A faint clank, clank, tap, tap had her spinning around so fast she slipped and crashed hip-first into a mooring cleat. The tautening stay rope scraped and tore skin from the back of her neck. Julia winced and scrambled to her feet. He’s coming. But what to do? There was still no sign of the elevator or of the Pegasus crew. Think, quick. This could all be a figment of my paranoia. The man in the bowler hat might be a deaf-mute and I could be running from nothing. She sucked in a lungful of icy air. The hatchway exit was now sheathed in light grey fog. No, no. It was too much of a coincidence.
Aquiver, she scanned the gangway for another way down. Nothing practical…except to jump into the Thames and that would likely kill her. It was too high. What else?
Tap, clang, tap, tap.
Erratic footsteps…nearing, quickening. Right. It was either wait until the very last second for the elevator, or stand her ground and—
The mooring cleat?
She considered the idea and immediately tossed her purse aside and pounced on the four-hooked iron anchor. Unscrewing it from the gangway took all her strength but it soon lifted free. The rope’s loop slipped loose when she heaved the cleat up onto her shoulder. Julia daren’t breathe. The iron thing weighed a ton and the major mooring rope, connecting the Pegasus to the ground, was only several yards away.
With a final shoulder-buckling effort she hooked the cleat onto the declining rope, slid it over the railing, and used its weight to steady herself while she climbed up. Crazy perhaps, but she’d seen acrobats perform this feat more than once. She couldn’t see the ground through the smog. God, please let there be no obstacles.
The railing rattled while she teetered, plucking the courage to fall.
Hissss! Squeeeeak!
Her heart froze and she gripped the railing at her feet with a free hand. Thank God. The elevator. What a reckless thing she’d almost—
The man dashed at her from behind. His bowler hat flew off during his terrifying spurt of acceleration. He lunged with an outstretched blade and slashed at her thigh. She felt a tight, curling pain, but only the hilt had caught her. He attempted to drive the knife into her stomach but Julia kicked off from the railings, out into nothingness, her fists clenched for dear life. She watched as he peered after her and then bolted for the elevator.
Julia slid backwards as she clung to the swaying curved prongs of the lopsided cleat. It fed her down, down to a mouth she couldn’t see. A never-ending descent. The muscles in her arms and fingers and shoulders leaked something flammable into burning blood. Through the mist below she spied concrete, a brick wall, grass.
Almost…there. Her soles slid for balance, she let go of the cleat and thump!—her backside landed on the grass and she bounced and fell sideways.
Her mooring cleat clashed with the one on the ground inches from her right ear. She flopped onto her side. A light-headed desire to lie there waiting for morning tempted her for a moment. The constant hiss of the steam elevator sputtered. Moments later, a faint metallic crack woke the mist. Someone slamming the elevator cage doors open? Julia stopped untangling her petticoats and staggered to her feet.
Please, Al, where are you? There was no time. She turned inshore and headed for the nearest light she could see. The ticket office? The Leviacrum? No. Her heart floundered. Lit by a wharf fog lamp, the silhouette of a man stalked the path between them, his blade protruding, questing for his prey through the smog.
Oh my God.
Away to her left, she couldn’t tell how far, another light blazed on before it flickered twice and blinked out. But at least she had a direction to aim for. Nowhere near her pursuer.
She hiked her dress and scurried across the lawn toward the dim, empty scrawls of London.
Chapter Six
“CLOSED.”
The brass signpost loomed at the foot of the stone steps, barring her way into the Westminster Observatory. The maze of thick cordon ropes had not yet been removed and a dim yellow light glowed inside the building—proof that someone was still in the process of closing up. A caretaker? Where was he?
Julia wanted to scream for help but that would give away her position. There was yet a chance her attacker had taken a wrong turn in the fog. She sank to a crouch, hugging her aching ribs, exhausted. She glanced round. Damn it. Her stockings, soaked by the damp wharf grass, had left footprints on the concrete pavement and likely over the iron canal bridge as well. All right, this was it. The observatory might provide a place to hide or, even better, help from someone inside.
