The Mystery Woman (26 page)

T
he first wave of rumors rippled through the Red Dog Tavern shortly after midnight. Joshua was alone in a booth at the back. He was dressed like the other patrons, in the rough clothes and heavy boots typical of a man who made his living in dark and dangerous ways. The scar had proven to be an asset in places like the Red Dog and the other establishments he had visited that evening.

He caught some of the low voices in the next booth and was certain he heard Weaver’s name but he could not hear the details. The crime lord’s name was always spoken in a whisper.

He had made the rounds of the gaming hells and taverns near the docks, setting the stage for the trap. There was some gossip about the killer called the Bone Man, but no hard facts. No one seemed to know the identity of his current employer, but there was speculation that he was working for an up-and-coming crime lord who intended to challenge Weaver and the others in the old guard who controlled the criminal underworld.

When the barmaid, an attractive, hard-eyed blonde, approached with his ale, Joshua took out a few extra coins and set them on the table. The woman glanced at the money, interested but wary.

“What do I have to do to earn that much money?” she asked.

“Tell me the news about Weaver.”

She glanced around uneasily and then leaned down to set the ale on the table. She lowered her voice. “No one knows for certain yet but there is word on the street that he’s dead.”

Joshua went cold. “Someone killed him?”

“No, that’s the odd part. They’re saying his heart failed him.”

Joshua thought about what Beatrice had said that afternoon.
He is dying.

“Do the rumors say when he died?” Joshua asked.

“It’s very strange. According to the story, he went out to meet someone earlier in the day. When he returned to his office his footman opened the door to his carriage and found him slumped over, dead as you please. Word is his enforcers kept it quiet as long as possible so that they could make one last visit to all of his businesses tonight to collect their protection fees.”

“Which the enforcers will now keep for themselves.” Joshua pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his cane.

He had wasted an entire evening. Weaver had not lived long enough to set the trap.

“What about your ale, sir?” the barmaid called.

Joshua did not respond. He made his way through the crowded room, desperate to get to the door. His hand was a fist around the hilt of the cane. He had to fight the frustration and cold anger that spilled through him. He was vaguely aware that people scrambled to move out of his path but he paid no attention, intent only on getting outside.

He knew that Lancing’s tentacles were closing around Beatrice at that very moment. So much time lost.

Hazelton will protect her,
he thought. But even as he tried to reassure himself, he knew that he could no longer be certain of anything. He had been wrong too often in this case, and Beatrice would pay the price.

He finally made it outside onto the street. The chilly night air and the stench of the river helped him focus. He forced himself to control his breathing, slowing it down, reining in his emotions. He could not think clearly when his brain was consumed by thoughts conjured up by his feverish imagination.

There was no point dwelling on the hours that had been lost. His original strategy lay in ruins. He had to craft a new one immediately or there was no hope. Everything inside him was shouting that time had at last truly run out.

He made his way down the street, heading toward the corner where Henry waited with the carriage. The soft thud of his cane and the echo of the hitch in his stride were the loudest sounds in the night.

He was so intent on formulating a new plan that he did not sense the presence of the killer until the skull-faced man lunged toward him from the alley.

It should have been a killing blow—it would have been a killing blow—but at the last instant he heard the assassin’s sharp intake of breath.

Old habits and long training took over. Instinctively, Joshua whirled to confront the attacker. The action sent him spinning off balance. His bad leg gave way beneath him and he tumbled to the ground—and accidentally saved his own life in the process.

The sudden change in the position of his intended victim threw the assassin off his mark. Carried forward by his own momentum, he stumbled a few steps past Joshua, caught himself and swung around to make another attempt.

Joshua struggled to get to his knees. He realized he was still gripping the hilt of his cane. He swung the stick in a slashing arc to fend off the killer.

The Bone Man was ready for the move. He lashed out with one booted foot and connected with the cane.

The bone-jarring blow sent the steel-and-ebony stick flying from Joshua’s hand. It clattered on the pavement.

