Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 11

BEAUMONT IN THE MORNING.

Dawn was two hours off when Beaumont crept from his room and down the stairs to the fourth floor hallway. The night watch had made his rounds, and the house was quiet. Early morning was the best time of day to be out and about in secret, Beaumont thought, too late and too early both. He knew the lay of the house by now and the habits of many of the people in it, although he could not make out the ways of Mr. Klingheimer, who might be seen coming in or out through any door at any moment, upstairs or down, day or night. Beaumont walked lightly along the hallway carpet to the picture on the wall that hid the key to the lock in Clara's door.

He took out of his pocket a double-sided, hinged key-mold filled with clay and opened it in his hand. He moved the picture aside, removed the key to Clara's room from its niche, laid it onto the bottom bed of clay and closed the hinged box, smashing the upper bed of clay around the key until the excess was forced out of the division between the two parts of the mold. He cleaned off the bead of extruded clay and pocketed it before opening the box, removing the key, cleaning it on his trousers, and putting it back into its niche. He swung the picture over it, listened for a moment to the silent house, and then, with the mold safely stowed in his coat pocket, went straightaway down the stairs. Beaumont had long been a collector of keys, and he knew a man along the river who could fashion a good bra.s.s copy as quick as you like. The man wouldn't mind being called out of bed at such an hour, either, if he was well paid for his trouble.

When Beaumont reached the bottom floor landing, he stopped again to listen, hearing quiet footfalls for a brief second and then silence again the sound of someone crossing a short expanse of floorboards and then stepping onto a carpet. He removed his hat and peered past a newel post to have a careful look. It was Mr. Klingheimer, out and about, just then disappearing down the short hallway that led to the cellar stairs. He was going in to flap his gab at Dr. Narbondo, perhaps a one-sided conversation, which suited Mr. Klingheimer, who was tolerably fond of his own voice. Beaumont had heard him at it before, talking away six to the dozen with great amus.e.m.e.nt, laughing even, while Narbondo watched silently through green eyes.

He hurried on his way again, around a turning and down the long hallway to the red door that led to the alley. He reviewed the lie that he would tell Mrs. Skink, but when he entered the final hallway and the red door lay ahead, she was nowhere to be seen. The curtain was drawn across her closet, and he heard the noise of her snoring. It seemed a shame to wake her, and there was no real need to make the sign of a Z on the chalk-board that meant Mr. Filby Zounds had gone out.

It was the work of a moment to step up onto the stool and fetch the key from the pitcher in order to make another impression in a second clay mold, and then to open the Chubb lock and the padlock before returning the key to the pitcher and going out, closing the door silently behind him. He heard the lock clank, however, perhaps loud enough to awaken Mrs. Skink, and so he hurried away up the alley toward the river. Soon he was lost in the foggy early morning darkness, glad to be quit of the house, if only for a short time.

Finn woke up fast from a deep sleep, sitting bolt upright in his bed in the utter darkness, his heart racing. His mind was off kilter from a waning dream about Duffy's Circus, where he had been an acrobat for many years. It was the usual dream in which he failed to catch the rung and fell, always sure to jolt awake at the moment he hit.

He heard someone speaking, very nearby. It came to him that it was early morning and that it might be Beaumont, come down to the cellar. But surely this wasn't Beaumont's voice. Mr. Klingheimer had said that Narbondo was to be taken away this morning to the mysterious Dr. Peavy's, which might explain it men setting out to load Narbondo's cart onto the van. It was strangely early, however, and the house was still apparently asleep. There were no kitchen noises from overhead, no sound of anyone working in the lift-shaft, nothing but silence roundabout save for the voice of one man talking, as if to himself.

