Not Less Than Gods (7 page)

“What sort of challenge?” Pengrove inquired. In reply, Ludbridge went to the vaulting-horse and, using it as an impromptu table, unrolled a map. They came crowding close to look over his shoulder.

“Simply to walk a short distance along the Strand,” said Ludbridge, indicating it on the map. “Without being caught.”

“Ah.”

“What’s the trick, Ludbridge?” asked Hobson.

“You tell me,” said Ludbridge. “Or, rather, don’t. You’ll proceed from Trafalgar Square to Bedford Street along the Strand. There will be five spotters along the route, dressed as policemen, and they will have been furnished with detailed descriptions of the three of you. Any one of them sighting any one of you will collar you forthwith, raising a considerable hue and cry. You will be dragged away in public disgrace.

“Should one of you manage to reach Bedford Street unobserved, you will have my congratulations and the satisfaction of a job well done. Should
all three
of you accomplish this feat, you will be rewarded with an outing to Nell Gwynne’s.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Edward. Hobson chortled.

“An exclusive establishment,” he said. “The finest in all England.”

“Somewhat more than that,” said Ludbridge. “It might be called Redking’s sister society. Though of course it does provide comforts and refreshment for the deserving.”

“Oh, I say!” cried Pengrove. Bell-Fairfax’s eyes brightened.

“Are there any conditions?” he asked. Ludbridge nodded.

“You are required to traverse the Strand. You may not cut across to Chandos Place to reach the goal. You may not simply take a cab or other conveyance. On the other hand, Fabrication has been instructed to provide you with any assistance or materials you request of them. You have a week to prepare; the challenge must be met on the fifteenth. Good luck, gentlemen.”

On the fifteenth, Ludbridge enjoyed a leisurely breakfast Upstairs and then went for a stroll along the Strand. In Trafalgar Square he noted the first of the spotters in police uniform, an old Residential named Valance, who nodded and tapped the brim of his hat with his truncheon by way of salute.

Omnibuses rumbled along the street, and cabs, with a brisk rattle and
clop-clop-clop
of horses’ hooves echoing. Crossing-sweepers, small bush-headed children in rags, trailed their brooms as they scouted for women to whom they might offer their services. Delivery-boys hurried, journeymen laborers trudged along to their respective destinations. Traffic was held up for a moment as a shepherd drove his flock through, aiming for Smithfield, and Ludbridge scrutinized both shepherd and sheep keenly.

None were his trainees in disguise, however. Smiling at the idea, he walked along a few yards. There ahead was Roberts, another spotter, staring in suspicion at an immense dustman laboring along under a binful of ashes. Bell-Fairfax, perhaps? With Hobson concealed in the bin? Roberts stepped in front of the dustman and, peering into his face, spoke sharply; the dustman lowered his bin and said something in protest,
whereat Roberts stepped back and appeared to be saying something apologetic.

A dozen yards farther on, Simnell was pacing an elderly lady in purple bombazine, the breadth of whose hooped skirts gave her the appearance of a gigantic ambulatory plum pudding. Clearly, he thought one or more compact persons might be concealed somewhere within her architecture, and was in a quandary over how to determine if this was, in fact, the case. At last, darting sideways, he smacked at her lower person with his truncheon. She stopped in her tracks and Ludbridge could hear her shrill protests even from a distance. Simnell stamped furiously at an imaginary insect, tipped his hat and appeared to be explaining his timely and chivalrous actions.

Ludbridge was distracted from this by a commotion farther back along the street. He turned, wondering at the shouts, and saw Roberts turning to stare too. And where was Valance?

“Here! Here’s a constable fallen down in a faint!” an omnibus conductor was shouting. Scowling, Ludbridge ran toward the knot of people that was gathering where Valance lay stretched upon the pavement.

A couple walked in the opposite direction past him, arm in arm. Ludbridge noted the young lady, fluttering her handkerchief in front of her face, while her beau bore on with a bright fixed smile, staring forward. Every instinct Ludbridge had demanded that he turn and look at them again, but he shouldered his way through the crowd and knelt beside Valance.

“Drinking at this hour of the day!” a woman declared. “He’s a disgrace.”

“You never know; might be a fit,” said a pedlar with a tray. “My wife’s brother had them.”

“Give him air, if you please,” said Ludbridge. Valance was pale and sweating, semiconscious, utterly limp. Ludbridge noted the tiny dart protruding from his carotid artery, just above the collar of his uniform. He plucked it out and discarded it, shaking his head. “I believe the man is ill. He ought to be carried into a house and given brandy.”

“We’ll see to it, sir,” said one of a pair of men in nondescript clothes.
Ludbridge, glancing up at them, recognized Burdett and Cowle, two of the porters at Redking’s. Grim-faced, they lifted Valance between them and bore him away in the direction of the club. Ludbridge got to his feet, dusting off the knees of his trousers, and had just turned back to see where the young couple had got to when a fresh hue and cry came from ahead. Ludbridge ran, arriving just in time to see Roberts, in the street, trying to rise on one elbow. He groped once, ineffectually, at his neck before collapsing again.

