Four
The rain had let up by the time Ellie and Constance disembarked from the crowded omnibus. Ellie juggled her briefcase and fern as they hurried up the street.
Her home stood on a tidy little enclave in Canonbury lined with three-story semi-detached houses that were set comfortably back from the road. Most of Ellie’s neighbors were reasonably well-to-do clerks of some sort or another. Her father, David Mallory, was an insurance actuary. He earned a high enough salary for the family to employ both a housemaid and a cook, which gave Ellie’s stepmother, Florence, less things to be loudly overwhelmed about.
Everything looked quite ordinary as Ellie and Constance approached the house. Florence hadn’t yet drawn the curtains for the evening. The train Ellie’s father took home every day wouldn’t arrive for another twenty minutes.
Ellie slowed as she approached the front steps, regarding the door warily. With its tidy front hedge and white trim, the house did not look at all like a dangerous villain was already wreaking havoc inside of it.
“Well?” Constance prompted. “Are we going in or not?”
“I suppose we had better,” Ellie agreed.
Her front hallway was just as unremarkable as the steps. The brass hat stand and potted philodendron gave no indication that any criminals were lurking about.
“Is that you, Eleanora?” her stepmother called from the parlor.
“Yes, Florence,” Ellie called back as she divested herself of her hat and umbrella.
Florence popped into the doorway. She was a pretty woman with a generously curved figure, her brown hair accented by streaks of silver. Florence loudly bewailed the presence of those streaks, but Ellie thought they looked nice. They might even have appeared distinguished, if Florence wasn’t… well, Florence. It was hard for a person to appear distinguished when they were endlessly complaining about their nerves.
Not that Ellie had any real fears for her stepmother’s nerves. Despite all the hand-waving she did, Florence possessed an exceptionally robust constitution.
“I am glad to see you are back at a reasonable hour today,” Florence said loudly. “How that office of yours can think it appropriate to keep a young lady of good breeding working past eight on a Tuesday evening is utterly beyond my comprehension...”
Constance raised an eloquent eyebrow at Ellie. They both knew perfectly well that it was not the PRO but the Metropolitan Police that had made Ellie late for supper the night before.
Thankfully, she kept quiet about it. Constance was nothing if not a reliable co-conspirator.
Florence was still talking.
“…never mind exposing you to all manner of hazards, like that dreadful bookshelf that fell on you…”
“Yes, well,” Ellie hedged, resisting the urge to put her fingers to the bruise that still marked her cheek. “I don’t imagine we’ll have to worry about rogue bookshelves for the foreseeable future.”
“Hello, Constance, darling,” Florence said, shifting her attention to Ellie’s companion. “I don’t suppose you would tell her that she can hardly expect to find herself a husband if she spends all her hours poring over musty old papers.”
“Florence!” Ellie protested.
“It’s only because I care so very much, darling,” Florence replied, looking a little emotional.
Beside Ellie, Constance cleared her throat meaningfully.
“Ah—did anyone happen to call by this afternoon?” Ellie asked, taking the hint.
“Why?” Florence demanded cannily. Her eyes sharpened like a hawk sighting marriageable prey. “Are you expecting a caller?”
A clatter and a cry of alarm rose from the kitchen.
“Oh bother,” Florence cursed. “Major is after the bacon again.”
Florence hiked up her skirts and made an energetic dash toward the kitchen, where Major, her beloved and thoroughly spoiled Jack Russell, was raising havoc.
Ellie tugged Constance up the stairs. They slipped into Ellie’s bedroom, which faced the front of the house, and pulled shut the door.
“He hasn’t come,” Constance concluded.
“It would appear not,” Ellie agreed, beginning to pace. “Perhaps we were unfair to Mr. Henbury. Maybe after giving that criminal my name, he resisted any further betrayal of my circumstances.”
“I rather doubt that,” Constance retorted dryly.
“Then why isn’t Jacobs here?” Ellie demanded.
She was answered by a burst of hysterical barking from below—the sound of a manic terrier demanding the opportunity to maul and destroy whatever lay on the far side of the front door.
Someone knocked.
By silent consensus, Ellie and Constance shot to the window and peered down at the front step.
A man stood there. He looked to be in his early thirties and was dressed in a well-made but unremarkable black suit. Ellie couldn’t see the details of his face from this angle—only a flash of pale skin and dark hair from under the brim of his bowler hat.
“Is that him?” Constance demanded in a whisper. “Your Mr. Jacobs?”
“I think we must assume that it is,” Ellie returned grimly.
Constance craned her head, trying to get a better look around the hat.
“He’s a bit dashing,” she commented.
