Death by Silver (45 page)

Ned shrugged. “Freddie says not, but he based that on Ellis being too respectable.”

Julian grinned in spite of himself. “I can’t say I find that conclusive. But that can wait. We need to deal with Mrs Makins now.”

“What did you have in mind?” Ned asked.

Julian looked back at the fire map, trying to imagine the streets around the gas works. “We have to go,” he said. “But I’m damned if I see what to do once we get there.”

“I need to change clothes,” Ned said. “I can’t go into Stepney looking like this. And then – we’ll figure it out.”

“Yes,” Julian said, unaccountably relieved. He reached into his desk for the revolver he kept there, checked the cylinder, and lowered the hammer again on the empty chamber. Ned nodded approval, and Julian caught up his weighted stick. “Let’s go.”

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Ned changed clothes as quickly as he could while Julian paced Ned’s bedroom. “Once we get into the house, it’ll be easy for them to get the better of us,” Ned said, shrugging on his oldest coat and trading his top hat for a sporting cap.

“They won’t let her come out into the street. I do have the pistol, at least.”

“That’s a help. Only…” Ned hesitated, and then decided that at the moment realism was more important than tact. “Do you actually know how to shoot?”

“I’ve practiced. A bit. Shooting at a target.”

“Did you hit the target?”

“Some of the time. I don’t keep it to shoot at people.”

Ned had to ask. “Whatever do you keep it for, then?”

“For threatening people with,” Julian said, as if that should be obvious. “That’s all I’ve ever needed to do.”

“Well, suppose we go in and you threaten them with it.”

“It lacks the element of surprise,” Julian said.

In the adventure novels they’d both read as boys, the heroes would have kicked the door down, stormed in with pistols in hand, and tied up the cowering villains at once, winning a kiss from the pretty girl rescued from deadly peril. It was possible real life wouldn’t play out quite as neatly. “Suppose I sneak in the back while you go in the front,” Ned said. “Ellis can’t have sent an entire army. Probably just one or two men. I’ll jump one of them by way of creating a distraction, and then you can threaten them with your pistol.”

“That ought to work,” Julian said, with more confidence than Ned felt.

The cul-de-sac was patched with mud, its ramshackle houses overshadowed by the looming bulk of the gas works. The odor that hung in the air was nauseating, enough so that Ned felt it a wonder anyone could eat their meals in the surrounding houses, but he supposed it made rooms there cheap to rent. The pub was crowded despite the oppressive stench, and the street busy enough that no one paid them any attention as they stood at the corner, eying the house Annie’s note had named. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other in the row.

“You go around the back, then,” Julian said. “I’ll give you two minutes to get in before I go.”

“Generous of you,” Ned said. “Suppose the servants’ entrance is locked?”

“Why should it be?”

“Because there’s a woman being kept prisoner inside the house?”

“Pick the lock, then.”

“How would I do that?”

Julian shook his head. “We really must further your education. All right, we’ll both go round to the back, I’ll make sure you can get in, and then I’ll come around to the front.”

It seemed risky, but better than being left unable to open the door while Julian walked into a trap. “Let’s go.”

There was a narrow walk between the back of the row and the curved tower of the gas holder, not so much an alley as a path. They had to pass a gas works watchman at his post, but he paid them no mind, apparently used to the residents taking the short cut behind the row. Ned held up a hand to stop Julian, and sketched an enchantment in the air, deepening the shadows behind Number 4.

Julian nodded appreciation and followed him through the shadows to the back door of the row house. He could still move silently as a cat, Ned noted, one more of the skills they’d learned at Toms’ coming in handy for them both now. Ned glanced up at the windows above, and then stealthily reached out and tried the door.

He turned to Julian, frowning.
Locked,
he mouthed.

Julian crouched, looking at the lock with focused concentration. He was fishing in his pocket when movement at the window above, a man’s form silhouetted against patched curtains, caught Ned’s eye. He caught Julian’s arm and pointed upward.

Julian made a face. He pointed at Ned’s wand questioningly, and Ned shook his head. The enchantment threw them into artificially deep shadow, but it didn’t confer invisibility. If they stayed here fiddling with the door, they’d surely be seen.

More than that, there were too many figures moving behind the windows; with the alley darkened, the lights within showed at least half a dozen people behind the drawn curtains, maybe more. Too many to easily overpower. He gestured that they should retreat, and after a moment’s reluctance Julian followed him back to the corner.

“Too many,” Ned said. “Damn it, has Ellis got that many villains working for him?”

“More likely one of his men has friends here,” Julian said. “But you’re right, it’s too many. We need some kind of distraction.” He looked up at the gas holder with an alarming speculative gleam in his eye.

“What kind of distraction?”

“Well, we probably can’t set fire to the gasworks.”

“Nor would that be desirable,” Ned said carefully.

“No. But everyone in the neighborhood must live in fear of fire. Suppose there were an alarm?”

“There’s probably a fire alarm box somewhere on the gas works grounds, but there’s probably also a guard stationed at it.”

“Better for the guards to give the alarm,” Julian said. “If there were a small fire…”

“The illusion of fire, maybe,” Ned said. “I think smoke pouring out from under the nearest doors would do the trick.”

“I’ll bow to your professional expertise.”

They found a vantage point from which Ned could see without being directly in the guard’s line of sight. It was a tricky enchantment, one Ned would have hoped to avoid being set in exams at Oxford, and he took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Can you do it?” Julian asked.

