“Yes, please,” said Penny.
“Then it’s sea slugs with bamboo shoots,” said Miss Wu dryly.
“Perfect!”exclaimed Penny, getting out her notebook.
Chapter forty
London
Eameswasonhisway back to his lodgings when he saw an unexpected policeman.He slunk into the nearest alley.He knew of a relatively clean restaurant at the end of this alley, frequented by Asiatics, and the policeman would be unlikely to come that way.Many of them were in the pay of the opium dealers.He would wait at the restaurant until his appointment later that evening at the canal, where he would assess a potential recruit to the Brotherhood.It was a step down from the Ormdale assignment, but he was desperately grateful for it regardless.
Eames found a dim corner inside it and carefully surveyed the restaurant from behind a newspaper.
To his surprise, his eyes fell on an apple-cheeked English girl.
His senses sharpened.Why was she here?Had she been lured here under some pretext?Was her food drugged?
She seemed completely off her guard, and exactly the sort of girl to be targeted due to her physical attributes and unsuspicious nature.
He almost wished he hadn’t come in.It was not his mission to protect naive females from the consequences of their actions.
But another part of him argued that this was what the Brotherhood was for—to protect that which was lovely from the forces of darkness.
And this girlwaslovely.
“Not my responsibility,” he muttered to himself.
It wasn’t the first time he had said that.He’d said it to a Boer woman once.She’d held up her filthy child, all limbs and eyes it had seemed, and pleaded with him in guttural tones.
“Please, can’t you see ve are starfing here?”
He shook himself.Memories could not hurt him.She and the child were long buried.
This girl, however, was alive—very much so.So Eames waited and watched.
A little later, the sly foreign girl who was with her slipped away from the table, no doubt to alert her associates to their opportunity.
He quickly crossed the restaurant and bent over the table so only she could hear him, peering at her over his tinted glasses.
“I say,” he whispered.“I’m dreadfully concerned that you may have been drugged.”
She gazed fixedly into his eyes, and a little tremor went through her.
“Do you think I’m in danger, Mr…?”she asked.
“Eames,” he said, startled into giving his real name by her confiding expression.“I think you are in very grave danger.”
“Won’t you help me find a police station, Mr Eames?”she asked.
He looked about him nervously.The last place in the world he wanted to go was a police station.What had his chivalrous impulses got him into now?
She reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
“Do please help me,” she pleaded, laying the other hand on her bosom.“I think I feel the drug taking effect.”
Eames chewed his lip.There would be a description of him at the station.He could go and call the bobby at the corner, but they would want him to make a statement.If only he hadn’t let that awful Worms girl see his eyes!
“Please—they’re coming…” and with this ominous prediction, her head fell onto his arm.
