Scotland Hard (Book 2 in the Tom & Laura Series) (42 page)

“I really did not have to arrange a rescue mission for you, did I?” Trelawney said in a surprised voice.

Tom could not let that go without argument.

“You sent
Cam
and her team after us, sir.
London
would have been destroyed tomorrow if you had not. I’m sorry, sir, that must make no sense at all to you.” Tom knew he was babbling on without explaining anything.

“You would be surprised how much of that makes sense to me, Thomas. We have another train in the station and her majesty’s troops running all over the place.”

“We could do with the train, sir. We need more carriages to get everyone out. But you have to get all your men back onto it. There is going to be a really big explosion here very soon.”

Trelawney nodded as he took in the situation.

“Sergeant Taggart.”

“Sir!” Sergeant Taggart stepped forward smartly and saluted.

“Send your men to the village, station and castle. Get them to give the troops new orders. They must return to the station as quickly as possible. Tell them to bring as many of the civilians with them as they can find.”

Sergeant Taggart turned to give the order and then stopped as a worrying thought occurred to him.

“That will leave you here defenseless, sir.”

“Leave me one of your soldiers then and you can stay as well. That should be more than sufficient to protect us.”

As the sergeant explained to his men where they should go, the clouds of steam finally dissipated from around the engine as Dougal finally found the right lever. He opened the door of the cab and shouted down at Tom.

“The next time I tell you to pull a lever, for God’s sake ignore me!”

53.
      
Evacuation

Giles Summers and Gordon Kemp started walking faster as the approached the castle. Both were getting nervous over the impending explosion and wanted to turn and run to the railway station, abandoning their task. But they were gentlemen first and foremost and a gentleman did not do such things.

“I will go and rouse up, Brennan,” Kemp suggested. “He is much better at organizing things in the castle than we are. You go to the lodge room and see if anybody is still in there. You might also try getting the Black Widow up while you are at it.”

Splitting up made sense to Giles, so while Kemp went upstairs towards the staff sleeping quarters at the top of the castle, Giles heading along the first floor towards the lodge room.

“Madam Hulot wake up!” Giles shouted as he pounded on her door. “You must get up and go to the railway station at once. Your very life depends on it.”

Madam Hulot woke with a start and for a second she thought her husband was calling to her. He would often shout drunkenly at her door, demanding despicable things of her. As if being married to a man gave him any rights over her body.

As she woke up, she recognized the voice as that of Giles Summers. He was a Spellbinder and she despised all the magically talented to some extent. He was babbling on about something and wanted her to get up and go to the railway station. She turned up the wick on her bedside lamp and saw from the clock it was twenty past two in the morning. The man must be crazy as well as drunk.

“Go away. I will go in the morning.”

“You do not understand. You will die if you stay here. I have to warn the other people in the house. Promise me you will go to the station.”

Madam Hulot considered her options and reached a decision. She put on her most frightened voice.

“Oh Mon
Dieu
, I am being a foolish woman. Of course, I will hurry to the station. You must warn the other people while I dress. Go quickly and God speed.”

“Do not spend too long in dressing, Madam Hulot,” Giles pleaded. Then he ran off down the corridor heading towards the lodge room.

Madam Hulot smiled at her own cleverness and sank back gratefully into her bed. It was well known that the British were crazy people. She wondered whatever had possessed her to come to such a heathen place as she fell asleep again.

Gordon Kemp knocked loudly on Brennan Campbell’s door until the man finally answered it. He came to the door wearing a long white nightgown and looked most displeased at being woken up in the middle of the night.

“What is it? Is the castle on fire?” Brennan asked grumpily.

“Listen carefully, Brennan. A device made by Hans Clerks is going to explode in less than two hours and it will destroy all of Glen Russell. The Laird is trapped in the factory and cannot be rescued. His son is preparing his father’s new train to evacuate as many people as we can and everybody must go at once to the railway station.”

