‘Well, that’s the second time this week I’ve had that door slammed in my face,’ said Lil as the four of them made their way down the steps. ‘I’m beginning to think that Veronica doesn’t like me very much.’
Feeling that it would probably be best not to linger near Miss Whiteley’s house, they crossed the road, and went through a gate into the pretty garden in the centre of the square, where they would be out of sight.
‘Talk about ungrateful,’ said Billy, disgustedly, flopping down on to a bench.
‘We should have guessed she would never believe us,’ said Sophie. ‘Why would she?’
‘It’s like you said before,’ said Lil. ‘She’s never even heard of the Baron. It doesn’t mean anything to her.’
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Billy.
‘Hush up !’ said Joe suddenly. He had frozen still, his hand on Lil’s arm.
‘What’s the matter?’
Joe’s voice was low and hoarse. ‘There’s someone watching us,’ he whispered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She struggled as hard as she could, but the arms holding her were far too strong. Panic overwhelmed her as she was dragged out of her safe hiding place and into the sunlight.
‘I say, do be gentle,’ said a loud, clear voice. ‘You’re hurting her. Why, she’s only a little girl!’
The grip slackened. Looking up, blinking in the light, Mei saw that she was standing in the middle of the square garden in front of two girls and a boy. The boy had untidy fair hair and looked about her own age, whilst the older of the two girls, who was tall and pretty and wore a straw hat with a pink ribbon round it, was probably the same age as Song. They were all gazing at her as though she was the strangest thing they had ever seen. She stuck out her chin and tried to stand straight, to seem bold and undaunted, just as Song had taught her.
‘She’s a little girl from China!’ exclaimed the boy, in a surprised voice. ‘Whatever is she doing here, hiding in the bushes?’
He spoke as if she wouldn’t be able to understand a word he was saying, and all of a sudden, Mei stopped being frightened, and instead felt extremely annoyed. ‘I’m not from China!’ she burst out, crossly. ‘I’m from Limehouse . And I’m not a little girl!’
To her surprise, she heard a laugh from her captor. Suspicious and indignant, she turned her head, and saw that the person holding her was a tall young fellow with curly hair. ‘Never mind China. She’s a cockney, from the East End, same as me,’ he said. Unlike the others, he spoke like the people in Limehouse, though his voice was somewhat softer. ‘You’re China Town, ain’t you?’ he added, looking at Mei.
‘Might be,’ said Mei, defiantly. She didn’t want to give anything away to these strangers, especially when the fellow was still holding on to her.
‘From the East End ?’ exclaimed the other boy. There was some extra special meaning in his words that Mei didn’t understand, and a look of alarm on his face. ‘What are you doing?’ he went on, in a quick, urgent voice. ‘Were you sent here to spy on us?’
Mei frowned in confusion, but before she could say anything else, the fellow who was holding her said in his low voice, ‘Are you working for him ?’
‘For who?’ asked Mei, even more perplexed now, and her fright renewed by the way they were all looking at her, watchful, like a circle of cats about to pounce.
‘You know who. The top man. The Baron .’
Mei started in surprise. ‘No! ’ she exclaimed at once, without thinking. ‘No! I hate him!’ But even as the words were out of her mouth, she realised what she had said, and she felt another rush of fear. They were all looking at each other again, a silent flash of communication passing between them.
‘What do you know about the Baron?’ demanded the other boy.
‘I’m not daft!’ she burst out. ‘Everyone knows about the Baron. Leave off. I’m not doing any harm. I’m just minding my own business. Let me go,’ she almost sobbed.
The dark-haired girl frowned. ‘Joe, do let go of her. You’re frightening her.’ She turned to Mei. ‘Listen, I’m sorry we grabbed you, but you must see that it’s jolly strange to be skulking around in the shrubbery like this. All we want to know is what you’re doing here; to be sure you aren’t up to no good. So why don’t you just tell us – and then we’ll let you go.’
Mei gulped in a breath, tried to calm herself. ‘I just wanted to see the young lady.’
