Wild Boy and the Black Terror

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  There were a few appreciative mutters, and several jealous scowls, at the sight of their masks, which were the most extravagant of the evening so far. Fans of purple feathers rose from the top of their ivory eye masks, as if a pair of peacocks had charged full-pelt at their faces.

  Wild Boy fought the urge to storm across the dance floor and tear the masks away. Even for his sharp eyes, it was hard to see behind the guests’ ridiculous disguises.

  It was half past nine.

  Almost two hundred guests had arrived. They all wore similar cloaks – shiny and black, with large velvet hoods – but the masks came in various colours and gaudy designs. Most featured some sort of plumage, so many feathers that Wild Boy wondered whether every bird of paradise had been plucked bare. Others were studded with jewels woven with laurel leaves, trimmed with lace or decorated with crystal horns.

  “The Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury.”

  “Viscount Palmerston.”

  The guests gathered around the dance floor, muttering about the lack of conveniences for a formal ball. Others wondered why the servants, who did not quite look like servants, seemed ignorant of the correct manner in which to serve drinks.

  “It simply will not do,” said an admiral.

  “I swear that waiter touched my glass,” replied his wife.

  “And why the devil is there a drummer-boy here?”

  Wild Boy banged his drum harder, praying his disguise would work. Since he usually wore a drummer boy’s coat, Lucien had suggested he play that role at the ball. His face was hidden behind a porcelain mask, and the shawl that covered his head was draped around his neck, concealing the hair.

  The disguise was far from perfect. The hairs on his face bunched against the porcelain mask and poked through the eyeholes, and the rim of the hood hung too low, limiting his vision. That was a fairly big problem, since their plan to catch the killer relied almost entirely on his vision.

  He felt his coat pocket, and the physicians’ syringe. He was ready to strike and get the killer’s blood. Aim for his neck, the doctors had instructed. The big vein called the jugular.

  Around the ballroom, some of the Gentlemen examined guests as they served drinks. Others rubbed steam from windows to inspect the ledges, or lingered by candles to smell the smoke. The men were clearly on edge. They flinched at every roar of laughter from the dance floor.

  Only Lucien was not in disguise. Dressed in a simple domino mask, he moved among the crowd, bowing and shaking hands. He made sure to remind everyone that the Queen, when she appeared, would be wearing the most precious jewel in her collection, a rare black diamond.

  It was twenty to ten.

  Wild Boy kept moving around the dance floor, banging his drum in time with the pounding of his heart. With each minute, he grew more certain the killer would come. He had no evidence, just a gut feeling that he trusted.

  Come on. Where are you?

  A hand grabbed his arm. It was one of the Gentlemen. The man was flustered, his forehead lit with sweat.

  “Over there,” he said. “Is that Gideon?”

  Wild Boy leaped onto one of the benches and followed the man’s gaze to a cloaked figure in the ballroom doorway.

  “The Chinese Ambassador,” Wiggins announced.

  The Gentleman sank to the seat, dabbing sweat from his face. “I almost apprehended him,” he said. “It would have caused a diplomatic incident.”

  “Get up,” Wild Boy said. “Keep looking.”

  The orchestra began to play a waltz, and the dancing began. Cloaks fluttered, dresses rustled, and satin slippers shuffled around the floor. Soon the whole room was twirling. There were quadrilles, polkas, two-steps and reels. The ballroom grew hot and clammy and the windows steamed over. One of the guests tried to open the patio doors to let in some air, but a Gentleman guided him politely away.

  Sweat trickled under Wild Boy’s mask. He kept moving, kept whacking his drum.

  Where are you? Why ain’t you here?

  Movement caught his eye. Lucien rushed towards the doors, responding to a signal from one of the Gentlemen. Now Wild Boy was running too, around the side of the dance floor, barging past the guests. He reached into his pocket, gripped the syringe.

  He caught up with Lucien as he marched along the gallery. “What’s happening?”

  “Carew,” Lucien replied, breathless. “Someone saw Dr Carew.”

