“I’m not checking up, Sabine, I’m... I’m—”
“Shall I tell you what I’ve discovered, and you can see for yourself that there is no threat?”
“The world is a threat, Sabine, when you are a beautiful woman prowling the streets alone.”
“The only real threat I’ve known in my twenty-seven years is Sir Dryden, andheis the reason I investigate the smuggling.”
“Fine. Tell me of these past few days, when a kiln in Hampstead was so very safe and justified.”
“Actually, I began in Regent Street,” she said, excited to finally tell him, “looking in on a chemist.”
“Oh yes. The chemist.”
“Another frequent guest to my uncle’s meetings at Park Lodge. The reports sent by my mother’s maid mention him repeatedly. He’s a young professor at the London Polytechnic Institute.”
Stoker limped across the clearing to the hedge. “Go on.”
“I observed the professor lecturing to students, doing some desk work in an office, puttering around a laboratory.”
“How long did you follow him?”
“A full day. I also made detailed notes on Regent Street and roughed out a preliminary map. I am always doing two things at once.”
“And what of the chemist?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t make sense of it. Through the window, I saw him weighing something on a scale and making notes. God only knows what he was doing. But earlier in the day, he gave a lecture to students on combustible substances.”
“What?” Stoker had been pacing, exercising his legs, but now he stopped short. His alarm was so very satisfying.
“Explosives,” she confirmed proudly. “Compounds that blow up mines or cause cannons to—”
“I’m aware of the function of explosives.Thisis the man who frequently calls on your uncle?”
Sabine nodded. “The very same. And at teatime, this man left the institute and made his way to a public house in Piccadilly, and Bridget and I followed from a safe distance.”
“You followed him into a pub?”
“I am a married woman,” she reminded, dropping onto the bench, “and I can patronize a pub if I choose. I took a table adjacent to his, and within ten minutes another man arrived, and they began a conversation about charcoal.”
“Charcoal?”
“Yes. It took me some time to determine what, exactly, they were discussing, but then the new man said something like, ‘We’ll have to burn the kiln for a fortnight, working ’round the clock, to turn out that much charcoal, but it can be done.’”
“Charcoal is a major component of most explosives,” Stoker said. “But a chemist whose research deals with explosives could require charcoal for any number of things that have nothing to do with smuggling or your uncle.”
“Except that the next thing the professor said was, ‘It must be absolutely dry when it reaches Dorset. We take a great risk, acquiring the charcoal in London... putting it in barrels and on wagons.’ And then the other man said, ‘Yes, but not every furnace master is willing to take the risk, is he? There are ways to keep it dry.’ And then the professor said...”
Now Sabine was overcome with enthusiasm, and she strode to Stoker and smiled up into his face. “And then he actually said, ‘Dryden Noble chose me for a reason.’”
She beamed, and then forgetting herself, she reached out and grabbed him by the arms. Stoker frowned into her smiling face but she pressed on, squeezing his biceps and giving him a shake. “He actually said Dryden’s name. They are all working together. The chemist and the charcoal kiln master and the man with the barrels. It’s a coordinated effort to do... something off the coast of Dorset.”
Stoker dropped his gaze from her face to her hands. Sabine rolled her eyes—he was so touchy—and stepped away.
“So of course,” she said, “I was given no choice but to seek out this kiln in Hampstead.” She stalked back to the bench. “The professor eventually left the pub and I followed him the rest of the day. If I returned again so soon, I would risk suspicion. There was no choice except to go to Hampstead and poke around.”
“Sabine,” Stoker said, lowering himself onto the bench, “do you never feel unsafe, poking around pubs and furnaces?”
“No,” she said simply. The bench was small and he was sitting very close. Her arm tingled where their sleeves brushed.
