A Dangerous Liaison With Detective Lewis (39 page)

“I believe ye’ll find the keys in there—across the way.”

Rafe jerked up and ran toward the familiar voice. He passed a number of small chambers that looked very much like jail cells. Only one room remained closed. “Professor Minnow? Good God, you are a sight.” Through a small pass-through opening in the door, Rafe could plainly see the man had been bashed about the head. “Are you all right?”

“I’d be feelin’ a mite better with a pint in hand and a few chops in my belly,” the big Scot groused.

Rafe nodded. “Hold on.” He found a ring of keys and let the big man out of his cage. Minnow gave him a hug that lifted him off the ground and nearly crushed the air from his lungs. “Good to see you, Detective—is Fanny with ye?”

Rafe shook his head. “Everyone but Fanny, I’m afraid.”

Minnow nodded. “Thought as much—dear girl. Ah, you’d be proud of her, Detective. And the wee laddie?”

“Delivered right to Scotland Yard’s door.”

“’Twas Fanny’s doin’. She made a bargain with Mallory. She’s been playin’ him for over a day now, but I dinna know how long she’ll last.”

The very idea of Fanny in that monster’s hands was unthinkable. Until this moment he’d pushed the most fearful imaginings into the darkest corner of his mind. They were the kinds of thoughts a man could not let enter his head. They clouded his reasoning and interfered with his single-minded aim, which was to find her alive and take her home to Lochree.

With a nod toward Finn, Minnow raised the wild
hairs of both brows. “Well, now, if it isn’t Mr. Curzon!”

Rafe shook his head. “Mr. Curzon actually turns out to be a Mr. Gunn.”

“Long story.” Finn passed a handgun over to Minnow.

Archie and the professor helped them drag Mallory’s guards into cells and lock them up. Clapping his hands, Rafe introduced Archie. “Professor Minnow, meet Archibald Bruce. Archie heads up the crime laboratory for the Yard.”

The young director pumped Minnow’s hand. “You’re the inventor of the submersible! My word, you have a brilliant machine there, Professor Minnow.”

“The
Horatio
’s here in London?”

Rafe grinned. “How do you think we got here? Might have taken us days to find the land route—our best bet was to find the old pirate’s cove by taking the sub under the St. Katharine Docks.”

Minnow stared and Rafe grinned. The large man’s eyebrows never left their upward position. “The submariner’s here? In this cavern?”

“Come along.” Rafe escorted the professor down the passageway to the rickety stairs above the grotto. “Thar be your pride and joy, Captain Minnow.” The slender shape of the
Horatio
lay placidly in the black, glistening water of the cove.

Rafe winked at the professor. “Why don’t you and Archie take the sub out of here? Finn and I are going to make our way over to the Hall of Machines in the Polytechnic.” Out of habit Rafe reached for his watch, but
remembered that it was at the bottom of the Thames, south of Henley. “Blast. Anyone have the time?”

Finn retrieved his timepiece. “Not quite four. We have a few hours until the opening.”

Minnow started down the stairs and turned back. “I believe Greyville-Nugent’s entry is the first one up for demonstration. As ye well suspected days ago, Mallory’s blokes have got a scheme up their sleeve. We’ve not much time, lads—do ye have something in mind?”

Rafe grinned with relief as he took stock of the men around him. This big-hearted bull of a Scot, Finn, and Archie; Melville, Zeno, Flynn—even the Yard dog. Every last one of them would lay down his life to help rescue Fanny and arrest Mallory. Rafe realized in that moment that
he
was the one with the formidable army on his side.

Chapter Thirty-five

“W
hat’s happening to him?” Fanny stepped away from the tortured body thrashing about on the floor of the hall. Just seconds ago, Mallory was fine, signaling orders quietly to his men—calm, controlled, and fully in charge. Then quite suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground.

“Step aside, miss.” The dwarf removed a kind of stubby wooden spoon from his pocket and thrust it between Mallory’s clenched teeth. Foam drooled from the side of his mouth. “Havin’ one of his fits.” The small man cradled his master’s head in his lap.