  Two Gentlemen pinned a guest to the gallery wall. But even before they removed the man’s mask, Wild Boy knew it was a false alarm. The guest looked like Dr Carew, but he was too round at the waist. It wasn’t him.

  Lucien leaned against the wall, struggling to catch his breath. He signalled for his men to release their prisoner.

  The guest staggered back. “What the deuce is the meaning of this?”

  “Our apologies,” Lucien said. “We mistook you for a French terrorist.”

  That was the story Wild Boy and the Gentlemen had agreed on should anyone ask about the security. “The Devil to you!” the guest roared. “I am no Frenchie. I was stepping out for air. And why the blazes is that drummer boy staring at me like that?”

  Wild Boy leaned to Lucien. “Get rid of him.”

  “What?”

  “He’s gonna go back in there and shout about terrorists. Everyone’s gonna panic.”

  “For God’s sake, Wild Boy. That’s the Earl of Gloucester.”

  Wild Boy didn’t care who it was. The man could ruin the whole plan.

  Lucien knew it too. He groaned, spoke in a low voice to one of the Gentlemen. The Earl’s protests grew louder as he was led away.

  Lucien checked his pocket watch. “Nine forty-five,” he said. “You understand our situation?”

  Wild Boy did, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so. This evening had been about catching the killer before the Queen appeared. If they hadn’t done so by ten o’clock, she would remain upstairs in her room. Their chance would be lost.

  Time was almost up.

  He tore the drum from around his neck and hurled it across the gallery. Slumping against the wall, he slid his mask up his face and rubbed his hair. He’d been trying so hard not to consider failure, but now it was impossible to avoid.

  “You’ll be the boss of the Gentlemen after tonight?” he asked.

  “It is not guaranteed,” Lucien said. “Her Majesty is yet to reprimand me over concealing the black diamond. But my appointment to the position would be the most likely outcome.”

  “What about me and Clarissa?”

  “Do you wish me to be honest?”

  Wild Boy didn’t. He wanted him to lie, to tell him that they could both stay in the palace forever.

  “You will both have to go,” Lucien said. “I cannot have Miss Everett undermining me. I would ask you to remain with us, but I doubt you would consider doing so without her or Marcus.”

  Wild Boy closed his eyes. He wouldn’t stay without her; that would be a betrayal too far. Nor could he stay with her, not for long at least. She could do anything she wanted, but not with him at her side.

  “Hear what they say about Wild Boy! The ugliest freak at the fair!”

  He heard the showman cry, the mocking crows. They were louder in his head, getting closer.

  “Sir? Mr Grant!”

  Another Gentleman rushed from the ballroom, red-faced and flustered. “We have another situation,” he said.

  Lucien waved the man away. “Whoever you have apprehended this time, I pray you’ve acted with more discretion.”

  “Haven’t apprehended anybody, sir.”

  Wild Boy sat up. This didn’t seem like the other false alarm. Something had happened.

  Sliding his mask back into place, he followed Lucien back to the ballroom. The heat of the room hit him like a furnace, drying his throat. The dancing was in full swing. Couples whirled around the floor, whooping with tipsy laughter.

  Through the moving bodies, Wild Boy spotted several Gentlemen exchanging angry words by the patio door
s. Lucien saw them too, and now they were both running again, dodging through the dancers.

  “What is the situation?” Lucien asked as they approached.

  “The patio doors,” one of the men replied. “Bentley was supposed to be watching them.”

  “Bentley escorted the Earl of Gloucester to his carriage. What is it? The doors are locked.”

  “No, sir. Outside – look.”

  Wild Boy rubbed steam from the glass. There were marks in the snow. They were faint, but they were definitely marks. Someone, or something, had been there just moments ago.

  “Could have been a fox,” Lucien said.

  Shifting his mask to see better, Wild Boy leaned closer to the doors and examined the groove around the frame. The ice seal was broken.

  “It ain’t no fox,” he said. “This door’s been opened. Someone’s broken in.”

  31

  “We must protect the Queen.”