Finn stood up, put on his shirt and vest and shoes, and then opened the door a crack. The furniture-filled storage room beyond was dark, but the door on the far side of it was open onto the storeroom. He picked up his creel and put on his jacket in order to carry everything with him in case he had to bolt. He went out then, closing the door to his room and following along the edge of the furniture, listening to the cheerfully animated voice almost certainly Mr. Klingheimer. He was in the laboratory, where the machinery whirred and ratcheted. The foul smell of the mushrooms was heavy in the still air. Finn stopped beside a wardrobe cabinet. He carefully opened its door, willing the hinges to silence. He climbed in, closing the door so that he was completely hidden. Even if Klingheimer walked into this very room, he wouldn't see anything amiss. He settled in to listen.

"I am certain you would make a joyful noise if only you could, Doctor," Mr. Klingheimer was saying, "and I apologize for Dr. Peavy's very necessary experimentation. Rest a.s.sured that the man is a medical electrician of the first water and is under strict orders not to damage your... faculties, which I have need of. Now, be so kind as to blink if you understand me. A flicker of the eyelids will suffice." There was a pause, and then Mr. Klingheimer resumed: "You do not wish to blink, I see, although I believe that you can hear and see me well enough. You cast a baleful eye upon me a moment ago, an eye filled with evident distaste, and yet I am the very man who released you from your fungal servitude in the underworld.

"Rest a.s.sured that I do not mean to harm you. Quite the contrary, sir. My only desire is that you live, and with your wits intact. You and I will very soon become kindred spirits, one might say, for I mean not only to look into your mind. From that vantage point I intend to see as you see and to know as you know. You will have the same advantage of me, the salient difference being that I can choose to end our communion whereas you cannot. I will be the actor, that is to say, and you will be acted upon."

The musty cabinet was very close, and Finn was warm in the heavy jacket that he had bought from the boy on the road a long time ago, it seemed to him. His leg was falling asleep, and so he shifted his weight, and the floor of the cabinet creaked, the sound unnaturally loud. He froze where he stood, holding his breath and listening to the silence, willing Mr. Klingheimer to carry on again.

But Mr. Klingheimer asked in a voice meant to carry, "Who is it? Who is there? Show yourself!" Finn remained still, waiting him out. "Ah well," Mr. Klingheimer said at last, "it's to be a game of hide and seek, is it? Give me a moment to complete my task, and then I'll come for you."

He started up again, speaking to Narbondo. "What I offer you, sir, is the opportunity to conjoin your mind with the minds of your fellow I'll not say prisoners your fellow travelers, let us say, these mounted, living heads that you see before you, maintained by fungal blood. One of them you might recognize the one hidden by the gauze veil. He arrived just yesterday, having found his way to London after a prolonged engagement in Kent as a river deity. I have it on good authority that you and he knew each other of old. I'll draw back the veil now, so that you might look upon him and wonder."

Finn wondered whether he should run. Narbondo's box, however, was very near the door, and it would take only an instant for Mr. Klingheimer to step in his way. The man was large too large to knock aside. Up the ladder, perhaps, if he could evade the man. Finn had quite possibly sealed Clara's fate by climbing into the wardrobe, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

"Your countenance has come quite thoroughly alive, Doctor," Mr. Klingheimer said, "and your flesh seems to be agitated, as if it were engorged with small, scurrying insects. Well, well. You don't care to look upon your stepfather's countenance, although surely it's scarcely recognizable to you. It is wonderfully preserved beneath the flesh, however, and the flesh, as we know, is mere stuff. The person dwells within. In a very short time you will be able to gaze into his mind, and he into yours. In that sense you'll have become as a G.o.d in your small way. As for the sputum you've vomited up, Dr. Peavy will see that it's swabbed clean. Good day to you, sir."

All was quiet for a time, and then Finn heard the disconcerting sound of footsteps drawing near, then stopping, then going on again. He could not quite tell where the man was. Then he heard a door open and close the room, no doubt, where he had slept. The footsteps returned, stopping very close by. He should have run. He had missed his chance.

In the voice of a schoolmaster, Mr. Klingheimer said, "Come out, thief."

Finn remained silent, considering what he would do.