‘The young lady?’
‘Miss Veronica Whiteley.’
‘You wanted to see Veronica ?’ repeated the girl, looking baffled. ‘But why?’
‘Because of the diamond,’ said Mei, reluctantly. ‘The Moonbeam Diamond.’
There was silence. The girl stared at her, agape. ‘What did you say?’
The other girl, the one with the fair hair, was looking at her sharply. ‘Do you know something about the jewelled moth?’ she asked.
Mei shook her head, confused by their reactions. ‘I don’t know anything about the moth brooch thing – it’s the diamond that’s in it. It’s called the Moonbeam Diamond. I saw that Miss Whiteley – she’s the girl that owns the brooch – lives here. It was in the society column, look.’
She held out a piece of newspaper in a trembling hand. The fair-haired girl took it and frowned as she looked over it:
‘I thought if I waited, I might catch sight of her and see which house she lives at,’ Mei explained. ‘If I knew that, I could talk to her, or write to her to explain. Tell her the truth about the diamond.’
‘What do you mean by the truth?’ asked the fair girl.
The young fellow who had been holding her had been casting anxious glances around them. Now, he swore quietly under his breath. Following his gaze, Mei saw that he was looking between the trees, through on to the street, where a couple of men dressed in chauffeurs’ uniforms were standing, apparently quite aimlessly, smoking cigarettes.
‘We should get out of here,’ he said in an urgent voice.
The others followed his gaze. The younger boy’s eyes widened.
‘The Baron’s Boys?’ asked the dark girl, but it wasn’t really a question. Mei’s heart thumped faster.
The fair girl looked at Mei. ‘You need to tell us more,’ she said. ‘We can help you – we can even take a message to Miss Whiteley if you like – but you have to tell us what you mean about telling her the truth. Will you come with us, somewhere we can talk safely?’
Mei glanced at the men on the street corner. They didn’t look anything like the Baron’s Boys as she had seen them on the streets of the East End – they were much too smart for that. But if they really were working for the Baron, the further away from them she was, the better.
She nodded.
‘This way,’ said the young fellow, and led them beneath the trees, across the garden, in the opposite direction to the two men. There was a gate on the other side. They slipped through it and out into the street, casting quick glances behind them. He’d taken hold of Mei’s arm again, but his grip was gentler now. He led them swiftly into a patch of shadow, around a corner, and away.
Hyde Park felt wonderfully safe and ordinary to Joe. They walked across the grass until they found a spot where they could sit in the dappled shade of a tree, not far from where a group of children in sailor suits and straw boaters were playing with hoops, their nanny looking on indulgently.
The girl from the East End sat down amongst them, looking small and rather frightened. She was wearing a faded striped cotton frock and a pinafore, and her black hair hung in a long plait down her back. She looked shabby compared to the children that were playing just a few yards away from them, but Joe knew that she wasn’t, not really. Why, some of the folks in the East End had not much more to wear than rags; this girl had clean clothes and a clean face, and her boots, though well-patched, looked decent enough. This was no street urchin. She might not be well off, but she was certainly well cared for.
Lil smiled at her. ‘I’m Lil,’ she explained. ‘This is Sophie
and that’s Billy, and that’s Joe.’
‘My name’s Mei,’ said the girl in a small voice.
‘Will you tell us what you know about the diamond?’ asked Sophie earnestly.
Nodding, the girl began to tell her story. She told it rather timidly at first, her voice halting, but as she went on, she seemed to become more and more self-assured, until she was speaking fluently and confidently. The others sat quite still and listened, almost as if her voice was casting a spell over them. It was a queer old story she was telling, Joe thought – the tale of an old temple and a magic diamond and a moon goddess, which somehow seemed tangled up with Miss Veronica Whiteley and the jewelled moth.
‘It all fits together,’ said Sophie, when Mei brought her story to a close, having related how she had seen the Moonbeam Diamond in the newspaper and ventured across London to find Miss Whiteley. ‘Remember?’ Sophie went on, turning to Lil. ‘Veronica mentioned that Lord Beaucastle had told her the story of how he came by the diamond. She said that it came from China and he saved it from an uprising at a monastery.’
