The Gilded Scarab (24 page)

His parting words, though, were interesting. “You know, we prefer our coffees are roasted and served in small high-caliber establishments like this. The bigger ones do approach us occasionally, but they want to maximize their profits and have little concern for quality. They see coffee as nothing more than a business commodity. There is no soul, no passion for it. You know of Philtre Coffee?”

“Of course. There’s a branch on Tottenham Court Road, a few hundred yards away.”

“We don’t supply the company, but they came to us to suggest a deal. They offered us an exclusive supplier contract, if we rescinded all our contracts to independent coffeehouses in this area.”

The emphasis was slight, but it was there.

“In this area?”

“Yes. Just this area.” De Jong pressed his lips together and nodded. “Odd, don’t you think?”

“Very odd.”

He nodded again. “We don’t break our commitments, Captain Lancaster. That isn’t an honorable way to do business. And we would prefer our good name be associated with the more select, independent establishments. I’m sure we’ll continue a very fruitful, mutually beneficial arrangement.” He shook hands heartily.

I watched him go. That had been very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Perhaps Philtre wanted to eliminate its rivals. And perhaps I had a clue, at last, to the identity of Josiah Stone’s mysterious clients.

I had no further visitations from Stone, although I kept a good eye out. I thought I saw him once, going down toward New Oxford Street, but if it had been him, he didn’t come into the coffeehouse and that was good enough for me.

Still, I carried the hideaway gun every day and kept my service pistol handy in my desk drawer, and I was always careful to set the locks and the alarms each evening.

Just as well.

O
NE
NIGHT
,
a couple of weeks after Lancaster’s Luck reopened so triumphantly, an alarm shrilled in my bedroom in the cold, dark, early hours.

God in heaven! I was bolt upright and had the covers flung back almost before I knew it. My training in Her Majesty’s Aero Corps served me well there, bringing me from sleep to alert in an instant.

The alarm shrilled again.

What in hell was that?

The side door onto the street! The side door with the elaborate alarm system. Someone had tripped the sensors.

It took but an instant to grope for the little hideaway gun I put each night on the table beside my bed, and then I got myself down the staircase as quickly and as quietly as I could manage it, careering around each bend and taking the stairs two or three steps at a time in my bare feet. I didn’t put on the lights to give any potential intruder a warning. And dammit, but three floors’ worth of stairs in the dark was at least two floors too many. I was lucky I didn’t break my neck.

Creeping along the passage to the side door was a sharp reminder of why I chose the Aero Corps over the Army. At least in the air, I didn’t have to get in such close proximity to the enemy. I wasn’t exactly trained for close combat. I admit I was a trifle nervous. I had to switch the gun to my left hand and rub my right palm against my nightshirt, to make sure the gun wouldn’t slip if I needed to use it.

Normally a pale blue light winked above the security panel set into the wall near the door, a small diode set into the brass façade, showing the system was live. That night the light was red.

But the door was closed. When I reached it and, quietly and cautiously, tested it, the locks held, solid and unyielding. If someone had tried to gain entry, they hadn’t succeeded.

I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, and let my shoulders slump. They ached from the tension. All around me the house was quiet, but the peace I’d enjoyed until then, the delight in having a place of my own at last, was shattered. I was more aware then of the two empty floors between me and my little apartment on the top storey than I had ever been. Solitude, it appeared, had its drawbacks.

I went to my office at the back of the house to check the other locks there. All secure. The datascope on my desk blinked at me. I swopped the little hideaway gun for the bigger laser pistol in my desk drawer, sat down with it within easy reach of my hand, and opened up the datascope. The security system came up on screen immediately, but whoever had attempted to break in had known better than to look up when the Cowens lights flashed outside, so the resultant photographic images showed nothing useful. The back of a bent head, dark and featureless. That was all. Pointless to call the police right then, but I saved the images to show them the next day. Not that it would be particularly useful, but a good and upright citizen saves all the evidence for the local constabulary, does he not?

I no longer wondered at Mr. Pearse putting such impressive locks on the doors. Instead I rechecked all the doors—twice—and reset the alarms. I went back to bed, clutching the pistol, and spent the rest of the night with my back up against the headboard, the gun in my hand.