"No," Klingheimer said after a long silence. "Not a thief! Here is a fine opportunity to put my powers to the test. Before my mind's eye stands a boy with green stockings and a stout heart. I see... an owl. I see... a coat stained with blood. Are you a desperate rogue, I wonder, or is it the blood of an animal?"

There followed the soft sc.r.a.ping noise of the latch rising, and Finn threw himself hard forward, the door smashing into Klingheimer and knocking him backward over a bench, the man sprawling and grunting. Finn dodged out, Klingheimer's arm making a grab at his ankle, but missing, Klingheimer scrabbling to get up. Finn scarcely looked at Narbondo when he raced through the laboratory had no desire to but swarmed up the ladder with his creel over his arm, moving fast far too fast for Klingheimer to follow.

It was early yet when Beaumont walked back toward Klingheimer's mansion through a gray fog, turning things over in his mind. He had breakfasted at Rodway's half a pound of bacon served up on toast and enough hot coffee to drown a cat and as he swallowed his food it had come into his mind that his stay at Klingheimer's might likely be a short one, what with Narbondo brought into the house and now the boy Finn having come to save the blind girl. And there was the heads and toads and all this upset about the sink-hole and the man underground. There was something afoot, things changing, some deviltry that he had no desire to be caught up in. Howsomever, he told himself, now that the key to the padlock on the red door lay in his pocket he could slip out when he chose to. Perhaps he could find odds and ends of things to take along with him. There was no tearing hurry.

He cut along down the Victoria Embankment, the air reeking from the smoke of the try-pots near the sink-hole melting down mineral pitch. Beyond Blackfriars Bridge a great number of men moved through the reek, laboring to fill the hole before the rest of London fell into it and was swallowed up. Barges loaded with asphalt and rubble came and went, taking full advantage of the tide. Beaumont turned up Temple Avenue and then down a narrow byway that ran along the back of several s.p.a.cious old houses, relics of London's past, their courtyards invisible behind high stone walls with arched wooden carriage gates.

One of these houses he remembered quite well, because it had belonged to Dr. Ignacio Narbondo himself, and Beaumont had spent a goodly number of weeks within it, if you added the days together. He had spent some small amount of time under it, also, for the house had hidden pa.s.sages below it that led away beneath the city and out along the river bolt-holes, in a pinch, or for slipping in and out unseen. Narbondo, a secretive man who had been involved in many criminal undertakings, had possessed several houses in and around London, two of them deep in the rookeries, and he had shifted from one to the other so that he might seem to be nowhere and everywhere, looking out through the windows like Bo Peep but rarely seen on the street.

This house would make a snug kip for a man like Beaumont if he had to leave Mr. Klingheimer's quick-like large enough so that no one would see lamps and candles lit in the recesses of the place, and likely wouldn't care a fig if they did. Two grapnels at either end of a length of two-inch line would do the trick to get him over the wall, the lower grapnel moored to a crate of eatables that he could pull up after.

He slowed his pace now, seeing through the fog that the carriage gate at the back of what had been Narbondo's house stood open several inches. There was the noise of workmen hard at it inside, and now the gate swung wide and two mules came out through it hauling a wagon with low sides. Beaumont stopped dead and moved out of sight behind a piece of wall. He knew the driver a man named Wilson who worked for Mr. Klingheimer and who had gone along underground just yesterday on the search. It had been he who had found the bit of newspaper, which had perhaps saved the lot of them from Mr. Klingheimer's wrath. This work on Narbondo's house was Mr. Klingheimer's doings, that was certain. A heap of dirt and rock lay atop the bed of the wagon, which made away upriver in the direction of the sink-hole, a contribution no doubt borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

The gate remained open, and Beaumont made toward it now, turning his head as he pa.s.sed to see what was what: an excavation, was what, much like a mine. It angled down into the ground a sizeable hole, large enough to back the wagon straight down into it, along the edge of the house itself. The rear corner of the house was sh.o.r.ed up with heavy beams, and more beams and boards stood in neat piles nearby, alongside a pyramid of cut stone. A stone foundation had been laid around three sides of the hole. They were building a hut, no doubt to hide the mouth of the tunnel: gatehouse meant to be the gate itself. And it was meant to be permanent, too.

