Courting Trouble (10 page)

Chapter Fifteen

The big bay gelding Jed rode fretted as he leaned from the saddle to question the little socialist, Mr. Campion. “I’m looking for Ishaan Prasad. Since you organized his talk at the Mechanics Institute, I thought you might know where he is.”

Mr. Campion shook his head as the tram he’d just descended from rattled away. “Although I believe he’s staying at the Raj Hotel.”

“Thanks. I’m on my way there.” The decision to question acquaintances on Nazim’s whereabouts had struck him while waiting for the tram to pass by. It wouldn’t hurt to let Nazim know Jed was hunting him. Gupta’s beating—surely the action of a desperate man—meant the trappings of civilization had been dispensed with.

Suits me.
The thought that Nazim might attack Esme next made him fiercely protective. Not that his darling suffragette would appreciate his wrap-her-in-cotton-wool instincts. His gut tightened as he recalled her passionate response to his kiss. She was a woman of reckless daring. She had exploded into his life and he was keeping her. He vowed she’d never regret loving him.

Which meant he had to catch Nazim today before she lost patience and slipped out to do her own hunting. He wouldn’t put it past her. Life with Esme might prove hair-raising, but it would never be boring.

As for dealing with Nazim, fortunately he’d grown up in California and knew something of frontier justice. If blockheaded officialdom in the person of Colonel Munroe wouldn’t listen, then Jed was in the mood to deal with Nazim directly. He hoped the man would show some fight, because his own fists were itching to avenge Gupta’s beating. Then a bribe to a ship’s captain and Nazim would be on his way back to India, whether he wanted to be or not. And if he ever returned to the Swan River Colony—

I’ll kill him.

He urged the bay into a trot as they crossed the bridge to Bombaytown. Festive bunting was already strung over the bridge for Diwali. A butcher’s van’s horse took exception to its flapping. Jed skirted the traffic chaos and plunged into the greater chaos of Bombaytown. He passed the shop of Esme’s friend Mrs. Ayesha Dam on his way to the Raj Hotel. Its small walls were crammed with children and a few women in colorful saris. The children waved Diwali toys in the air. The women emerged cradling lamps. He decided against stopping to ask about Nazim’s whereabouts. He’d ask at the hotel, and if they didn’t know, a few bribes would send runners out through the crowded, gossiping streets, and someone would bring back the information of his whereabouts, even if he wasn’t in Bombaytown.

The Raj Hotel failed to meet the grandiose promise of its name, but its white and blue interior was clean and tidy and as busy as everywhere else, with Diwali approaching. Jed caught the manager’s eye. The harassed man abandoned a family party unable to be accommodated in the already full hotel to his assistant and crossed over to Jed. Discreetly, Jed passed Mr. Kumar a pound note.

Mr. Kumar sent a bellboy running to check Mr. Ishaan Prasad’s room.

The shake of the boy’s head gave them the answer even before he snaked his way through the crowded foyer. “No.”

“It is urgent that I speak with Mr. Prasad. May I trespass on your kindness and ask that you inform people that I am looking for him? There is a reward.” Jed passed over more money.

The bellboy’s eyes lit up. It was regrettably obvious that he was about to abandon his regular duties. The hunt for Nazim was on.

* * *

In a militant mood that barely masked her fear for Jed, Esme marched through the hallway, past Gupta sitting limply by the telephone, and down the front steps. As ordered, her mare, Minnie, was saddled and waiting. Esme swung into the saddle.

Francis handed her his prized set of brass knuckles, well-polished. “Remember. If you have to hit, hit hard.” He patted her knee with grandfatherly concern.

“And tuck my thumb away. I remember.” She slipped the brass knuckles into a pocket and set off at a canter.

Magpies caroled in the trees. Children played hopscotch and skipped rope. Washing flapped on clotheslines, airing in the fresh spring breeze. Bees hummed among roses and in the sweetly scented lemon trees. The town gave way to open country. Nazim had chosen an isolated rendezvous point.