‘But it wasn’t an uprising!’ said Mei, fervently. ‘Waiguo Ren started it himself. He betrayed the monks and attacked them, and stole all their treasures.’
‘So that means that Waiguo Ren – the man who stole your diamond – must be Lord Beaucastle,’ said Lil slowly, working it out. ‘And Lord Beaucastle is also the Baron.’
Mei’s face turned white. ‘The Baron?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t understand.’
Joe thought he knew how she felt. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her gruffly. ‘You’re safe with us here.’
Sophie tried to explain: ‘We believe we’ve found the Baron’s true identity – the identity he tries so hard to keep hidden. We’ve discovered that the Baron is really a wealthy society gentleman named Lord Beaucastle. By the sounds of it, he’s the same man that you call Waiguo Ren – the Englishman who stole the Moonbeam Diamond.’
‘So you mean that the Baron took the diamond?’ said Mei, her face creased with concentration. ‘Well, I s’pose that makes sense . . .’ she said after a long pause. ‘He’s taken everything else.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Billy, who had been busily scribbling in his notebook as Mei talked.
It had been Billy who asked the question, but it was Joe that Mei looked at as she answered. ‘He’s in China Town now,’ she said sadly. ‘He sent his Boys in, demanded everyone paid up. If you don’t . . . well, my Dad didn’t, not at first. Mum said we should stand up to them. But they came and . . .’
‘They roughed him up – your old man?’ asked Joe sympathetically.
Mei was blinking back tears. ‘Yes, and they ruined our shop. Then they asked for even more money. Mum and Dad can hardly pay what they’re asking, but it’s much worse for the others. Mrs Wu – she runs the Magic Lantern Show – she couldn’t scrape together what they wanted, so they broke her son’s arm. They’re taking over. They’ve got hold of the Star Inn, and they’re running all sorts of rackets there, gambling and opium and . . .’ her voice faded away.
‘That’s how he works,’ said Joe, shaking his head. ‘The Baron’s like a leech. When he gets hold of you, he just about bleeds you dry. He’ll move in somewhere and suck every penny out of a place, no matter what the consequences for the folks who live there. Anyone who stands up to him – well, you can guess.’
‘But that’s simply terrible!’ exclaimed Lil. ‘How can he get away with it? Why doesn’t someone stop him?’
‘No one cares,’ said Joe, shrugging. ‘You know, I was surprised at first that the Baron’s some big toff, but I reckon it makes sense. You’ve got the grand folk out here, with their great big houses and money and fancy clothes and motors and anything else you like. Half of that’s being paid for by the poor folk, isn’t it? I mean, these people probably own factories where the workers aren’t paid enough to feed their families. But folks are greedy. So long as they’ve got what they want, why should they care about anyone else?’
There was silence for a moment. Then Lil smiled at Mei. ‘It was jolly brave of you to come all this way on your own,’ she said. ‘However did you persuade your parents to let you?’
Mei blushed: ‘They don’t exactly know I’m here,’ she said.
Billy added a final vigorous scribble to the pages of his notebook. They were now a complex web of scribbled phrases and arrows and words like BARON and BEAUCASTLE and MOONBEAM DIAMOND, heavily underlined. ‘What should we do now?’ he asked, tucking his notebook and pencil back into his pocket.
Sophie looked at Mei. ‘We’ll make sure Miss Whiteley learns the truth about the diamond,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about that. But you should get home now. It’s getting late, and your family will be worried.’
Mei nodded and got to her feet, but Lil stopped her. ‘You can’t go back alone,’ she said. ‘It’s simply miles to the East End.’
‘I can find my own way back,’ insisted Mei, stoutly.
Sophie shook her head. ‘Lil’s right. We’ll see you home safely.’
‘Let’s get a cab,’ suggested Lil. ‘That way we’ll have chance to talk more on the way.’
