The door to the exhibition room was unlocked. As I turned the knob, I heard a soft noise—a footfall? a snore?—and instantly stopped, standing as still as one of Stoker’s stuffed specimens. I waited an eternity, but there was no further noise, only the occasional gentle creak of an old house settling its bones against the icy weather. After a thousand heartbeats, I slipped inside the room, shutting the door gently behind me. I took the precaution of turning the key in the lock and slipping it into my pocket. Without it, there would be a delay of several hours at least before anyone was able to gain access to the room and discover the theft of the notebook.
I was conscious at once of how cold it was in the room, far colder than the rooms downstairs, and I shivered as I crossed the carpet to the display case where the notebook had been locked. It was darker here as well. No night-light softened the darkness, and the heavy draperies had been drawn across the window. It was a large French window giving on to a small, balustraded parapet that overhung the ground floor, making the house far more attractive than the buildingswith flat façades, I thought, but desperately drafty in winter, it seemed. The draperies even stirred a little in the chill of the night air, and I realized I could, quite possibly, leave that way, eliminating the need for a return trip through the club. All it required was a convenient bit of ivy or even a few architectural embellishments upon which to place my weight. I was no climber in the fashion of Alice Baker-Greene—or even as skilled as Stoker in such matters—but butterflying required considerable scrambling over rocks, hauling oneself up and down steeply scrubby hillsides and modest mountains. I had more than once launched myself into ravines or over a precipice, and the thought of doing so under these conditions caused my pulse to quicken with excitement.
So distracted was I by such thoughts that once I struck a vesta, the burst of light blooming into the darkness and dazzling my eyes, I did not realize at first that the door of the case stood open, a twisted wire lodged in the lock. On the shelf, where the notebook had been left, there was only an empty place. I like to think that my wits might have functioned more quickly had my eyes not taken a moment to adjust to the change in the light, but the truth was, I had approached the endeavor far too complacently. When I am coursing along the trail of a most elusive butterfly, I must still be watchful, vigilant against poisonous vipers, assorted venomous spiders, rock falls and sinking sands, and the occasional brigand. In the cushioned security of the Curiosity Club, those lessons deserted me, and I did not scent danger until it was upon me.
The drapery at the window bellied out with a sudden frosty gust, and I realized too late that the window was not poorly fitted and drafty—it was open. The gust caused my vesta to gutter and die just as a figure launched itself at me from behind the drapery. I had but a fragment of a second’s warning. I dodged to my right, eluding the heaviest part of the blow, but still a solid strike from a closed fistlanded upon my jaw, hurtling me to the ground and causing stars to sparkle across my vision.
Without thought or hesitation, I forced myself up onto my hands and knees in time to see the intruder flee through the open window, pausing only briefly, entangled in the thick curtain before vanishing out the window and onto the parapet. Our collision had cost me a second or two at most, and by the time I reached the parapet, the villain had only just swung a leg over the side of the balustrade. The figure was male, with a cap pulled low over the brow, concealing the features. The head turned, the shadowed eyes seeming to bore into me, and then he was gone, as silent and weightless as if he had dropped from the parapet.
I vaulted to where he had disappeared to find he had not, in fact, fallen, but was climbing swiftly and quietly, with an economy of motion that would have done credit to an orangutan. I swung my leg over the parapet, giving a double-barreled cry of the hoopoe, two quick calls to alert Stoker to danger. The figure looked up as I secured my hold on the drainpipe. The apparatus swung alarmingly under our combined weight but it held, the bolts biting into the masonry of the building as we descended. He hit the ground at a dead run, his boots making a peculiar metallic noise as he moved. There was no sign of Stoker and I cursed him roundly under my breath as I undertook the pursuit myself. The stranger ran across the street towards the square, hauling himself hand over hand up the iron bars and into the garden, disappearing into the thick foliage.
“What in the name of the oozing wounds of Christ is happening?” Stoker demanded as I pounded on the bars in frustration.
“The devil has gone in there!” I exclaimed. “He has the notebook!” Stoker, to his eternal credit, required no further urging. He dropped at once to his knee, forming a stirrup with his hands. He rested these on his thigh and as I set my foot into his cupped palms, he surgedupwards, vaulting me up and over the top of the fence. He followed hard upon my heels, both of us landing rather gracelessly in a particularly nasty evergreen shrub.
We helped one another to our feet, stopping to listen. There was no noise save the sigh of the wind and the click of the bare branches of the plane trees overhead as they rubbed together.
“He cannot be far,” I whispered. “His boots make noise. Metallic.”
“Climbing boots,” Stoker said grimly. “Nails in the soles, no doubt.”
I nodded and peered into the darkness. Only a sliver of a waning crescent moon illuminated the sky, giving nothing but a cold, faraway glow to the rooftops beyond the garden. Of the square itself, it showed nothing, and there were no friendly lanterns to light the way. It seemed impossible that one could be in the heart of London and yet so completely silent, but we were as remote as that silvery, slivery moon, I thought.
But then I knew, although I could not have said why. Our miscreant was close at hand.
I turned to Stoker. “We have lost him,” I said in audible dejection. “And I cannot stand any longer in this freezing cold. We might as well go home.”
Stoker opened his mouth to protest, but I pressed his hand. “Oh—er, yes. Quite right. It is devilishly cold and I think I am taking a chill.”
He gave a racking cough that was as false as it was loud, and I tugged on his hand, pulling him towards the gate. “Have you your lockpicks handy? I’ve no liking for going over that fence again and it would be far more comfortable to leave by the gate.”
“Yes, of course.” We dared not light a vesta, so he worked by touch, taking a little longer than he might otherwise have done. I was conscious the whole time of a presence, nothing more than a feeling. Not by footstep or rustling branch did he betray his presence. But I knew he was there.
When the gate was at last open, I motioned for Stoker to go through first. He eased himself out onto the pavement, looking for any passersby, but he shook his head, indicating the streets were quiet. I tested the gate on its hinges, finding it silent and smooth, and opened it widely.
“Thank God this night is over,” I said with a yawn, and I gestured for Stoker to walk a little ways down the pavement, his footfalls echoing around the silent square. I stood in the shadow for a long minute, so long I began to think our quarry would never emerge. But at last I heard the peculiar metallic scrape of his boots on the gravel, coming closer and closer still as my hand gripped the gate.
He stepped onto the pavement and I flung the gate forward with all my might, the end post catching him squarely upon the chin and knocking him flat onto his back as his feet soared over his head.
Stoker was at my side in an instant. “I presume you had an excellent reason for doing that?” he asked mildly.
“He hit me in the jaw,” I said, tapping the spot on my face that I was quite certain would bloom with a bruise by morning.
“Well then,” Stoker replied, “you ought to have hit him harder.”
“He is unconscious,” I pointed out. “I was not trying to kill him.” Stoker lit a series of vestas to illuminate the scene as I bent swiftly to the villain’s recumbent form and searched his pockets. The notebook was in the second and I handed it to Stoker for safekeeping. I might have proved myself a match for the fellow, but I had little doubt he would think twice before attacking Stoker.
“Who do you think it is?” Stoker asked as he buttoned the notebook securely into his pocket. His vesta struggled against the chill wind, giving only a small pool of light, and the miscreant’s face was still concealed by his scarf and cap.
I shrugged. “It has all been too confusing to venture a guess. Maximilian perhaps?”
Just then the villain groaned and moved his head. “What in the name of Sam Hill did you do that for?” he demanded.
He sat up, his scarf falling away, but even if I had not glimpsed the features, I would have known him from the American idiom. “Douglas Norton!” I cried.
CHAPTER
16