She dismounted out of sight of the derelict mill and hitched the mare to the low branch of a gum tree. A quick check confirmed all her weapons were in place. It was time to squish Nazim like a bug. No one threatened Jed.

As she approached the mill, she forced her shoulders to hunch, as if crushed with fear, and her footsteps to echo with hurried uncertainty rather than striding fury. She drew a resolute breath, tugged her fashionable hat forward to conceal the anger that undoubtedly glittered in her eyes, and rounded the corner of the ramshackle storage shed that leaned against the old mill’s redbrick wall.

The small weatherworn door the miller had used as his private entrance stood open. At the edge of the stream of sunlight that poured in, she saw the pointed toes of Nazim’s polished boots.

She heard the soft click of a pistol being cocked.

“You are in my sights, Miss Smith. Enter carefully.”

She did so and blinked in the dimness. Blast it. Here was a factor she hadn’t considered. Till her eyes adjusted, Nazim had the advantage. “Jed?” No answer, not even a muffled grunt. “Where’s Jed?”

“I have no idea.” Nazim laughed as she whirled to face him. “No, no, stay your distance. You were ridiculously easy to fool, but I’m taking no chances. Where is the emerald?” He gestured with the gun. “No games.”

Blood pounded through her body and pulsed up behind her ears, threatening her with untimely faintness. “Jed is safe?”

“I believe he’s chasing me in Bombaytown. I certainly laid my false trail there.”

“And I fell for your trick.” She forced back her faintness, chagrined by her love-addled gullibility. At least her eyes were adjusting to the dimness. She could make out the dusty emptiness of the mill—and her own distance to the doorway.

Nazim shuffled sideways, putting himself between her and freedom.

Realization struck her that she was now the one in danger, that she had recklessly placed herself in that danger. “Damnation.” She had to be very, very careful.
Jed will never forgive me if I get myself killed.

* * *

Jed had no intention of sitting back and waiting for news of Nazim’s whereabouts to be brought to him. The fever of impatience in his blood wouldn’t allow such inaction. He left his horse at the Raj Hotel and headed for the market. The chai stalls on its eastern side were where the men gossiped.

“Mr. Reeve! Mr. Reeve!”

“Sir!”

He’d questioned only one stall when a cacophony enveloped him. The bellboy from the Raj Hotel pulled at his jacket and Mrs. Ayesha Dam looked as if she’d like to do the same. Two of Gupta’s cousins and an inventor he often chatted with all spoke at once. The import of their news chilled his blood.

Gupta had telephoned from Esme’s house and it was extremely urgent that Jed call him back. He’d found a note to Esme from Nazim.

“Very urgent.” Mrs. Ayesha Dam held Jed’s gaze. “I fear for Esme.”

When Jed heard Gupta’s story, his own blood chilled. He struck the wall beside the telephone with his fist. No wonder the damned anarchist was so desperate. The Jungle Heart emerald was priceless. He flung the telephone receiver at its cradle and ran for his horse.

* * *

The knife slipped from its sheath to Esme’s palm. The hilt felt natural in her hand. Childhood years spent throwing a knife at a stump near her father’s gold mine gave her confidence in her aim. Keeping her chagrined expression, she flung the knife at her captor’s gloating smile.

He sidestepped, but not away from the doorway.

She stopped a few feet from him. It wasn’t time to rush him, not yet. Her knife quivered in the wooden wall behind him.

“Don’t be a fool,” he growled.

Oh, but she was a fool. Lajli wasn’t the only thief in town. Nazim must have paid a pickpocket to lift Jed’s notebook. She had fallen for a trick.

“For the last time, where is the emerald?”

“Lajli hid it.”
Come closer, close enough that I can blind you with spice spray.
It would be a chancy move, but a moment’s distraction would give her a chance to uncoil the whip stashed in a pocket. She couldn’t simply run, since he had a gun. She had to disarm him.

“For your sake, I hope you found the emerald.” The gun was steady in his hand, pointed at her heart.