Brennan nodded his understanding without showing any surprise. He was told little, but heard a great deal, and he was first and foremost an intelligent man.

“The Laird’s madness has finally over taken him. Where is Blane Grant? He is the man to run such an evacuation.”

“He has been shot and killed by Hans Clerkes. It seems that the Laird attracted the attention of MM3 and they have agents operating in Glen Russell. It is their orders I am following.”

“Aye, I dare say there are MM3 agents here,” Brennan agreed, “Though I doubt the three they sent to see the Laird this afternoon are still among the living.”

“Will you get the staff up and to the station? Don’t try and save anything in the castle, there will not be time.”

“Aye, Mister Kemp, I will see to the staff. Will you get the guests from the guest room?”

Kemp knew Brennan meant Tom and Laura and nodded as it was not necessary.

“Dr Thomas and Mr. Summers already know what is going on,” Kemp said quickly and started to run down the corridor. Then he realized there was something else he had to say. He stopped and faced Brennan. “The maid Rhona, I never knew her surname.”

“Freer.”

“The Laird strangled her tonight. I am sorry.”

“Aye, her parents will be sorry too, as am I. She was a fine lass and will be sorely missed. I will tell her parents when I have to.”

“Thank you, Brennan. And hurry.” Kemp resumed his run to take him out of the castle.

Giles reached the lodge room and burst in on Alan MacTavish and his men, who were in the process of consuming a large keg of ale.

“You must leave the castle and go to the railway station. A bomb is going to destroy Glen Russell.”

Most of the men burst out laughing, but Alan MacTavish sobered up almost instantly.

“And where is the Laird?”

“He is trapped in the room where Hans Clerkes makes his devices. The girl cast a bind and dropped the bomb through the floor as the Laird triggered it. It will explode at four o’clock.”

“Thank you for telling us, Mister Summers. We will be sure to be along soon,” MacTavish said politely. “Away with you now and off to the station.”

Giles smiled with relief and feeling his duty was now complete, ran through the castle to the main gate.

As soon as Giles had left the room, MacTavish turned to his men.

“You know what we have to do?” he asked.

“Aye, that we do. We must go and rescue the Laird,” Jimmy said with a grin.

“Break out the pistols and rifles, Jimmy. We may have to do a wee bit of fighting before this night is over.”

“My lady we have to leave the castle at once,” Brennan told Lady Fenella McBride for the eighth time.

“I told you witchcraft would be the end of us all. This is that little witch’s doing. That fair haired bitch has doomed us all.”

“If we leave now then we will be safe, my lady,” Brennan pointed out once again.

“I am not leaving my own castle in the middle of the night. Tell them Elspeth.”

This was a cruel thing to ask, as Elspeth McPherson suffered from terrible stuttering when made to talk in a crisis. Elspeth tried to speak as she had been ordered.

“I ddddddddo nnnnot th, th think he, her l,l,ladyship wwwww…”

At this point Elspeth acknowledged that whatever the Lady Fenella wanted, Elspeth very much wanted to live. She stepped towards Lady Fenella and punched her in the jaw with a superb roundhouse punch. Lady Fenella dropped to the floor unconscious.

“Will you get someone to ca, carry her?” Elspeth asked in a remarkably clear and determined way.

“It would be a pleasure… my lady,” Brennan said, and he gave Elspeth a deep and formal bow.

Annelise Shultz felt more alive than she had in a long time. Killing innocents was always fun, but it was not particularly challenging. There was no great personal risk in it; the odds of capture could be easily calculated. The most you faced for failure was being imprisoned until your government traded you for a captured English spy.

The fact was, stealthily moving through a factory at night against an unknown number of factions and with a noble cause, made her heart beat faster while sending adrenaline coursing through her veins. The pistol she carried was custom made with a longer barrel for greater accuracy. She practiced every day and she was an excellent shot. Hans Clerkes did not know it, but his days were about to come to an end for the wellbeing of the Hungarian Empire.