The killer glided forward in a low rush. His eyes were pools of empty night. The blade in his hand glittered darkly in the light of the nearby gas lamp.

He did not notice the small throwing knife that Joshua had drawn from the cane until the blade sank straight into his throat.

He grunted and stumbled to a halt. Blood boiled in his mouth. He looked at Joshua in disbelief.

He sank to his knees, toppled onto his side and collapsed faceup.

An acute silence filled the street. Joshua gathered himself and got to his feet. He limped to where the cane lay on the paving stones. Stooping low, he picked up the stick.

He made his way to the body and used the cane to send the Bone Man’s blade skidding away from the limp hand. There was no such thing as too many precautions.

Bracing himself with the cane, he leaned down and pulled the small throwing knife from the dead man’s throat. He wiped the blade clean on the Bone Man’s clothes and slid the weapon back into the top of the cane.

He went toward the small, fast carriage on the corner, thinking about one of the maxims he had learned from Victor.
Everyone has a blind spot.

“You were mine, Victor.”

N
elson was in his small study, a glass of brandy on the table beside him. He had long ago lost interest in the book he had been reading and had moved on to his favorite subject: the contemplation of his boring future. The small taste of the investigation business that he had gotten recently had whetted his appetite. It was as if he had found a calling. But he was not fool enough to believe that Josh would ask him to assist in that sort of thing in the future. His uncle had retired, after all.

He was considering a visit to the American West, where, according to the press, adventure awaited, when the clang of the door knocker shattered the late-night silence of the house.

He debated whether to answer the summons. The visitor would be one of his friends who would be thoroughly drunk by now and wanting companionship for a trip into the more dangerous neighborhoods. For the first time in months the prospect of an evening of heavy drinking and gaming hells did not seem to be the answer.

The knock sounded again, louder this time. He groaned and got to his feet. He went down the hall and opened the front door.

“You’re on your own tonight,” he said. “I’m not in the mood—” He broke off when he saw Joshua on the step.

The sight of his uncle rendered him speechless for a few seconds. There was a terrible light in Joshua’s eyes. Nelson wondered if he was burning with fever. But that did not explain the dark energy that seemed to emanate from him. It was as if Joshua had just returned from a trip to hell and expected to make a return visit quite soon.

“Uncle Josh.” Nelson swallowed hard. “Are you all right?”

“He’s got her,” Joshua said. “It’s my fault. I violated the first rule in an investigation. I trusted someone connected to it.”

“Hang on, are you talking about Miss Lockwood? Who has her?”

“Hazelton. He was working with Lancing all along. They’re going to attempt to revive Emma and they believe they need Beatrice to do it.”

“Bloody hell. They’ve both gone mad, then?”

“It’s the only explanation,” Joshua said. “I need your help.”

“Yes, of course, but how do you know that Victor is in league with Lancing?”

“Get your pistol and come with me. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”

It took only a moment to retrieve his pistol from the desk in his study. Nelson grabbed it and raced back down the hall. He climbed up into the small cab and sat down beside Joshua. He was aware of a fire in his own blood now. Excitement, resolve and a sense of purpose energized him as nothing else ever had. He wasn’t going out on another pointless round of drinking and gambling tonight. He was going to do something important. He was going to help rescue a lady.

Henry cracked his whip. The horse leaped forward.

“First, tell me how you learned that Hazelton is involved in this affair,” Nelson said.

“He sent the assassin after me tonight,” Joshua said. “He assumed that if I survived, I would credit my own plan and never suspect him. He had no way of knowing that Weaver did not live long enough to help me bait the trap. Hazelton was the only other person except Beatrice who knew that I would be at the Red Dog tonight. He is the only one who could have sent word to the Bone Man.”

“He brought in a foreigner to do his killing and kidnapping—someone he knew from his years as Mr. Smith—because he knew that if he used a man from the London underworld, one of your acquaintances in the criminal class who owes you a favor would either warn you or take care of the problem himself.”