* * *

“Tarnation. She promised to stay safely home.” But Jed knew she could no more have stayed home at this threat to him than he could ignore her danger now. Nor would he berate her. “Though I might kiss her till she swoons.” He was whistling in the dark while his blood ran cold at the thought of Esme in Nazim’s clutches.

“Whoa.” He halted the bay at the sight of Minnie the mare hitched to a tree. He could see the top of the abandoned mill over the trees. Time to trade speed for stealth. He hitched the bay beside Minnie and, while the horses snorted at one another, crept forward.

The revolver a comfortable weight in his hand, Jed squinted, peering through the bullet hole in the sheet of corrugated iron that covered one window of the abandoned mill. He blinked and drew back quickly as the rust that had corroded the ragged circle crumbled at his forehead’s involuntary bump against the tin. Fortunately, the soft bump had been near silent. No one in the mill reacted to it.

“I’ve learned something interesting about you in the last few days, Miss Esme Smith.”

“Have you?” she drawled, sounding as bored as a society miss at an inventors’ convention.

“Oh yes. You are quixotic. Look at how you rushed here to save your lover. You don’t respond to threats against yourself, but threats to those you love…yes, that’s another story. I knew you might need some additional incentive to hand over the emerald once you saw Mr. Reeve wasn’t here. I wouldn’t put it past you to have hidden it, just to be difficult.”

“You say difficult. I say cautious.”

Cautious? Ha! Esme’s recklessness had put her in grave danger, but the fact she’d done so believing she’d save him tore at Jed’s emotions. His hand tightened, then relaxed, around the revolver. He couldn’t risk a shot through the tin sheet. The main double doors to the mill were firmly bolted shut. He tipped his head back and studied an upper window. He could enter through it, but the scrape of his boots on the brick wall as he climbed would alert Nazim. There was only one solution.

Silently, he skirted the building.

“Miss Smith, you were not cautious enough nor clever enough to outsmart me.” The gloating edge to Nazim’s voice raised the hair on the back of Jed’s neck. “I know your weakness. I have planted a bomb in your friend’s shop. Mrs. Ayesha Dam is popular in Bombaytown. Many children will be visiting her today, to collect their Diwali toys.”

The ugliness of Nazim’s threat drew Jed’s lips back in a silent snarl. He recalled the happy, crowded store. Nazim deserved to die.

Esme’s voice shook. “I don’t believe you. You lied about Jed being here…”

“I am an anarchist. Bombs are what I do. Believe me or not as you choose, but either you hand me the emerald now and I tell you where the bomb is and give you a chance to save the day…or
kaboom!
”

“How long? How long before the bomb explodes?”

“Something less than an hour. So you’d best hurry, Miss Smith. The emerald! Where is it?”

“Under my hat.”

“Show me. Reach for it carefully. Any tricks like the knife and I’ll take great pleasure in killing you slowly. You and that damn American. Devil take you!”

The scent of pepper and other spices exploded on the air. A gun roared.

Out of time!

Jed stepped into the doorway, revolver pointed at Nazim. But the scuff of his step on the brick path had given the other man a moment’s warning. He whirled and they ended up gun to gun.

Nazim reached out snake fast and grabbed Esme’s arm. He dragged her in against his body as a hostage and shield.

“Sorry, Jed. Ayesha’s spice ring misfired.
Achoo.
”

“Let her go,” Jed ordered over two more sneezes from his beloved.

“Don’t kill him. Did you hear his threat against Ayesha?” She was scrabbling in a pocket as she spoke. She could have been searching for a handkerchief, but…

Jed watched her warily, prepared to take action when she did. Meantime, he had to distract Nazim from her maneuverings. “The bomb, yes. I won’t kill him. I’ll shatter his kneecap. He’ll still be able to talk—in between screaming.”

Esme spun in Nazim’s hold and aimed a solid punch at his jaw. Brass glinted from her fist. Unfortunately, her punch missed as Nazim jerked his head back. Even worse, it happened so fast, there wasn’t time enough for Jed to close with them. Nazim fired at his feet and Jed skipped back.

