The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (17 page)

In contrast to our fellow travelers, 'Arrington sat beside me, silent and grim. His sentence would be no worse than anyone else's, but it would begin with simultaneous withdrawal from cocaine and opium.

"I meant what I said," I told him. "When this is all over, come and see me. Ira Adler."

He nodded and hugged his arms tighter around his chest as if he were actually cold despite the sweltering darkness inside the carriage.

"You'll be fine," I said without conviction.

The truth was I was unlikely to be in a position to help myself in two years, less so someone else. Some dangerously optimistic part of me was convinced Goddard was already at Bow Street, pulling strings and calling in favors on my behalf. But even if this were true, he wouldn't be sweeping me into his arms the moment we were alone. He had made me a very serious proposal last night, and I had accepted his ring before disappearing. Whatever lies Collins had been whispering into his ear since would only be amplified by the fact I had been arrested in a brothel.

I gave my ring a twist and shifted on the splintering bench. My muscles ached, my feet were torn and bruised, and my eyes burned from lack of sleep. Yet even if I'd been in my own bed, my racing thoughts would have kept me awake. One pocket of my horrible brown coat bulged with documents that could send the brothel owner to the scaffold. Through the scratchy fabric of the other pocket, I could make out my picklocks and the sad little doll. I'd finish Nate's work if I died doing it. It was bad enough destitution forced children into that situation now and then--for people to deliberately put them there was unconscionable. I'd see someone hang for it, if it was the last thing I did.

The prison van lurched suddenly as the horse stumbled over a rough bit of pavement. I opened my eyes, then squeezed them shut again, forcing myself to breathe.

A lifetime ago, another carriage had been taking me to the Stepney Street clinic, though in truth no more than twenty-four hours had passed. I wondered whether Pearl's sources had turned up any information about the porcelain dog. It would have been fast, but Pearl knew everyone. Someone might well have heard something. I also wondered whether Goddard had someone else standing ready to take up the search, now that I had proven incapable of this simple task. Goddard seemed to know what his blackmailer wanted, which meant he knew who it was. I wondered again about the brothel's manager, Mr. Sinclair. Goddard and Sinclair were in some of the same circles, and they were likely close in age. And Nate had to have got the idea for the lavender letters from somewhere. If I ever saw Goddard again, I'd ask him about it.

When he was finished shouting, that is.

At last the carriage pulled to the side and stopped. The back door opened. A constable led us, blinking, out onto the street. London's first police station loomed over us: gray, ominous, and possessive. One of the peelers took me by the elbow and attempted to lead me toward the massive stone facade. There's a network of cells below Bow Street Station, where prisoners are housed until they can be tried. Depending upon where the judge is in his circuit of the courts, a case could take up to a month to come to trial.

Thirty days. No windows. A door of solid steel.

Goddard speculates my dread of enclosed spaces stems from the day my mother left me at the workhouse. After they ripped me from her arms, I screamed for six hours straight, alone in a dark closet set aside for that purpose. Though I've no recollection of it, several of the warders recounted the story exactly that way.

Which is probably why I sank to the ground, insensible and immovable, instead of meekly following the constables through the big wooden door.

I could see people milling about, mouths moving and arms waving as they tried to figure out what to do with me. Why they couldn't just pick me up was a mystery. I wasn't particularly heavy, and finally they did give it their best. My body simply wasn't going anywhere. Quite a crowd gathered round. Marcus was looking at me dolefully, when a voice cried out,

"Constables, move aside!"

The voice sounded tinny, faraway, and yet I could make out a certain impatience that made my heart leap. Someone said
Ira
, and a hand closed over my shoulder, so strong, so full of concern, that just as I'd been powerless against my body's urge to collapse into a boneless heap, I was powerless to keep myself from turning into those familiar, linen-clad arms.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, by God I'm so sorry," I whispered into a freshly shaven jaw. My throat tightened around the words. I didn't trust my voice not to crack. "Please take me home. I'll never so much as look out the window again."

He was freshly bathed as well, his warm, clean skin redolent with musk and citrus--the work of M. Piesse, if I wasn't mistaken. The new fragrance was not unpleasant, especially when accompanied by discreet, comforting caresses at the back of my neck.

"You smell good, Cain. Is that a new cologne?" I asked.

The arms around me suddenly stiffened and pushed me away. There before me stood the last person I wanted to see, wearing a dour brown jacket, trousers creased to a razor's edge, mustache twitching as if caught between irritation and smug amusement.

"I suppose I should be grateful to get any sort of apology out of you," Lazarus sniffed. "Even one meant for someone else. But considering the circumstances of your arrest, and the fact our blackmailer is still at large, you might reconsider how you choose to express your gratitude. And yes," he said, smirking at my consternation. "The cologne is new."

∗ ∗ ∗

"It's not that I'm not happy to see you," I said as Lazarus packed me into a luxuriously appointed brougham.

The carriage was miles better than Goddard's. To be fair, Goddard preferred an unadorned black hansom. One didn't advertise ill-gotten gains, after all. On the other hand, St. Andrews's carriage was a gold-touched masterpiece of overstatement. While he chatted with the driver outside, I melted into the velvet-upholstered bench beneath a pair of gilded angels and closed my eyes. The inside smelled like old money and new paint. Lazarus folded down the hard little seat in the corner and perched on it. He and his earnest beau weren't my first choice for saviors, but they weren't going to leave me bleeding in a ditch, either.

"To what do I owe this eleventh-hour rescue?" I asked. "I'd think that you'd be happier with me out of the way."

"It would make things easier," Lazarus admitted. "But when St. Andrews learned you were caught up in the raid, he figured you'd be of more use to us as a free man."

I cracked an eye open.