A man walked up out of the tunnel now, crossed the courtyard, and began to push the broad gates shut. Beaumont looked ahead of himself and moved on, not looking back, fairly certain that he had not seen the man before and so wouldn't be recognized.

What are you about, old c.o.c.k? Beaumont asked under his breath, addressing himself to an imaginary Mr. Klingheimer, but as soon as he had voiced the question, the likely answer came into his mind: Klingheimer was setting up shop in Narbondo's abandoned house and yard to bring things out of the land beneath. Deans Court was too difficult an entry, and Hampstead Heath too far away. But right here, a stone's throw from Klingheimer's own house, the man could do his rotten business behind high walls and no one the wiser. When Beaumont had worked for Narbondo, none of the pa.s.sages beneath the house were so deep as to access the lower reaches of the land beneath. Something must have opened a way the collapse of the Cathedral, perhaps, the explosion that had opened the great crack in the floor.

Did Klingheimer mean to close the other doors, the dog? Would he lock Beaumont out, the rightful potentate of the world beneath, the very man who had led Klingheimer to the toad forest where Narbondo was imprisoned? It came to him that he, Beaumont, might have sold his birthright for a handful of sovereigns betrayed his father's secret only to bring shame upon himself out of greed and stupidity. Suddenly enraged, he made a fist and struck himself in the forehead, hard enough to dislodge his hat, although it caught around his neck by the strap and hung there. He had a mind to wrench it off and leap up and down upon it, except that he was far too fond of the hat. The hat hadn't played him false, after all. It was Klingheimer who had played him false, or was setting things in train to do so.

In fact it might be worse than that. Why would a man like Klingheimer allow Beaumont to remain alive at all once he had no need for him? Beaumont knew too much about the underworld, had seen too much of what went on in Klingheimer's cellar of living heads. A careful man would not remain at Klingheimer's house at all now that this was made clear. A careful man would take his bag of sovereigns and count himself lucky to keep his skin into the bargain. He would go underground, east to the sea, that's what he would do to Margate, where he could enter the eastern reaches of the underworld through the sea caves and never set eyes on the likes of Mr. Klingheimer again.

When he found himself nearing the alley where stood the red door, however, he had given up any idea of immediate flight. The boy Finn and the blind girl Clara were still inside the house, after all. Beaumont had befriended the boy, who had taken no unseemly notice of Beaumont's size, and who had come into London like a hero to save his sweetheart from these low men. Klingheimer could not know that Beaumont had seen the tunnel. Beaumont knew more about his enemy than his enemy knew about him, which was a good thing. But that would soon change, and he must be gone before it did, and he must take Finn and the blind girl with him.

The fog was heavier now, although the sky was white above as if the sun was raveling the fibers of the mist. He saw someone hurrying toward him Arthur Bates himself, waving at him.

"Avast there, Zounds," he said. "Mr. K. wants all hands to turn out for the search."

"I'm as turned out as can be," Beaumont said. "What search?"

"There's been a boy snooping in the house, a thief, most likely, and he's got out. When the old man left for Peavy's he was fit to be tied."

"What's his appearance, this boy?"

"Middling tall, roundabout fifteen years. Sandy hair. Black shirt and green stockings in his boots. He's quick, too sneaked past old Mrs. Skink, unlocked the door, and went straight out. She never saw him, the hag. You go down along the river and look roundabout Blackfriars. I'm to search the Temple, although if he's got that far there's no finding him at all, like as not, and good riddance."