“Enough,” Nazim panted. “If you want this troublesome woman to live, put your own gun down. I’ll keep her and the emerald till I’m safely aboard ship.” He grinned as Jed slowly lowered his gun. “Maybe I’ll keep her longer than that. Evidently she needs a real man to train her. A woman should be—” he adjusted his hold on Esme to grope her bosom, “—biddable.”

Their scuffle had brought Esme and Nazim up against the wall. Now, she kicked back against the wall, then stamped her right boot down on his foot.

He screamed and lowered the pistol.

Jed kicked it out of his hand.

“Yuck.” Esme grimaced. There was an unpleasant squelching sound as she withdrew her foot from Nazim’s boot, revealing a short, bloody blade. She kicked the heel of her boot against the wall again and the blade retracted. She wrenched her throwing knife from the wall. “We have to save Ayesha.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Where is the bomb?”

Esme had never heard Jed sound so grim.

He aimed at Nazim’s left knee. “It would give me great satisfaction to leave you bleeding in agony. Tell me.”

Nazim licked his lips, looked from Jed to Esme and back, and decided. “Under her counter, among the clocks she’s repairing. The bomb looks like a clock for a mantelpiece. In all the disruptions of Diwali preparations, I calculated she wouldn’t notice its addition.”

“Oh, Lord.” Part of her had hoped the bomb was a hoax, just another of Nazim’s tricks. But then she thought of Jed’s workshop, the explosion and intense heat, and felt sick.

“How do I disable it?”

“It’s not complex. Just disconnect the wires.”

“Uh-huh.” Jed tucked his revolver in his belt. In a couple of minutes he had Nazim bound and gagged with his own belt and necktie. “We’ll collect him later.”

“Or send a trooper for him.” Esme hurried with him to the horses.

Jed threw her into the saddle, then stood a moment with his hand on the mare’s neck. “We’re going to have to split up, and you’ll have to trust me to save Ayesha.”

“But—”

“You need to get to a telephone and warn Ayesha. But I rode past her shop this morning. There’s a good chance she won’t hear the telephone or won’t bother to answer it. The shop is buzzing like a beehive.”

“I’ll get hold of her,” Esme vowed. “Even if I have to phone the Chai House and have someone run the message to her.”

“Just in case, I’m going to ride hell-for-leather. Nazim might be lying about the ease of disabling the bomb. In fact, I’d put money on it. I need to be there.”

“I know.” It was his instinct to save and protect. She leaned forward in the saddle and touched his face. “Be careful.”

“You too, sweetheart.”

She watched him galloping away as she turned Minnie in the direction of the nearest house. Distant telephone wires gave her hope.

False hope, as it turned out.

“Of course you may use my telephone.” Old Mrs. Jones was chattily willing to oblige. She led the way into the house, her skirts sweeping the worn wooden floors. “Where did you say you were calling?”

“Bombaytown.”

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Jones turned back to Esme. “Haven’t you heard? My daughter phoned me from Fremantle with the news. One of the Diwali flower carts backed into a telephone pole near the bridge not half an hour ago. You can’t reach anyone in Bombaytown by telephone.”

Esme spun on her heel and raced for her horse.

* * *

Jed crouched low over the gelding’s neck and urged it to greater speed. Maybe he was being melodramatic, but he couldn’t shake a feeling of doom. Common sense told him Esme would have contacted her friend by telephone by now. Warned, Mrs. Ayesha Dam had the sort of decisive nature to empty her store in seconds. She also had the technical clockwork skills to dismantle the bomb—and a mining boomtown like Fremantle had any number of explosives experts, if she needed help. But common sense wasn’t winning this argument.

He’d lost his hat a mile back and the wind blew his hair into wild disarray. He must have looked as grim as he felt because traffic on the bridge gave way to him.

He saw the fallen telephone pole and torn wires with a clutching of dread. That they were surrounded by cut flowers only added picturesque insult to injury.

“Out of my way,” he shouted, and people on the crowded streets of Bombaytown stared, murmured and parted for his determined canter.

He swung out of the saddle at Mrs. Ayesha Dam’s shop and simply dropped the reins. He wrenched open the door. “Out! Everyone out. There’s a bomb.”

