“I have done nothing untoward with Miss McKenna, and I will thank you to speak of her in a respectful manner,” he growled. “I came to you today to do you the courtesy of informing you that I plan to go above you, directly to the Home Secretary.”
“Oh? And you plan to tell him what?” The smirk was back in place now. “That you have been fucking a Fenian actress who smuggled dynamite into Liverpool? That would be rich, Winchelsea.”
Looking pleased with himself, Ravenhurst lit a pipe and stuffed it into his mouth, puffing a cloud of smoke into the air. The urge to deliver a drubbing to another man had never been stronger, burning to a seething crescendo inside Felix. It was only with the greatest exertion of his rigid control that he remained calm.
“I will tell him you are subverting the authority of the Home Office,” he countered. “That you are conducting witch hunts involving innocent women. That you have been planting evidence upon suspected Fenians so you have cause to arrest them.”
The last was information he had obtained directly from Arden, who had himself been pursuing an investigation into Ravenhurst’s conduct. The recent CID arrest of one Irishman named John Tierney had been predicated upon the planting of evidence at his home in the form of nitroglycerine and explosive Atlas powder buried in the yard.
Ravenhurst looked distinctly less smug now. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of.”
“Does the name John Tierney mean anything to you?” Felix asked, warming to his cause now that the tables had been so distinctly turned.
“Tierney was charged with conspiracy to cause an explosion,” the Commissioner clipped. “He was found to be in possession of dynamite at the time of his arrest.”
“Dynamite which was given to him by your own undercover agents,” Felix accused. “The evidence against Tierney was manufactured. When you cannot find dynamitards, you make them yourself, is that not true?”
“Tierney is a known Fenian,” Ravenhurst argued. “The case in his possession on his arrest was his own.”
“In fact, he was asked to carry the case by your informant while he was traveling.” Felix paused, and it was his turn to smile, for he felt the stirrings of victory over Ravenhurst. Everything was proceeding according to plan. Johanna would be free of suspicion before he was done. “When your men arrested him, they did not even open the trunk to determine the contents, did they? Why is that, I wonder? How could Mr. Tierney have been arrested for conspiracy to cause an explosion if no one knew what was actually in the trunk?”
The Commissioner paled, because he knew Felix was right. He also knew the evidence had been planted on Tierney, just as the mole within the CID ranks had claimed to Arden.
“That is a blatant falsehood,” Ravenhurst bluffed. “The trunk was opened at the time of Tierney’s arrest.”
“No,” Felix insisted, “it was not. The Special League is in possession of a sworn statement to the opposite. A concerned CID officer approached Arden with the information. The Home Office will not be pleased to receive this information or the statement, but I am obliged to provide both.”
Ravenhurst sneered. “Do you think you can bribe me into keeping your slattern free of prison? Is that what this is, Winchelsea?”
Felix’s fist slammed on the desk between him and the Commissioner with so much force, the blow echoed through the room. “I told you to speak of Miss McKenna with the respect she deserves. If you call her a slattern again, so help me, I will feed you your fucking teeth. Listen to me, Ravenhurst, and listen to me well because I shan’t repeat myself. When I leave here, I am going directly to the Home Secretary. I will be accompanied by the Duke of Arden, who is in possession of the statement. I will tell him everything I know. I will also tell him about your false imprisonment of Miss Johanna McKenna, who is innocent of all charges you leveled against her.”
“The Home Office was happy to see Tierney arrested,” Ravenhurst said, stubborn to the last. “Do you really think the Home Secretary will give a damn how his arrest was secured?”
“Yes, I do expect the Home Secretary will object to the violation of civil liberties and the planting of evidence upon a suspect,” he gritted. “If you do not see the wrong in what you have done, then you have no right to claim to be a man upholding the law.”
“Go ahead and fight for Tierney if you wish,” Ravenhurst said, “but there is something you are forgetting, Winchelsea. Two very big, very undeniable somethings, in fact: the dynamite and the correspondence your slattern smuggled into England. I have an informant who was willing to turn Queen’s Evidence against her. He will testify that she brought the dynamite here at her brother’s behest, and that she met with him at the Royal Aquarium to deliver the correspondence, which included a list of public targets for future bombings.”
Felix met Ravenhurst’s stare unflinchingly, for he had already known this was the man’s final trump card—the dynamite and the man Johanna had met at her brother’s orders at the Royal Aquarium. But he had a more powerful move to make. The only one, in fact, he could. He had thought long and hard about what he was about to do, and the only conclusion he reached every time was that he would do anything—whatever he must—for the woman he loved.
“I will inform the Home Secretary that I was conducting my own campaign without the knowledge of the Home Office, the Special League, and the CID,” he said. “During the course of my investigation, I contacted Johanna McKenna in New York and paid her to act as my informant. At my orders, she brought her brother’s dynamite and correspondence to England. At my orders, she met with her brother’s man at the Royal Aquarium. My staff will confirm I followed Miss McKenna to the aquarium on the day in question. I also ordered Miss McKenna to copy all the correspondence contained in the trunk prior to her turning it over.”
“You are lying,” Ravenhurst snarled, slamming his pipe down upon his desk. “You conducted no such campaign, and you know it.”
“I will be bringing to the Home Secretary the trunk in question, which has been in my possession from the moment Miss McKenna arrived in London,” he continued, unmoved by the other man’s rage. “In it, the Home Secretary will find the dynamite, untouched, along with the copies of the correspondence I asked Miss McKenna to make, written in her own hand. The Duke and Duchess of Arden are willing to testify on my and Miss McKenna’s behalf, along with the Duke of Westmorland. I feel confident the Home Secretary will see as clearly as I do that there is no evidence against Miss McKenna at all. Indeed, she has been working for the Home Office and for me, doing everything I asked of her.”
“You would go that far for an Irish whore who treads the boards for her living?” Ravenhurst asked cruelly.
“I would go to the ends of the earth to protect an innocent woman from being imprisoned for a crime she did not commit,” he corrected, standing.
And to protect the woman I love, he silently added. But he did not dare say those words aloud, for he could not give Ravenhurst any ammunition against him or Johanna.
Ravenhurst stood with such force, his chair toppled backward in a noisy clatter onto the wooden floor. “You will go to hell for this, Winchelsea,” he vowed.
Felix sketched him an ironic bow. “If I do, I will expect to see you there, Ravenhurst.”
And with that parting shot, he took his leave, his heart pounding in his chest as if he had just run a mile. Johanna’s name was going to be cleared, he vowed as he strode from the temporary CID offices. Even if it meant thrusting his into the mud.
Because he would do anything for her.
