“No. It was sheer luck our finding out about the first shipment.”
“It’ll have to be something else, then. Something revealing. But what?” He thought for a silent moment. “Who gave Nathan the first information?”
“The honorable Frederick Nash. A dissolute bastard if there ever was one. He is also on the professor’s payroll.”
“We can work with that. Drag his name into the fray. I’ll come up with something.” Matthew was thinking he had to get into Smythe’s room when the foul man went down for the mid-day meal. Questions nagged at him, though, and one he specifically had to have answered. “You say the powder is stored in a warehouse in London, but you don’t know exactly where? Why doesn’t the professor keep it all here, instead of transporting it?” As soon as he asked the question, he thought he knew the answer. “Ah,” he said before Minx could reply. “He wants it in a place where the spies from other countries can see it and report to their masters. And he fears another earthquake, doesn’t he?”
“What?” She obviously had no idea what he was talking about.
“The tremors,” Matthew explained. “There was an earthquake here when the professor was a boy. He can make the Cymbeline here in relative safety. But he fears if there’s an accident at the fort, and enough of the powder ignites…there could be another earthquake. That’s why I suspect he moves the powder off the island as soon as there’s enough to fill a ship’s hold. Which I would think would be enough to make a very impressive blast.”
“Insane,” Minx said for the third time. “You’ll never get in there to blow it up.”
“Not alone, no. But with help…possibly I will.” He levelled his gaze at her. “Yes, Madam Chillany killed Nathan. I won’t tell you how. But I will say that if Nathan Spade was standing here…he might also be thinking of blowing the place up.” He gave a quiet grunt. “The bad young man found his boundary of evil, didn’t he? The line beyond which he would not pass? So yes, Minx…your Nathan would go in there and blow the place to smithereens, just as I intend to. And he would ask for your help, just as I am asking.”
“My help? You mean with the forgery?”
“That, and however I might need you afterward. You’re very capable. I have need of your capability and your…shall we say…firmness under pressure.” He couldn’t help but give her a sly smile. “I have to ask…last night…did you…?” He shrugged and trailed off.
“Did I what?”
Her tone spoke volumes. The problem-solver was at a loss.
“Never mind,” he told her, not without some disappointment. “I have someplace to go. The house of a certain sea captain. Will you come with me?”
“I will,” she answered.
Astride their horses and with the map to Falco’s house in Matthew’s brain, they continued on their journey. Matthew and Athena were in the lead, and after a moment Minx urged Esmeralda up beside them.
“He was not all bad,” she said.
“No one is all bad.” Then he thought about Tyranthus Slaughter. “Most aren’t, at least.”
“He wanted to make amends for things he’d done in his past. He wasn’t proud of them. When he saw this chance, and he told me about it…we both knew it was right.”
“I should say,” said Matthew.
She was silent for a time, perhaps reliving poignant memories. “We were going to have a future,” she told him. “Married or not, I don’t know. We met by chance, really. At a party for Andrew Halverston, the money changer. Also on the professor’s payroll.”
“Who isn’t?” Matthew asked.
“We didn’t know we had the professor in common until later. Then…it didn’t matter.”
“It matters now,” Matthew said, turning Athena toward the road that led to Falco’s house. “More than ever.”
“You should know about being on the professor’s payroll.” Minx shot him a dark glance. “His enemy…brought to his island to work for him. How in the name of God did that happen?”
“You’ll begin to see when we get where we’re going,” he told her. “One thing I’d like to know from you…who is Brazio Valeriani and why is Fell searching for him?”
“I don’t know…but I’ve heard things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as…that the professor has strange interests and ambitions. Valeriani has something to do with those. Other than that, I have no clue.”
“Hm,” Matthew said. “I should make it my business to find out.” He kicked into Athena’s flanks to hasten her progress, for he felt that time was growing short and there was yet much to do before he, Berry, hopefully Zed and…yes, Fancy…could escape this damnable island.
Following his mental map, Matthew led them along the cart trail into the woods and to the ascertained house of white stone that stood amid a few others. They both dismounted. Matthew knocked at the door. He didn’t have long to wait before a very lovely young native woman with cream-colored skin opened the door and peered out. “Saffron?” Matthew asked. She nodded; her eyes were wide and frightened. “I’m here to—” Saffron was pushed aside, gently but firmly. The fearsome visage of the white-goateed, amber-eyed and creased ebony face of Captain Jerrell Falco took the place of his wife’s loveliness. He looked from Matthew to Minx and back again, with a slight frown of disdain. “I didn’t think you’d be damn fool enough to come in the daylight,” he rumbled, like his own earthquake. “Who is she?”
“A friend.”
“You say.”
“You can trust her.”
“Too late now, if I don’t. You sure no one followed you?”
“He’s sure,” Minx spoke up sharply, her own brass showing.
“Damn all of you for getting me into this,” Falco said. And then he opened the door and stepped back. “Come in.”
As soon as Matthew walked across the threshold, he was hit by the embrace of a red-haired adventuress from New York who, at all of nineteen tender years, had found herself in at least twenty years of trouble. Her hair was wild, her dirty face scratched by island brush, and she wore a dark blue sleeping gown that appeared to have been ripped by the claws of wildcats. Berry clung to Matthew so hard he struggled to draw a breath, and then it was she who drew back with a penetrating question: “Who is that?”
That being…
“My name is Minx Cutter. I’m a friend of Matthew’s.” The gold-hued eyes took in Berry, the room, Falco and Saffron and everything; she was as cool as a September Sabbath. “Who might you be, and why are you hiding here?”
“Berry Grigsby,” came the frosted reply. “Also a friend—a very good friend—of Matthew’s. I am here because…” She faltered, but looked to no one for help.
“Because she escaped from the Templeton Inn night before last and got herself in some difficulty,” said Falco. “She and the Ga. Where he is, I don’t know. Packs of men were nosing around here all yesterday. Searched my house, but Miss Grigsby was under the floorboards in the back room. Not very much to her liking, but necessary.”
“There are crabs under there,” she said to Matthew, her eyes wide and rimmed with the tears of revulsion. There was nothing like feeling crabs tangling in one’s hair while rough boots stomped the boards three inches above one’s face.
“She kept silent, though.” Falco had his clay pipe in hand, and now he lit it from the stub of a candle and blew out a plume of smoke. “Good thing. They were looking to hang somebody for hiding her.”
“You were where? On the road to the fort?” The question was from Minx and directed to Berry.
“I don’t know about a fort. But we were on a road not too far from here. There were skulls hanging from the trees on both—”
“Stupid girl,” Minx interrupted. “Going in there, after you saw the warning? And who else was with you?”