‘Quickly then,’ Kingsley said. ‘Go out the back way. Get your carriers. I’ll hold the Agency off for as long as I can.’
Gompers gnashed his teeth, something Kingsley had read about but never actually seen. ‘Be ready!’ He stormed out and left the door open.
Kingsley sprang into action. He pushed the door shut, then grabbed his hammer. He dropped to his knees, tapped the floor four times quickly, then he bounded to his feet and squared up the top of the chest. As fast as he could, just as a similar hammering came from below, he slammed in the remaining nails to secure the lid. He was just finishing the last when Gompers threw the door open and a dozen Spawn marched in.
Kingsley gave a quite genuine cry of disgust. ‘Take them away!’
‘Quiet!’ Gompers snarled. ‘Those Agency busybodies will hear you!’
The Spawn arranged themselves around the crate and seized it with their unnaturally long arms and fingers. Kingsley held his breath as they heaved it up. Crab-like, they scuttled to the door. With some awkwardness and tilting, they rammed it through, heedless of paint and timber, and then they were gone.
Gompers darted after them without a look back. Kingsley closed the door behind him and let out such a huge breath that he was surprised the seams of the room didn’t give way.
I really should take a bow right now.
He pushed his way through the curtain to see Christabel threatening Evadne with a truncheon. Evadne, clearly, was barely restraining herself. Most of the other patrons were situated as far away from this contretemps as possible while still keeping their distance from the Agency officers at the doorway – apart from one of the grey-haired scholars, who was actually at the door, peering through a crack and holding one arm stretched behind him, palm out.
His hand became a fist. It shook, he straightened and bounded into the middle of the room. He threw his arms wide and roared: ‘They’ve gone!’
Everyone cheered. The uniformed officers threw their caps high. The patrons broke out in smiles and pounded each other on the back. Christabel tucked away her truncheon. She and Evadne hugged, whirling each other around in a giddy reel that took them right up the middle aisle between the tables and back again.
Kingsley grinned at Evadne. ‘Oh, well done, each and every one of you! Well done, indeed! They took the fake without thinking twice!’
A cry went up from one of the Trojans. ‘Where’s Finny?’ It was seized by the others and soon a chant of ‘Finny! Finny!’ was rocking the room.
Finny poked his bowler-hatted head through the curtain. He, too, was smiling. ‘What’s all this commotion? I could hear you all from the basement.’
Kingsley dragged the master dodger into the room. ‘All safe and secure? Did the accordion lift work properly? You secured the bottom of the crate?’
‘You think I’m an amateur? Yes, yes and yes, if you really want to know.’ He gestured to another figure pushing through the curtains. ‘Your Mr Kipling was a great help in a time of need.’
Kipling was smiling so broadly Kingsley thought his moustache would disappear. ‘I’m useful with a hammer, fortunately.’
‘Useful?’ Finny clapped him on the back. ‘Basher Kipling, they’ll be calling you! We would have been in trouble without you!’
‘So the switch went smoothly?’ Kingsley asked.
‘Like buttery silk, lad. Like buttery silk.’
Another cheer, but Finny held up both hands. ‘That’s all well and good, everyone, but that’s not the end of it, not by a long shot. This place must disappear, right now, if not sooner.’
‘It’ll be as if we were never here,’ Kingsley vowed, grinning.
‘I hope so,’ Finny said grimly. ‘I don’t want the Immortals trying to find me.’
Kingsley’s grin faded. ‘No. That’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Christabel and Evadne wove through the maelstrom Finny’s words had set off, with books being flung down from shelves and packed into crates, shelves being disassembled and chairs being hurried out through the open double doors. The deconstruction of the Ficino Institute was undertaken with the gusto inspired by success.
‘I’m glad we could play a part,’ Christabel said. ‘Even if I did have to look twice to recognise you both.’ She ducked to avoid a carelessly swung length of what had been a bookshelf until a few moments ago.
‘We were glad to have you on board,’ Kingsley said. ‘Finny said it was crucial to hurry the dupe away once the switch had been completed. He favoured an appearance by the authorities as a useful hurry up.’