“How on earth can you tell that from the top of his head?” Ellie shot back.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Major’s frantic barks were silenced as Florence presumably snatched the dog up in her arms. A moment later, Ellie heard the distinct creak of the front door opening.
She and Constance exchanged an alarmed look.
Ellie quickly weighed her options. She knew Jacobs was not averse to using violence to achieve his ends. Ellie refused to put her friend or her stepmother at risk.
There was an obvious solution to that problem. She might simply give Jacobs what he wanted.
The very thought of it was anathema. Hand the key to a potentially revolutionary archaeological discovery over to someone who walked on historical documents and threw people into doors?
She grasped for an alternative.
A train whistle drifted through the window, emanating from the nearby East London line. The sound was as familiar to her as the clatter of carriage wheels.
Ellie’s gaze shot to the books packed neatly onto her shelves.
She hurried over and unerringly plucked Osgood’s English Rail and Steamer Timetables from among its brethren. It took Ellie only a moment to find what she sought—the list of steamer departures for the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America.
Her finger stopped on a single tidy row of type, and her heart began to beat a little faster.
Could she possibly…?
She could, she realized, feeling a jolt of excitement and alarm. She very possibly could.
Ellie flipped to the local rail timetables at the rear of the book—and stopped, staring down at the lines.
She raised her eyes to the clock beside her bed. One of the hands clicked forward.
The time was precisely twenty-two minutes past five.
Her plan fell neatly into place.
It was mad. It would be by far the most rash and irresponsible thing that Ellie had ever done—and that included chaining herself to the gates of Parliament.
It could also work… so long as she could refrain from being assaulted for exactly eight minutes.
What was the alternative? Leaving her map to a well-spoken criminal?
Ellie slammed shut the book and yanked a battered valise from the bottom of her wardrobe, dropping it onto her bed. She began tossing things into it as she spoke.
“I need you to take this to Canonbury Station and buy a ticket for the West India Docks,” Ellie ordered.
“The docks!” Constance exclaimed as two practical changes of clothes and a bundle of flannels landed in the suitcase. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
Ellie added a hairbrush and four pairs of spare stockings to the pile.
“I have analyzed the alternatives and—”
Constance cut her off, leaping into action.
“This is marvelous!” she declared. She grabbed a bottle of face cream and a silk scarf from Ellie’s dressing table and threw them in as well. “But I don’t see why you’re running. I can confront the fellow with my jiu jitsu.”
“Absolutely not,” Ellie shot back as she packed a pair of nail scissors and a still-wrapped bar of soap. “The man is a villain. Your jiu jitsu is most useful when evading capture or restraint, but you cannot expect it to allow you to overcome a person twice your weight.”
“But Sensei Tani taught me an excellent maneuver that I have been dying to try out,” Constance cut in as she tossed an entirely impractical blue silk dressing gown onto the growing stack of items.
“That will not be necessary,” Ellie asserted, snatching up a blank notebook and pen from her writing desk. “This fiend cannot know Canonbury nearly as well as I do. I will lead him on a chase and then double back to meet you.”
Not for the first time, Ellie wished that ladies could don a pair of trousers without the garment being seen as an invitation to ridicule or harassment. Thankfully, she at least made a habit of dressing practically. Her boots were sturdy, and her plain tweed skirt wouldn’t hamper her movements too badly once she had hiked it up over her shins.
Exquisitely conscious of her limited time, Ellie fought to get the suitcase closed. Constance added her muscle to the effort and finally hopped up to sit on the lid, which allowed Ellie to fix the latch.
Ellie pushed the suitcase at her friend.
“Be ready,” she warned. “If I do not succeed in losing him first, I will be cutting this rather fine.”
“You may count on me, of course,” Constance returned stoutly.
Ellie shoved open the window facing the side of the house and swung a leg over the sill.
“Thank you. You are a true friend, Connie,” she said meaningfully.
She grasped hold of the wisteria trellis, setting her boot to one of the sturdy rungs. Casting one final glance back into her bedroom, she took note of the time on the clock as its most slender hand ticked neatly forward.
Five minutes and forty seconds, Ellie calculated.
She swung out onto the wisteria. It took her only a moment to descend the vine, landing solidly between her house and the semi-detached next door. She hurried up the narrow path and emerged into the street.
Constance hadn’t been entirely wrong about the man on her doorstep. An idle passer-by might have found him reasonably good-looking. His pale skin and dark hair complemented his lean build and regular features—but his gaze was cool and flat in a manner that reminded Ellie of the unhurried danger in the tones she had overheard from Mr. Henbury’s office.
Florence was oblivious to the threat. Based on her pose in the doorway, Ellie’s stepmother was mildly flirting as she assessed whether the fellow was a reasonable candidate for a new son-in-law.
