The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  She ran her fingers over the surface. It felt cool, as it always did, even in the thick tropical heat. The weight of it filling her palm was oddly comforting, and looking at it helped settle her. It was so solid, so very real. It had to have come from somewhere just as real. And she would find it.

  She heard the click of the door handle and started. It had to be one of the maids trying to get in to tidy things before she returned from supper. She had only enough time to bury the black stone under the hat on her vanity table before the door opened the rest of the way.

  “I don’t actually need…,” she began, then stopped short as she turned and saw not the thin young chambermaid but the looming figure of Adam Bates.

  He shut the door behind him and stood, arms crossed.

  “So how about you tell me what you’re really up to?”

  “Don’t you ever knock?” She shook her head, realizing the futility of that line of inquiry. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I believe I already did.”

  “If you’ve got a brother named Oliver, then I’m your aunt Mabel.”

  “You’re calling me a liar?”

  “Didn’t say you make it a habit. You aren’t that good at it.”

  Ellie felt a welcome flare of righteous indignation. Well, perhaps not entirely righteous. After all, he was right about the brother. But she was hardly going to admit that. She drew herself up to her full height and pointed an imperious finger at the door.

  “Get out,” she ordered.

  “Now, that looks familiar. Listen, princess—”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” she demanded, exasperated.

  “It fits better than Constance,” he said with a wry look. “I don’t know what sort of scheme you’ve got up those pretty sleeves of yours, but take it from someone who spends far more time there than he ought: The bush is no place for a lady. Even,” he continued, cutting off her protest, “a relatively resourceful one. There’s not a lot of fine-bred women who would’ve made the trip across the water in that tub on their own. But a busted excuse for a freighter is one thing. The jungle is another. There are things out there a lot meaner than the one I pulled out of your bath this morning, and some of them walk around on two legs. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take the same advice I gave those boys in the dining room: Have yourself a nice holiday. Then head back to England, where you belong.”

  “Why is it, exactly, that you think my affairs are any of your business?” she asked, frustration rising.

  “There’s enough of the gentleman left in me to want to keep a woman from putting her neck on the line.”

  “Gentlemen knock, Mr. Bates,” she said meaningfully.

  Adam’s eyes narrowed. “If you won’t take that piece of advice, at least listen to this one. What I told Lewis and Clark down there was true—particularly for a woman. Any decent guide is going to refuse to bring you out there unaccompanied, especially when, any day now, it’s going to start raining. Getting through the bush in the rainy season is no picnic. And that means,” he added, stepping closer to her, “that anyone who does agree to take you is probably planning on robbing you or worse. I can tell you don’t want to hear this, but if you don’t have a man accompanying you, you’re setting yourself up for some serious unpleasantness.”

  She hated what he was saying. And she hated even more that it was very possibly true. From what she had seen, the local men were, if anything, even more strict in their notions of what was and wasn’t appropriate behavior for a woman, and she was fairly sure that archaeological expeditions did not fit under that particular umbrella. She fought fear with sarcasm.

  “What’s that, then? An offer or a threat?”

  Adam laughed, shaking his head. “Miss Tyrrell—whoever the hell you are—I probably am the only man in this country crazy enough to do what you’re asking. But I’m not going to partner with someone who won’t come clean about what she’s after. You also don’t strike me as the type to follow orders, and from my experience, that’s a pretty quick way to get yourself killed out there.”

  “Are you quite finished?”

  He studied her for a moment. “Reckon so,” he said finally.

  “Then kindly remove yourself,” she said coldly.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he shot back, then turned and stalked out, leaving the door open behind him.

  She ran over to shut it and was unable to resist the urge to shout after him, “Maybe you should spend a little less time out there, Mr. Bates. You might remember to behave like a civilized person.”

  “Sweet dreams, princess,” he drawled in reply, continuing on his way.

  Ellie slammed the door and set the lock, adding the chain for good measure. She should have done that the moment she’d returned from dinner—though then again, she hardly expected anyone to come waltzing in as if he owned the place.

  She went back to the vanity, tossing aside the hat, and gripped the medallion. She pressed it to her chest, as though hoping its cool solidity would help banish the doubts Bates had put into her head. It wasn’t possible that every guide in this colony would be as backward and pigheaded as he implied—that not one of them would think her capable. She’d let them put her to the test, if that was what it took to convince them. One way or another, she’d find a way to get where she needed to go, and to hell with Adam Bates.

  5

  PROFESSOR GILBERT DAWSON WAS in hell. His suit clung to his skin, heavy and damp with sweat. He thought longingly of the cool greens of Saint Andrews, the soft gray skies that arched over the campus. Right now, the air in Fife would be crisp, a steady breeze freshening the lecture halls and the offices with their book-lined shelves. Instead he was here in the devil’s armpit of Central America, taking orders—he, Gilbert Dawson, a tenured professor of ancient history—from a half-foreign street thug.

  Jacobs seemed unaffected by the climate, undoubtedly a gift from whatever part of his heritage lay behind his dark complexion. He never had to stop to wipe sweat from his face with a handkerchief, as Dawson had to do quite frequently.

