“Help me,” she gasped. “Please!”
There was a pause that seemed to stretch for a hundred years. “What’re you doing out here?”
That voice. She recognized its deep, commanding resonance.
The door opened wider and the lamplight revealed the ebony, white-goateed face of Captain Jerrell Falco. The amber eyes were ablaze in the yellow light. They moved to take in the two torches coming along the trail.
“Please,” Berry said. “They’re after me.”
“So they are,” Falco replied, without a shred of emotion. He stared at her as if to ask why he should help. But then his mouth crimped, he blinked as if someone had slapped sense into his soul, and he said, “Get in here.”
Berry entered the house like a sliding shadow. Falco reached past her, closed the door and bolted it. A movement to her left startled Berry, and when she looked in that direction she saw a young cream-colored woman in a yellow gown holding a baby in her arms.
“Saffron,” Falco said, “take the child into the bedroom.” The girl instantly obeyed. Another small candle was burning in the room she had entered. Falco positioned himself between Berry and the front door. “Go back in there and stand in a corner out of sight,” he told her. “Go on. Now.”
The voice was made to give orders. Berry went into the bedroom, a small but tidy place with pale blue walls, a clean bed, a crib for the baby, a writing desk and a couple of cheap but sturdy chairs. Berry took a position with her back in a corner, while Saffron rocked the baby and stared at her with huge chocolate-colored eyes.
Falco’s candlelight was blown out. Berry knew he must be standing in the dark, waiting for the insistent knock upon the door. A half-minute stretched, and then a full minute. The baby began to cry, a soft mewling sound, but Saffron crooned quietly to it and the crying ceased. Saffron’s eyes never stopped examining Berry Grigsby.
Another thirty seconds passed. Saffron whispered, “You runnin’ from them men?”
“Yes,” Berry answered, supposing ‘them men’ were the same who chased her.
“Go in them woods? Where they be?”
“Yes.”
“Quiet,” said Falco, in a low murmur.
“Them woods is death,” Saffron told her. “That road, too. You go in there, you doan come out.”
“Why?” Berry asked, recalling how the men had converged on Zed. “What’s in there?”
“Somethin’ ain’t healthy to know,” Saffron answered, and that was all.
Falco came into the room. In this low light he looked very old, and very weary. “I believe they’ve passed by,” he said. “But they might yet start knocking on doors. Did anyone else see you?” Berry shook her head. “Good. Where’s the Ga? They take him?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You wouldn’t have come out here alone. Miss, you should have stayed in the village. Are you so eager to be…” He stopped, measuring his words against his tongue and teeth.
“To be what?” she prompted.
“Made to vanish?” he asked, with a lift of his unruly gray brows. “As some curious cats have vanished before you?”
Berry swallowed. She had to ask the next question. “What will they do with Zed?”
“Whatever they wish. That’s no longer your concern, if you care to keep your skin.” Falco took one of the two pillows from the bed and tossed it to the floor. “Sleep there,” he said. “The men might come back with their dogs. If so…we shall see.” He stretched out upon the bed, his hands folded back behind his head. Saffron lay the baby in the crib and curled herself up alongside the Nightflyer’s captain.
Berry lay down on the floor and rested her head on the pillow. Sleep would be impossible, but this was the best place to hide. Lying on her back, she stared up at the ceiling and saw in it the small cracks that meant Pendulum’s movements were felt here as well.
“Thank you,” she offered, in a voice strained from the night’s events.
Someone blew out the candle, and from the dark there was no answer.
Twenty-Two
MATTHEW was ready and waiting, dressed in his charcoal-gray suit with thin stripes in a lighter gray hue. The suit was a bit tighter than it had been before being immersed in salt water, but Matthew still wore it well. When the knock came at the door this bright and sunny hour, Matthew was quick to open it for he knew who was behind the fist.
“Good morning,” said Sirki, with a slight nod of his turbanned head. Today the East Indian giant wore his white robes, spotless as new snow. A glimpse of diamond-studded front teeth sparkled. “You are well, I presume?”
“Very well,” said Matthew, attempting lightness but finding it a heavy effort. “And you?” As well as can be expected, Matthew thought, for someone who delights in severing heads from their bodies.
“I am instructed,” the giant replied, “to pay you.” He offered a brown leather pouch tied with a cord. “Three hundred pounds in gold coins, I am told. A very sizeable sum, and one you may keep whatever your decision may be regarding the professor’s problem.”
“Hm,” Matthew answered. He took the pouch; it was richly heavy. He noted the red wax seal that secured the cord, and the octopus symbol of the professor’s ambition embossed upon it. He moved the pouch back and forth next to his right ear to hear the coins clink together. “I have questions for you before I decide,” he said firmly. “Will you answer them?”
“I will do my best.”
Matthew decided not to tell Sirki about his dream last night, in the midst of his troubled sleep. In the dream, which was fogged at the edges with phantasmagoria, the gasping head of Jonathan Gentry had rolled along the bloody table and fallen into his lap, and there the twisted mouth had rasped three words that Matthew now repeated to Sirki.
“Finances. Weapons. Spain.” Matthew had gotten out of his bed and walked back and forth upon the balcony in the cool hour before dawn until his perception of the matter had cleared. “Those are the realms of the three men involved. I am assuming, then, that the Royal Navy intercepted a cargo of weapons meant to be handed over to the Spanish, in return for a large sum of finances to the professor?”
“Your assumption may be correct,” said the giant, with an expressionless face and voice that likewise revealed nothing. “I think,” he added, “I might enter your room instead of having this discussion in the hallway.” When Sirki came into the room, Matthew backed cautiously away from him, reasoning that the evil sawtoothed knife was somewhere near at hand. Sirki closed the door and planted himself like an Indian ironwood tree. “Now,” he said, “I will entertain more of your assumptions.”
“Thank you.” A small bow completed the charade of manners. “I’m thinking, then, that Professor Fell is supplying some kind of new weapon to the Spanish? And he plans to sell the same weapon to Britain as soon as Spain puts it into full production? And there are other countries he plans to see this weapon to?”
“Possibly correct,” said Sirki.
“But someone informed the authorities, and the first shipment was waylaid on the high seas? What’s the weapon, Sirki?”
“I am not allowed,” came the reply.
“All right, then.” Matthew nodded calmly; he’d been prepared for this. “The professor believes one man of three is the traitor. Is it possible there could be two traitors among the three, working together?”