A neighbor at the next house was out front watering his garden. A few scattered people strolled down the road. Ellie felt certain that only their presence had prevented the stranger on her threshold from shoving past Florence to get inside.
Thankfully, the neighbors were not an impediment to Ellie’s plan.
Five minutes and ten.
“You, there!” Ellie shouted as she yanked the map from her pocket and waved it over her head. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
The man’s reaction told her everything she needed to know. As he turned toward her, his eyes sharpening like a hound after a fox, Ellie knew that he must indeed be the mysterious Mr. Jacobs—and that she had succeeded in capturing his attention.
“Come and get it, then,” she challenged—and bolted.
Her boots pounded down the pavement in a most unladylike manner. A glance back showed that Jacobs was sprinting very capably after her.
Behind him, Constance slipped past Florence, who was gaping after Ellie from the doorway.
Constance whipped off a cheerful salute as she dashed the opposite way up the road, carrying Ellie’s valise in her hand.
Ellie hauled up her skirts, exposing her wool stockings as she put on more speed.
Jacobs was fast—but she didn’t need to outrun him. She had spent her entire childhood marauding around Canonbury. She knew these streets like she knew her own skin.
She pivoted, skidding to the left and slamming through Mr. Pettigrew’s garden gate, the lock of which had been broken for years. Mr. Pettigrew glanced up at her, blinking, from where he stood watering his hydrangeas.
“Sorry, Mr. Pettigrew!” Ellie called as she hopped onto the back of an overturned wheelbarrow and scrambled up onto the wall.
She half-fell into the adjoining garden, landing beside a three-year-old playing in a sandbox.
“Hi Ewwie!” he said cheerfully.
“Keep digging, Clarence!” Ellie replied.
Clarence’s mother, Mrs. Lovett, stepped out into the garden with a tea tray. She stared wide-eyed as Ellie dashed around the corner of the house.
Mrs. Lovett’s alarmed scream and the crash of breaking porcelain a moment later told Ellie that Jacobs had managed to follow.
Ellie blasted out into another street, swinging left and sprinting past two perambulating widows in elaborate black gowns as she continued to keep her mental count.
minutes thirty.
“Well, I never!” the first widow, Mrs. Fairweather, exclaimed.
Only Mrs. Fairweather’s grip on her companion’s arm kept the sour-faced woman from stumbling over with surprise as she gaped disapprovingly at Ellie’s exposed shins.
The tailor, Mr. Granger, tipped his hat politely as Ellie skidded past him. She hopped from the pavement into the road, dodged the plumber’s lorry, and ducked to the right to avoid startling Mr. Twyford’s temperamental cart horse. The poshly irate driver of a gleaming Vauxhall motorcar shouted after her as he fumbled for his horn.
Ellie ignored him as a more alarmed outburst from the two widows alerted her to Jacobs’ proximity.
She raced into a fine little early Georgian chapel. She flew up the nave past the rows of pews, wheeled around the altar, and slammed out the back door into the churchyard. The leaning monument of G. Edgar Wittlesmith nearly tripped her, but Ellie managed to right herself by rolling across the surface of a raised tomb, scattering a cluster of terrified squirrels.
Two minutes and twenty seconds.
A door slammed open behind her, and Ellie acknowledged that she was unlikely to succeed in shaking her pursuer.
That was all right. She had recognized the possibility and planned for it.
Ellie was very good at making plans.
She raced up a narrow alley, vaulted over a toppled rubbish bin, and skidded around a corner. Back out on the main road once more, she dashed past the news shop, the post office, and the chandlers. A Pomeranian on the end of a lead barked at her excitedly. A pair of children pointed, staring with wide-eyed wonder as she sprinted past them.
Another train whistle sounded, carrying musically to her on the wind from the east.
One minute twelve.
Ellie swerved onto Grosvenor Avenue. She jumped down into the road again, narrowly avoiding the clustered buckets of blooms that Mr. Cresswell, the florist, always set out on the pavement under his awning.
A loud clatter sounded behind her as Jacobs collided with the display. After a brief delay, he freed himself from the tulips, and his footsteps pounded after her again.
Ellie’s legs and lungs burned as she sprinted toward the now-visible sign for Canonbury Station.
Forty six seconds, she thought furiously.
It was too much time.
Ellie raced toward the two sets of stairs that led down to the inbound and outbound platforms on opposite sides of the tracks.
She thought of the whistle that she had heard a moment before, and knew that it must be the five twenty-nine outbound service to Highbury sounding a warning as it approached the station. The five twenty-nine was a train she knew well, as it was the one that her father took home from work every evening.