  The words came almost as a whisper from Lucien’s mouth as he stared at the marks beyond the patio doors. The tracks of an uninvited guest.

  Wild Boy turned and scanned the dance floor. He suspected that whoever had sneaked into this ballroom was still here. He was certain he could find the person, but not if Lucien and his men charged around causing panic.

  He grasped Lucien’s wrist, kept his voice low. “We gotta stay quiet.”

  Lucien glared at the hand on his arm as if it had just fractured whatever fragile peace existed between them. “You forget yourself,” he said. “It is our primary duty to protect the Queen.”

  Ain’t my primary duty. Wild Boy was here to save Marcus. He almost said as much, but stopped himself. “Look at them candles on that stand,” he said. “Two of ‘em are out.”

  “So?” Lucien said. “The wind extinguished them when the killer opened the door.”

  “Right. But they were all lit at the same time, and now the other three have burned for about ninety seconds longer.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Cos I know this sorta stuff. Now listen, we were in the gallery before that and no one passed us. Here in the ballroom the windows are guarded and your men are on the doors. No one’s gone out in that time. So whoever broke into this ballroom is still in this ballroom, geddit?”

  Lucien got it. He watched the guests swirling around the dance floor. “Good God,” he said. “If the killer knows he is caught, he might act irrationally.”

  “Right, like grab one of these toffs.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Block the doors, don’t let no one out. Gimme five minutes and I’ll find him.”

  “There are two hundred and thirty people here.”

  “Two hundred and thirty-one now.”

  “All right,” Lucien agreed, with a sigh so heavy it rustled his whiskers. “Five minutes. But after that we shall tear this room apart to find him.”

  Wild Boy didn’t doubt that. But he had to try it his way, to think like Marcus had taught him. Only he wished he’d asked for ten minutes rather than five.

  He opened the patio door and slipped outside.

  A porch protected him from the worst of the weather, but the cold was still vicious, like a wire in his nose. The fog of his breath formed ice crystals that hung in the air before being swept away by the wind. Through the heavy snowfall he saw naked trees swaying at the side of the palace garden.

  His pulse quickened. He had a feeling that he was being watched.

  He stepped out from under the porch and looked across the side of the palace. Stone angels stood guard on the roof, black against the dark sky. With their wings raised, they reminded him of the demon Malphas.

  Stop messing about, thickhead.

  Returning to the porch, he tore off his mask and dropped it by the doors. He crouched and examined the marks in the snow. They were just fragments of footprints – the point of a toecap, the indentation of a heel, a curling groove from the side of a sole. As Wild Boy stared at them, they began to move. He knew it was only happening in his head, but it seemed so real. The pieces of the jigsaw slid across the snow and slotted together. In the moonlight, he saw a single complete footprint.

  He blinked and it was gone.

  The moment lasted barely a second. But there was no mistaking the tapered, flat-soled print and sharply pointed toe of a Wellington boot, the calf-high leather boots named after the duke that wore them so often.

  A clue. But was it enough?

  He peered through the glass doors, studying the ballroom. In ten seconds he had seen that fifty-three of the guests wore Wellington boots.

  Gotta try harder than that.

  He looked down, and the puzzle came back together. He realized now that something was missing from the footprint. Most wealthy men wore either old-fashioned breeches, pulled tight by a strap under the boot, or fashionable French-style trousers. There were no marks from a bootstrap in this print. So the intruder wore trousers.

  He shot back to the door. Of the fifty-three men in Wellington boots, eighteen wore trousers.

  Still not good enough.

  There was something else about the marks. The largest fragment was almost half complete, from the centre of the sole to the point of the toecap. He could tell from the depth at the centre that the intruder had crouched to pick the lock, transferring his weight to the ball of his toes. But the print continued two inches beyond that point. Either the intruder had unusually long toes or his boots were too big. But why would someone choose to wear oversize boots?

  Unless he hadn’t chosen.

  Unless the boots were stolen.

