Page 42 of The Locked Room

The man bowed and backed away. Percy patted Harry’s hand. ‘What would you like to drink? Champagne?’

‘Nothing, thank you,’ Harry said, aware of the tight knot of anxiety that was forming in her stomach. ‘Please show me what you’ve brought me here to see.’

‘All in good time,’ Percy replied. ‘You’ll stand out if you don’t have a drink. We need to blend into the background, stalk our prey without them even realising we are here.’

Harry sighed, loathe to admit he was right but knowing she needed to look as though she belonged there even if she had never felt more out of place. ‘Very well. I suppose it will have to be champagne.’

He snapped his fingers and a waiter appeared with a tray of golden flutes, seemingly from nowhere. Percy took two, held one out to Harry and smiled as he raised the other. ‘To illicit adventures, Miss White.’

The first room they entered appeared to be home to a very serious game of poker. Five men sat grouped around a table, with a smartly dressed dealer wearing a green shade over his eyes. Cards were demanded and thrown away with little conversation. Drinks went untouched. A long table lined with cooked meats, breads and salad was largely ignored. Smoke rose languidly into the air, pooling around the chandelier and creating swirls of hazy cloud. Percy leaned towards Harry. ‘The young man in the grey suit with the extravagant moustache is a bonnet,’ he whispered.

Harry’s gaze flew to the man he described, who was now grinning broadly at his companions as the dealer used a rake to push a large amount of money his way. ‘A bonnet? What’s that?’

‘An imposter,’ he murmured. ‘A false player put into the game by the establishment to entice others to gamble more. Sometimes, he wins and makes a great fuss of showing how much fun he is having. On other occasions, he appears to lose large amounts, which attracts those of a more predatory nature.’

Harry turned to stare at him. ‘That’s terrible.’

Percy shrugged. ‘It’s business. Anyone stupid enough not to spot a bonnet deserves to lose.’

Scarcely mollified, Harry studied the young man more closely. He was still smiling but she thought she detected a tightness around his eyes, a touch of melancholy in the way he held himself. But he clearly knew how to gamble – how could he do his job otherwise? ‘Why do they do it? Surely they don’t enjoy playing if they never really win or lose.’

‘They owe the establishment money,’ Percy said, sipping his champagne. ‘In most cases, they’ve lost everything they own and have no option but to work here to repay the debt.’

That went some way to explaining it. She felt an unexpected wash of pity. ‘And I suppose they were previously encouraged to gamble by someone else in the same situation. It never ends.’

He dipped his head. ‘The highs and lows of gambling. In some cases, the debt is so large that members of their family are obliged to work alongside them.’

‘But that’s little better than slavery,’ she protested. ‘It can’t be legal.’

‘Perhaps not, but the alternative is utter ruin.’ He paused to drain his glass. ‘The golden rule when gambling is never to wager anything you can’t afford to lose.’

Harry eyed the intense concentration on the faces of the men who were being dealt a fresh hand. From the looks of things, every single one needed to win. She took a deep breath and forced her pity to one side. ‘What does this have to do with Miss Eccleston?’

‘All in good time,’ Percy reassured her. ‘If we move too fast we will frighten her off. Why don’t we try another room?’

It was the last thing Harry wanted to do but, once again, she realised she had little choice. She had not noticed any windows, which supported her assumption they were still underground, nor was there any sign of a staircase, which meant she was dependent upon Percy to lead her out of the Black Feather Club. Gritting her teeth, she nodded. She could only hope he would be as good as his word.

The game in the next room did not appear to have started. Several men were clustered around a sideboard laden with bottles of sherry and port, helping themselves while the dealer arranged packs of cards on a green-clothed table. There were women in this room; Harry could not tell if they were players or their companions. They eyed her with curiosity – one or two smiled at Percy – but none approached them.

‘Can you spot the bonnet in this game?’ Percy asked, switching his empty champagne flute for a glass of claret wine.

Harry allowed her gaze to sweep across the occupants of the room. She dismissed a florid-faced, portly gentleman in late middle age almost instantly – his suit was too well made and his gait too unsteady to be a man at work, unless he was an actor of supreme skill. A silver-haired man with impressive whiskers also seemed an unlikely prospect, but the pallid young man he was talking to was considerably more likely. She was about to say as much to Percy when a flicker of movement from the dealer drew her attention. He sat composedly at the table, his gloved hands shuffling a deck of cards, but his eyes were not focused on his task. Instead, they were fixed on a woman in a scarlet dress, with waves of auburn hair and a cigarette in her hand. She was laughing at something the portly man had said but, as Harry watched, her gaze slid momentarily to the dealer and she gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

‘It’s the woman in red,’ Harry told Percy.

He beamed at her. ‘Well done. Perhaps we’ll make a gambler out of you yet.’

‘Oh, I know how to play.’ She offered a thin-lipped smile. ‘Ask any of my brothers.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Percy replied, grinning in evident delight. ‘Is there anything at which you don’t excel?’

‘Patience,’ Harry fired back. ‘And I don’t mean the card game.’

Percy winced. ‘Touché. Goodness knows I have no intention of testing your forbearance, Miss White. Let’s take our hunt off the beaten track.’

Ignoring the other, as yet unvisited rooms, he led her to a door in the far corner. At the end of the thickly carpeted corridor beyond it, he opened another. The room beyond was not as brash as those they had just left. In fact, it seemed to Harry as though everything, from the lighting to the furnishings, was more muted here. There were doors, some open wide and others ajar, offering glimpses of rooms that seemed to Harry to be much the same as those they had already visited. Music played, although she could not establish from where, and a waiter offered her a fresh glass of champagne. Percy wandered slowly from door to door, pushing them back and glancing through with little apparent interest, yet Harry suspected he was taking an inventory of everything and everyone inside, absorbing every detail and filing it away. She was beginning to appreciate that there was not much that escaped the attention of Percy Finchem. ‘Ah,’ he breathed as they entered the last room. ‘There you are.’

Harry followed the direction of his gaze, expecting to see Serafina. Instead, her eyes were drawn to a young man of around twenty-five. He was lounging in a chair beside the gaming table, one arm draped across the back, his long legs sprawled in front of him. His dark hair was too long, brushing the collar of his white shirt, and his eyes burned with contempt as he surveyed those around him. A glass of red wine sat untouched upon the table and Harry thought she would not have been surprised if he had leapt to his feet and tossed it into the face of the nearest fellow gambler. And yet for all his sullen fury, he was an attractive man, with high cheekbones and generous lips. Several of the women in the room were darting coy glances his way, along with one or two of the men. If he was the bonnet, he was making absolutely no effort to blend in. ‘Who is that?’ she murmured, scarcely able to drag her gaze away.