She nodded numbly. Her gaze ran up a wall to the barrel-vaulted ceiling and down again. The board of this year’s competition had leased the Polytechnic’s great hall and its fantastical Hall of Machines, which hailed back to the birth of the steam age. The original exhibit had been painstakingly re-created, including its most famous demonstration of all, the underwater diving bell.

Mallory’s men had overpowered the guards inside
the exhibit. It was as though his men knew every niche and corner of the hall. Fanny bit her lip. Well planned, and well executed? She certainly hoped not. Earlier this evening, she had watched them bind and gag two kidnapped inventors. They packed the men inside the diving bell, replete with curtained windows, skylights, and ornate brass fittings. A crane at one end of the tank sputtered to life and lifted the bell high into the air. The elegant copper-clad underwater observation bell resembled a giant Christmas tree ornament hung above a great tank of water.

Fanny had never seen the apparatus, but she remembered Father talking about it. As a young man he had participated in the demonstration. Three volunteers would be placed inside the bell. The long, clawlike armature of the steam-driven crane would pick up and lower the diving bell into the water.

Fanny noted the walkway around the glass tank enclosure so visitors might watch passengers converse with one another and wave to onlookers. Absently, she backed up against a display platform and sat down. There were two men inside a diving bell that held three passengers. She could only assume everyone was accounted for but her. She tried not to speculate on Mallory’s plans for the prestigious contest. A crane failure and they would all slowly suffocate from lack of oxygen. Or perhaps they planned a deliberate leak and drowning?

Still, if either of those scenarios were the case, why wasn’t she bound and gagged and up there with the others? Fanny returned to the man writhing on the floor.
His thrashing about had eased, though he still appeared dazed and incoherent.

Several of his men approached her. All business, they were, except for the man in front, whose eyes leered. “We’ve come for the lady. We’ll be wanting to bind her—” The gruff man’s lip curled to reveal uneven teeth blackened by tobacco. Fanny shrank from the men looming over her.

“Leave her be.” Mallory was up on his elbows. “I have other plans for Miss Greyville-Nugent.”

The small but sturdy minion helped Mallory to his feet. “Tell the men to finish up quickly and make themselves scarce. They know their posts.” He dusted off his coat. “Everything will commence on my signal, shortly after the Exposition opens.”

Mallory escorted her upstairs, past a balcony viewing area, and through the Polytechnic’s gymnasium. Inside a small room at the end of the exercise room, he sat in a chair behind a simple desk and placed his head in his hands. “I have discovered that your father’s machine will be rolled into the hall after the opening remarks.” He rubbed his temples. “I will ask you one last time, tell me the nature of the Greyville-Nugent entry.”

Fanny’s brows crashed together. “I swear I do not know it. Father wished to keep his latest invention a secret, a surprise of sorts, he said, until the unveiling.” Fanny turned away from the infuriating man, who was most certainly mad. “If it’s not a new thresher, you’ll just have to think of some other way to grind me up.”

Mallory exhaled impatiently. It was all too clear he was
uncomfortable with the extemporaneous quality of her demise. “Are you always like this? Provoking and infuriating?”

Now it was her turn to stare. “Are you always angry and vengeful?”

He rolled his head back onto his shoulders. “I’m tired.” The sputtering gas lamp overhead threw the room into flickering light and shadow. “It is often quite impossible to think beyond the pain.”

She was now quite sure Mallory’s head injury had affected his brain irreparably. His eyes flashed red momentarily, then resolved into darker pools of despair. “Ah, Fanny. Pretend for the next few hours that I am not a monster.”

RAFE TOOK THE broad steps of the Royal Polytechnic Institution two at a time. He was to enter the concourse from Regent Street while Finn and the professor came in through the square. Melville and a number of plain-clothes operatives were already inside. At the entrance, banners trumpeted London’s
Tenth Annual Industrial Exposition
. He followed the concourse past several guards and entered the Hall of Machines.