Bates turned away in the direction from which Beaumont had just come. Beaumont watched him leave, thinking things over yet again. Had Finn taken the girl with him? For it was clearly Finn who had run. If he had taken the girl, then Beaumont's work in Klingheimer's house was finished. He had no pressing reason to stay. If Finn had not run, then the girl was still a prisoner, and Finn was lost to her if they found him. Beaumont had no idea of searching Blackfriars, but went along toward the red door instead. It stood ajar, with old Mrs. Skink standing on the stoop, a vinegar face and her hair like the nest of an uncommonly stupid bird.

"I looked along by the river like I was told," Beaumont said to her. "No sign of the boy."

She squinted hard at him. "I didn't see you go out, Dwarf, and your mark ain't on the board."

"Then you should keep your eyes in your head and not in your pocket. Mr. Klingheimer don't want a blind woman at the gate, especially with thieves in the house. It was me who was at hand when the news broke, which is what you don't know. And the door weren't barred, because the boy had opened it. And you was no doubt asleep, with the doors standing open, so out I went as easy as nothing, just like the boy did, and now I've come back. You're an ugly, worthless, fig of a woman, Mrs. Stink, but you've got a fitting name."

He pushed past her as she began to rail at him, and he made his way upstairs toward the attic. In his head was a presentiment that things were coming apart fast. It was a bit of luck that he had left the door unbarred this morning so that Finn could get out for that's what must have happened if the boy escaped and another bit of luck that the unlocked red door would be blamed on Finn and not on Beaumont, although Mrs. Skink had her suspicions. He had seen that in her face. Still and all, she couldn't peach on him, since it would be plain that she wasn't at her post this morning.

He went into his room and was satisfied that all was as it should be. Narbondo would not be back from Peavy's until noon at the earliest, and in the meantime Beaumont intended to lie abed and contemplate on things. He took off his hat and set it on the table, and then removed his coat and hung it across the back of the chair before turning to the window to draw the curtain. There, framed by the cas.e.m.e.nt, was Finn Conrad's face, the wind blowing his hair aside.

TWENTY-ONE.

BREAKFAST.

When Alice descended the stairs next morning, Tubby and Hasbro were sitting at a table drinking coffee out of a porcelain pot. Miss Bracken was nowhere to be seen, likely still in bed. Neither Mr. Hillman nor Mr. Smythe was about, either. There was a man near the fire stowing away a plate of food as quickly as possible while looking into the morning paper.

"I'll beg a cup of that coffee from you gentlemen if you can spare it," Alice said, sitting down with her two friends.

"Billson purchased the beans from a man just in from Sumatra," Tubby told her, pouring her a cup. "He parched the beans this morning and brewed this pot when he saw us on the stairs. You've never had better, I'll warrant, although it's growing cool. I must say that you seem in a jolly mood this morning. What's afoot?"

"I'll tell you what's afoot in a moment," Alice said, seeing now that Tubby's eyebrow had been split open and that there was a bit of plaster on it. Protruding from his shirt cuff was a quarter inch of b.l.o.o.d.y bandage, apparently wrapped around his wrist. "Any news, Hasbro?"

"I'm sorry to say there is not. The Board of Works is already far along with the work of filling the sink-hole. The fact that two men are still lost below makes no matter to them, nor did my protests. I sought out Mr. Bayhew as you requested, and he filed papers asking that they desist until rescue efforts had been carried out, but the Board refused. In Bayhew's opinion it's useless. The Board has an immediate responsibility to the public, we're told, and not to individuals foolhardy enough to descend into the abyss."

"Mr. Bayhew is a fine solicitor, and he performed prodigious legal wonders when we were charged with the collapse of the Cathedral," Alice said, "but if determined work on the sink-hole is already underway it would be a miracle if he prevailed over the Board of Works. It was worth an attempt, but I didn't hold out much hope."

A plate of bacon and a dozen fried eggs appeared now along with a fresh pot of coffee and slices of toast. Alice discovered that she was nearly starved. Yesterday she had had no appet.i.te. Today it had returned in force. The man sitting near the fire put down his newspaper, paid Billson, and went out into the bl.u.s.tery morning, the door shutting behind him.