The distant, staccato click, click of running steps rushed her up the stairs to the heavy oak doors. Her heart flipped when the left-hand door groaned open with a push. She eased it closed behind her. Someone had propped open the inner doors—a large crack ran through the crimson stained glass—with a mop and bucket. The marble foyer was empty. The light she’d seen came from a solitary gas lamp perched on the reception desk to her right.
No one at all came to help her.
She held her cry to a whisper. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Repeating it down each corridor scraped her throat like sandpaper. No sooner had she touched a hand on the varnished banister when a sliver of cold air tickled her neck. Creeeeak! Julia half turned, glimpsed a bulge in the flickering shadow near the door.
She hiked her dress and flew up the staircase two steps at a time.
Click, click, click…
He was following! Faster, faster—a surge of energy shot her up two more flights. The third floor was very dark indeed. Left or right? The latter room, though blacker, looked bigger, felt more inviting. She tore along a strip of carpet and hurdled a sagging cordon rope.
Planets?
Dark spheres of every size sat suspended in midair around the exhibition, each connected via a brass pipe to the central hub, the largest sphere of all—the sun.
Julia remembered she’d been here before, a few years back, with the girls from dance class. The orrery. An enormous mechanical model of the solar system. Fancy. Expensive. The only place she could think of to hide was the centrepiece attraction, inside the sun.
Click, click, click…
She ducked under Neptune. The show had cost her half a crown last time. She dodged Mars. Gasping, she slithered round to the far side of the sun.
Cold, gloom and the spokes of a sleeping mechanical beast surrounded her. In the daytime, this whole heliocentric exhibit hissed and wheezed and revolved for minutes at a time, a magnificent brass roundabout unlike anything else in the world.
Click, click.
Her pursuer stopped, then resumed his measured steps. But in which direction was he headed? She fingered the sun’s smooth, cold surface, trying to locate a seam or a handle. If he chose this direction she would be cornered. No way out.
There. The large cloth-covered knob, well-protected if the sphere overheated. She eased the hatch open moments before his footsteps resumed. Definitely in her direction. Oh, God. No time to unfold the stepladder. Breathless, she climbed onto a pipe, pulled herself up between the two rows of seats inside, then, bunching the layers of her dress about her knees, inched the door ever so gently closed.
The entire circumference of the globe was one-way transparent. Those inside could see out, but no one could see in. Julia didn’t want to take any chances, though. She stayed on the floor between the seats, tucking herself into a ball.
Minutes passed. No sound, no sign that he was there. Yet at any moment the hatch could fling open and a shadowy arm could reach in to stab her. She forced herself to look one last time—she couldn’t see him anywhere—before sinking back into her haven and closing her eyes.
She thought of the hard, inexpensive pew in the church, of hot cross buns in a shop window, of smoking cigarettes backstage at The Swan and of the comfort of resting her head on Al Grant’s firm shoulder during a polka to die for.
The lights blazed all at once, from every angle. Brilliant amber from the sun, blue from the earth to her right and Pluto far behind that, r
ed from Mars. Julia shrank to a bottled gasp. The bastard had the measure of the mechanism! A sequence of stutters, grinds and whirs overlapped a rising hiss, hiss from the four corners of the room.
This was it.
The steam-powered solar system was starting up.
Julia gripped the seat back as the sun shuddered into a slow-grinding spin. The amber window filter permitted her a spectacular, terrifying view of the orbiting planets. They revolved at different speeds, while the entire spectrum of colours reflected off their brass pipe-spokes, creating a dazzling optical effect that was part whirligig, part kaleidoscope.
But where was he?
The outermost planet, Pluto, illuminated a brass dashboard to the left of the entrance. She saw a number of gears, wheels and buttons but no sign of the bearded man. Rather than pivot her head frantically, try to chance upon him in the phantasmagoria, she remembered Lady Law’s method of deduction. Calm. Measured focus. She let the sun rotate her line of sight, then studied each corner of the room for shadows and silhouettes.