“Right,” Joshua said. “Victor wanted me out of the way but he did not want to take the risk of trying to kill me. If he failed, there would be no hope of reviving Emma.”

“He’s the one who trained you,” Nelson said. “He still respects your ability, in spite of your injuries.”

“So it seems. But in the end, it didn’t matter if I lived or died tonight. All he cared about was distracting me long enough to allow him to snatch Beatrice.”

“But we are going to find her, aren’t we?” Nelson said.

“Yes. But first we will stop at my town house for some equipment that I put into storage a year ago.”

“Uncle Josh, I don’t mean to be pessimistic about our prospects of success, but you can’t possibly know where Victor took Miss Lockwood. How are we going to find her?”

“We look for her in the right place.”

S
he awoke to the essence of death and the smell of strong chemicals. For a moment she lay still, afraid to move, afraid to open her eyes, fearful of what she might see.

“I think our guest is awake.”

The masculine voice was unfamiliar but there was no mistaking the whisper of unwholesome excitement that was woven through it like a dark thread.

“Yes, she is,” Victor said. “The least we can do is offer her a stimulating cup of strong tea to help her overcome the effects of the drug.”

She realized that she was lying on a cot. A strange lethargy weighed heavily on her senses. She felt vaguely nauseous. A hazy scene fluttered through her head like an image from a dream. She caught a glimpse of Mrs. Flint and Mrs. Marsh sprawled, unconscious, on the floor of their front hall. She remembered the overpowering smell of the chloroform.

Instinctively she pulled hard on her senses, struggling to overcome the dazed ennui that held her in its grip.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at the night sky through a glass-and-steel dome. An icy white moon, partially obscured by clouds, shone down. The dome was modern in design as were the gas lamps that illuminated the chamber, but the stone walls around her were very old.

A figure appeared between her and the view of the night sky. She had never met him but she knew it could only be one man.

“Clement Lancing,” she said. She had a hard time getting his name out. She knew she sounded half asleep or perhaps slightly inebriated.

“Your tea, Miss Lockwood,” Clement said. “You have given us a great deal of difficulty. We were forced to go to extreme lengths to find you, but you, are here at last and in time. That is all that matters.”

Clement Lancing was a striking figure of a man—tall, broad-shouldered and endowed with an athletic physique. His dark brown hair was unfashionably long, as if he had not bothered to go to his barber in many months. He wore it brushed straight back from a sharply defined widow’s peak. The style framed a high forehead, aristocratic nose and piercing gray eyes.

“How odd,” she whispered in her drug-thickened voice. “You don’t look mad.”

She had expected the remark to send him into a rage. Instead, he startled her with a sad, knowing smile.

“Is that what Gage told you?” he asked. “That I was insane? Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He is the madman in this affair. He murdered my beautiful Emma.”

“Rubbish. You’re the one who killed her.”

Clement’s eyes flared with an unholy light. “That is a lie.”

“Enough, both of you,” Victor snapped. “We do not have much time. We must conclude this business tonight.”

Beatrice sat up cautiously and eased her legs over the side of the cot. Instinctively she searched for the source of the strong chemical odor and saw the massive sarcophagus on the far side of the chamber. She knew at once that the smell was emanating from it. An icy thrill of horror spiked through her. Death leaked from the ancient quartz box. She could feel it all the way across the room.

A tall statue of Anubis with a human body and the head of a jackal stood next to the sarcophagus. A length of gold wire was wrapped around the god’s throat. The obsidian eyes glittered in the glary light. She could sense the paranormal energy infused into the statue.

With the horrible exception of the ancient burial box and the statue, the rest of the chamber was unsettlingly similar to Mrs. Marsh’s basement laboratory. Workbenches covered with an assortment of chemical apparatuses were arranged around the room. The shelves set against the walls were lined with boxes and jars that she knew very likely contained chemicals.

She pulled hard on her talent and some of her unnatural lethargy receded. The skirts of her gown were crushed and someone had removed her cloak, but she was relieved to note that at least she was still fully dressed. When she looked down she saw that her chatelaine with the small vial containing Mrs. Marsh’s special smelling salts was missing.

