Even in the dark, William could tell the colonel smiled. “You’d have made a good commanding officer,” Merri- weather whispered approvingly. “We shall indeed stay put. Except that I should like you to take up position against one wall and I shall take up position over by the other wall. We shall hold this rope taut between us.”
William didn’t argue. He grabbed the end of the rope the colonel held out to him. There was, he knew, no time to waste upon foolish questions, such as how the colonel came to have a rope with him. William moved swiftly and silently across the hall, and in moments they had the rope taut between them at the height of a man’s knees.
They were just in time. Scarcely were both men, and the rope, in place, than several dark figures came rushing down the hallway and straight into the trap William and the colonel had set for them. Just as planned, the men went tumbling onto their faces, and before they could recover, both Stanfield and Merriweather had pistols aimed at the head of the man he judged to be their leader.
“Tell your men to yield,” Colonel Merriweather said loudly, “or I shall shoot you!”
Unfortunately, the others appeared not to care what happened to their leader. One grabbed Merriweather about the ankles and pulled him to the ground. Another man reached for William, intending to do the same to him, but he managed to move just out of reach. And then they heard the voices both men least wished to hear.
“Andrew?”
“William? Captain Stanfield?”
The Bow Street Runner’s voice, on the other hand, was very welcome, indeed. “ ’ere now! Let ’im up! I’ve got me popper, oi do!”
“No, you don’t,” the gentleman objected. “My men took it from you when they bashed you over the head.”
His words were enough to shake the spell, and before anyone knew what was happening, the scoundrels were on their feet and holding Miss Hawthorne and Mrs. Merriweather with knives to their throats. Lady Merriweather they ignored as insignificant. All she could do, it seemed, was stand and wail bitterly at their situation.
As the colonel gave a cry of dismay and struggled to reach his wife, the gentleman stepped forward and pointed his pistol, first at the colonel and then at Stanfield.
“Do not go any closer to them!” the villain warned both men. Then, in a quieter voice he added, “I think.
gentlemen, that the tide has turned. You are, it would seem, in my power. If you would all be so good as to place your pistols upon the floor . . .”
When they had done so, the villain came closer.
“What are you going to do to us?” Colonel Merri- weather demanded.
“You are getting far too impertinent in your inquiries, all of you. In a few moments, you will all be dead, the unfortunate victims of a last massive theft here at the museum, and I and my friends will be long gone.”
“Lord Hollis?” Ariel gasped.
The villain’s pistol wavered, but only for a moment. “You are mistaken, Miss Hawthorne! Perhaps you ought to have worn your spectacles.”
“No, you are Lord Hollis,” she said with quiet conviction. “I would recognize your voice anywhere.”
“But I thought you suspected Mr. Kinkaid,” Lady Merriweather protested.
Hollis gaped at her. “Kinkaid? But I thought—” He broke off abruptly. “Apparently I miscalculated how much all of you knew. But no matter. You are here, and I have no choice but to kill all of you.”
What happened next, all of them would remember to their dying days with a sense of utter disbelief. Lady Merriweather tottered toward their captor.
“Please let us go!” she cried.
As everyone turned toward her, she grasped for his sleeve and he laughed harshly in her face. Then, so swiftly that none of them understood for a moment what they were seeing, a knife flashed in Lady Merriweather’s hand and she stabbed the villain in the throat.
At the same time, Mrs. Merriweather rammed her elbow into the stomach of the man behind her and twisted free. By her side, Miss Hawthorne was scarcely a moment behind. She did something that caused the man holding her to let go as well.
The two men tried to grab their captives again, but each of the ladies found an object to smash against the villains’ faces. From there it was a simple matter for the
Runner to grab one man, and the colonel and Stanfield to retrieve their pistols and point them at the other men.
“That will be quite enough!” Colonel Merriweather said, finding his voice at last.
“Quite enough,” his aunt echoed with understandable satisfaction.
William looked at the Runner. “What now, Mr. Collins?” he asked.
