“Might I inquire,” Stoker said politely, “if this is your usual business or merely a hobby?”
Harry looked pained. “I have tried to make an honest living, but it is difficult.”
“It can be,” Stoker agreed.
“So,” Harry went on, “I have very often been obliged to return to my less-than-laudable ways. Fortune has not always been kind to me.”
“And so you intended to defraud Lady Hathaway of her diamond as your latest criminal enterprise?” Stoker asked.
“Things,” Harry said coldly, “did not go according to plan.”
“Obviously,” Stoker replied, his gaze resting upon Harry’s bruised eye.
“After I left the Hall in some distress, I met with certain associates of mine who had a vested interest in the diamond. It disappointed them that I was unsuccessful,” Harry said. He prodded the bruise gently with his fingertips. “One of my associates tends to be demonstrative with his fists when he is disappointed.”
“You were stealing the diamond to order,” I said, my understanding suddenly illuminated. “It was a conspiracy!”
“The word ‘conspiracy’ implies a certain egalitarianism,” Harry corrected. “I was very much operating at the behest of another party—a party whose attentions I hoped to avoid by leaving the Hall as soon as it became apparent I could not fulfill my commission.”
“You were running away to avoid the thrashing your partners were sure to administer for your failure.” I poked his empurpled cheekbone, provoking a shriek. “A thrashing they managed to inflict anyway.”
“My flight from the Hall did not go unnoticed,” he said dryly. “I was apprehended as soon as I alighted at the station. They took me to a villa somewhere beyond Hampstead, where they made their feelings about the situation perfectly clear.”
“And then they let you go?” Stoker asked.
“I let myself go. There are only two of them, and the fellow who did this”—he gestured towards his bruises—“left me on my own for a little while. No doubt taking a leisurely dinner to fortify his strength before he came back to finish the job. I did not think it would be a wise strategy to test my hypothesis, so I effected an escape.”
“And you camehere?” I said.
“You needn’t sound so incredulous. I haven’t been to London in many years. It would take time to locate friends who might take me in. And, as I said, I had seen your address on the letter Charles had. He showed it around, you know, pleased as punch that a lord had writtenhim. He made each of us ooh and aah over the bloody thing as if it were a holy relic. I remembered the name of the house and thought I might lie low here for a bit, just until I got my nerve back. I never imagined you would be returning so soon, although I must say I am rather glad you did. I was in real danger of suffocating in that monstrosity,” he added with a shudder.
“The sarcophagus has holes in it,” I told him coldly. “Your only danger was cramp.”
“Still, I have had a thoroughly unpleasant time of it and I want nothing more than to sleep just now and then eat again, something hot this time. A nice bit of roast beef,” he said, his eyes shimmering with longing. “Do you know how long it has been since I had a nice bit of roast beef? The Hathaways eat far too much lamb. I am heartily sick of it.”
“Tell us more about these colleagues of yours,” Stoker urged. “A fellow who is free with his fists, you mentioned.”
Harry nodded. “Göran, an enormous Swedish fellow whom I have only ever heard communicate in grunts. Swedish is a distinctly unmellifluous tongue. He answers toher.”
“Her?” I inquired.
Harry shuddered. “Isabel de Armas MacGregor,” he said, whispering the name.
“She is not here, you utter coward,” I said.
“You do not know. She is capable of anything.Anything.And right now she is put out with me. Very angry indeed. I promised her the Eye of the Dawn, and I cannot deliver.”
“Why did you promise her the diamond?” Stoker asked.
Harry’s expression was pained. “There was a little scheme in South America, some months back.” He paused thoughtfully. “How much do you know about the Brazilian Empire?”
Stoker shrugged and I interjected, mindful of the article I hadrecently read in theDaily Harbinger. “The emperor, Pedro II, is ailing and elderly. He has only a daughter to succeed him, and power is shifting increasingly towards the coffee growers and the generals in his army.”
Harry’s look was one of admiration. “That is a far sight more than most English bother to know. Yes, the emperor is failing, and not likely to hold on to his throne for much longer. He worked for many years to abolish slavery in Brazil, a very unpopular position, it must be said. The landowners complained it would destroy the economy, but slavery was ended last year and, in point of fact, the economy has flourished. That ought to have improved the emperor’s popularity, but it has not. He is living out his own obsolescence. All of Brazil turns to the future instead. And that is where Isabel de Armas MacGregor came in.” He paused as if to steel himself. “Isabel never believed the end of slavery would damage the economy. In fact, she rather thought Brazil would enjoy a boom of sorts, expansion in technology and transportation, new investments, that sort of thing. As it happens, she was correct, and if she had had money to invest, she would have made quite a nice packet. But Isabel is not inclined to invest in the normal, aboveboard way. She had a different plan—a railway. From the Atlantic to the Pacific.”
Stoker stared in stupefaction. “A trans-Andean railway? Man, it cannot be done.”
“You know that. I know that. I daresay even these dogs know it,” Harry said, ruffling Nut’s elegant head. “But the Brazilian coffee growers can be a bit greedy, particularly when one dangles the possibility of opening new markets to the west via a pretty new railway designed to move their crops to the coast of Chile and beyond.”