"Shall I tell you what it is now?" Alice asked.

"This instant. We insist," Tubby said, slathering jam on a slice of toast and engulfing half of it in his mouth.

"Langdon is alive," Alice said in a low voice. "He surfaced on Hampstead Heath last night, and wandered into the midst of a gipsy encampment where he was recognized by friends of ours the Loftus family, who helped us with the hop harvest just a short while ago. You remember them, Hasbro. They put Langdon back together and ensconced him at the Spaniards."

Tubby gazed at her with a look of surprise on his face. "He surfaced, do you say? That's brilliant news. What of Uncle?"

"Langdon had no knowledge of Gilbert. They were separated in the blast, which was behind them, and the force of it pitched Langdon forward into the darkness. The same was likely true for Gilbert, or so I very much hope. Langdon was injured somewhat in the fall, but he was not buried by the cave-in. He told Mr. Loftus that the world below is quite vast, especially the deep reaches. Langdon failed to find Gilbert, but he did find his way out, and so it stands to reason that there's hope for Gilbert as well."

"By G.o.d it does stand to reason," Tubby said. "I'd stake a good sum on the old man's being alive. There's no one half so game as Gilbert Frobisher. We'd best shift our gaze from the Embankment and fix it on Hampstead Heath, Hasbro. But how do you know all of this?" he asked Alice.

"Theodosia Loftus, the oldest of the Loftus children, came to my room last night."

"It was she who knocked upon your door!" Tubby said. "That bilge rat Hillman not his name, by the way was lurking in the hallway listening at the keyhole."

"I heard you accost him, Tubby," Alice said. "You went out together directly, I believe."

"Yes indeed. It dawned on me that Uncle's jewelry case had not fallen out of his bag at all, but had been removed and ineptly hidden by those two frauds when they'd gone up to the room earlier. I had a word with the alleged Mr. Hillman in the alley and discovered that the two men are mere spies, intent upon looking into our business. He admitted to the attempted theft of the jewels, by the way, and more, before I was done with him. I'm waiting for Mr. Smythe to come down to breakfast. I believe that the two of you will find our conversation amusing, although not half so wonderful as what you've been telling us."

"We're to keep it a secret," Alice said, "even from Miss Bracken, although it would give her a bit of hope, perhaps. Our enemies currently believe Langdon to be dead, and for the moment it must stay that way."

"They'll have their eye on us in any event," Hasbro said. "We haven't gone away, after all, which we would soon do if we in fact believed him dead and buried."

"Who is Mr. Hillman?" Alice asked Tubby. "Or rather what is he? I've been told his name is Penny. He's not from Manchester. I know that. The Billsons recognized him as a local man."

But before Tubby could answer, Mr. Smythe appeared on the stairs, looking out of sorts, it seemed to Alice.

"My dear Mr. Smythe!" Tubby said cheerfully, and then sopped up egg yolk with his toast and bit off a great piece, chewing like a satisfied badger.

"What is it?" Mr. Smythe asked. "I'm in something of a hurry."

Tubby swallowed the mouthful and said, "I daresay you are. The delightful Mr. Klingheimer awaits you, I don't doubt. Will you give him my very best wishes? Tell him that Tubby Frobisher will pay him a small visit on a particularly dark night in the near future."

Smythe stared at him, apparently struck dumb. He made an effort to compose himself, and said, "I do not take your meaning, sir."

"I believe you do," Tubby told him. "I sent a note by messenger to your Mr. Klingheimer just this morning, telling him that he had been betrayed by a Mr. Smythe and a man calling himself Hillman, although actually named Penny. Mr. Penny had no great desire to open his mind quite so completely to me about the good Mr. Klingheimer's whereabouts, but he was persuaded to do so when his ears began to fall roundabout him like autumn leaves two of his ears, that is to say. He hadn't any others. Human beings make tolerably bare trees in that regard. He made the mistake of waving a dirk in my face after I gave him a taste of a heavy cudgel. He oughtn't to have done that, do you see? I relieved him of his weapon, ascertained that it was very sharp indeed by trying the edge on his ear joints, and admonished him to comport himself like a gentleman from this point hence."

