Chapter 7
Oscar would have charged off to confront Mr. Defoe then and there if I hadn’t blocked the doorway. The fire in his eyes raged so fiercely that I worried he’d forcibly move me out of the way.
I put up my hands, prepared to press them against his chest if I had to. “Oscar, don’t do anything rash.”
“I won’t,” he growled.
“We can’t accuse him of abduction and theft.”
“You’re right. We need to gather evidence first.”
“We can’t even accuse him then. If we find evidence pointing to him, we take it to the police. They can handle it.”
“We can handle it.”
“You’re forgetting something, Oscar.” At his blank look, I continued. “He’s an iron magician. He can tear sharp slivers off iron things and fling them at us with the movement spell. We’ll become human pincushions!”
“Defoe may have lied about knowing the iron-moving spell. Iron magicians are incredibly rare, and we only know of one who knows the spell to move iron. If he could do that spell, India and Matt would have heard of Defoe and warned us, but they didn’t.
Your grandfather was an iron magician, wasn’t he? Could he make it fly?”
“No, and I understand that not every magician knows a movement spell. My point is that Defoe says he can, so we must assume he told the truth until we learn otherwise. It’s too great a risk to confront him. I say we take our suspicions to the police. We’ll warn them about his magic.”
Oscar lowered his head, his shoulders slumping. When he looked up again, he was more composed, his brow cleared of the furrow that had formed there upon first mentioning Defoe.
“All right,” he conceded. “We’ll go to the police and offer our assistance.”
I collected a clean handkerchief from my valise and plucked my hat off the valet stand. I followed him out of the room and locked the door, pocketing the key just as my stomach growled.
“We’ll go after breakfast,” he added.
There was no point protesting. I was hopeless in the mornings until I’d eaten a good breakfast and downed it with a cup of coffee. I quickened my pace to keep up with Oscar’s long strides as he headed for the stairs.
“India once said it was a good idea for you to accompany me on these book collecting jaunts,” he said. “Perhaps this is why. I tend to act without thinking, whereas you…”
“Tend to think without acting?” I offered. It was hardly a flattering assessment of my overly cautious nature, but it was an accurate one.
“I think she meant you and I complement one another. Separately, our strengths are fine, but not special. But together, we make a formidable team.” He clasped my shoulder. “We’re going to find those women, Gavin, and get the book back from Defoe if we work together.”
“With the police.” I peered up at him and nodded. Considering the nature of what we’d set out to do, he was in quite a good mood.
“You need new spectacles,” he said. “Ones that fit better.”
“Pardon?”
“Those keep slipping down your nose.”
“Do they?”
“You’ve never noticed you’re constantly pushing them back up?”
I touched the bridge of my glasses only to self-consciously lower my hand. “No, I’ve never noticed.”
He wasn’t listening, however. He’d spotted two people on the landing below and increased his pace. “Defoe!”
Oh, lord. I suspected my influence wasn’t going to stop him doing something rash now.
Mr. Defoe smirked. “I told you.” He spoke to Miss Wheeler, standing beside him.
She eyed Oscar’s rapid descent toward them, her gloved hand tightening its hold on the umbrella she held.
“Want to sell it already, Barratt?” Mr. Defoe asked. “I’m afraid my offer will not be the same as—”
“Don’t play games, Defoe. Where is it? Where’s the book?”
Mr. Defoe laughed, only to stop when no one joined in. “What do you mean? Have you lost it?”
“We haven’t lost it. You stole it.”
Mr. Defoe’s eyes widened. “My God, you have lost it! How could you have misplaced it mere hours after getting it?”
Oscar’s fists closed at his sides. “Hand it back and we’ll forget this happened. Otherwise…”
“What? You’ll punch me? And here I thought you a gentleman, Barratt.”
“I’ll notify the police,” Oscar growled.
Defoe snorted.
Oscar stepped toward him. I lunged to stop him, but was too late. The point of Miss Wheeler’s umbrella pressed into his stomach. Oscar could have pushed it aside, but he seemed too taken aback by the unexpected move to do anything other than stare at her, mouth ajar.
Defoe snorted again. “Take my advice, Barratt, don’t cross Adele. With or without an umbrella, she’s formidable when she wants to be.”
Oscar put up his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t going to hit him,” he said to Miss Wheeler. “I just want to search him for the book.”
