pink to white.
“Err...” Slowly Lars collapsed to his knees on the pavement, clutching at his stomach.
“Go, Hasim! Go! To my car!” As he backed away, Leonhardt observed the felled guard. Apparently lifting camels didn’t make one immune to a punch in the stomach–a good thing to know. “Farewell, sir.”
The throbbing engine of the Thomas Flyer was only a few feet behind him with Faith still clutching the wheel and peering out at him. He shook his head at her exuberance and courage. He should have expected it, though.
While Tom madly cranked the Model T, Faith scrambled out the driver’s side and around into the back seat of the Thomas Flyer. She wrapped her arms about the woman from the brothel. By then Hasim had slipped into the driver’s seat.
Beth, that was the lady’s name.
A shout came from the direction of the brothel. The front door had been flung open and Sydney Smythe, sporting a dead-eyed smile and a dapper cream suit, headed their way. He stepped off the footpath but detoured, and reached into the Packard’s front seat. His hand came out carrying a cloth-wrapped parcel with the butt of a pistol protruding from it. Obviously, the car belonged to Smythe. The recovering guard, Lars, staggered along behind.
If they left, Tom would be next on Smythe’s menu. He might not get shot, even Smythe was surely unlikely to go that far, but he would be beaten. If they stayed...and Smythe did shoot, he was acutely aware Faith was as likely to get hit as anyone by a stray bullet.
“Tom, leave it! Get in my car, fast!” Leonhardt grabbed the passenger-side door handle.
Too late Smythe pulled the gun, sliding it out like a black snake from a burrow.
There was a Webley revolver stashed in the Thomas Flyer, but if he used it this might turn into the gunfight at the OK Corral.
“Sirs! Sirs!” A white-uniformed constable appeared at the corner, his strides long and purposeful, though he was armed with only a cane. “Is there some problem here?” The Egyptian officer stopped near Smythe and questioned him. Either he’d not seen the pistol, which Smythe had quickly hidden, or he’d chosen not to remark on it.
The Model T rumbled and coughed to life.
“Tom, get out of here,” Leonhardt wrenched open the front passenger door of his own automobile and slipped inside. In the back, Beth curled up under the sheet sobbing while Faith hugged her and made soothing sounds. A bright spot of blood showed on the sheet where it pressed on the woman’s back.
The Model T curved out and drove off, slewing a little from side to side, but as Hasim pulled out to follow, Smythe stepped in front. With a small screech of brakes, Hasim halted the car. Beyond Smythe, still in midstreet, the officer tapped cane against trouser leg while the doorman wobbled back to his spot at the door.
“You all right back there, Faith? And the lady?” He didn’t take his eyes off Smythe, who leaned across the bonnet, cream coat sleeve on green metal, to sneer into the car through the windscreen. The gun, thank the Lord, was nowhere in evidence.
“Everything is under control, Leonhardt. Please, can we leave?” Faith said. The quiver in her words spoke of fear. He could step out and slam Smythe...and maybe provoke the man into shooting after all. No, calm, cool. Bluff your way.
“If I go now,” Hasim said, through clenched teeth, hands white-knuckle on the steering wheel. “I will run the stupid bastard down. Pardon my language, ladies. I doubt the officer will excuse me, despite the circumstances.”
“Have we a problem, Mr. Meisner?” Smythe asked, voice smooth as that of a man out on a Sunday stroll. “I’m sure my hospitality does not extend to lending you my harlots? Might I have her back? Or do I have to track her down and send some brutish men in to repossess her? Brothels are legal here since eighteen eighty-six, or haven’t you been following the law reforms? I’ll have you in court faster than a ferret can dig out a rabbit and shred its guts.” He smiled in at them, gaze flicking past to the back of the car. “Pardon my language too, ladies.”
Leonhardt formed a fist. “Damn you, Smythe.” This whole affair sat too close to his deepest fears. But this had to be done, he just wished now he’d made Faith go home.
“Wait, Leonhardt. I can fix this.” Hasim held up a placatory hand and raised his voice. “Smythe, I have the ear of the prince. Brothels might be legal but what you’ve done to her is not. If you don’t get your rotten face out of my way, I’ll have you up before the courts, and I assure you the punishment here does fit the crime.”
True, there was still allowance for some very nasty physical deterrents and the courts were not afraid to use them, but would Smythe see sense?
For a second Smythe’s face held the calm then, like a landslide, ugliness piled in, his lips curling, eyes narrowing. “Meisner, I know this is your doing. Don’t think you have the moral ground here! You’re doing the same with that little Miss Evard of yours as I do with my whores–conditioning her! Pavlov’s experiments have come in so handy haven’t they?” He spat a gob of mucous onto the windscreen then stepped away. The slime slid down the glass.
The silence from the back of the vehicle only made him wonder what Faith made of all this.
“Drive, Hasim.” Violence leaked through Leonhardt and ground away the veneer of civility until he feared if he left the car he’d smash Smythe’s face into a red ruin of flesh. “Drive unless you want me to kill him.” The automobile accelerated.
“Take care, Meisner!” The last shouted words of Smythe reached into the car. “I have a long arm! People get hurt in this business!”
He closed his eyes and barely felt the jolt and jerk as they turned corners and hit bumps and holes in the road.
The problem was, of course, he knew exactly what Smythe was referring to. He knew of Pavlov. Could the man be right? Had he condi
tioned Faith? Maybe he was going to Hell.
Chapter 28
Though he said nothing on the drive back home, it was clear to Faith that Smythe’s last remark had hit Mr. Meisner hard. Home? Where is my head going–calling his house, home? And who is this Pavlov? She had some questions for Leonhardt.
She helped the woman from the automobile, the soft sheet still wrapped about Beth’s body, with curls and tangles of gorgeous red hair fluffing up about her shoulders and blood dotting the sheet. Leonhardt remained silent. He too put an arm about Beth, only to flinch when the woman gasped and shrank back. Then he stepped away. Hasim instructed a servant girl to take Beth inside the white three-story house then followed her in after a swift goodbye and a handshake with Leonhardt. Faith stared up and up the front of the house. It had pretensions to majesty thanks to all the columns and stained glass, the servants and carefully pruned shrubbery.
“She looks like she’ll be in good hands, Leonhardt.”
Even that, a direct piece of conversation, drew nothing from him. His face was a wall. Was he angry at her too? She got back inside the Thomas Flyer and watched his strong fingers manipulate the gears and the wheel all the way back, wondering what it was about this Pavlov and “conditioning” that had struck such a nerve. Smythe barely knew her and though he might have guessed...what they did...how could he know enough to upset Leonhardt? For a man with control engraved in every line of his body, to see him tipped off his center, it was simply awful and ran a raw thread of pain through her middle.
Inside the house, Leonhardt directed her to the dining room and pulled up a chair for her to sit on. He perched on the edge of the table and regarded her with that face of flesh made stone, yet still said nothing.
Questions chased each other in her head. Who or what is this Pavlov? Why does it bother you so? What is conditioning? She was afraid to ask. And her instincts told her, if it affected Leonhardt this much, he should be the one to bring them up.
Yet, what did he want of her? The silence stretched, until that raw thread of pain connected them and she dreaded whatever he might say. She’d seen his best side this day, no matter that he patently thought the opposite. A man who went to the place that hurt him terribly, where he tried his utmost to correct a wrong for a woman who was a stranger to him. It humbled her. He was so good while she skipped through life on money and indulgences and did what struck her, on the day, as fun or exciting. Today he’d given her a taste of doing something right and good and satisfying.
Rough Surrender Page 19