It was Ariel who answered. “There is a carriage, out front, down the street and around the corner from the museum. There was one driver and no one else that I saw. And I asked the hackney driver who brought me to wait; he is a couple of streets away in the other direction. We could bundle them into those two carriages and take them to Bow Street, couldn’t we?”
“We would not all fit,” Mrs. Merriweather said briskly, “but that is irrelevant. I should be quite happy to allow the colonel and Captain Stanfield and our Runner to take them along. If, that is, they believe they can manage. That was quite a severe blow to your head,” she told the Runner.
“We’ll manage,” he growled.
“Yes, of course we can manage,” the colonel said impatiently. “Particularly after you tie them up with the rope you’ll find on the floor. That’s what I brought it here for. Tie them all up, even Lord Hollis and this fellow. I don’t care how injured we may think them to be, I don’t wish to take chances that we are mistaken.”
It was as they reached for the rope that everything happened at once. The villain, who had been stabbed, suddenly dove for the floor, oblivious to his injury. He rolled once and came back to his feet, the colonel’s forgotten pistol in hand.
Before anyone seemed to have time to react, a shot rang out and the villain sank to the floor. As he fell, he said in disbelief, “Miss Hawthorne?”
It was then that they all realized it was Ariel who had pulled out a pistol and shot the fellow. She walked closer to him. In a gentle voice, she said, “Unfortunately for you, Lord Hollis, I never truly did need those spectacles. I can see quite well without them.”
Several voices murmured astonishment. Ariel ignored all of them. Instead she turned to the others and said, “You mentioned some rope?”
There was plenty of rope, fortunately, and Stanfield, Merriweather, and Ariel all produced knives with which to cut it. They could even have used Lady Merriweather’s knife—if they didn’t mind a little blood—but it was not, fortunately, necessary.
Once all the men were safely tied up, William looked at the ladies. “We shall get the men to Bow Street, but what are we to do about the three of you?”
It was Lady Merriweather who answered. “We shall wait here at the museum, of course,” she said briskly. “After you’ve taken these villains to Bow Street, you can come back with the carriages and take us home.”
“I don’t like it, Marian,” Colonel Merriweather said bluntly.
“Neither do I,” Mrs. Merriweather retorted, “but I can see no other solution.”
Reluctantly it was settled. Pistols were reloaded and left with the ladies, just in case there should be any villains that had not been caught. They elected to wait in what had once been Hawthorne’s office. Over the most vocal protests of Mrs. Merriweather, Ariel left long enough to go to the stuffed giraffe at the head of the main staircase.
There she found a thick sheaf of papers, and by the light of one of the villains’ lanterns she looked them over. It was enough to explain everything, and it was with a constriction to her throat that she tucked them inside her bodice and rejoined the other two ladies in her father’s old office. Somehow it did not surprise her that when the men returned, Mr. Kinkaid was with them.
23
Mrs. Merriweather, Colonel Merriweather, Miss Hawthorne, Captain Stanfield, Mr. Kinkaid, and Lady Merriw
eather all stared at one another in the gathering light of early morning in her ladyship’s drawing room. Every one of them held a glass of brandy.
Servants were beginning to stir below stairs and noises could be heard in the street as other households came to life as well. A maid entered the room to clean the grate, then backed out hastily when she realized that the room was not empty, as she had expected it to be.
“I fear we have shocked your staff,” Stanfield told Lady Merriweather.
“Do them good!” she retorted, draining her glass of brandy.
She held the empty glass out to her nephew, who took it with good humor and refilled it for her. “Tell me, Aunt Cordelia, how you came to have a knife upon you tonight,” Colonel Merriweather said as he did so. “Mind you, I am very glad that you did. I just would like to know why on earth you should have carried a knife to a ball.”
Lady Merriweather cast a reproving look upon him. “I read,” she said.
“Novels!” the colonel could not help but reply, a hint of contempt in his voice.
