Desperation and Decision (5 page)

"Hah! Maybe it's a good test of their
resolve. So, Mac and I will go see if we can question the boy who
tried to rob him. Want to tag along, Florizel? Twisty?"

"It's time for me and Tod to get started
frightening the other recruits," Twist demurred. "We shall go up
and then you can go down."

Doctor Mac growled and rose unwillingly from
his comfortable chair, shedding the satin jacket and donning his
overcoat and blue goggles. His wife sweetly made sure his coat was
buttoned and his scarf securely wound about his neck. I readily
agreed to accompany them, very curious to know more of this
kidnapping incident and as hopeful as they were of getting someone
to question.

We were destined to learn nothing, however.
The boy was gone, the constable on desk duty informed us when we
got him to admit there had actually been a pickpocket incident that
evening.

"I thought surely he would be held
overnight," Doctor Mac snapped at the fellow.

"How was he released so soon?" Mr. Campbell
demanded.

More constables were called. Papers were
shuffled. Whispered conversations were held. The upshot was that no
one knew. Everyone thought someone else had him, or someone else
was doing the paperwork.

"He's clean vanished from under their noses,"
Doctor Mac growled as we emerged into the drizzle once more.

"They have no idea who he was or where to
find him," Mr. Campbell mocked.

"In the midst of all that confusion, is it
not odd that everyone agreed upon one thing?" I said. "The
constable walked in with his collar and vanished off the face of
the earth. How can that have happened?"

"Well, among other things, your highness,
that's why we called you in," Mr. Campbell said grimly. "By the
way, we insist you take a room for the night downstairs, as our
guest. We have a few more things to go over with you before
tomorrow's meeting and it's already far too late for you to go home
to your place." I was too intrigued to do other than accept.

"There are quite a few more things I would
still like to know," Doctor Mac began as we arrived back at the
penthouse sitting room. The two ladies graciously helped us strip
out of our wet things. Madame Moore-Campbell then repaired to a
curious credenza-like furnishing in a niche outside the suite she
and her husband shared. The cabinet rotated and presented file
drawers by clockwork and steam power as she operated a series of
levers. She extracted and handed to Doctor Mac and his wife a
folder of documents.

"These seem to be biographical sketches,"
Doctor Mac commented.

"They are," Madame Moore-Campbell nodded.
"They will acquaint you with the people we have asked to join our
company, and will help prepare you for our meeting tomorrow."

"Prince Florizel of Bohemia," Madame Campbell
read. I flushed anew but they persisted in reading the entire
document. I was forced to endure a far too enthusiastic recital of
the absurdly risky adventure my comrade Colonel Geraldine and I had
undertaken in our heedless youth. Geraldine and I had served
together during my two years' obligatory military service before I
had begun university. He had followed me into exile a few short
months after my escape, finding himself also unable to endure or
stop my uncle's abuses of power. We had been mercenaries together
in various parts of Europe before settling again in London.

"This account of how you pursued that
dreadful man who ran the Suicide Club and challenged him is
chilling. You must be a very daring man," Madame Campbell said with
a sharp glance up at me. I tried to meet her gaze, lest she think
me a dissembler, but it was a difficult enough thing to do. When
Doctor Mac added his own piercing gaze I was even more discomfited.
I felt most unworthy of his next words.

"A good man, and full of courage."

"You two must get some rest," Madame
Moore-Campbell insisted, pushing them off to the suite where she
had helped Madame Campbell change earlier. "Look the rest of the
biographies over quickly, but you've been through enough
tonight."

After the pair reluctantly closed their door
Madame Moore-Campbell turned to me. "How shamefully we have
neglected you, your highness. I do not know how to make amends for
my appalling neglect of my duty as hostess. Can I offer you some
refreshment? Has my husband informed you that we have a room
engaged for you?'

"Madame, I am warmed by the sweet care and
fellowship I have witnessed here and need no other attentions," I
assured her. "Please let me know what you require from me if I am
to associate with this company you mean to form."

"It is so late," she sighed. "We shall meet
in the morning at ten o'clock. We will have a breakfast tea in the
Pyrenees Conference room before the meeting begins but you are also
welcome to break your fast in the hotel's dining room. They have
orders to serve any of our members at any time and you are
absolutely not to pay a cent. It is taken care of. I have here
documents intended to brief you on our meeting's agenda. Several
prospective members, yourself included, will present reports on
occurrences each of us have witnessed that dovetail to bolster the
case for the criminal organization we began to talk of
earlier."

She repaired to her clockwork credenza again
and presented me with a folder of my own. "I wish you to tell the
story of your chance meeting with this young man."

I glanced over the remarkably detailed
account. My eyes flew to hers.