There was a moment’s frozen silence. Then, with a couple of screams and squeaks, the shop emptied.

“Where?” Mrs. Ayesha Dam faced him from behind her counter. Mentally he saluted her courage. No wonder Esme counted her a close friend.

“Under here.” He joined her behind the counter and crouched down. “Hidden as a mantelpiece clock, or so Nazim said. You know him as Ishaan Prasad. An anarchist. There should be a clock here that you don’t recognize.”

“This one.”

It was also the only clock on the shelf ticking. Very carefully, he lifted it onto the counter. Mrs. Dam handed him a screwdriver.

“You should leave.” He unscrewed the back of the clock.

“Jed.” Esme burst into the shop. “The telephone wasn’t working.”

“Get out,” he said with impolite urgency.

Of course, she didn’t listen. She tiptoed up to the counter.

“It looks simple enough to me.”

Jed disregarded Mrs. Dam’s comment. According to the timer, they had ten minutes’ grace. He intended to study the mechanism carefully.

A deft, elegant hand swooped in.

Jed saw what she was going to do and raised a blocking arm, but before he could tell her to stop or grab her hand, Mrs. Dam had yanked the wires free.

The ticking stopped.

Jed held his breath, but nothing exploded.

“We did it!” Esme rushed around the counter and hugged him. “Everyone’s safe.”

He held her tight enough to bruise ribs. “Mrs. Dam, you are a brave woman. Tarnation.” He hurriedly released Esme. “The police are coming this way.”

“Good.” Esme frowned at him, puzzled. “They can arrest Nazim.”

“Yes.” He agreed wholeheartedly. “But
after
we’ve explained something to him.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened.

He nodded. Nazim—and through him, all the other anarchists—needed to know that the Jungle Heart emerald and Kali’s Scream were forever out of their reach.

“Ayesha, I’ll explain everything later. Can you tell the police to follow us up to the old mill near Jones’s chicken farm? Thank you,” she called from the door.

They escaped a whisker before the policemen’s arrival. Knowledge that the police wouldn’t be far behind meant they had to ride fast, and that left no time for talking. Although Jed did shout, “Esme, if you ever scare me like that again, I’ll spank you.”

“Me?” She found breath to be indignant. “You were the one playing with a bomb.”

They drew rein outside the old mill. The door was still shut. Jed drew his revolver, then handed it to Esme as he opened the door.

Her breath rushed out in a sigh of relief and she lowered the revolver. “He’s still here. I half feared he’d have escaped like some mythical monster.”

“He’s only a man, and a pretty poor specimen at that.” Jed stooped and roughly untied and ungagged Nazim.

The man moaned. “I need a doctor.”

“So did Gupta, the boy you beat.” Blood had dried on Nazim’s boot. “We disabled your bomb.”

“It was a hateful thing to set. You could have killed children—and all for a chunk of rock.” Esme extracted the emerald from her pocket.

Nazim’s moans stopped. “You did have it.”

“Oh, yes.” She tilted the stone so it caught the sunlight and flashed green fire. “Lajli stole it from you, but then, you stole it from the goddess’s statue.”

“Not me.” Nazim’s avid gaze followed the stone. “It was another anarchist, one of the true believers. He thought the sonic destroyer would actually work. Kali’s Scream.” He sneered. “Melodramatic nonsense. Dynamite is far more effective.”

“On that we agree.” Jed took the emerald from her. “Heavy, isn’t it?”

“It is worth a king’s ransom,” Nazim said bitterly. He turned his head away from the sight of it. “What will you do with me now? Call the authorities and I shall at least have a prison doctor attend me. My disgrace is complete. Two women, two mere girls—and one a thief—have done me out of my future.”

Jed grinned at Esme. “It seems his Oxford education was incomplete. He should have remembered the Amazons.”

She smiled back at him, slowly, with dawning joy, then hugged him hard. “Not every man has the courage to properly appreciate an Amazon. You’re unique, Jed Reeve, and you’re mine.”