With only the light from those stained windows at the street level, it was admittedly not my best move, but it was enough to bring a startled curse.
I took advantage of our assailant’s surprise and swept his feet from under him. He hit the floor with a groan and another curse as I thrust my hand into my bag and retrieved the revolver.
“Mikaela?!”
That stopped me as I pulled back the hammer and prepared to defend myself and Munro if necessary.
“What the bloody devil are ye doin’ here?!” the “assailant” on the floor demanded in that broad Scots accent that I knew quite well.
“I think ye broke my nose!”
Eight
I stoodacross the office from Brodie.
“So good to see you again,” I commented as I laid the revolver he had given me on the desk.
There was not an immediate comment as he pressed a cold cloth across his nose which seemed to have quit bleeding, with a rather colorful bruise below his left eye.
Both eyes, one quite narrowed, glaring back at me.
“What the bloody devil were ye doin’ there, woman?!”
That did seem to be the question of the hour, or perhaps as much as he could demand that wasn’t a litany of curses, some of which I had not heard before.
Imagine that.
I removed my jacket and crossed over to the coat rack.
“I might ask the same of you.”
Perhaps not the right response under the circumstances, said circumstances that had Munro leaving immediately after we reached the office, obviously with experience in such matters in consideration of their long friendship. Those“matters”such as the one I now confronted in the form of a very angry Scot.
“Your inquiries for Sir Avery?” I ventured a guess.
“And yerself?” he demanded.
“My inquiries on behalf of Helen Bennett,” I informed him.
I had indeed discovered where Dr. Bennett had been keeping himself the past several days. The question now was what had happened and what was he doing in that part of London in what appeared to be a well-equipped medical office. Or perhaps“clinic”was a better description by what we found there.
It was apparent that Dr. Joseph Bennett had set up practice in that abandoned tenement building. But for what reason when he very obviously had an office and medical practice at St. James Hospital?
Dr. Pennington had called him brilliant, even though he had been criticized and apparently censured for some of the methods he promoted which, according to Helen Bennett, had the potential to greatly improve the lives of severely injured patients.
Was he then forced to set up a secret practice in Aldgate because of that censure, a brilliant physician forced to take other measures to continue his practice? Or for some other reason?
“Did it occur to ye that it could be dangerous?”
The anger behind that question brought me back to Brodie. He was quite irritated over the matter as he pulled off his blood-stained sweater— that blow I landed had caused his nose to bleed quite profusely.
If it had been anyone else but Brodie, I would have felt a sense of satisfaction. However…
I was not entirely unsympathetic, which of course raised the question of what precisely was he doing at that tenement in Aldgate?
He tossed his sweater through the doorway into the adjacent room, and I was forced to view Brodie in rough cambric pants and boots, overlong hair somewhat disheveled with several days of dark beard, and that cloth clutched to one side of his face.
I was reminded that Brodie could be quite a stirring sight. Not given to slack muscles or paunchiness as a good many men were inclined, but quite lean and well-muscled, with that light dusting of dark hair on his chest.