Annelise knew the factory layout as she had been shown around it by Lord McBride. She walked down the track alongside the passageway that Trelawney would use a few minutes later, but she did not enter the shed with the train.

She was aware of Lord McBride’s schedule and believed that the dantium would still be being cast into balls. In which case, Hans Clerkes would be supervising their production, either in the smelting room or in his device construction room. The fastest way to those facilities was via the factory shed that stood to the left of the one holding the train. She broke the lock on its door and made her way deeper into the factory complex.

“They are not insane,” Clerkes said desperately to the skeptical factory workers, “The whole valley will be destroyed by my bomb in less than two hours. You must go to the railway station and get on the train at once.”

“I see that these people have you tied up Mister Clerkes,” Stanley Fothergill, chief supervisor for the dantium steam engines said respectfully. “Under those circumstances, how can we believe anything you say?”

“When you get to the Railway Station you will find Dougal McBride driving the steam engine. Ask him if you do not believe us, but go,” Daisy pleaded.

“My wife and two kids are back in the village,” Rory McPherson broke in. “I shall have to go and get them.”

“We have a team in the village waking everybody up and sending them to the station. Just go to the station and you will find them there.”

Annelise Shultz listened carefully to the conversation from the walkway above their heads. The news that one of the bombs had been triggered and was due to explode in two hours was a bonus. It would destroy the factory and end the British capacity to produce more dantium for years. She would have to make sure she was on the first train out, but before that, she had to take care of a little business.

“All this talk of giant bombs is absurd,”
Stanley
said with a sigh. “If we stop work now, my men and I will lose the Christmas bonus. I am afraid I require a little more proof than just the word of a foreigner and a couple of young people I do not even….”

Stanley
’s speech was cut short by the loud report of a pistol discharging at short range. The blast echoed off the factory walls.

“Up there!”
Arnold
shouted as he took cover. He had seen the plume of gun smoke rising from the walkway above. He tried to drag Clerkes with him, but Clerkes seemed immovable. When he looked at the man, he saw why. Clerkes had a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead and where the back of his head had been, there was only empty space. Clerkes’ corpse dropped to the floor in the manner of a felled tree, revealing the missing back of his head for everyone to see.

The only sound in the building was that of someone running away. Stanley Fothergill raised his head from behind a large piece of machinery and looked at Clerkes’ body dispassionately.

“I reckon that will do me for proof. To the railway station, lads, and let’s be sharp about it.”

The men were gone by the time that
Cam
managed to extricate herself from the equipment she had dived under.

“It is clear that someone wanted Mister Clerkes dead,” she said to
Arnold
. “I wonder who?”

At about the same time that Annelise Shultz dispatched Hans Clerks, Karl Wagner and his team arrived at the room where Clerkes built his devices.

“Who the hell are you,” Lord McBride shouted from his entombment in the floor.

Karl swung his pistol towards Lord McBride, but put it up when he saw that the man was trapped.

“Ignore him,” he told his men, speaking in German, “He is the Lord here, but he has obviously had a significant mishap. We have no orders to either free him or kill him. Let us set our charges and go.”

The British Army had been happy to give Karl explosives when he asked. He and his men had four small barrels of gunpowder between them along with long lengths of fuse wire. There was more than enough explosive to destroy the three partially constructed devices that Karl could see.

Karl considered himself to be an artist. The barrels of gunpowder were carefully hidden from view and their fuse wires strung where they could not be seen. Karl did not want anybody wandering in and pulling out the fuses once they were gone. Lord McBride could not see what they were doing and had gone back to trying to free himself. Karl lit the four fuses and blew out his match.

“Schnell,” he ordered his men.

“And where would you gentlemen be going?” Alan MacTavish enquired from the far side of the room.

Karl pulled his pistol and shot at MacTavish. MacTavish held his own pistol raised and his men held their rifles at the ready. Everyone on MacTavish’s side fired at once. When the gun smoke cleared, all the Hungarians in the room were dead.”