The Future Door (15 page)

“Prime minister,” Rupert finished for her. “We know already.”

Griffin noticed how terrified Charlotte Pepper looked. It was so different from the calm and self-assured woman they'd met on Baker Street. Something had definitely changed about her since he'd last seen her. And Griffin had a hunch that her motives in stealing his uncle's time machine might have been a little different from what he'd read in the note she'd left behind.

“And why should we trust you?” Rupert said with a sneer. “It seems to me that you've done nothing but lie since the moment we met.”

“You're right,” she said. “If I were in your shoes, I would probably say the same.” She gazed at them intently, as if willing them to believe what she was about to say. “But please believe me now. I never would have stolen your time machine if my sister's life were not at stake.”

Griffin was taken aback. “What happened to your sister?” he asked.

“Six months ago my parents inherited a ranch in America— California, to be exact. They left England, and I was to look after Mary and then join them after a few weeks.”

Charlotte sighed. “But then we were robbed. Someone broke into our flat and stole the steamship tickets and all of our money. We've been trying to contact our parents but haven't been able to reach them.”

Griffin saw tears spring into Miss Pepper's eyes. “We had to find work. We've been trying to save as much as we could, but it's been slow. I've always been good with numbers and found employment with an accountant. Mary took a job working for Sherlock Holmes. She became one of his ‘irregulars,' children in his employ who often acted as his eyes and ears around London. They could often go places where a famous detective couldn't.”

She wiped her eyes and composed herself. “Mary was one of his best. She's a tough girl . . . even the boys were afraid to pick a fight with her. She's always been kind of a tomboy, but working the streets made her even tougher. She really misses our parents but she doesn't show it by crying. Ever since they left, her reckless spirit has gotten worse. It's made her take on assignments that were too dangerous for her.”

“What happened?” Griffin asked.

Miss Pepper took a deep breath. “She ran afoul of the Black Widows, a deadly society of female assassins that Professor Moriarty sometimes hires to do work for him.”

“Ah,” said Griffin. “So that's where the spider rings fit into all this.”

“Precisely,” Charlotte said. “Every member wears the ring on her left hand, like a wedding band.” She indicated her finger with the glittering ring. “It's largely symbolic, but all of the women in the group have lost their husbands in strange, unexplained circumstances.”

Griffin couldn't help wondering if the husbands had been murdered by their assassin wives. He suppressed a shudder. Was Charlotte one of them? And if so, had she once been married?

His dark thoughts were interrupted as Charlotte continued. “We had nearly saved enough money for steamship tickets when Mary thought that she'd found the Widows' London hideout. She told me that she was going to go back one more time to confirm it and to draw a map.”

Charlotte wrung her hands. “Mary felt that Mr. Holmes would have appreciated, and perhaps paid a little extra, for her diligence. We both hoped that his payment for the information would give us the last bit we needed to get to America.

But when she didn't return, I assumed the worst . . . The Black Widows must have captured her.”

“But you're obviously one of them!” Snodgrass interrupted.

“You've got one of the rings yourself!” He turned to Griffin.

The boy saw that his uncle's face was red and blotchy with suppressed anger. “Come along, nephew. This woman cannot be trusted. We can find the machine without her help.”

Rupert turned to leave, but Griffin stayed behind. He wanted to hear the rest of her story. He could tell that Charlotte Pepper wasn't lying. He'd studied faces long enough to notice the usual habits that went along with deception and could observe none of them as she told them her story.

“Please, Uncle, could we stay a moment?” he asked.

“Whatever for?” Snodgrass snapped.

“I think we should hear the rest of her story. There might be something in it that could help us.”

Taking the resigned expression on his uncle's face as permission to stay, Griffin turned back to Charlotte Pepper. “Please go on,” Griffin said softly.

Charlotte took a deep breath and said, “It turned out that

I was right. The Widows had captured her and they wouldn't let Mary go. They wanted to get information about Sherlock Holmes and how much he knew about their operation. I am a great admirer of Mr. Holmes and have read all about his cases in the
Strand
. So when Mary didn't come home, I decided to do a little detective work of my own. I was able to piece together where she'd gone and decided to try to save her.”

She paused, and Griffin could tell by her pained expression that the memory wasn't pleasant. After a moment she said, “I . . . did research. By going to the most unsavory parts of London, probing the back alleys and searching through the beggars' dens, I was able to discover, bit by bit, who the Black Widows were and how to join them.”

She shuddered. “There certainly has never been a more deadly and terrible gathering of women. Most of the people I approached were too afraid to even mention their name.”

Griffin held his breath, riveted by her words. Charlotte continued, her gaze distant with memory. “In a dark, forgotten alley, I finally found the person I was looking for. The old woman looked as if she'd survived a fire of some kind. She was terrible in every respect and, most importantly, she was the Widows' gatekeeper.”

Griffin saw Miss Pepper's hands shake a little as she continued her account.

“I would have been too frightened to go any further, but my love for Mary compelled me onward. I told the hag that I wanted to join the Black Widows and made up a story about having murdered my husband. It was the first requirement for admittance into their organization. Only a woman who had murdered her spouse would be considered.”

“How did you convince them that you had done it?” Griffin asked. “Didn't they check to see if you were telling the truth?”

Charlotte glanced at him. “I studied the obituaries until I found an unsolved murder, then claimed responsibility for it.”

She shrugged. “It was enough to get me through the door. But what came next . . .”

She winced at the memory. “Well, I had . . . had no idea what they do to their initiates. If I had, I don't think I would have had the strength to do it in the first place. I was tortured in terrible ways, forced to endure the pain of being bitten by several deadly spiders.”