Yes, she thought. Yes, that could do nicely.
Ellie dashed past the inbound stairs, hitting the outbound set instead. She hopped onto the railing and slid down the length of it, buying herself an extra six seconds.
As Ellie reached the bottom, Constance’s petite figure waved to her furiously from the inbound platform on the far side of the rail lines. Beside her, the gleaming black engine of the five-thirty express to West Croydon let off a burst of steam and a warning whistle before its departure.
“Inbound express to Shadwell, Rotherhithe, and Forest Hill!” the conductor shouted.
Twenty eight… twenty seven… twenty six…
Brakes screeched from the tracks to the east as the five twenty-nine outbound service slowed for its stop at Canonbury.
Jacobs’ footfalls rattled on the grate of the stairs behind her.
Constance shouted over, bouncing nervously up and down where she waited by the inbound train.
“Ellie, you’re on the wrong—”
Ellie jumped off the platform.
Her boots landed solidly in the gravel of the track bed. She kicked off against the stones, scrambling across the tracks as the five twenty-nine let off an alarmed whistle.
She felt the rush of the cars behind her as the outbound service crossed the place where she had been standing a moment before.
Ellie hurried in front of the waiting inbound engine and climbed up onto the platform. A small but sturdy hand grasped her arm to help haul her up.
“That was magnificent!” Constance exclaimed with a happy flush in her cheeks.
“Last call for Rotherhithe and Forest Hill!” the conductor shouted.
Constance shoved Ellie toward the first class car. Ellie half stumbled inside as Constance hopped up behind her.
The car jerked as the engine chugged into motion. Constance pushed Ellie into an empty compartment.
Ellie went straight to the window, tugged it down, and stuck her head out through it.
The cars of the inbound train flashed past, and the outbound platform was revealed.
She spotted the trim, mustachioed figure of her father moving toward the stairs, his nose pressed to the pages of the latest edition of the Financial Times.
Behind him, Jacobs stood like a dark, still pillar in the midst of a moving mass of evening commuters. His thoughtful, assessing gaze locked onto hers across the growing distance that separated them until he slipped from view.
Ellie collapsed into her seat, releasing her breath in a whoosh.
“That was by far the most exciting thing I have ever done,” Constance announced, plopping down across from her.
“Hold on,” Ellie said, straightening. “You aren’t even supposed to be here!”
“I am seeing you off,” Constance retorted breezily. “You never know if you might need someone to engage in physical combat with another dastardly fellow at the docks.”
Ellie pressed her fingers to her temples, fighting off a rising headache as reality settled in. “This is madness,” she declared.
“Why on earth would you say that?” Constance protested.
“I am throwing myself onto a steamer to British Honduras on less than ten minutes’ notice,” Ellie shot back, her tone rising. “I just raced a villain through the streets of Canonbury. I haven’t the foggiest notion where I’m going or what must be involved in getting there.”
She buried her face in her hands. It was becoming a bit harder to breathe.
“I should be doing so much research…” she protested helplessly.
Constance grabbed Ellie’s hands.
“Eleanora, what is the hieroglyph for truth?” she demanded.
“A feather, or the image of the goddess Maat,” Ellie replied automatically.
“Who was the first emperor of China?”
“Qin Shi Huang.”
“List the ancient civilizations of Central America in chronological order.”
Ellie frowned. “If one includes southern portions of Mexico, we can establish a reliable timeline for the Aztecs, who were preceded by the Mayans to the south. Prior to that, there are still questions as to whether the Toltec or Olmec peoples were genuine or mythological. Of course, the dating methods are notoriously subjective, which makes establishing a clear chronology unreliable at—”
“I have made my point,” Constance said firmly. She leaned back, crossing her arms neatly over her chest.
“But there are still so many books I haven’t read!” Ellie fought back a flare of panic. “The research is terribly new. Why, just the other day, there was an article in The Century on the excavation of a Post-Classical site in Honduras that I have barely had an opportunity to browse, never mind properly annotate…”
Constance was unmoved.
“You are getting on that boat,” she declared flatly. “You are going to the Caribbean. You will purchase your equipment with the pile of earnings from your dull job that you have never bothered to properly spend. You will hire a guide, find your city, and become the most famous archaeologist in the world.”
Ellie crossed her arms mulishly.
“I am not interested in becoming famous,” she said tartly. “I would simply like to be permitted to use my skills and education to further our understanding of the ancient world.”
“So go do that, then.” Constance waved an airy hand. “I don’t even know why we’re arguing about it. It seems to me that your whole plan to keep your parents from being accosted by that thug relies upon your immediate escape to the colonies and prompt removal into the back country before he can track you down.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed, feeling a bit dizzy. “Yes, it rather does. Oh, bother…” She lowered her head to her knees.
