Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
London
Penny might as well have been screaming at the wall, and it certainly looked as if that was what she was doing as her prey disappeared into a crevice like the nasty little spider he was.
One of the bobbies threatened to cuff her ‘if she didn’t quiet down and tell them what had happened like a nice young lady.’
“I’m not a nice young lady!” she shrieked. “I’m a journalist! And there’s a fugitive from justice getting away— again!”
It was impossibly good luck to have happened across the very man she wanted in all London. To lose him now would be unthinkable!
Her eyes met Miss Wu’s and suddenly, inexplicably, she thought of Qiu Guijin.
Perhaps it was the spirit of the martyr that inspired her, for Penny slipped off the policeman like water on a bird-wing and plunged into the narrow slit of darkness alone.
The first thing that happened was that she stumbled over the broken shards of a crate. The yowl of a surprised cat ahead of her confirmed that she was on Eames’s tail.
Penny picked up her pace, twisting sideways to get through the smallest places, and keeping her umbrella point ahead of her to identify obstructions. The sounds of her own breathing and footsteps thundered at her.
Rounding a corner, she almost fell into a busy street, loud with traffic, both animal and machine.
And there was Eames, across the street and a city block ahead of her, leaning against a wall to catch his breath.
Their eyes met across the street, and they both froze. Then a heavily laden lorry rumbled between them, horn bleating.
Penny darted into the street behind the lorry and seized the taut ropes lashing down its load. Then she swung herself nimbly up, finding a foothold on the bumper, and thanking heaven that she had worn her sensible shoes.
A moment later and she was neck to neck with Eames, who was running down the pavement. He was fast, but he would get tired if he kept this up, and Penny had the upper hand now. She was young and fleet of foot, and her cause was just.
“I just want to talk to you, Mr Eames!” she shouted.
His eyes bulged with disbelief.
“I want an exclusive interview!” she tried again.
At that moment the lorry lurched to turn off the main road. Penny lurched too. She used the momentum to spring down onto the sidewalk, breaking her fall by running, and just narrowly missing a flower girl’s cart.
But she had taken her eyes off Eames for a moment, and now she couldn’t see him.
“‘Ere, love!” the flower girl cried, tucking a posy of wallflowers into Penny’s lapel. “That way!”
The street vendor pointed down a side street and held out a palm. Penny had no time to find a coin—so she plucked out her hatpin and tossed her new hat to the girl. It was in the latest style and would fetch a good price, far more than the girl’s wares would for a whole day.
The girl crowed a “cor!” and “good luck” after her as Penny sped on, hatless. She pushed her hatpin into the knot of hair at her neck before she could stab herself.
Penny was running towards sound and movement and the smell of the docks, towards the growl of engines and clank of machinery, towards another iteration of the city that was hers.
At the next intersection of streets she found herself in a bustling lumberyard. A stack of rough boards swung inches from her ear, and a voice shouted at her to watch out.
But Penny had already ducked gracefully out of the way, her reflexes sharp from regular practise of the martial arts. She darted halfway across the yard undeterred, scanning it for Eames.
But the yard was too full of brown-armed lascars and navvies, coughing lorries, and clanking cranes. Penny hopped her way up to the very pinnacle of a pile of timber to get a better view.
A brawny arm caught her round the waist and swung her lightly back to earth.
She considered stomping on this bold young man’s feet, but his boots were substantial and his smile pleasing.
And it was his pile of boards, after all, that she’d just been clambering all over.
“I’ve come from Limehouse Causeway—after a man,” Penny panted.
“Any man?” he asked hopefully, as if he might volunteer.
“Englishman with a beard—running, just now.”
He whistled and called out in a presumably-subcontinental language to a little cluster of his fellow Indian dockworkers who had stopped to watch them in amusement.
One of them nodded and shouted back, pointing across the lumberyard.
Penny lurched in that direction, but the laskar stopped her with his developed forearm.
“Wait, Goat Girl,” he said, and whistled again.
One of his compatriots produced a motorised bicycle, kicked up the stand, and started the motor with a thrilling crack, and offered it to her with a little bow.
Penny goggled at it. She looked up at the bold one in amazement.
“What if I ride it into the Thames?” she protested over the roar of the motor.
“Then you’ll owe me two kisses instead of the one you’ll give me now,” he said cheerfully.