  There had been a telegram waiting for them at the customs office—coded, of course. Jacobs had provided the decryption, though the message it contained was hardly any clearer than the jumble of code he’d first seen.

  Candidate for Tulan Zuyua, it read. If present acquire Smoking Mirror.

  Tulan Zuyua…Dawson knew there was something familiar about the words. Hopefully one of the texts on Central American history he had brought with him would provide more insight. As for the Smoking Mirror, Dawson’s only clue as to its significance had come, humiliatingly enough, from Jacobs.

  “That’s what we bring back,” he had said, when Dawson had managed to cough up the nerve to ask.

  The reply had chilled him, even in the thick tropical air. It reminded him all too well of Ostrask.

  There, too, all of their efforts had been directed at acquiring a single object, no matter what the cost.

  He remembered what the cost had been in Ostrask. He hoped desperately it would prove otherwise here. But he supposed that would depend upon the girl.

  She had proven surprisingly capable. Dawson had to admit that much. But Jacobs had been more so.

  It had been another revelation, an additional piece of the puzzle of who exactly Dawson was working for. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. It had taken significant influence and resourcefulness to arrange Dawson’s salvation. His life had been forfeit, every piece of evidence pointing—rightly—to the fact that he was a violent murderer. Yet another life had been found to replace his own, evidence manufactured out of thin air, judge and jury as compliant as a basket of kittens.

  Now he could add to those feats his employer’s ability to muster a vast and mysterious network of informants. After Jacobs had lost the girl, a few more telephone calls had set this machine of information in motion. Within two days, they had learned that Constance Tyrrell, a schoolmate of Eleanora Mallory’s, had suddenly book
ed herself passage on a steamer to British Honduras.

  While the girl herself could still be seen through the windows of her father’s house in Bayswater.

  If that idiot Henbury’s description of the map was to be trusted, British Honduras was not an illogical place to begin the search for the promised city. The girl had clearly decided to pursue the route herself. Of course, that simple fact still boggled Dawson’s mind. That a woman—a young, unmarried woman—would voyage to a remote and dangerous colony, apparently intent upon trekking alone to an unknown location in the deep jungle, would never have occurred to him.

  She was either remarkably brave or entirely insane.

  The possibility had clearly occurred to his employer, however. Why else would he have checked ships’ manifests, not just for the girl’s name but for that of any person she had associated with over the past ten years?

  Dawson and Jacobs had been dispatched posthaste. The Jamaica steamer, the next boat that would put them in the vicinity of British Honduras, had been full. It hadn’t mattered. Two passengers had failed to arrive at the docks that morning, and Dawson and Jacobs had been given their rooms. Dawson had stood and watched as an absurd amount of equipment was loaded into the hold, including an item he had almost jokingly included on a list Jacobs had once demanded he make of materials that might be needed for an expedition to remote, uncharted territory.

  It had all been purchased, all been packed and made ready. And now it was here… and so was the woman.

  Finding her had been as simple as a chat with the customs agent. The colony didn’t often receive unaccompanied female visitors, and he remembered precisely where she had gone for accommodations.

  Dawson looked at the hotel ledger. There was no entry in the “checked out” column beside the scrawled feminine signature. The girl was still here.

  He prayed she would prove more cooperative this time. He knew with a dread certainty just how far Jacobs would be willing to go to get what he wanted.

  The afternoon was at its height when Ellie returned to the hotel. It was the hour when most of the city sought escape from the thick, wet heat in shady hammocks or the cool confines of the cantinas. She was ready for a nap herself, her spirits plummeting after the result of her latest interview, this one with the last on the list of potential guides Mr. Smith had given her.

  The interview had gone as she had expected, not as she’d hoped. He had refused, claiming that he could not in good conscience take her where she wanted to go. It was too dangerous for a lady. He couldn’t be at peace knowing he was putting a woman’s life at risk.

  Ellie wanted to retort that he did that every time he impregnated his wife, but she politely thanked him instead. That wasn’t a battle she would win today.

  It had been the same story with the six other men she had tried to convince to lead her expedition. Either her gender proved an insurmountable obstacle, or the imminent arrival of the rainy season provided their excuse.

  It had been hard for her to take the threat of a bit of rain seriously at first. After all, she was a native of London, a place where rain was more common than pigeons on St. Paul’s. But here in the southern latitudes, it was a different story. The colony’s rainy season was notorious, washing out even the most established and well-traveled roads and flooding the rivers. She had been assured, time and again, that it particularly made passage to the wilder areas of the interior virtually impossible.

  The rainy season lasted for months. If she wasn’t able to find a guide before it set in, she might very well be stuck in Belize City until the fall.

  Six months. Far too long for her cover story of a holiday to Bournemouth to keep Aunt Florence and Uncle David from worrying. They might report her missing, and Ellie had to admit there was a chance her relatives wouldn’t be the only ones looking for her.

  She might have escaped Dawson and his companion, Mr. Jacobs, back on Regent Street, but they still knew who she was. How determined would they be to acquire the map? There was no way to know.

  The thought was an unsettling one, until Ellie reminded herself that she was traveling under an assumed name. There was no way they could guess where she had gone.

