“I also have my work cut out for me. Minx, we should get back to the castle. I have to get into Smythe’s room for a sample of his handwriting. I’ll come up with something interesting for you to scribe.” The purpose, Matthew thought, was to skewer two pigeons with one spear and thus afford the octopus a double course of corrupted brains. He turned toward Berry and reached out for her…
…and she was there, his lucky star.
He had been so relieved to see her at first that he hadn’t known what to say. Words still seemed so small. She grasped his hand and he pulled her toward him like reeling in the most beautiful and scrappy fish in the sea. He hugged her to himself and she clung to him as if he were the most solid rock on Pendulum Island. His heart gave a few hard beats, but when he drew away and looked into her soft and frightened blue eyes he felt the irritated anger flare up once more.
“Why in the name of dear departed Christ did you and Zed leave that inn?” he demanded. “Do you know what trouble you’ve caused?”
“Zed wanted to find a boat. I wanted to help him.”
“Oh, you can converse freely with him now?”
“I can understand him. Without words.” She pulled away a greater distance. The shine of anger had surfaced from the depths of her eyes and her cheeks had reddened. “I swear, sometimes I think I can understand him better without words than you with them!”
“As your opinion pleases. We have no time for roundabouts.”
“The truest thing that’s been said!” Falco announced. “I have to go get a crew together. I suppose you’re wanting me to keep her here until morning?” The her being Berry, who looked alternately bewildered and ready to bite through iron nails.
“I do. She’s safest here.”
“That’s a poor statement, but I’ll testify to it. If those men come back again, she goes under the floor.”
Berry started to protest to Matthew but caught herself, for even she knew that her jailers this time would not be so gracious, and the crabs were more welcome company than rats in a dungeon cell somewhere.
“The Nightflyer will be ready at first light,” said Falco, his goateed chin lifted in defiance, perhaps, of Professor Fell. “If you’ve gotten me in this far, I’ll have to cast off without you if you don’t show up. My throat and the throats of my loved ones are worth more gold than you can possibly pay.”
“Agreed,” Matthew said. “At first light, then.” He glanced quickly at Berry but didn’t wish his gaze to linger upon her. She was going to be hell after this mess was cleaned up; but he was determined to give her back as much hell as he could, too.
“Good luck to you,” Falco told them when Matthew opened the door for himself and Minx. “If you’re caught tonight, please allow them to cut your guts open without squealing my name, won’t you?”
“Fair enough, sir.”
“Matthew?” Berry stepped forward. She reached out, tenderly, and touched his arm. The anger in her eyes had given way to a frightened concern. “Be careful,” she said. “I mean it. Be really careful.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he promised, and then he and Minx left the house. He hoped it wasn’t an empty promise, and that by first light his own head would not be the devil’s breakfast.
They reached the road and turned their horses toward Fell’s castle, and under the glaring white sun Matthew busied himself conjuring up a message to trap two traitors. Within a few minutes he was satisfied with himself. Smythe and Wilson would never know what hit them. Couldn’t happen to two more despicable characters…unless it happened to the Thacker brothers.
And now what lay ahead was truly treacherous territory. Slipping in and out of rooms unseen. The message itself: would it fool Professor Fell? And how to get to Fancy to let her know she was on the edge of her deliverance? Then tonight…the main show and a display of fireworks to end this conference of criminals.
He made a vow that he would kiss Dippen Nack if he ever got back to New York. He thought he must be truly desperate.
“What are you thinking?” Minx asked, urging Esmerelda up beside him.
“About what must be done,” he replied. “And…that I’m not so different from Nathan Spade after all, am I?”
She made a noise that might have been a cruel laugh.
“Only in your dreams,” she said, and rode on ahead.
Twenty-Eight
MATTHEW had his hand on the doorknob and was about to venture forth from Adam Wilson’s room when he heard the sound of clumping boots, slurred and boisterous curses and drunken laughter. He stayed his hand and stood transfixed, as if the Thackers might see him through the door. He judged the time to be quarter after four. The Thackers were indeed getting an early start on the evening’s festivities. He wished he could blow them to Hell along with the gunpowder, but that was not likely to happen.
He waited, hearing the noise of their passage dwindle along the corridor. Fancy would probably have been crushed between them. Either that, or she was swimming again in her world of peace and silence. In Matthew’s left hand was a small piece of parchment with ragged edges. Earlier he had slipped into Edgar Smythe’s room and gotten a piece of clean parchment and a piece with some of the Bard’s lines that Smythe had written in his bored doldrums. While he was in Smythe’s room, Matthew had heard footsteps approaching the door and then a key slide into the lock. He thought he might have aged a few years in the seconds it had taken him to get out upon the balcony, press his back against the wall and hope that Smythe did not emerge for a breath of air. Instead, Matthew had been treated to the grunting and farting noise of Smythe relieving himself in the chamberpot. Then there’d been another damnable space of time during which Matthew feared the munitions master would come out, pot in hand, to dump his mess over the railing, but this fortunately did not happen. At last the door had opened and closed once more, the key had been turned, and with sweat on his face and itching the back of his neck Matthew got out of the room, relocked it, and as had been agreed upon slipped under Minx’s door both pieces of parchment and the octopus wax stamp cut from the leather pouch with the sharp knife she’d given him to use.
Then there had been the waiting.
At nearly three-thirty the small square of parchment was pushed under his own door. There were the two lines, exactly as Matthew had directed. It looked to be Smythe’s handwriting, of course. Minx was obviously very efficient at her craft. And then there was the next step, which Matthew had chosen not to skip: he would get into Wilson’s room after four o’clock and actually plant the message in a place he might ‘discover’ it, thereby having an accurate description of Wilson’s room and belongings in case he was further questioned. A neatly-folded stocking in a drawer had served the purpose.
And now…out of this damned room with the forged evidence of communication between traitors, and let the heads roll.
He gritted his teeth, turned the knob, looked out for anyone passing by and entered the silent corridor. He was sweating under his arms and as well as on his face. He longed for a breath of New York winter, and to Hell with this infernal paradise. He slid the key into the lock, turned it and then, message gripped in hand, he took a leftward step toward his own room and therefore saw Mother Deare standing in the hallway not five paces distant, her red-gloved hands folded together in front of her, her mouth pursed with the beginning of a question.
Matthew felt his touch of winter. In fact, he was nearly frozen.
The woman approached him. When she stopped, just short of bowling him over, she peered into his face with her bulbous brown eyes.