Christabel waved a hand at the rapidly disappearing institute. ‘But I still don’t understand how you convinced Gompers to take a fake. Surely he was more suspicious than that.’
‘Of course he was,’ Evadne said. ‘That’s where Kingsley’s art was important. Misdirection, deception, substitution.’
‘We all played our part,’ Kingsley said. ‘Mine was on show. Evadne’s wasn’t but it was just as important. Even Mr Kipling helped.’
Christabel glanced at the writer, who was helping Finny’s hirelings stack books into boxes. She still wasn’t convinced. ‘But didn’t Gompers test the thing?’
‘Oh, he did that,’ Kingsley said. ‘I insisted. But the dodecahedron he tested wasn’t the dodecahedron he took away, and that’s a sentence one doesn’t have a chance to say every day.’
Christabel threw her hands up in the air. ‘I give up! How do you swap a thumping great object like that when it’s inside a sealed crate in the middle of a room?’
‘This way.’ Kingsley took Evadne and Christabel down to the basement. Even though there was no time to waste, he paused a moment to admire the work that had gone into their switch. ‘Behold!’ he said, and gestured with all the theatricality he could muster. ‘The work of the great Evadne Stephens!’
Evadne bobbed a small curtsey, then trailed a hand along the steel limbs of the accordion lift. A platform on top of a neatly folding arrangement of joints, bolts and swivels, it was still positioned directly under the trap door they’d sawn in the floor. For something as functional as a hoist made in such a short time, Kingsley still marvelled at how elegant it was. Each of the supporting arms was inlaid with a strip of brass, while all of the pins that held the joints together shone silver. The entire hoist looked like a highly polished insect ready to spring into action.
Christabel stared at it, then at the trap door, and then at the large crate next to the stairs. ‘Oh,’ she said, and Kingsley was impressed by how quickly she’d apprehended the workings of a switch that Evadne, Finny and he had laboured over. She kicked the crate, gently. ‘Your real dodeca-thing is in here,’ she said.
‘Correct,’ Kingsley said.
‘I’d guess that it was your friend Finny down here, operating the hoist, while you were up there making sure Gompers was alarmed by our arrival.’
‘Also correct. Finny had the help of a brace of muscular lads he’d rounded up. They had the tricky job of lowering the hoist and bottom of the crate that was resting on it – and the real dodecahedron that was resting on the bottom of the crate.’
‘The one that Gompers had tested.’
‘Tested and found to be good. Once Finny’s crew had lowered it, they heaved it off the lift and into the crate by your side. Then they heaved a prepared section of floor topped with rug, then the fake dodecahedron sitting on a carefully crafted crate bottom onto the lift.’
‘The fake dodecahedron with my myrmidon inside,’ Evadne added.
‘But when the crate was lifted, why didn’t the bottom simply fall out? It wasn’t nailed in.’
‘Evadne?’
‘This was difficult,’ Evadne admitted. ‘I tried many approaches, but the one that worked was to have three spring-loaded pegs set into each of the four edges of the crate bottom. A sharp smack with a hammer and the pegs shot home, securing the base.’
‘Finny and his men – and Mr Kipling – had to hammer quickly, and i
n an awkward position above their heads. They were heroic,’ Kingsley said.
The swap may have been simpler if they’d chosen to lower the whole crate and substitute it instead of the more delicate manoeuvring of just the crate bottom and its contents, but Kingsley had insisted on the more difficult option. He maintained it was safer – if Gompers happened to glance into the room mid-swap, he would have seen nothing. Plus, a trap would have to be slightly larger than the crate and so might be detected. And besides, his final solution was, in a performance sense, much more elegant.
Christabel looked at them both. ‘It was your idea, Kingsley?’
Kingsley remembered the discussions, arguments, proposals and re-proposals. ‘We worked on it together.’
‘And Evadne,’ Christabel said as she slapped the accordion lift, ‘this contraption is yours?’
‘I designed it.’