  Unless, perhaps, they had six months to do it.

  She felt a headache coming on. As she trudged into the lobby, she saw Mr. Smith standing behind the front desk.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Tyrrell. Will you be joining us for dinner?”

  The thought of keeping up appearances for another hour seemed exhausting, especially given her latest disappointment. And there was always the chance that Adam Bates would turn up. She felt certain he would be able to read her failure from the mere set of her shoulders, and the thought of giving him the satisfaction of knowing he had been right was a galling one.

  “I’m feeling a bit under the weather,” she said. “Could you have someone bring a tray up to my room for me?”

  “Certainly,” he replied.

  Ellie moved toward the stairs, mounting them wearily.

  It was not the end of the line, not by any means. It was just a disappointment. There were bound to be more of them. But it did not mean that Bates’s dire prediction would prove true. She would get more names from Smith. Somewhere in this colony, she would find a man willing to work for a female.

  As she reached the top of the stairs, she nearly collided with Mr. Tibbord. He visibly jumped at the sight of her, then settled himself with a quick flutter of his hands to lapels, hair, and glasses.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Tyrrell,” he said politely.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. Trying to move past, she was stopped as Mr. Galle stepped into the hallway from a neighboring room.

  “Miss Tyrrell!” he said. “Tibbord and I are going bathing. Want to join us?”

  Ellie watched Mr. Tibbord’s face flush a rather extreme shade of red.

  “But, Galle, she can’t… she’s…”

  “Bosh. We’re off the map; she can do as she likes. No one would know. It’d be a lark. Might as well take full advantage, that’s what I say. Eh, Miss Tyrrell?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Galle,” she replied coolly.

  “If you change your mind…,” he offered with a wink, then headed down the stairs.

  “Sorry… sorry about that,” Mr. Tibbord said. Ellie gave him a tight smile, and he stepped carefully around her to follow Mr. Galle.

  A dip in the cool blue water did sound heavenly, but Ellie was hardly going to indulge with a pair of overgrown schoolboys as audience.

  She reached into her pocket, then stopped as her hand encountered nothing but a tear in the linen of her skirt.

  Ellie cursed herself. She had noticed the hole days before, when she had last worn the garment, but she had been hurrying out for another interview and promptly forgot about the need to repair it. Now the key to her room was probably lying on the street somewhere between here and the harbor.

  There was no point in trying the door. She had started to set the lock by default since Adam Bates’s intrusion a few nights before.

  Cursing floridly under her breath, she turned back for the lobby. She would have to ask Mr. Smith to let her in, which was likely to involve small talk about how her interviews were progressing. Ellie could hardly explain that every one of the recommendations he had made for a guide had refused her. At least, not without admitting that it was Ellie, and not her imaginary brother, who needed the help.

  The dreadful awkwardness of it stopped her in her tracks. She scrambled for a way to avoid it, and inspiration struck in the shape of an unremarkable door on her left.

  It opened onto the veranda. Ellie had closed the French doors leading from the veranda to her room before leaving, of course, but they were held closed only by a simple hook-and-eye latch. A little work with a hairpin should be enough to lift it and gain her access without Smith’s assistance.

  She stepped out onto the wide, weathered planks. The light was softly golden as she moved past the rows of glass-fronted French
doors, her feet tapping lightly against the wooden planks. As she reached her room, she paused, drawn in spite of herself by the beauty of the view. The light was warming the tiled rooftops, painting the wide stretch of marshland that lay beyond them vividly. On the horizon, the dark line of the mountains was almost invisible, lost in the haze of late afternoon. Somewhere in their midst lay the goal of her map, the possible location of a stunning archaeological discovery. However far away those peaks might look today, they were there, and that meant they could be reached, one way or another. The thought reassured her.

  Then she heard the voices.

  “It’s not here, either,” the first said. It was close by, barely muffled, and there was something familiar about it, something that set the hairs on her forearms tingling.

  “Jacobs?” it said again, and her skin went cold. The image came to her sharply—the pale, bearded man, sitting on Aunt Florence’s settee, and his companion, lean and dark-haired with eyes like coals.

  Quickly, silently, she moved away from the railing, ducking behind a tall fern that stood next to the doors to her room. She pressed her back against the weathered siding. As she did, she heard the floorboards creak just inside the doorway and knew, quite suddenly and surely, that Jacobs was standing just inside, gazing out through the filmy curtain. She found herself furiously trying to remember how she had approached moments before. Had her feet creaked on the boards? Would he have heard her?

  How had they found her?

  She pressed herself flatter against the wall as the doors opened.

  Through the fronds of the fern and the glass panels of the door, she could see Jacobs’s profile as he stepped over the threshold. His gaze drifted over the landscape, attentive but unhurried. For a moment, she thought that he must know she was there. That he was simply toying with her and would turn and look directly at her pathetic hiding place.

  But he didn’t turn. She watched him, the glass panes amplifying the oppressive heat of the afternoon. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her back as she saw him cross to the edge of the veranda and kneel down. Reaching through the railing, he ran his hand along the underside of the platform, as though searching for something that might have been secured there.