Her talent was flaring and sparking but she could see the hot footprints that covered the floor of the chamber.

She looked at Clement. “You may like to think yourself the sane one in this affair, but it is clear from your psychical prints that you are quite mad.”

Another flash of strange fire lit Clement’s eyes. But he managed to suppress it to some degree.

It was Victor who responded to her statement.

“I told you, the line between genius and madness can be difficult to detect,” he said quietly. “Believe me, Miss Lockwood, I have been attempting to find it for the past year. In the end, it seems, one must go on faith alone.”

Clement held out a mug. “Have some tea. It will restore your nerves, Miss Lockwood.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “You will understand when I tell you that I must assume that any tea brewed by you would be poisoned.” She looked at the sarcophagus. “Like everything else in this place.”

“You are wrong, Miss Lockwood,” Clement said. “There is no poison here. Quite the contrary, what you are going to witness is a triumph of the science of chemistry. Actually, you will be more than a witness to history tonight. You will make a great contribution.”

She looked around the room. “Joshua was right. He said that if you were still alive, you would be found in a laboratory.”

“Gage knows me well,” Clement said. “It has not been easy hiding from him for the past year. I was fortunate in that he chose to become a recluse on his estates after he murdered my beloved, but in a very real sense, I, too, have been in prison because I dared not leave this place. But that is all finished. What matters is that I have you here in my laboratory at last. I have been searching for you for months.”

“Why me?” Beatrice asked.

“Because only a woman with genuine paranormal talent can release the energy in the Anubis figure,” Clement said.

“There are thousands of paranormal practitioners in London.”

“But the vast majority are frauds,” Clement said. “I require a true talent.”

“How did you identify me as the one you wanted?” she asked.

“That was Victor’s doing,” Clement said.

Victor touched the top of the sarcophagus with a reverent hand. “We were getting desperate. I knew I had to take some risks. I used Hannah Trafford to locate you.”

“I don’t understand,” Beatrice said.

“Hannah has always considered herself a student of the paranormal,” Victor said. “Josh never believed in that sort of thing so he has always dismissed his sister’s interests. I, on the other hand, am well aware that the paranormal exists. I have some psychical talent myself.”

“A gift for strategy, perhaps?” she asked coldly.

Victor inclined his head. “Indeed. Because of my long and close association with Josh, I knew a great deal about his family. During my years as Mr. Smith I made it my business to learn as much as possible about my agents’ personal lives.”

“In other words, you spied on your spies.”

“Of course. Hannah is something of an expert on the subject of the paranormal, although I’m not sure she knows that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a touch of talent herself. After she attended a few of Fleming’s seminars at the Academy of the Occult and booked some appointments with you, she informed the members of her little society of researchers that you were the genuine article, a woman endowed with true psychical ability.”

“You hired the Bone Man to kidnap me,” Beatrice said. “Why in heaven’s name did you order him to murder Roland Fleming?”

“Fleming’s death was regrettable but I had no choice. I knew that if you simply disappeared, Fleming would go to the police and demand an investigation.”

Beatrice pushed herself to her feet. “So you told the Bone Man to silence him.”

“But you slipped away that night,” Victor said. “At first I did not think it would be difficult to find you, but eventually I realized that you had literally vanished. It was . . . astonishing, to tell you the truth.”

“The Bone Man found Roland’s stash of blackmail material that night, didn’t he?” Beatrice said.

“Yes. He brought it to me. I had no interest in the items at the start of the affair but later, when I realized I could not find you, I took the biggest risk of all.”

“You blackmailed Hannah and made it appear that I was the extortionist. You knew that would draw Joshua into the hunt.”

Victor sighed. “By that time I was quite desperate. I feared that I might never find you.”

“Was there anything in Roland’s collection of extortion material that involved Hannah?”

“No. But Hannah and Josh had no way of knowing that.”