‘And constructed it,’ Kingsley said. He remembered the way she had handled the welding torch, the goggles on her face dark against her hair. The basement had been full of sparks and screeches, an industrial Hades, but Evadne was at home tinkering with brazing or advising her helpers. ‘She is astonishing,’ he added simply.
Evadne’s protests were interrupted by Finny’s muscular helpers clumping down the stairs. One knuckled his forehead in a way that made Kingsley feel both lordly and embarrassed. ‘Take the crate out the back way,’ he said. ‘And wait for us there.’
‘I’ll take my people out the same way,’ Christabel said. ‘It’s time we were never here.’
‘We appreciate your help,’ Evadne said. ‘We couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘I have the feeling you would have found a way. Still, I was glad to be part of it.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose I should tell you, though, that the boss is keen to hear from you. Very keen.’
‘Congreve-Knollys or Buchanan?’ Kingsley asked.
‘Both. My guess is they’re getting some heat from above about the Immortals and they’re desperate for something. Results, preferably, but I’m sure they’d be satisfied with some news. If you could find your way clear to dropping into HQ and bringing them up to date, I’d be grateful.’
‘What is it, Christabel?’ Evadne said. ‘You’re looking decidedly ill at ease.’
Christabel rubbed her nose, then sighed. ‘After that mess at the docks, I’m in their bad books. To help you out here with this little exercise, I had to skive off from some pointless surveillance.’
‘You disobeyed orders?’ Kingsley asked.
‘They were daft orders,’ Christabel said, shrugging. ‘Your show was much more likely to get results.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Evadne said, ‘I’m not sure your superiors will see it that way.’
‘A pity, that,’ Christabel said, ‘but I’d do it all over again if I had to.’ She saluted easily. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.’
The crate went up the stairs after her, Finny’s helpers grunting and swearing as much through habit as through genuine exertion. Getting the crate back to Evadne’s underground refuge would be an adventure in itself, but Kingsley felt Finny would be equal to the task.
Kipling approached. He was still smiling. ‘I must thank you, both of you. I’ve finally felt what being in the middle of adventure is like.’
‘And how would you describe it?’ Evadne asked.
Kipling referred to his notebook. ‘Heady, exhilarating, breathless and daunting.’ He looked up. ‘That’s just a beginning, of course.’
‘So can we look forward to seeing Mr Rudyard Kipling in the newspapers as “Adventurer and Explorer” instead of “Writer”?’
Kipling slipped his notebook into an inner pocket. ‘I’d say not. I’ve learned many things today, and one of them is that while adventuring may have its attractions, it has its dangers, too.’ He shuddered. ‘Those Spawn.’
‘And they’re only underlings of their much more dangerous masters,’ Evadne pointed out.
‘Quite so. No, I’m happy writing about such things instead of experiencing them. And now, thanks to you, I shall write about adventuring with a touch more verisimilitude.’
Kingsley shook his hand. ‘That’s probably a wise decision, Mr Kipling.’
Kipling stopped at the door. ‘And you’ll be careful, both of you? And let me know how it all turns out?’
‘We’ll do our best,’ Evadne said. ‘But even the best planned adventures have a way of going in unexpected directions.’
Despite Kingsley’s wild side knowing the value of patience, he tended to fret, pace about and make a nuisance of himself at times such as these. So, while they awaited news from Evadne’s myrmidon emissary, Evadne suggested going directly to the Agency headquarters. ‘We need to make sure that Christabel doesn’t get into trouble for helping us today,’ she said as they strode along a dark and almost deserted Buckingham Palace Road.
‘Of course. She could be very useful to us, with her insights into the Agency.’
‘Oh, Kingsley, it’s more than that. She’s a fine person and simply doesn’t deserve shabby treatment.’
‘And how, exactly, have you come to the conclusion that she’s a fine person?’
‘We had quite a conversation over breakfast in the Agency mess, while waiting for you. I’ve learned a great deal about our Christabel.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the fact that Christabel Hughes much prefers living in the Demimonde to the ordinary world. She says the ordinary world lacks “spice”.’
‘She lives in the Demimonde?’
‘Partly, I suspect, because she was brought up there by her mother.’