The door flung open.
“There you are, bitch.”
She screamed and kicked at his hideous bearded face while he clambered in. There was so little room to manoeuvre and her kicks landed with such force that he spilled backward onto one of the pipe-spokes. Julia seized upon the chance to escape while the sun rotated away from him. The next three spokes sat close together. She scurried out onto the centre one. It was warm and smooth, like the factory pipe she and Georgy had picnicked on. Except this measured under two feet in diameter. Her dancer’s sense of balance helped her reach the far side, which was the planet Saturn. But the bastard was at her heels. She dove onto Uranus and slid down the far side to land with a sideways thump, smashing her shoulder.
The man vaulted another pipe, knife at the ready. Julia crabbed away, ducking under Neptune and rolling under its connecting spoke. She saw the massive exit and made a beeline for it. Her attacker dashed in front, barring the way.
“What do you want?” she cried.
The man’s knife flew from his hand. She flung her arms over her face for protection.
Clang!
One of the pipes buckled and broke, ejecting steam. A tangle of limbs writhed about on the floor where Pluto had been. Like a billiard ball, the sphere rolled to one side, clattered into Neptune, then continued on to double kiss Uranus.
The bearded man got to his feet, but was dragged down again. Seizing the opportunity, Julia dashed for the exit.
Yet she spied someone on the floor with him, throwing vicious fists. Someone smaller but stockier, someone…
“Al!” she yelled.
“Run, Julia, run!”
He took a heavy blow to the jaw. The man seemed to be getting the better of him, punch for punch, but Al fought like a bulldog. He landed an uppercut that sent the bastard reeling. Where had Al come from? How had he found her? Shaking, Julia wanted nothing more than to flee, but now he was in trouble.
Now it was two against one.
She wiped her brow with a frilly sleeve and then ducked low to ground, questing for the knife. An easy find. It was tiny compared to the spheres but on the bare marble floor it stood out like one of Jules Verne’s rocket ships. She hurdled two pipes and grabbed it from near the sun. The most deafening clatter she’d ever heard shook the entire room. A man’s scream and the rolling growl of thunder gathered momentum behind, from where the fight had…
Jupiter? Startled, Julia hurled herself out of the Jovian giant’s path as it sped across the floor toward the sun. Steam hissed out of its side, scalding the bearded man whose arm appeared trapped in the twisted, broken piping. He yelled for help, but she would give him none.
She watched, horrified, as another globe hit the rolling reddish leviathan and accelerated it further still. A clatter of breaking glass curtailed the bearded man’s final scream. He fell, Jupiter and all, through the blacked-out window. A distant splash heralded his watery grave in the canal below.
The lights of the solar system flicked out. The planets ground to a halt. And Al, against the wall by the dashboard, having turned the orrery off, appeared no more than a phantom in the hissing gloom.
Julia crept toward him, felt her way along warm pipes and moonlit black marble. Lost in the cosmos, with only his form to guide her.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he grabbed her and held her tight.
She flung her arms round him and swore she’d never let go.
Chapter Seven
Insistent tram bells drew Julia’s attention to the street outside the fish and chip café. Not many people out walking for late morning on a weekday, and those she could see were muffled tight. An old butcher ambled by her window, his apron flapping in the Arctic gusts, his cold breaths inches from the glass.
She shivered.
The red double-decker tram rocked through its sharp turn onto Piccadilly. On an advert covering its side, the familiar red, white and blue lettering meant to signify the Union Jack, read, Ambition Soars. The World Is Yours. Fly British Airships. Julia felt like resigning then and there. No one had come to her aid on the Pegasus. Indeed, no one had stayed around long enough to hear her cries for help. So much for security. Bloody tin-pot outfit.
Thank goodness Al had come through in a pinch, despite being locked in the bathroom like that. She took a bite of her French toast and chewed slowly, trying to connect the dots of his rescue. He’d explained it to her once, at the station, but her dazed state had blurred all but the affection in his unblinking, adorable eyes.