"You're dead," Mr. Smythe said flatly. Then he turned around and went out through the door without another word, the wind blowing a flurry of leaves through it before it banged shut.

"You've disturbed the man deeply," Hasbro said.

"I intended to. I had an interesting conversation with Hillman-Penny."

"Please tell me that you did not actually cut his ears off, Tubby," Alice said.

"Not entirely, no, although it was necessary that I convince him that I would do so with great enthusiasm with very little persuasion. He mumbled through our conversation, unfortunately, due to his teeth being stove in, but in order to save what was left of his ears he confirmed that the Embankment collapse yesterday morning was indeed no accident. The mysterious Mr. Klingheimer ordered it done. It was quite intentional, a successful effort to close the pa.s.sage to the nether world. I knew that some powerful force was behind all this, do you see? It stood to reason. And so I went to work like a terrier and worried the rat Penny until he gave up the name."

"But was the thing directed particularly against St. Ives and Mr. Frobisher," Hasbro asked, "or were they unwitting victims?"

"That I cannot tell you. Unfortunately our man bolted before I was through quizzing him, and I wasn't up to a chase."

"Did he reveal anything of substance?" Hasbro asked.

Tubby picked up the coffee pot now and filled their cups. "He revealed the location of Klingheimer's residence, very near the Temple. A wealthy man, it seems."

"Well," Alice said, "I don't intend to pay this Klingheimer a visit. And I hope that Smythe won't stir the hornet's nest up afresh when he reports to him. I would rather Mr. Klingheimer a.s.sumed that he was successful in his efforts and moved on to other crimes."

"Hasbro is quite correct in stating that the man still has his eye upon us," Tubby said. "If he were moving on to other crimes he would not have sent Smythe and Penny to spy on us. We've stepped into a nest of vipers whether we like it or not, and we cannot stand idle. We know the villain's name now and he knows ours. We can carry the battle into his camp any time we choose."

The street door opened, and the three of them looked in that direction. It was Henrietta Billson, blowing into the room on a gust of wind and bearing a great basket of eggs and another of greens. She shut the door behind her with her foot, wished everyone a good morning, and went toward the kitchen, promising to have Billson prepare a fresh pot of coffee. Before another word was spoken, the door swung open yet again, and to Alice's vast surprise, Mother Laswell, bundled in a vast shawl, came in through the doorway with Bill Kraken right behind her, his hair sculpted into a precipice by the wind and his face hard set. Abruptly it came to Alice that Clara wasn't part of their company, that they had not gone north as planned, and that beneath his cap Kraken had a bandage wrapped around his head, a b.l.o.o.d.y patch showing through.

"Thank G.o.d we've found you," Mother Laswell said to them, breathing hard and hauling off her coat. "We're here to search out Clara Wright and fetch her home."

They shifted to the great table, where there was room for the eggs and toast and rashers and beans and pudding and pots of coffee and tea that appeared from the kitchen. Tubby settled into a second breakfast, and Alice poured herself another cup of coffee, listening to Mother Laswell tell the story of the treachery at Hereafter Farm and the surprising news that Finn Conrad had followed Clara and the man Shadwell into London that he must have arrived yesterday.

"He knew that we were staying here at the Half Toad," Alice said. "We've brought along his portmanteau, for he meant to arrive this very day. Why hasn't he come to us?"

Mother Laswell shook her head grimly. She opened a small purse and removed a wrinkled piece of paper, which she lay atop the table for everyone to see. "Finn is looking out for this address," she said. "He might have found it discovered something there that kept him."