I did not sleep again that night.

T
HE
POLICE
professed themselves baffled but sent the local bobby down the road a few more times a night as he did his rounds. I don’t know whether it was the police presence or the fact that the alarms were so effective, but there were no further attempts to gain entry.

I may have been overreacting and starting at shadows, but I thought Stone might be behind the attempted break-in. I hadn’t liked him or his very dubious proposition. I hadn’t liked him at all. I continued to be cautious, all the more so because I was operating from a position of ignorance. Stone might be working for a company with an interest in coffee. Or, given that both the Scrivener and the Gallowglass First Heir used the coffeehouse, he might be an intelligencer for one of the Houses.

No matter. Whoever they were, the mysterious principals who wanted Lancaster’s Luck, they wouldn’t get it if I could help it. I pushed away concerns over Stone and his mysterious principals and turned my attention to building up my business.

If Stone was on the debit side of the balance sheet, then in the credit column I had good neighbors, and my tenants, Rosens and Matthews, turned out to be friendly, jovial fellows who paid their rent promptly and came in at least once each day to spend an hour or two. I still didn’t know what it was they imported, mind, but it seemed churlish to inquire more closely when they were so reticent. I hoped it was legal. I liked all my regulars—with a slight reservation still about Mrs. Deedes, who showed no sign yet of succumbing to the considerable amounts of charm I expended on her—and I had a deep respect and admiration for Sir Tane. I assumed Professor Winter would appear at some point, along with a few old bones, and I would carefully not think about him and Daniel. I would especially be careful not to think about him and Daniel naked.

I was making friends. Real friends. Will Somers took to wandering over when his assistant arrived to run the bakery. He started work at a dreadfully early hour each day, getting up to make his bread and cakes while the rest of the world still slept. The advantage of that was he was normally free by noon. One evening in mid-March, he stayed after closing. His wife was at the Opera that night, and it would be several hours before he needed to collect her from Covent Garden.

Much as I enjoyed my days in the coffeehouse, I had my happiest time after I’d closed for the evening and locked up the building. I spent hours experimenting. Creating the perfect roast beans and blending them until I found the ideal mix for a coffee that would be uniquely mine, uniquely Lancaster’s, was the most satisfying thing I had ever done, bar flying. I didn’t mind sharing my enthusiasm.

“Do you do this every night?” Somers asked, settling into a disreputable armchair I kept in the roasting room. I had made a quick trip upstairs while he explored the back rooms, to collect some bottles of Bass that had been cooling nicely in the antiquated ice box. He didn’t hesitate to accept one.

“Most nights. I’m still learning, you see, and experimenting.” I lit the furnace under the roaster. The aether burned with a sharp lemony-yellow flame, edged with blue. “Mr. Pearse taught me the basics, of course, but it takes experience to master this art.”

Somers nodded. “A skill isn’t much use without patience and practice.” He gulped down some Bass, his Adam’s apple jumping. “That is a fearsome machine, Lancaster. Show me how it works.”

I started by opening up a jute sack of green coffee beans, almost pushed his face into it, and ordered him to breathe in deep. He gave me a doubtful look but did as he was told.

His expression changed to one of surprise. “They smell of grass or hay. They don’t smell of coffee at all.”

“They will,” I promised.

Under my direction, he stood on a stool to reach the polished brass conical hopper at the top of the roaster and tipped in the sack. About thirty pounds of coffee slid into the roaster, while I supervised and reflected on how pleasant it was to have a minion to do the heavy lifting. I reflected aloud, of course, and Somers, to give him credit, merely laughed.

I started the drum. The roaster shuddered as the drum began to revolve, settling down into a faint rumbling as the drum came up to speed. I loved this part. I showed Somers how to time the different roasts, from barely done to deepest, strongest dark brown. I had reached a level of skill that meant I could control the furnace to a nicety, bleeding through aether into the steam generation chamber to adjust the volume of steam and density of the heat with the same sure hand with which I’d once monitored and adjusted my aerofighter’s engines.

“So you listen for a sign that the beans are ready?”