“How was it you found me again?” She slurped a mouthful of hot—too hot—chocolate. It dribbled down her chin but she caught it with a napkin.
“Hmm, it was luck,” he replied. “I guessed something might be amiss when I heard a raised voice, though that didn’t unduly alarm me. The locked door on its own would not have, either. But the two together—I kicked the door a dozen times before its hinges buckled.”
He paused, sipped his coffee. “By that time you’d vanished. All I had to go off was the broken heel of a shoe. I ran outside and that’s where I found the dead crewman. His throat had been cut right in front of the elevator shaft. I hoped that you’d gotten away and that the murderer was an elevator descent behind you. Little did I know you were a trapeze artist, Julia.” He winked. “But the cage clearly wasn’t coming back up, so I had to climb down the tower’s exterior frame—”
“Wait, that gets scalding hot with all the steam.” Julia cut in. “Your descent was as harebrained as mine!”
He chuckled. “Gentleman’s gloves, two pairs for five shillings and nine pence. Good for rolling snowballs and sliding down hot brass in pursuit of murderers. Actually, the trickiest part was figuring out where the deuce you’d fled to. That darned mist! I’ll never forget how hopeless it felt…I was ready to tear the bastard apart—pardon me—if only I had a clue which way to go. The only light I could see through the smog seemed as good a gamble as any. The wet footprints clinched it. I remembered you’d broken a heel and figured you wouldn’t want to run with a limp, so that was how I knew they were your tracks.”
“Bravo. Not too shabby.”
“Good old blunt luck.” He fidgeted with his cuffs. “I could have easily gone the other way, bowled over a few fat members of Parliament in frustration. Come to think of it, I still might.”
Julia grinned as far as her mouthful of hot chocolate would permit.
“And you know the rest,” he added. “The clincher came when I heard the machinery start up. I ran up the stairs and saw the goddamn aurora borealis in full beam. Didn’t know what in hell to expect. You’ll have to excuse my language, Julia. It’s just that it still fires me up, thinking of that brute cornering you like that. And we have no idea who he is. It’s only a matter of time, though.”
Bunching the ends of her shawl about her collar, Julia rotated her taut shoulders. What an ordeal it had been! Crazy to imagine it, let alone to realise she had lived through it.
“You already have, Julia. Seeing you again is more than I could have hoped for.”
“You’re sweet.” She blushed, tried to hide it by nibbling her piece of toast.
Al reached for his cigar case but seemed to change his mind and instead melted her with a wry curl of his lips. “I promised myself I’d cut down. Tobacco seems to play havoc with my physical stamina,” he explained. “The chase somewhat took it out of me yesterday. Lucky I had enough left to finish the brute off. So have you given any more thought to Inspector Statham’s suggestion?”
“Which one is that?” she quizzed.
“About leaving London. He seems to think you would be safer away from here for a while, until we put the case to rest.”
“And what do you think, Al?”
“I think that if you were compelled to go, I would be obliged to follow.” He allowed a passerby to distract him from Julia’s gaze for a moment. “Hey, who else is going to keep me on my toes? Dancewise,” he added feebly.
“What are you saying?” She knew the answer before the question, or she hoped she did.
“Hmm? I was simply saying…I would be sorry…very sorry to see you go. The Swan would have lost a gem of a dancer.”
Al looked away again and she rolled her eyes. What was it that separated men from their emotions? They could flirt all day and drop a girl flat at midnight if her corset wasn’t for coming off. They could fight wars for money and happily squander those earnings at the local betting shop. They boasted they could do practically anything bigger and better than women, on the whole; yet, a simple declaration of affection snatched the wind completely from their sails.
At least Al had a legitimate reason for being cagey. Yet five years was a long time, long enough for at least a measure of healing. And she felt certain he wanted to open up to her.
“And you’d miss me, I suppose, for more than my dancing?” she fished.
“Yep.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What else will you miss me for?” Julia teased, anchoring her gaze on his darting brown eyes.
The Mysterious Lady Law Page 6