Keeping her eyes fixed on his face, Penny pulled the posy from her lapel, gave it a kiss, and popped it behind his ear.
His friends hooted with delight and clapped.
Penny quickly hitched her leg over the seat, smoothed her skirts down, put her umbrella over her lap, and grabbed the handlebars.
“How do I return it?” she asked.
“Leave it at any of the public houses around here for Joki—they all know me, Goat Girl,” he called out, holding up the posy to give it a flamboyant kiss of his own.
“Oh, I’ll bet they do,” she returned.
They let go and she was off to the sound of whoops and applause.
Penny propped her feet on the pedals and let the motor take her, the wind whipping her curls about.
In the interest of womanly dignity, she swallowed a shriek of excitement. Was it the unexpected conveyance or the encounter at the lumberyard that made her heart race so? Something to think about later.
For now, she had a villain to catch.
She sped noisily along the very edge of the canals and basins where the cargo ships brought in their loads. The stink of receding tidewater filled the air, and fingers of fog poked round the fronts of the buildings.
She had almost given up hope when she spotted her quarry, sheltering in a hotel doorway to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. He was tinged a sickly colour by the blue-tinted lamp over the door. For a moment she was afraid he would see her, but he disappeared inside without looking her way.
Brakes, thought Penny, and depressed them just as she would on a normal bicycle. Thankfully, this worked, and it slowed to a halt, though the motor kept sputtering at her as if complaining about something.
Penny caught herself with a boot on the pavement and swung her leg over to dismount, but as she did so her umbrella got caught in a lever and the vehicle simply scooted out from under her and disappeared into the fog, taking her umbrella with it.
Leaving her with one hand outstretched in a mute and ineffectual plea.
She heard a loud splash.
“Bother,” she muttered.
Well! No time to worry about that now. She crept up to the window of the hotel and peered in.
It seemed an average grimy waterfront public hotel, and not somewhere Penny would choose to visit near dusk, alone, hatless, and—worst of all—without her umbrella. But she had got this far—she wasn’t about to slink home in disgrace now.
She looked up and down the waterfront for a policeman. To her relief, one was approaching her now with a hangdog expression.
“See here, miss, this isn’t the right kind of place for your sort,” he said. “If you want to go slumming, you should book one of them there tours, Thomas Cooke, and do it safe like, not on your own, miss. This ain’t Kensington!”
“I’m not slumming, officer,” she explained, “I’m on the tail of a dangerous fugitive. I followed him here from a Chinese restaurant in Limehouse, and if you’ll just come with me, you’ll make ever such a prominent arrest. I’m sure your superiors will be terribly pleased with you.”
The man’s eyes twitched a bit at prominent arrest, as if this were the last thing in the world he wanted for his evening. That was the problem with these men, Penny thought—absolutely no ambition at all. If only there were such a thing as lady police officers!
“Where do you come from, love,” he said. “I’ll find you a cab.”
Penny pushed a curl out of her face. “I’m not your love and I’m from Bloomsbury but I write for the Daily Mail,“ she insisted, “and I’m chasing a dangerous fugitive, I tell you! But if you won’t believe me, I’ll keep following the man myself—in there!” She pointed at the door.
The policeman gave the blue lamp a wary look. “Tell you what. I’ll have a look round inside as long as you promise to take a cab back to mum and dad after. Promise?”
“But of course,” Penny said tartly, “I’m not planning to take up permanent residence at”—she referred to the peeling sign— “the Smoking Monkey.”
She allowed the policeman to go first. It took only a quick circuit around the dim interior to see that Eames was not at the bar.
“Have you another room?” she asked the barman, who shook his head.
“Right, let’s go,” said the policeman with satisfaction, reaching for her elbow.
But just then, a man in a well-cut suit and a dishevelled tie came out of a door behind him, blinking in a foggy sort of way. He left the hotel with a nod at the bobby.
Penny lost no time. She caught the door he had come out of before it swung shut and ran up the narrow stairs behind it.
At the top of the filthy stairs, a heavy, acrid-smelling curtain screened whatever lay beyond.
“Stop, miss! You mustn’t go in there!” the policeman barked from behind her.
She had the distinct feeling that he knew quite well what lay behind that curtain.
Penny pushed through it before he could stop her.