He was late. He and Finn had made the mistake of stopping by the safe house on Cavendish Square, across from the Polytechnic. They’d been delayed an interminable amount of time, interviewing distraught industrialists and inventor types. Two scions of industry had broken rank and left the premises last night—off to a pub or brothel—and the men had never returned.

There were three sapphire pins left to award. Two inventors and one industrialist suffragette was all Mallory needed. At the break of dawn, Rafe sent officers into the exposition hall. They had returned to report nothing out of order. Rafe rushed past stalls selling mementos and scientific toys and headed inside. Contest demonstrations were scheduled to begin on the hour.

The cavernous hall was already filled with spectators, there to behold all the miracles of the modern industrialized world. For once, Scotland Yard had managed to keep the case against Mallory out of the press, but it was a dangerous gambit. If any onlookers were seriously injured, they would pay a price for not informing the public.

He was greeted by a display of machinery in full, topsy-turvy spin. Mechanical arms pumped, pneumatic devices puffed up and down, and all of them whirred into action at once. Visitors ventured cautiously through the hall to stare in fascination as these great engines revolved and hissed and quivered.

He passed a theater where something called a physioscope magnified the human face to a gigantic size. A water tank made of glass panels stood at the end of the hall with a surface area, according to signage, of over seven hundred feet. Rafe squinted at the diving bell dangling above the pond. Pivoting slowly, he inspected the upper gallery, crowded with visitors waiting for the first demonstration.

Rafe spotted Finn moving through the crowd and recognized several men from the Yard stationed about.
Melville had planted himself halfway up a staircase that led to the upper viewing area.

The speaker, one of several gentleman seated on the dais, stood up and welcomed the public. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are gratified to be here today in the Royal Polytechnic’s Hall of Machines. On July 18, 1837—fifty years ago this day—the Institute opened its doors to promote . . .”

Rafe wove a path over to the stairs and came up beside Melville. Neither man acknowledged the other, but continued to scan the hall. “Quite the spectacle,” Rafe said.

Melville grunted. “Showmanship appears to be an integral part of the business of invention.”

The speaker droned on: “. . . dedicated to the elevation of whatever may be found to be superior, in the scientific arts and manufactures, and to the display of these models of invention and other works of interest for public exhibition.”

Rafe returned to the refurbished diving bell dangling from the crane arm. “I missed the diving bell as a lad—did it always begin in the rafters? I suppose passengers must have entered from the balcony above?”

Melville scratched an eyebrow. “If memory serves, the demonstration began lower, on a stage, where the volunteers would climb aboard . . .” Melville’s eyes darted about nervously. “Good God, Rafe—you don’t suppose—?”

“Hold on.” Rafe nodded to the speaker.

“. . . And without further delay, I have the honor to
present our first entry—just arrived this moment. Gentlemen, roll on the device.”

A flat drayage cart was pushed onstage. The speaker adjusted his spectacles and read from a card. “From Greyville-Nugent Enterprises. Step back, gentlemen, this one is for the ladies.” The brawny boys beside the cart rolled back a curtain. “Transform the drudgery of washday with an electric-powered washing machine.”

A wave of titters and applause, oohs and ahs emanated from the crowd as men and women alike pushed forward to watch a demonstration. An attractive young lady stood beside the automatic laundering device and began to drop clothes into a large, rotating drum. “Saves time, labor, nerves, clothes, and strength.”

A chortle of laughter drifted down from a viewing gallery above the dais. It started out as a giggle and ended in quite a loud belly laugh. “That’s Fanny. I’d know her laugh anywhere.” Rafe searched the crush of gawkers up on the balcony. And it was so like her—in the throes of an abduction and having a damn chuckle over her father’s surprise household invention.

“Upstairs, Rafe—I shall collect Mr. Gunn and go after that crane operator.” Melville stepped down and Rafe climbed to the upper tier. He needed to get to the opposite side of the balcony. The hall was long and narrow with a balcony that ran down each side and curved around the short ends. Rafe fought his way around the end loop and caught sight of both Fanny and Mallory.