“Shoreditch High Street!” the conductor called from outside their compartment. “Next stop, Whitechapel. Change at Shadwell for the London & Blackwell Line.”
“That’s you,” Constance announced. “How long before we arrive at the docks and put you on that boat?”
“Approximately eighteen minutes,” Ellie replied unthinkingly.
“Well, then,” Constance returned cheerfully. “That should be plenty of time for you to get used to the idea.”
The West India Docks were loud and crowded. The narrow waterways were packed with ships. Steam stacks mingled with the tall skeletons of graceful sailboats. Passengers bumped against dockworkers as everyone hurried to load the boats scheduled to leave with the turning of the evening tide. Cranes hefted pallets of tea, oranges, and tobacco onto the wharfs as street vendors hawked whelks, mussels, peppered pies, and apple fritters.
Ellie sniffed at a baked potato cart as a line of dock workers trudged past carrying sides of frozen beef, wrapped in muslin, on their shoulders.
Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that it was nearly time for supper.
Constance slipped out the door of the shipping company office and hurried over to join her.
“You’re on,” she announced, slapping a piece of paper into Ellie’s hand. “Though it was a near thing. They’re sailing momentarily, and they were loath to deal with the paperwork for another passenger. I had to resort to an outright bribe in order to get you on board.”
“A bribe!” Ellie protested. “Connie!”
“It’s the sort of thing one does when one is on an adventure,” Constance neatly replied as she hooked a hand under Ellie’s elbow and dragged her away from the potato cart. “You shall be traveling as Mrs. Nitherscott-Watby, widow.”
“Nitherscott-Watby?” Ellie echoed in disbelief. “Did you make that up off the top of your head?”
“Of course I did,” Constance returned. “What a silly question.”
“Why must I be a widow when I am already a perfectly good spinster?” Ellie demanded.
Constance raised a wry eyebrow at her. “You are hardly some dried up old prune. You are an attractive woman of four-and-twenty. You have only passed as a spinster because you haven’t really tried to do anything scandalous yet beyond suffraging.”
“Suffrage is not a verb,” Ellie retorted.
“What else should I call it?” Constance continued without waiting for a reply. “As a widow, you will be subject to far less scrutiny than an unmarried woman. You will see the sense of it soon enough.”
“Should I invent a few imaginary siblings while I’m at it?” Ellie demanded crossly.
“A wealthy uncle might be handy,” Constance mused as she hauled Ellie toward the looming ships. “You can think about it on the boat. They’ve already sent your valise along.”
Ellie felt a bolt of panic. “What about my parents? I can’t just disappear to the other side of the world without so much as a note.”
“I’ll tell them you’ve gone off to Bournemouth on a holiday,” Constance breezily assured her. “Heaven only knows you were in desperate need of one.”
“Bournemouth?” Ellie’s headache threatened to return.
“Bournemouth is lovely, as you would know if you ever went anywhere besides the library. One more to board!” Constance hollered up at the men on the deck, who were in the process of drawing the chain across the gate for departure.
“Perhaps it’s too late,” Ellie suggested hopefully.
Constance caught Ellie’s shoulders, gripping them with a strength that belied her diminutive size.
“You are standing at the foot of the most important thing you have ever done in your life,” she declared. “Do you really want to turn around and walk away from that?”
Ellie blinked down at her friend. The answer spilled from her lips, as undeniable as it was terrifying.
“No.”
Constance narrowed her eyes with fiery determination. “Then get on the boat, Eleanora.”
Ellie yanked Constance into her arms, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and then hurried up the gangplank.
She extended her pass to the porter when she reached the top.
“One more to board,” she announced.
“You’re cutting it fine,” the man retorted irritably before undoing the chain and waving Ellie impatiently onto the deck.
The crew raced to haul in lines as the ship gave off a warning whistle. Behind her, the gangplank clattered as a pair of men pulled it up and tucked it away.
Ellie grasped the rail tightly as she looked out over the docks. Constance had hopped up onto a barrel of salted fish and was waving at her enthusiastically. Behind her, a lean figure with night-dark hair broke the sea of busy, moving people on the pier.
It was Jacobs, gazing up at Ellie from beside the open door of a hackney carriage.
He looked curious, and perhaps a little challenging—but not defeated, Ellie thought with a little chill.
No—he did not look at all like a man whose hopes had just been dashed.
He tipped his hat like a fencer acknowledging a fine parry. Then he was gone, the dark point of him vanishing like a ghost as the ship glided free of the dock and London receded behind her.