A cab was an unusual luxury, but Sophie nodded at once. They had the ten pounds from Miss Whiteley, after all – and after their close encounter with the Baron’s Boys on Belgrave Square, a cab would be safer than travelling on foot.
Billy was frowning. ‘D’you think it’s such a good idea for us to go to the East End?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘I mean – that’s where the Baron’s Boys come from .’
Billy looked at Joe as he spoke, but before he had the chance to reply, Lil spoke up again: ‘We can’t possibly let Mei go so far alone,’ she said indignantly. ‘Come on – we can get a cab at Hyde Park Corner.’
At first the cabman did not seem at all pleased at the prospect of taking five not particularly smart-looking young people all the way to Limehouse, but when Lil showed him five shillings, he suddenly became a great deal more accommodating, and they squeezed themselves inside.
No one said much as they rattled along Piccadilly and through Covent Garden. Billy found himself thinking about what Joe had said – was it really true that most people didn’t care what happened to everyone else, as long as they had everything they wanted? Meanwhile, Sophie’s mind was whirring. The legend of the Moonbeam Diamond was important, she thought to herself. It was another clue to the puzzle that was the Baron. She knew he was a collector, drawn to beautiful objects, and she knew too that he rarely did his dirty work himself, preferring to let others – in this case, the Emperor’s men – take care of any unpleasant business. He had been in the army, and there was a military precision to everything he did, but there was something else too – a certain theatrical flair. The staging of the burglary at Sinclair’s department store; the infernal machine in the clock rigged to explode at midnight; scheming to deceive the monks and betray them, taking their riches . . . She tried to imagine the Baron as a young man in China, masquerading as the brave hero of Empire, like one of the captains in Billy’s story-papers. He had seized the diamond and transformed it from something sacred into a mere bauble, a trinket to be given away to a debutante and worn at a coming-out ball.
She was so busy thinking about it all that she hardly noticed them passing St Paul’s, nor that in the corner, Joe was beginning to look restless. As they crossed the City, he became more nervous still.
‘I – I can’t,’ he said suddenly.
The cab had stopped at a busy junction and without saying anything to the driver, Joe opened the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Be careful,’ he warned, and then he jumped down into the street, where he was lost at once amongst the crowds.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The cab rattled on towards Limehouse.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lil, gazing out of the window in the direction that Joe had taken.
‘Where did he go?’ asked Mei, confused.
‘He didn’t want to go back to th
e East End,’ explained Billy, soberly.
‘I hope he’s all right,’ said Lil. ‘I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean to him to go back,’ she added, guiltily.
‘He told me once that he could never show his face there again,’ said Billy. ‘Once you leave the Baron’s Boys, you’re a marked man.’
‘Did he really used to be one of the Baron’s Boys?’ asked Mei. She looked rather alarmed by this revelation.
‘Yes, he was once, but he isn’t any longer,’ explained Lil. ‘He wants to stop the Baron now – the same as the rest of us.’
By now they had left the City behind them and were making their way through a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets. To Sophie, the streets looked darker here, almost as if night was falling early. The buildings were crowded densely together on either side of the street – small, shabby houses, jostling up against shops and workshops.
‘Where are we now?’ she asked.
‘Shadwell,’ said Mei. ‘It’s poor round here. This is the Baron’s territory, all this.’
Sophie stared out of the window. Here and there were a few signs of life: a ragged group of children, some without shoes, watching them pass by; a stray dog, nosing through rubbish. It was a gloomy place, and Sophie found her thoughts straying to fragments of stories she had heard about the horrors that happened in the East End – murders and mutilations.
They passed a queue of people, snaking all the way along a side street.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Lil, curiously.
‘Queuing for their dinner,’ Mei explained. She went on, rather shyly: ‘If you’ve got kids and you can’t afford anything to eat, the Board of Guardians’ll give you tokens to get a bit of bread and milk. If we were coming along here later, we’d see all the old fellows queuing up for a bed in the Spike – I mean, the workhouse . . .’
The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth Page 11