She shrugged. “As you say, novels. And I know them to be foolish nonsense. But they also give one pause. Bad things do happen to ladies—even here in London. I know more than one lady assaulted in the past year. Why should I not carry a means to defend myself? Particularly when all of you cannot seem to keep from getting involved in the most ridiculously dangerous circumstances?”
“But to a ball?” Mrs. Merriweather protested.
Lady Merriweather lifted an eyebrow. “Well? Was I mistaken in doing so?” She paused and then added, “Perhaps you had not heard, but one of the ladies I spoke of was accosted returning home from a ball. Footpads stopped her carriage. Had she had a knife with which to defend herself, she need never have lost the diamond necklace that she prized so highly.”
The colonel grinned. “You are a right one, Aunt Cordelia,” he said.
Lady Merriweather sniffed, but there was no hiding her delight at the compliment. She did, however, turn a stern gaze upon Captain Stanfield, who had discarded his sling and cane and held his glass of brandy in the hand that was supposed to have been all but useless.
“What about you?” Lady Merriweather demanded of the young man. “Why were you pretending to be injured far more severely than you obviously are?”
“So that anyone seeing me would underestimate my ability to defend myself, of course,” he answered promptly. “Just as no one would expect an elegant lady such as yourself to carry or wield a knife, no one would expect me to be able to disarm a man or knock him to the ground or carry a pistol hidden inside the sling.” She nodded grudgingly, then turned to Mrs. Merriweather. “You are the one I find a sad disappointment, Marian. Why were you not carrying a knife?”
“I was,” Marian replied with a grim edge to her voice. “I had a knife and a pistol on my person. Both of which the villains apparently expected me to have, because they searched me and found both and removed them before I regained my wits at the museum.”
“Oh. Very well. I forgive you, then,” Lady Merriweather said magnanimously. She turned to Ariel. “And you, Miss Hawthorne! Let this be a warning to you to always go about with some means to defend yourself!”
“Oh, I had such means,” Ariel replied coolly. She pulled her small pistol out of her pocket. “This is what I used to shoot Lord Hollis. Papa commissioned this for me years ago. I didn’t show it at the museum, for I didn’t think it would frighten the men we were dealing with. They might not believe I could really kill a man with it, and I would get only one shot.”
She allowed the others to hand it around and remark over the cleverness of the design. Then she pulled the knife from her other pocket and showed that as well. “I also used this to stab into the leg of the man who was holding me,” Ariel said. “But I had to wait, you see, until there was at least some chance of success. I did not wish to risk doing so until I was certain Mrs. Merriweather would also manage to break free of her captor.”
“What about you, Mr. Kinkaid?” Lady Merriweather demanded. “What were you doing outside the museum? And since you were there, why didn’t you come in to help?”
Mr. Kinkaid bowed. “I followed Captain Stanfield. I thought it might prove interesting, and I was quite correct. Had I known just how interesting things were inside the museum, I promise I would have come in to help. But I had no notion. Still, I do think I acquitted myself rather well when I assisted Captain Stanfield in removing the villains’ coachman from his perch.”
Captain Stanfield grinned. He couldn’t help himself. “What,” Lady Merriweather asked in the frostiest of voices, “is so amusing, young man?”
He looked around the room, then back at her. “I was thinking that none of us were as we seemed. Except, perhaps, Colonel Merriweather. The rest of us were all far more formidable than anyone could have guessed. Can you imagine how disconcerting it must have been for the men we captured?”
“One might almost feel sorry for them,” Lady Merri- weather said tartly, “if they weren’t such fools. Tell me, Andrew. Who were the others? Besides Lord Hollis?”
“Simple cutthroats and ruffians,” Colonel Merriweather replied. “Except for one we discovered to be a clerk at the museum. It seems he believed himself to be woefully underpaid. Fellow comes of a good family, but he is the younger son of a younger son. Apparently he felt humiliated that he was forced to work after his efforts to marry an heiress failed. So he began to help Hollis steal artifacts from the museum. I am certain you must know him, Miss Hawthorne. His name is Henry Gilmer.”