Defoe opened his jacket to reveal he had nothing in his inside pockets or tucked into his waistcoat. “Adele, open my valise. Our trunks have already been taken down by the porter, but you can search those too, if you like, Barratt.”
With a final glare for Oscar, Miss Wheeler lowered her umbrella and opened the valise Mr. Defoe had set down upon our approach. Inside was a traveling writing desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which she also opened, and papers. The Mackenzie book wasn’t among them.
“We don’t have it,” Mr. Defoe reiterated when his assistant closed the valise. “If you’ve lost it—"
“It was stolen,” Oscar snapped. “Gavin left it on a table in his room, but it was gone when he woke up this morning. Aside from us, you are the only other person who knew we had it and also wanted it.”
“You can’t be certain of that. Perhaps Kinloch informed someone. Perhaps Kinloch himself stole it back.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“To have both the money and the book.”
“He struck me as an honorable man.”
Mr. Defoe had answered me without looking at me, but now he managed to tear his attention away from Oscar.
From the anger vibrating off him, I rather wished I’d stayed silent.
“May I offer you some free advice, Professor? You shouldn’t trust a man on such a short acquaintance. It gives him the upper hand.”
His words were friendly on the surface, but the underlying tone rippled with anger. He now turned that anger onto Oscar.
“That book is valuable, Barratt. I’ve not found another and I’ve been searching for years.”
“We know that,” Oscar said through gritted teeth. “We also know you only wanted it for the reference to tattoo magic. Hence our conclusion that you are the one who likely stole it last night.”
Mr. Defoe pointed his finger in Oscar’s face.
“You two should never have been given custodianship of such a valuable item. A journalist and an academic,” he spat.
“I’d wager neither of you have ever wielded anything more dangerous than a pencil.
You can’t protect yourselves, let alone an object in your possession. ”
Oscar lunged, but Miss Wheeler was quick. She whacked his shin with her umbrella.
“Ow!” He hopped on one leg and rubbed his shin. “Was that necessary?”
Miss Wheeler stepped closer to Oscar while Mr. Defoe stepped back, content to let her take charge of the situation.
It was most peculiar. While I’d seen Willie use physical violence, I’d always thought her rather unique among women.
She dressed like a man, behaved like a man, and was raised by outlaws in America’s Wild West. Miss Wheeler, with her educated English accent, expensive clothes and pristine white gloves, was definitely not like Willie.
Yet she made me feel rather vulnerable. I suspected she could beat me soundly with nothing but her umbrella.
Oscar didn’t seem quite so vulnerable, although he looked bewildered as he took her in anew.
“You’re rather easily riled, aren’t you, Mr. Barratt?” she asked, voice warm and velvety like a fine mulled wine.
“Defoe can say what he likes about me,” he shot back. “But not my friend.”
“You called him a thief. Did you expect him to let that slide?”
Oscar lifted his chin, not willing to retract his accusation.
I, however, had considerable doubts that we were right. Mr. Defoe seemed worried about the disappearance of the book. It could be an act, but if so he was a good actor. I was about to point out a fact that Oscar had missed, but Miss Wheeler did it first.
“Think about it, Mr. Barratt. Would we still be here if we stole the book? No. We would have left on the first train out of Edinburgh.”
“Someone stole that book, Miss Wheeler. It didn’t walk out on its own.”
“Then let’s work together and find out who took it, shall we?”
“We’ll report the theft to the police,” I told her. “There’s no need for your help with that.”
Neither she nor Oscar was listening to me. They didn’t even look at me.
“Why do you want to help us find it?” Oscar asked her. “We won’t be selling it to you once its safely back in our possession.”
“Because knowing who has it is better than not knowing. You said yourself, the book is going to form part of a library collection in London that will be open to the public. We are the public. Or will certain people be barred?”
“Of course not,” Oscar assured her. He glanced at me. “Do we trust them, Gavin?” By asking me, it meant he wanted to give in. I wondered if that had anything to do with the remarkable woman with the wine-dark voice and lovely brown eyes, who was rather handy with an umbrella.
“There’s no need for anyone’s help,” I said again. “We’re only going to the police station to report the theft. We don’t need anyone to accompany us.”
“We’ll go there soon,” Oscar told me. “We should find out what we can from the staff here first, then take that information to the police.” At my hesitation, he added, “We may as well be of use, and we are already here. Time is of the essence, Gavin.”