“You knew about the man who had died in Hannah’s kitchen,” Beatrice said. “How did you discover that?”

“Josh kept that a secret, even from me, the one person he trusted outside the family. But as I said, I made it a practice to keep an eye on my agents. There was no way I could get a spy into Josh’s house, but Hannah’s housekeeper was my unwitting informant. She was there that night and afterward badly shaken. She confided in her sister, who had been on my payroll since soon after I began to train Josh. I had no particular interest in the death at the time.”

“But when you realized you had to send Joshua after me, you knew you possessed the perfect bait,” Beatrice said. “Blackmailing Hannah yourself, however, would have been far too dangerous.”

“It would have drawn Josh straight to me,” Victor said. “I required a distraction that would satisfy him.”

“You found a cheap, somewhat inept criminal who was more than happy to try to extort money from some wealthy people. You faked a couple of pages from a nonexistent diary hinting at the death in Hannah’s kitchen.”

“The fool required considerable guidance, but in the end my strategy worked,” Victor said.

“You ordered the Bone Man to kill your handpicked blackmailer at Alverstoke Hall.”

“I couldn’t allow the extortionist to live after he had served his purpose,” Victor said. “He knew too much, you see. There was always the chance that, even though I had been careful to keep my identity a secret from the blackmailer, Josh might be able to find me by following the trail.”

“You do realize that Joshua will even now be searching for me,” Beatrice said.

“Assuming he survives the encounter with the Bone Man,” Victor said. “But by then it will be finished. My daughter will have been awakened.”

“You cannot run far enough to escape Joshua, you must know that.”

“I do not intend to run.” Victor looked down at the sarcophagus. “All I care about is Emma.”

Clement snorted. “I assure you, Gage will not survive the next twenty-four hours. Even if he escapes the Bone Man’s knife, he will die in this house when he comes looking for you.”

“You have tried to kill him before and failed,” Beatrice said. “What makes you think you will succeed this time?”

Clement’s eyes heated with a savage madness. “Things were not entirely under our control on previous occasions. But if Josh comes looking for you again, he will be on my ground.”

She glanced around the room again. “You refer to this chamber?”

“The stairs and hallway that lead to this laboratory are set with a number of traps. Each contains a canister of my nightmare-inducing vapor. Only Victor and I know the safe route to this room. Anyone else who attempts to climb the staircase will die a slow and terrible death.”

“Why don’t you tell me precisely what it is you expect me to do for you?” she said.

“Yes,” Victor said, his tone sharpening. “It is time.”

“Come with me, Miss Lockwood,” Clement said.

He turned and led the way across the chamber to the sarcophagus. She followed him slowly, struggling to suppress her senses. But no matter how she tried to lower her talent she could not entirely escape the traces of decay and death that permeated the atmosphere around the ancient coffin.

Clement walked around the sarcophagus and faced her from the opposite side.

“Behold my beloved,” he said. “Tonight you will awaken her.”

Beatrice had tried to prepare herself for what she would see when they pushed the lid of the sarcophagus aside. She dreaded the sight but she reminded herself it would not be the first dead body she had viewed.

She was wholly unprepared to discover that the lid of the sarcophagus was fitted with a large panel of transparent crystal. Beneath the clear plate the body of a perfectly preserved woman floated gently in a clear liquid. She was dressed in a prim white nightgown. The hem of the garment was secured to her ankles to keep it from floating up above her knees. Her dark hair drifted around her beautiful face. Her eyes were closed.

Beatrice stopped a short distance away and fought to breathe.

“Dear heaven,” she whispered. “This is Emma.”

“Yes,” Victor said. “She is in a very deep sleep. You see now why I have gone to such lengths to revive her.”

Clement looked down at the dead woman. “Beautiful, is she not?”

Beatrice swallowed hard, trying to suppress the queasy sensation in her stomach. It was not just Emma’s beauty that had been so artfully preserved. The bruises around her throat were as vivid as if she had been strangled yesterday.