“Yes, I do,” Ariel acknowledged. She paused and took a deep breath. Then she went on. “I know far more than that. My father found out about Mr. Gilmer and left an account for me hidden at the museum. I’ve barely had time to skim over what he wrote, but, well, it begins, I think, with Mr. Kinkaid.” She turned to him. “Perhaps you would care to explain?”
Kinkaid sighed, then cleared his throat. “Yes, perhaps I’d better,” he agreed. He looked at the others. “Hawthorne wanted funds to travel, the way he used to do before he ran through his own inheritance. In particular, he wanted to go to Egypt to see what he could find to bring back to the museum. We talked about it, Hawthorne and I, and we agreed he would lend me some artifacts from the museum in exchange for a good-size payment. He didn’t ask for enough to travel, just enough to invest. He figured that if those investments were successful, he’d be able to pay me back, I would return the artifacts from the museum, and he would get to go on his trip. I was never to keep them permanently. I suppose we shouldn’t have done it, either of us, but it seemed like a way for both of us to have what we wanted, and no one hurt by it.”
There was a stunned silence. It was Ariel who broke it. “That was the start of the trouble. At some point, Mr. Gilmer began to steal artifacts from the museum and sell them to Lord Hollis. When Papa realized what was going on, he did not know how to stop them without exposing his own actions as well. He meant well, when he entered into this scheme with Mr. Kinkaid. But he knew how it would look to others.”
She paused and looked across the room. “My father sent for you, Colonel Merriweather, to help. But when he saw you, he lost his courage. He feared that perhaps Mr. Gilmer had gotten the notion to steal from discovering what he had done. Papa could not bear what you would think of him, if you knew.”
“So he decided to try to stop Gilmer on his own?” Stanfield said, when Ariel’s voice faltered. “Perhaps he hoped to redeem himself by doing so, even at the risk of his own safety?”
Ariel nodded, grateful for his understanding. “Papa knew the odds were against him, and he wrote this all out and hid it at the museum, then arranged that if anything should happen to him, a letter would be delivered to me telling me where to find these pages. He thought ten days would be sufficient to throw off the scent for anyone who might suspect me of knowing what was going on. He didn’t, you see, wish to put me at risk. The rest, well, Papa meant to confront Lord Hollis and Mr. Gilmer together, and I ca
n only guess that when he did so, they killed him.”
She broke off then, her face very pale. Stanfield reached out to Ariel and drew her to him. She buried her face against his chest.
Again there was silence. Then Mrs. Merriweather said slowly, “And it seems Mr. Gilmer or Lord Hollis did suspect that Hawthorne might have written something down, because they sent someone to Miss Hawthorne’s house the day her father died, presumably to find out.”
“I think it most likely,” the colonel agreed. “I would guess they also decided to hurry along their plans to take what they could from the museum—just in case. Tom must have come upon the men the next night, and they killed him.”
“But why had he not happened upon them before?” Lady Merriweather asked.
“Perhaps Mr. Hawthorne had always told him to stay in his room at night,” Stanfield suggested. “Or perhaps Gilmer usually gave him a sleeping draught on nights things were to be taken out of the museum, and that particular night he forgot or Tom was too upset to drink it. In any event, on that particular night, Tom interrupted the thieves and they killed him.”
Mrs. Merriweather regarded Ariel with what seemed to her to be a worried eye. And when the former governess spoke, worry seemed to be in her voice as well. “How much of this will become public?” she asked her husband.
The colonel gave a cynical, wry smile. “Not a great deal, I’ll wager. In the end, I would guess Lord Hollis will return the artifacts to the museum and the museum will decline to press charges, with the understanding that Hollis leave the country at once. Mr. Gilmer’s family may also choose to pay some sort of restitution to the museum and arrange that he is never again seen in England. The other footpads and the coachmen will in all likelihood be transported. As for Mr. Kinkaid, here, well, I presume there is no law against being loaned artifacts with the consent of the curator. Particularly if they are returned immediately.”
Miss Tibbles Interferes Page 20