"How did you learn of this?" I demanded. "I
was at a loss what to do with the clues I gained from this,
shocking as it was. And I had a piece of written evidence I meant
to study further, but it disappeared, so I have chafed and done
nothing."

"The evidence you speak of came into my
hands," she confessed. "A pickpocket stole it from you, and that
pickpocket tried to rob my husband the same evening and dropped the
paper as he fled, since Archie, too, has a problem turning the
other cheek." she smiled. "It was the last clue I needed to put me
firmly on your track and finally enable me to find you. And it has
helped greatly in our efforts to build our final presentation for
Rose's foundation.

"Here are copies of the same biographical
sketches I gave to Rose and Mac, and our agenda for the meeting
tomorrow. What more can I tell you to reassure you about your
participation? I feel you are the least informed and prepared of
our members and I so regret that. I also feel -- " she stopped
abruptly and looked uncertainly at her husband.

"Don't begin being shy now, Phoebe-Bird," Mr.
Campbell urged. "This is too important."

"You will see from your biographical sketch
that I really know very little about you," the lady said. "Of
course, you can make the same charge concerning me. I have bettered
my acquaintance with and knowledge of the other members over a
period of months. Please do not be offended, but I must ask you to
endure a sort of probationary period. No one else need know of
this, but let me just be frank. I must make myself more certain of
your fitness to be a part of my organization before I can offer you
a sure place among us. Do you understand?"

"It is all perfectly clear." The atmosphere
of warmth and trust that had built itself around me in my brief
time in this place evaporated. The powerful memory of my mother's
coldness toward me and her self-interest in pursuing my uncle
struck me like a blow. The callous letter my sister wrote to Trevor
trolling for his courtship and his money also leaped to the fore.
The desolation of being hooded and bound, of hearing those hammers
drawn back -- I stopped myself from dwelling on these dark
thoughts.

It was completely uncalled for, comparing a
natural caution in a business association to the abandonment I had
felt as I realized that my uncle, my mother, and my sister had
betrayed me and sentenced me to death. With an effort I shook off
the black mood but my shell of reserve was not so easy to shed. "I,
too, will need a better acquaintance, a better understanding before
I can give you an answer about whether I can be associated with
what you mean to do here."

They both saw the change in my manner and
looked troubled, but I doubted they knew what passed through my
mind or what they would or could say further to reassure me. I took
the materials from the lady, bowed, and left with her husband as my
guide to go to my room.

"Well, good night, then, your highness," Mr.
Campbell said as he left me at my door. He held out a hand, but I
bowed instead of taking it.

The dark thoughts rose again as soon as I was
alone. I had been filled with confusion, doubt, trepidation, even
fear over and over this evening. But these uncertainties had slowly
dissipated as I had, I thought, become a part of something I had
not experienced since the death of my father. I had come into a new
family, it had seemed, into a place of ease, laughter, camaraderie,
and love, and though I had not even been formally introduced into
the group's notice for half the evening, I had belonged
somehow.

I had found myself wanting more of this
association, more intimacy with these amazing people. But Mrs.
Moore-Campbell had made it clear that I was to be held at arm's
length. I was to be scrutinized where others had already been
welcomed. These were thoughts I could not stop from crowding in no
matter how hard I tried to recapture the glow that had been more
attractive than the fire's warmth on this very cold evening.

To try to distract myself I looked about to
acquaint myself with this room, belatedly realizing I had not even
brought a change of clothing. Then I found the morning suit hanging
in the closet and all the necessities I could want, in my size, all
newly purchased. The garments were just to my taste if not
perfectly tailored, and the sense of warmth and care started to
grow upon me again. I pushed it down, because it was necessary to
do so, to hold it at arm's length, and quickly showered. I settled
myself at the desk in my borrowed nightclothes to look over the
documents Mrs. Moore-Campbell had given me. My bewilderment, and
the dark thoughts that would not be pushed down, rose in force as I
looked at the odd company with which I had been told I should plan
to associate myself. Before me lay descriptions of an American
singer, a London inventor, an elderly country churchman, the owner
of a private security firm from the Caribbean, a Chinese merchant,
an Indian forest ranger, and finally another American woman who
appeared to be some sort of cattle-herder. I put the biographies
aside, unable to concentrate on them any longer.

The agenda for the meeting listed a welcome
and introductions by Mrs. Moore-Campbell, and reports by other
members along with my own. I wondered how important this
information I was to give could be, what it really even meant, and
why it meant so much to that handsome gypsy-complexioned woman,
Phoebe Moore-Campbell, but exhaustion was rapidly overtaking me. My
watch told me the meeting was no longer an event for tomorrow but
for today, so I resigned myself to sleep with a greater mystery to
be puzzled out than any I had ever confronted.