‘Her father wasn’t a Demimonder?’
‘He was a merchant who did business with the sect of reclusive linen makers her mother belonged to. Rather romantic, their meeting up like that, when you think about it.’
‘I enjoy a good romance as much as the next fellow, but perhaps she shared something a little more relevant to our current situation – her views about the Agency, perchance?’
‘She’s ambivalent. She staunchly defended its role, but admitted that it was mostly a shambles. She’s convinced that ever since the Agency had failed to identify who destroyed the Immortals’ Greenwich lair, Congreve-Knollys has been hanging onto his position by a thread. She says that he’s desperate to save his position but he probably doesn’t have the foggiest notion of what to do.’
Kingsley and Evadne had only a short time to wait before the doors of the meeting room burst open to admit the duo of Agency nabobs. While they were waiting, he sought for a slip of paper to jot a message to Christabel, but had to settle on one of the playing cards he kept on his person for practice.
Christabel trailed in behind Congreve-Knollys and Buchanan, and looked both embarrassed and impatient. Buchanan was thunderous, but Congreve-Knollys beamed as if he’d stumbled across them at a picnic in the park.
‘Ah, Miss Stephens and young Mr Ward! Hughes was sure you’d be here after this morning’s brouhaha. I’d let you have a copy of our report into the Lambeth incident but our investigators haven’t returned from the site yet.’ He took a seat opposite Kingsley and Evadne. Buchanan sat next to him, and Kingsley was dismayed to see Christabel taking up a position near the door – too far away to slip a message to.
Kingsley put that difficulty aside and decided that the front foot was the place to be. ‘If you’re going to discipline Christabel for what went on, I think you should know that her cooperation was vital in leading to important information.’
‘Oh, I hope so,’ Congreve-Knollys said. ‘And I hope you’ll be sharing this information, regardless of what happens.’
‘She’ll be disciplined,’ Buchanan growled. ‘She acted beyond her remit.’
‘I understood you allowed your officers considerable latitude,’ Evadne said.
Christabel offered a nervous smile at this, but didn’t say anything.
‘There’s a difference between latitude and insubordination,’
Buchanan said. Kingsley thought he looked as if he were ready to wrestle someone. ‘You two are a bad influence.’
Congreve-Knollys waved a hand. It was a careful gesture, and Kingsley could see the man practising it in front of a mirror to get that combination of negligence and spontaneity just right. ‘But that’s a matter for us, and for another time. What we’re most interested in is a progress report.’
‘We have had contact with one of the minions of the Immortals,’ Evadne said. ‘Musgrave Gompers.’
Buchanan stifled an oath. Congreve-Knollys looked pained. ‘We haven’t heard of him for years. We thought he was dead.’
‘Alive and working hand in glove with the Immortals,’ Kingsley said.
Congreve-Knollys rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Der ewige Friede ist ein Traum, as von Moltke said. Eternal peace is a dream.’ He sighed and looked down, and Kingsley felt sorry for him.
‘With Gompers’s expertise, that means wireless telegraphy in the hands of those beggars,’ Buchanan said. ‘It fits with what we suspected, and doesn’t augur well.’
‘It augurs very poorly indeed,’ Evadne said, and she went on to explain their findings and her conclusions.
When she finished, both Congreve-Knollys and Buchanan had gone white. ‘Sympathetic magic?’ Congreve-Knollys croaked. ‘On that scale? Unthinkable.’
‘Of course, we’ll have to get some of our experts to confirm your conclusions,’ Buchanan said.
Behind them, Kingsley saw Christabel roll her eyes.
‘More than ever it would appear as if we need to find these horrors,’ Congreve-Knollys said, still ashen-faced. ‘I hope you’ve made progress.’
‘Indeed,’ Evadne said sweetly. ‘In fact, if we hadn’t felt the need to come here and stop you from disciplining Officer Hughes over what was, in reality, an outstanding display of initiative, we may have discovered the location already.’
‘Buchanan.’ Congreve-Knollys’s voice was strained. ‘Make sure a commendation is entered on Officer Hughes’s record.’
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