“They make a popping sound at this temperature as they crack open. This will give me a light roasted bean. If I leave them longer and allow the temperature to rise further, they’ll crack again. Of course, I have to gauge the scent and color, too, but the pop is the first sign. Hear it?”

The beans were ready after the first crack. I was aiming for a light roast with the beans an even light brown color, slightly acidic, so I grasped the brass beetle to open the drop door and allow the finished beans to fall into the cooling tray. We crouched over the tray, taking turns to crank the rotating circular tray, and watched the shiny dark-roast beans cool in the air jets. The air was dense with the scent of warm, smooth coffee.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” I said.

Somers smiled. “You’ve found your niche here, I think.”

He was right. I was making this place my own. Home.

As Somers cranked the tray, I misted the beans with a light, flavored oil. The tray slowed and stopped. We were done. “That smells nutty,” Somers said, standing up and making himself useful by opening another couple of bottles.

“Hazelnut. Mr. Pearse had a book on flavored coffees hidden away, and I thought there might be a market for them.” I took a bottle and glugged half of it down. It was damned hot this close to the roaster, and I crossed the room to the air-circulation control panel and reminded it of its duties with a quick thump. One day, when I could afford it, I’d have to put in a new system. I’d read of one in
The
Times
that used far less coal and aether than the older models. “I’ve got a small roaster coming in a day or two. This one’s too big to experiment with. I can’t afford to waste pounds of beans if I get it wrong.”

I patted the big scarab roaster, to console it for my perfidy. I was a firm believer in propitiating the household gods.

Somers stared into the middle distance. Perhaps he was seeing visions, or getting up at three in the morning to slave over hot ovens had addled his brain. “Hazelnut,” he said. “
Mmmn
.”

The next day he brought in tiny cakes covered in swirls of hazelnut-flavored icing, each one with a scattering of chopped nuts on the top as decoration. They smelled as nutty and as fresh as the coffee and naturally they sold like… well, like hot cakes.

Another success chalked up to Lancaster’s Luck.

O
N
THE
more personal side of life, though, the luck was a little on the sparse side.

While my platonic friendships deepened—Will Somers and I were on first name terms by the end of March—I had no romantic encounters to boast about. I wasn’t monastic, by any means, but I kept such couplings short, spending no more than an hour or two each weekend at one of the usual haunts, at the Fox or at Alex’s. I had no time for more. The coffeehouse kept me intensely busy during the week.

I saw Daniel twice, both times at the Trocadero. He hadn’t recovered his equanimity, and he was stiff and distant when we met. We kept it short, talking only for a few minutes, and it was of the “I hope you’re well” level on my side and, on his part, a hand arrested in its movement to touch the scarab watch on my chain and an “I’m glad you’re wearing it, Rafe.” In fact I wore the scarab watch constantly now. I’d dithered for a little while about returning it, but it amused me to use the scarab watch to time the beans in the scarab coffee roaster. But he stiffened back up when I told him and took his leave quickly. Ah well. There were other elegant fish in that sea. If he thought to make me run after him, he would be disappointed.

In the absence of further attempts to break in, I recovered my confidence about living alone over the coffeehouse. I loved my independence, from Daniel and everyone else. The flat wasn’t fancy or luxurious, but comfortable and cozy. The two main rooms suffered a little from having the roof slope down in the corners, but they were spacious enough for me. I had envied Daniel his bachelor quarters in Argyll Square, but this was better. No landlady here to beware of, to begin with, when I had the time to find a good-looking man I wanted to invite home for the night.

Mind you, the good-looking man would have to be a sound sleeper. The flat had the occasional nocturnal visitor, which left no evidence of its existence but which I heard sometimes scuttling and scurrying in the corners. Sometimes I heard a soft whirring, like a cockchafer’s wings. Usually I was half-asleep, and it was never quite loud enough to bother getting up to deal with it. It puzzled me to work out what was causing this occasional disturbance. There was no sign of mice, and I was pretty sure black beetles didn’t have heads for heights and tended to stay at ground level in nice damp sculleries. Which I didn’t have anyway. I’d made a point of overhauling the storerooms, and everything was dry and snug. Not attractive to beetles.