"What do you mean 'of more use'? To
you
? And how the devil--"

"'O d'yer fink tipped off the rozzers, old chap? Eh?"

Wood squealed, and for one horrifying moment the carriage tipped onto two wheels as St. Andrews swung his long body through the door. He landed beside me in a heap of knees and elbows. His imitation cockney was appalling, but it was hard to be properly irritated with someone who resembled nothing so much as an overgrown puppy--soft of middle, floppy of limb, and grinning. St. Andrews's age was somewhere between Lazarus's and Goddard's--late thirties was my guess. Despite his lack of decorum, his enthusiasm did lend him a certain charm. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with the enemy only seemed to delight him.

"My old coat!" he exclaimed, looking me over with evident pleasure. He thumped a merry fist on the roof, and the cab began rolling. "You wear it well, Mr. Adler."

"I might have known you'd be at the center of it all," I said.

"Now, is that any way to speak to someone who's just pulled your crumpet out of the fire?"

"If I'd known there were strings attached, I'd have preferred my crumpet to remain where it was."

St. Andrews laughed and rubbed his enormous hands together, relishing a bout of witty repartee. My head throbbed. I yanked down the window shade.

"In case you were curious," he began.

"I wasn't."

"I told the police that you were our man inside. A special operative."

"Bet that didn't raise eyebrows," I muttered.

"We can take you back to prison, if you prefer," said Lazarus. The swelling had gone down on his broken nose, but it had turned a beautiful shade of purple.

"The way I see it," St. Andrews said, "Everyone benefits from our current situation. Mr. Adler, you're now a free man. Just say the word, and I'll have my driver deliver you to York Street, with no further 'strings.'"

"Right now, please," I said.

"But," he carried on, as if he hadn't heard, "considering we've just extricated you from a very sticky legal situation, an honorable man would at least hear my request."

Sighing, I opened my bleary eyes and shifted in my corner to face him. His sandy hair seemed to disappear against the amber velvet covering the walls.

"I knew you'd see reason." He grinned.

Lazarus rolled his eyes. Curious. One doesn't expect a man to display such undisguised contempt for someone he cares about, especially not in that person's presence. I remembered the look of rapture that came over Lazarus's face the other day at the clinic, when Nurse Brand had announced his luncheon companion had arrived. That rapture certainly didn't square with Lazarus's current posture, nor with his derogatory remarks about St. Andrews's abilities Wednesday night at the dollyshop. His present attitude was more befitting a long-suffering employee, which he might have been.

I'd just never pictured old Tim as a kept man.

"First point," St. Andrews said, cutting through my uncharitable speculation. "Goddard and I are enemies, as you know."

"I know."

"Second point: we're being blackmailed by the same person."

"Nick Sinclair," I said.

It was a guess, and I wasn't disappointed when it hit the mark. St. Andrews stopped mid-blather, mouth open, eyes wide.

"How--what--how--"

"No," I said. "You tell me. Who is this bastard? What does he want? And what the devil were you thinking, raiding his brothel this morning?"

The carriage swayed and creaked as we made our way across the evenly paved streets of Westminster. The trees cast dappled shadows on the window shade. With any luck St. Andrews would stutter out an answer that would mollify Goddard by the time we reached Regent's Park--at which point I would leap out and sprint down York Street before he could start asking his own questions. Lazarus turned on his little seat and was watching us with a combination of curiosity and envy.

"I had understood from our real operative that Sinclair would be at the brothel last night," St. Andrews said. "Since neither you nor Lazarus had managed to get hold of the porcelain dog, Goddard and I thought we might take care of the matter this way."

"What the--Goddard was in on this?"

"He certainly didn't expect
you
to be there," St. Andrews said. "The raid was an act of good faith: my idea undertaken with Goddard's blessing."

"I don't understand."

St. Andrews looked me over with an evaluative eye. He might have been a bumbler, but he wasn't stupid. I wondered what he had read at Cambridge, and what he might have ended up doing had he not been expelled so early on in his studies.

"That was me at York Street, Wednesday night, in disguise," he said.

"That was a disguise?"

He pursed his lips.

"I was hoping Goddard would work with me until this nasty business was over, or at least agree to a temporary truce."

"Let me guess: he wouldn't."

St. Andrews shook his head.

"He's a bitter, bitter man."

"He has a right to be after what happened at Cambridge," I said.

Of course I didn't know what happened at Cambridge. Unfortunately, St. Andrews was disinclined to enlighten me.

"That was over ten years ago," he said. "And I didn't leave Cambridge unscathed either."

"It's easy to be sanguine when you've got the family fortune to fall back on."

St. Andrews glared for a moment, then chuckled. "'Sanguine.' You've quite a vocabulary for a hustler."

"I have a good teacher."

"You have the best," he said. "But we've wandered far enough from the topic at hand. I have nothing to say about Cambridge. That's Cain's story to tell, if he chooses."

He might not have said anything outright, but his unexpected intimacy in referring to Goddard by his Christian name gave me more information than he would ever have willingly revealed. Goddard and St. Andrews had been at Cambridge around the same time--Goddard as a lecturer, and St. Andrews as a student. A little more than ten years ago, they were both dismissed with the ruinous finality that follows a scandal. Goddard held St. Andrews responsible, and from what he had said, the sentiment was mutual.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the intensity and duration of their grudge reminded me of the undying resentment reserved for lovers parted unpleasantly.

My nausea returned. On the other side of the cab, Lazarus looked away.

The carriage slowed. On either side, I could hear the scrapes and creaks of neighboring vehicles, hear the singsong voices of the drivers as they called back and forth to one another. We'd left Westminster, merging onto a major thoroughfare, and yet we hadn't made the series of sharp, close turns to take us to York Street. Perhaps St. Andrews had told the driver to take the scenic route around the park.