  The patio darkened as the moon slipped behind clouds. It didn’t matter. Wild Boy had seen enough. Whichever of those eighteen suspects wore oversized boots was the intruder. Hopefully the Gentlemen could escort them from the dance floor without attracting too much attention.

  For the first time that evening, Wild Boy smiled. That had gone surprisingly well.

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  Then he realized he’d forgotten to put his mask back on.

  “It’s the Wild Boy of London!” someone screamed.

  “He’s come for the Queen!”

  Another scream, and another, and then lots of screams at once. Guests stumbled back, tripping over one another in their desperation to escape from the ballroom. Some of the men stood in front of their wives and adopted boxing stances. Others thrust their partners in front of them as shields. Lucien pleaded with the guests to remain calm as they demanded to be released by the Gentlemen blocking the open doors.

  The orchestra hurled their instruments at Wild Boy from the stage. Violins and harps crashed down near his feet, but he ignored them. His eyes remained fixed on the guests, searching for the intruder.

  “For God’s sake!” someone cried. “There’s a monster loose!”

  “Get a shotgun!”

  Wild Boy ignored everything, still seeking out the Wellington boots from among the fast-moving feet. He saw one pair, dismissed it, saw another and another…

  His eyes locked onto a pair that looked too large for their wearer, and wet from the snow. He could only see the back of their owner, a cloak and hood swaying as the person jostled among the guests at the doors. Just for a second Wild Boy glimpsed a mask beneath the hood. It was covered in silver sequins.

  He began to run.

  It was a mask he’d seen before, on the statue of Marie Antoinette at the wax works museum. The boots were stolen too, he realized, from the wax figure of the Duke of Wellington. It had to be the killer. It had to be.

  The screams grew louder as he charged across the dance floor.

  “Spread out!” someone yelled. “He can’t eat us all.”

  Wild Boy ran for the killer, bracing himself to leap at him. Then he saw something he could barely believe. With extraordinary speed, the figure dropped low, launched forward and twisted between the legs of the Gentlemen at the door. The guards saw but couldn’t give chase without letting the rest
of the group into the gallery.

  “He got past!” Wild Boy cried. “Move!”

  The guests fled from the doorway, scattering in every direction across the dance floor. The Gentlemen saw him coming and stepped aside, letting him out of the ballroom. Ahead, Wild Boy saw rustles of cloak as the uninvited guest raced along the gallery and up the Grand Staircase.

  He couldn’t believe it. Surely the killer wasn’t still going after the black diamond? The Queen was guarded by six men.

  He reached the stairs in time to see the hooded figure stumble, wet boots slipping on marble steps. Wild Boy willed his legs to go faster, closing the gap. He yanked the syringe from his pocket. A cry came from his mouth, savage, guttural. He didn’t care how he did it, he had to get the killer’s blood.

  He expected the intruder to keep running, but the figure stayed at the top of the stairs. Eyes behind the sequined mask watched him run closer. They were burning eyes, filled with fury.

  And then Wild Boy stopped too.

  All of his anger was suddenly sucked from him, replaced by surprise.

  He recognized those eyes. He recognized them but it was the last person he expected to see.

  Then he heard a shout from behind.

  Two Gentlemen charged up the stairs, shoving him aside in their rush to reach the intruder. The cloaked figure fled again, taking the last three steps in a single jump and then turning along the corridor at the top.

  Still Wild Boy just stood there, staring.

  Glints of light reflected off the Gentlemen’s pistols, breaking his trance. Now he was running again – no longer after the intruder, but after the Gentlemen. He shoved the syringe back into his coat.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Don’t shoot!”

  BOOM!

  He came to a gasping stop in the corridor.

  No. No, no…

  Wisps of smoke floated past his head, tinged with the smell of gunpowder.

  “Don’t move!” one of the Gentlemen warned.

  He’d fired a warning shot. The intruder had stopped mid-escape, with one leg out of the window at the end of the corridor.

  Wild Boy rushed forward, barging past one of the Gentlemen. The man slipped and fired his pistol at the ceiling.