“If I’m not interrupted,” Ned said, and began sketching the enchantment. It helped that the air was filthy already, heavy with coal smoke. To make the smoke seen, then, with an intensifier to bring what would have normally been invisible into light, but only in a few places, where it would seem to have escaped the doors…

For a moment he was afraid he’d botched it, and then curls of remarkably realistic smoke began curling up in front of the nearest doors of the towering brick building. For good measure, he added the play of light about the windows, the glass lighting and dimming satisfyingly in answer to the enchantment.

The watchman was still leaning against a wall, and it took an agonizingly long time for him to look round. The enchantment wouldn’t last forever, and coaxing it to continue was starting to be a decided strain. Finally the man looked round and swore, scrabbling at his pocket. He pulled out a whistle and blew it shrilly, and then yelled “Fire!”

There was the sound of an answering whistle, and then another, and then the clamor of a fire-alarm bell. That brought doors slamming open, men and women running out into the street and children shrieking.

“Now,” Julian said calmly, and Ned followed him through the chaos toward Number 4 Josiah Street.

The front door was flung open, and as they watched, several men ran out, shoving their way past the milling crowd in an effort to distance themselves from the gasworks. A number of people were pushing and shoving to do the same, and Ned hoped no one would be hurt in the crush, but there was nothing to be done for it now. The fire-alarm bell was still shrieking.

They were nearly to the door when someone slammed it, and when Ned tried it, it proved to be locked. There was no question of lock picks now, not in this milling crowd.

“To hell with it,” Ned said, and slammed his shoulder into the door. It was cheaply made, and splintered, but didn’t give. He slammed his shoulder into the door again, and then drew back and kicked it, putting all of his pent-up frustration into it. The lock splintered free, and the door banged open, smashing back against the wall inside.

He was already moving, Julian at his shoulder. The house had been cut up into single rooms to rent, and the front rooms were filled with meager possessions but empty of people. The door of one of the back rooms opened as he watched, though, a man stepping half-out into the hallway, and Julian stepped forward with his pistol in his hand.

“Put your hands up,” he said. “I’ll shoot.”

“We’re here for Annie Makins,” Ned said.

“Never heard of her,” the man said. He was a bulky man, one Ned wouldn’t like to try facing in a fight, but he looked torn with uncertainty, glancing nervously down the hall toward the gas works.

“Can’t you hear the alarm?” Julian said. “Not to concern you, but if the gas works catches I expect this place will be blown to hell.”

“Hey, get your arse out here,” the man called, and another, weedier man stuck his head out the door. “We were just going.”

The smaller man stared at Julian’s pistol, and then jerked his head back toward the doorway. “What about –”

“None of our concern, right? Now get moving, or stay here to be blown up if you like,” the large man said. “I’m not. Nothing’s worth that.”

“That’s right,” Ned said. “Out you go.” He ducked out of the way to let them go, their footsteps pounding down the hall. Julian was already heading for the room they’d vacated, and Ned followed him.

Inside, a shabby bedstead shared a single room with a table laden with empty bottles and the remains of some long-ago dinner. Annie Makins was tied to the bedstead, tugging at the rope knotted around her wrist. “Mr Lynes!” she exclaimed. “Mr Lynes, I didn’t want to write what they said, but they said if I wouldn’t do it they’d kill me right on the spot. They said it like they would.”

Ned drew out a penknife and freed her arm. “I don’t doubt that they would have,” he said. “You did just the right thing.”

She threw a frantic look at the window. “There’s a fire, and we’ll all be exploded –”

“There’s no fire,” Julian said. “That was merely a distraction to help us make our entrance.” He threw a satisfied glance at Ned, looking momentarily very much like one of the heroes of an adventure novel. Ned felt rather like one himself, and wished there were any chance of Julian putting his arms around him in an admiring way on the spot.

Instead he took Mrs Makins firmly by the arm. “Let’s go before anyone figures out there’s not really a fire.”

Two fire engines were pulling up outside as they went out, the horses stamping and their crews shouting as they readied the steam pumps. Ned’s enchantment would have long since worn off, but it seemed likely to take some time to establish that it had been a false alarm.

Julian had Mrs Makins’s other arm, steadying her and keeping up a brisk pace as they walked away from the gas works. They attracted no attention there – people were still streaming away from it, shouting to one another and clutching at struggling children – and after several blocks, the crowd thinned enough that it was possible to catch an omnibus.

Ned could feel Mrs Makins shaking as she sat between them on the omnibus, her mouth pressed tight as if fighting to hold back tears, and he put his hand over hers to steady her. “Easy now,” he said. “You’ll be safe with us. We’ll go back to – it had better be my place, hadn’t it?” It was safest, given that Ellis knew Julian’s address. “And then you’d better tell us all about it.”

The evening wasn’t all that cold, but Ned busied himself with the fire anyway, building it up to a decent blaze, and Julian drew an armchair close to the hearth and settled Mrs Makins in it. Mrs Clewett brought a tea tray, clucking over Mrs Makins as Ned explained that she was a client who had just escaped from terrible danger and needed to be hidden overnight. She provided slippers and dry stockings as well, and a heavy shawl, and Mrs Makins huddled under it, sipping her tea, until the color came back to her pinched face. Julian held out a glass of whiskey, and she took it with a sigh.