Griffin's eyes widened. Charlotte spoke softly, her voice barely a whisper. “Just before the point of death, an antidote was delivered. I was allowed to recover only enough to be bitten again. It was terrible . . .”

If Rupert Snodgrass was listening to Miss Pepper's account, he was trying very hard to give no outward signs. But Griffin did notice his uncle shift uncomfortably at the mention of the spiders. To endure such treatment must have been torture indeed!

“I finally found out the location of where my sister was being kept. Moriarty has a special prison beneath the Tower of London where he keeps his kidnapping victims. It's an awful place, filled with rats, and worse. The only person who has a key is the professor himself. So when the Widows told me that he'd hired them for a new mission, one that involved close contact with him, I had to take it.”

She gave Griffin a sorrowful look. “I should have known better than to try to act the double agent. The professor is as cunning as Sherlock Holmes, but uses his reasoning abilities for dark purposes. He found out that I wasn't really a Black Widow, for I had never been married. He checked the church records.”

“Clever,” Griffin admitted.

“I knew that after I fulfilled my mission to steal the time machine and deliver it to Stonehenge, he would probably tell the others. The penalty for betraying the Widows is death. So I decided to leave the note in your apartment, one that I filled with subtle clues, hoping that it would lead you here.”

She looked up at Griffin and Rupert and offered them a small smile. “And here you are,” she finished. “I've been hoping and praying that you would rescue me, but I know I don't deserve it. And you don't have to—just please rescue Mary. I'm truly sorry for stealing your machine. I have to admit, until I saw Nigel use it, I didn't think that it would actually work.”

She glanced over at Rupert and gave him a wistful smile.

“I'm afraid I underestimated your genius, Mr. Snodgrass. I had no idea that anyone really could have found a way to travel through time. I thought that the professor was chasing a pipe dream, and that once he had the machine, he would discover that it didn't really work. Had I known what terrible uses he and Nigel wanted it for, I would have never, ever delivered it into their hands. May God forgive me for what I've done.”

She began to weep quietly. Rupert gazed down at the woman with a slightly less hostile expression. Griffin could tell that her story had impacted him. But he knew his uncle wasn't one to forgive quickly.

Griffin felt a surge of compassion for Miss Pepper and all of the terrible things she'd gone through to rescue her sister.

He could imagine how difficult her decision had been, to join forces with an evil organization so that she could save someone she loved. Her solution hadn't been the right way to handle the problem, but she had done it for the right reasons. And he did feel that she was finally being honest with them.

He couldn't undo her actions, but he could offer her forgiveness for the deception and theft of the time machine. He reached his small hand through the bars and gently stroked her bruised fingers.

“All's forgiven, Miss Charlotte,” Griffin said. Then, glancing up at Rupert, he added, “Right, Uncle?”

Rupert Snodgrass muttered something unintelligible, but Griffin was pleased to notice that he did remove the lock picks from his pocket. Seeing a chance for freedom, Charlotte's eyes brightened.

“You'll set me free?”

“Yes, but we will need your help. We can still put matters to rights. After we get the machine, then maybe we can find a way to stop whatever Nigel Moriarty has done to affect the present. I assume that he's found some kind of information by traveling through time, something that has helped him and his uncle gain power. Then we can rescue your sister,” Griffin said.

But as soon as Rupert placed his lock picks into the lock, his face grew concerned. He twisted, prodded, and poked at the lock, but it wouldn't budge. His arms strained with exertion and tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, but after a considerable effort, he finally stopped, obviously frustrated and at his wits' end.

“Custom lock,” Rupert explained. “It can't be picked.”

A sudden booming noise startled them. Griffin jumped.

The terrible sound of one of the clanking metal spiders echoing from somewhere outside in the tunnels mingled with the sound of rough voices. Someone was coming!

“Leave me!” Charlotte hissed. “If they find you here, you're done for! Your machine is through that door and in a chamber to the left. GO!”

“But what about you?” Snodgrass said. And Griffin noticed that all traces of bitterness were gone. He gazed at Miss Pepper with a look of deep concern, and the woman was obviously touched by his attention.

She reached through the bars as best as she could with her chained hands. Rupert moved his to hers, and the two of them gazed into each other's eyes.

“Not everything I said was a lie, you know,” Charlotte said.

She smiled gently. “You truly are the most gifted inventor I've ever met and a wonderful man too. I . . . I wish circumstances had been different. I would have liked very much to know you better.”

Rupert melted. He brushed Miss Pepper's bruised fingers with his lips, a gallant gesture Griffin had never seen his uncle make before—had never dreamed his uncle
could
make before.

And then, with tears in his eyes, Griffin's uncle said, “I will see to it that we have that opportunity, dear lady. We will use the time machine to return and set you free.”

Charlotte blushed. “If anyone can do it, I'm certain that you can. But for now, I'm afraid it's off to the Tower of London for me. Good luck, Mr. Snodgrass—”

“Rupert, please,” Griffin's uncle said.

And then, hearing footsteps outside the door, Griffin pulled at his uncle's sleeve, urging him to depart.

Griffin's cane tapped in quick clicks as he moved across the stone floor with his uncle close behind. As they dashed through the walnut door at the end of the room, Griffin heard a rough voice behind him call out, “Stop or we'll shoot!”

Griffin's breath caught in his throat and he almost turned around, but he knew they had to keep going. Even as bullets ricocheted behind them, Griffin and Rupert dashed for the thing for which they'd come.