Lighting a candle, he left his quarters and crossed the mapping room to look down through the window near Sir Daniel’s desk.
He wasn’t sure, but there may have been a figure running away down the alley.
He ventured down the stairs and unlatched the hidden door behind the shop counter. His wall of clocks marked away the seconds with a comforting tick-tock.
He checked the front door as a precaution ahead of checking the back. Whoever it was hadn’t managed to get into the shop at least. In truth, he’d be surprised if they had, as both front and back doors were reinforced. After all, in their line of business it paid to be careful.
Bassett’s sensitive nose detected something. It was familiar, a bit like pine.
He opened the door to the storeroom to make his way through to the back door. Wisps of smoke were visible here. A glow caught his eye. A reflection of his candle in the transom window? As he neared the back wall and the door out into the alley, he could feel the heat as well as see the glow beneath the door. A pane above suddenly shattered with the heat, showering him with glass.
Bassett ran up the narrow back stairs up into the living quarters.
“Joe! Joe, get up!”
He burst through the apprentice’s bedroom door and shook the lad awake. “There’s a fire outside the back door. Take the two strongboxes outside by the front and get some help.”
The lad leapt to his feet and began running to the map room.
“Shoes, boy! Get your shoes on first!”
“Yes, Mr. Bassett!”
Bassett scuttled back downstairs into the storeroom. Flames licked around the sides of the door. He picked up a bucket filled with sand and tossed it in a futile attempt to quench the fire.
By the time he had disposed of a second bucket, Joe had descended the front stairs and opened the front door. The rush of cold air drew the flame further in at the back. Tongues of flame lapped along the ceiling. The entire thick timber door was engulfed.
Bassett backed away from the heat. Everything that was irreplaceable to The King’s Rogues was now in Joe’s hands. The fire burned hot and brighter than he expected. This was not caused by a careless dropping of embers or a discarded cigar.
In the shop, the air shimmered with the heat of a blaze well established in the back of the building. It would be in here very soon.
Bassett looked mournfully at his beautiful, beautiful clocks – such precision, such craftsmanship! He wasn’t a man often given to emotion but hearing the discordant sound of clockwork springs distorting in the oppressive heat nearly made him weep.
He withdrew to the outside and joined the bucket brigade which concentrated on trying to save the two shops either side of the chandlery. For Charteris House itself, it was too little, too late. Flames burst through an upper window and waved like pennants.
Although dressed in nothing more than his robe, bed shirt and boots, Bassett didn’t feel the cold. He was numb.
“Mr. Bassett, is there nothing we can do?”
His apprentice Joe, face soot-stained, looked at him with wide, mournful eyes.
“Get one of our horses from the stables and race as fast as you can to Sir Daniel. Tell him the fire was no accident.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Someone set it by the back door, poured turpentine all over it before lighting it – and stayed long enough to watch it go up.” He glanced about the gathered crowd. “And he may still be here.”
Joe’s jaw dropped.
“I suspect that,” he continued, handing over a folded piece of paper, “because someone slipped this into my dressing gown pocket when I was wielding the buckets.”
Before Joe could ask any more, the sound of bells chimed discordantly from the distressed clocks inside.
Bassett spun round to look at the shopfront, suddenly remembering. “My God! The key!”
He took off at a run back toward the burning building without a second thought.
“Mr. Bassett!” the youth called out.
“Follow orders, Joe!” Bassett yelled back. “Go to Sir Daniel!”
*
Joe looked down at the note he had been given. It was addressed to Adam Hardacre in a flourishing hand. It read:
This is not over,
Harold Bickmore
The apprentice rushed to the stables several streets away, rousing the ostler from his bed. No sooner had he mounted than the ground shook and a fireball of yellow and orange appeared above the roofs of the buildings between the stables and Charteris House.
The horse reared and tried to bolt. Joe used all his skill to control the startled beast and send it in the right direction, weeping all the way to Bishop’s Wood for his friend and master.
The End
Adam Hardacre will return in book three of The King’s Rogues:
Spy Another Day.
About the Author
Elizabeth Ellen Carter is an award-winning historical romance writer who pens richly detailed historical romantic adventures. A former newspaper journalist, Carter ran an award-winning PR agency for 12 years. The author lives in Australia with her husband and two cats.
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Spyfall Page 29