“That must be Sumner you saw. Was Hancock’s niece with them?”
“No. I noticed the man in a wizard costume talking to a young, blond shepherdess shortly before he asked Emma to dance. The shepherdess could have been his niece. Whatever he said, she shook her head no and went off to dance with someone in a knight costume,” Jacob said as he and Fogarty piled in behind me and our driver started to pick his way around the other carriages.
“The wizard was alone when I spotted him carrying Emma. She appeared to be unconscious,” Fogarty said. “I think she was still alive.”
My heart squeezed tight. I had to save Emma. We finally broke free of the tangle of carriages and rode out past Kensington Palace and Holland Park.
“Why does it have to be out in the country?” I asked. Traffic had been heavy through town and our trip was slow. I could have run faster. It was all Fogarty could do to keep me from bolting from the carriage.
“This isn’t the country anymore,” Fogarty told me. “He still owns the house and grounds, but the estate has been sold off and built up. Part of the London suburbs now.”
“Are we ever going to get there?” Tears were filling my eyes.
“If he drove the horses any faster, we’d tip over on a curve,” Fogarty said. “Jacob, are you armed?”
“I’ve got my knife.”
“I have a dagger,” I added.
“Can you throw it?” Fogarty asked me.
“No, but I’ll have no problem stabbing him in the heart. Poor Emma. She’s so young. What did he do to her?” I started to pull the weapon out of its sheath, but Fogarty put out a hand to stop me.
“Leave it where it is until we know there’s no other way.”
Fogarty stopped the driver on the road in front of Chelling Meadows and told him to wait for us. Then we climbed down and entered the grounds past a tall wrought-iron fence. None of us spoke as we stepped through knee-high weeds and around a dry fountain, Fogarty leading the way with a lantern from the carriage.
The house loomed before us, an old three-story structure with a two-story wing on one side and the crumbling remains of a conservatory on the other. Every window was dark.
Fogarty turned the knob on the front door and it opened with a creak. We walked inside the empty front hall, expecting to be challenged by a thug at any moment. The only footsteps and breaths we heard were our own.
Holding the lantern ahead of us, Fogarty was the first to see the wire across the doorway in front of us. He held up his hand, and we stopped. He stuck his head into the space beyond and looked around. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the next room, pushing the lantern ahead of him.
When Fogarty was through, he stood up and gestured to the side. I stuck my head over the wire and saw it went to the stopper of a glass vial perched on top of a barrel of whitish powder. Hancock was an inventor of weapons. I guessed this was one of his creations.
Fogarty carefully unhooked the wire from the loops on either side of the doorway and pushed it to the side. Now no one could accidently trigger the fire or explosion or whatever Lord Hancock had planned. We walked on, smelling wood rot and stale air, until we reached the back of the house, where we found a door with light showing underneath.
Fogarty set down his lantern and pulled out his pistol. Then, with a nod, he pushed open the door and the three of us spilled into the room.
I had never seen a room like it before. Once it had been a small ballroom, but now it was covered with tables holding glass vials in metal stands with gas jets underneath, glass tubes running from glass jar to glass jar, and clear containers of different-colored powders and liquids. In one corner, barrels were stacked up. The air smelled of sulfur and coal fires and spices.
In the very center in the crossroads of two aisles, Emma sat bound to a large wooden chair with thick ropes. Her head drooped forward. There was blood on her skirt. I reached for my dagger.
Fogarty put out a hand to stop me.
“I’m glad someone in your group has some sense.” Lord Hancock, in a heavy canvas coat like the one Lady Westover wore for gardening, stood facing us a few feet away from Emma. He stood behind a table three rows back, measuring an orange powder into a beaker.
Emma looked up then, and I saw relief in her eyes. She tried to squirm, but she was tied too tightly to move more than a shiver. Then she glanced upward.
That was when I noticed the beaker of clear liquid poised over Emma’s head. It was held in place by a rope and pulley that ran through a glass dish containing a reddish jelly. The dish was on a metal stand. A few inches beneath the dish sat an upright tubular gas jet, and Lord Hancock stood near the gas jet. He set down the beaker and picked up a friction match.
“Would you like a demonstration of how this works? I’d love to show you, but I don’t think your friend would like the outcome. Acid causes such frightful burns.”
I thought for a moment I’d throw up. Emma was so incredibly beautiful, inside and out. I’d never once regretted my decision years before to take her in. She was my sister in all but name, and at that moment she depended on me to save her. “Why did you abduct her from the ball?”
“You were the only two not announced by name. The Ice Queen and the Fire Queen? Really? I was certain you were from the interfering Archivist Society. If it weren’t for you and the rest of your nosy group, I’d have Nicholas Drake and my papers. I’d be free to continue my work.”
I had to find a way to stop this madman. Taking a deep breath to steady my heartbeat, I said, “But why abduct Emma?”
“To use her for a trade, of course. Her life for Nicholas Drake and his papers.”
As long as he was talking, he wouldn’t strike the match and Emma would be safe for the moment. “Why use Emma for a trade? Wouldn’t anyone do?”
“She’s part of the Archivist Society. The society found Nicholas Drake. I want him. Turn him over to me. Now.” He waved the gas jet to his left. “And make this man disappear.”
Glancing in the direction he pointed, I saw Sumner standing with his weight on the balls of his feet and a knife poised in his hand. He and Fogarty seemed to have reached some sort of agreement with the slightest of moves.
Hoping I’d make a good distraction, I took two steps forward but I wasn’t nearly close enough to pull Emma free. How long did we have until Hancock decided to act? The man was insane. “Why did you bring Emma here? I thought you’d moved out.”
“It’s being stolen from me by my creditors. I used it to get loans to continue my research, but I’ve not been able to sell any of my ideas and couldn’t repay the loans. They’ve been trying to take this away from me since last summer. My laboratory!”
“Why bring Emma here when you never let anyone in?”
“Because I knew you couldn’t resist coming here to search for her. And I have the advantage of knowing every inch of my laboratory and what each chemical will do.”
I tried again. “Why are you doing all this?”
His sneer said he didn’t think I was too bright. “Ultimately? Recognition in my field. My inventions in use by the British army. Respect. Drake stands in my way. He and those damnable papers will ruin me. I should have destroyed them long ago, but I didn’t know about the one until recently when Drake told me what he’d stolen from Daisy. And I kept the other locked safely in here where only I would see it. That letter’s a memento of my cleverness. That is, until Drake broke in here and stole my prize from me.”
“It wasn’t very clever to let Drake gain the upper hand.” Seeing his eyes narrow and his grip on the gas jet tighten, I knew I’d erred badly. I held up my hands, palms out. “We’re not experts in your field. And Drake knows nothing about weapons. He’s not in a position to order your inventions. What do you want with him?”