“Here! It’s another policeman fallen down!” cried the pedlar. Ludbridge dropped to his knees and pulled the telltale dart from Roberts’s neck.

“What’s that?” said a sharp-eyed lady’s maid, her arms full of parcels. “Was that a wasp? Was he stung by a wasp? That’ll do it, you know. My cousin—”

“Yes! It’s wasps! A swarm of wasps! Look out, they’re dangerous!” Ludbridge recognized Bell-Fairfax’s voice and scrambled to his feet at once, staring around, but failed to spot him. Women began to scream and men ducked, beating the air futilely. Cursing, Ludbridge grabbed Roberts under the arms and dragged him to the curb, where he propped him against a lamppost. Ludbridge stood and scanned the crowd, wondering how someone as tall as Bell-Fairfax could hide.

“Oh! Oh! I’ve been bitten!” shrieked a woman some distance ahead. “Help!”

“Here’s a wasp!”

“Look out! You’ve got one on your hat!”

“Look! Look! Another poor policeman’s been stung!” It was true; Simnell was down in the street, gasping and white-faced. Ludbridge sprinted to his side, narrowly avoiding being knocked down by a hysterical female flailing about with her shawl. A tiny bit of yellow and black fluff flew from her hat brim and landed on the bricks beside Simnell. Ludbridge picked it up and examined it briefly: no more than a bit of cotton daubed with paint, cleverly tied with a couple of twists of fishing line to make it somewhat resemble a wasp.

“The bastards—,” said Simnell, before falling back unconscious.
People ahead were running to and fro, yelling, and a cab-horse reared in its traces. Ludbridge dragged Simnell as far out of harm’s way as he was able, and ran on to the next man on watch, Preston. He arrived as Preston fell to his knees, clutching at the side of his neck. Just beyond him walked the young couple, the woman sashaying with the merest trace of exaggeration, her escort stiffly upright.

“Did you see them?” Ludbridge shouted, pulling the tiny dart from Preston’s neck. Preston raised bewildered eyes.

“Who? No—no one—” He sighed deeply and fell back, unconscious. Pulling him from the street, Ludbridge realized that all the darts had come from the south side of the Strand. He looked up at the buildings there to see whether there were not some form of scaffolding or other structure that might have served as a place of concealment, but was unable to discern any. None, at least, where someone of Bell-Fairfax’s size could hide—

“Help! Wasps!”

“Look, here’s
another
one bit!”

“It’s the Chartists! They’ve gone and loosed wasps on the constabulary!”

Ludbridge glanced ahead and saw Bedford Street. With resignation he walked through the crowd and beheld young Malahyde, the fifth spotter, who had just crumpled to the pavement. He bent, flicked the dart from Malahyde’s neck, and hoisted him over his shoulder as a fire brigadesman might. Making his way on to Bedford Street, he saw the three figures standing behind the railings at the Adelphi Theatre: the odd-looking young couple and a slouching man in the garments of a laborer.

As Ludbridge drew near, the laborer shrugged and stood straight, seeming thereby to gain a full twelve inches in height. He met Ludbridge’s eyes and smiled. The lady lowered her handkerchief and positively grinned; her companion turned his still-fixedly-smiling head with a strange jerky motion, and raised one hand in an awkward gesture to his shirtfront. The hand lifted a small panel in the fabric of the shirt, revealing a square slot through which a second pair of eyes peered.

“Bedford Street, Ludbridge.” Hobson’s voice emerged from the figure’s chest.

“We win, I believe,” said Pengrove, in a fluting falsetto. “Something of a Pyrrhic victory, don’t you think?” Ludbridge glared at them, indicating Malahyde.

“The effect of the dart wears off quickly, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax. “Kirke provided me with the drug. Our own formula, sir.” Looking smug, he twirled a length of hollow cane in his fingers.

“ ‘EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE IN THE STRAND,’ ” Greene read aloud. “ ‘Wasps Attack Members of the Metropolitan Police. Chartist Plot Suspected.’ ” He lowered
The Times
and glared across his desk at Ludbridge, Bell-Fairfax, Pengrove and Hobson.

“My fault, Greene,” said Ludbridge. “I never told them that creating a distraction wasn’t one of their options.”

“And rightly so, because it
was
one of their options,” said Greene. He considered them sourly. “Perhaps not to the extent of immobilizing five fellow members and causing a public panic that gets into the papers, but an option nonetheless. You do understand, though, don’t you, gentlemen, that our organization prefers to
avoid
drawing attention to its activities, as a general rule?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax, and Pengrove, and Hobson.

“I am pleased to hear it. I have no doubt you will conduct yourselves with greater discretion in the future. Trusting in your good sense—” Greene reached for his pen and signed the chit Ludbridge had presented. “You shall have your treat after all.”

There was in Westminster a certain dining house, long established, eminently respectable, and frequented by prominent statesmen, being so conveniently situated near Whitehall. Although its public dining room was grand and spacious, it had beside exquisitely appointed private rooms available for those gentlemen of rank willing to pay a membership
premium for their exclusive use. This fact was well known and therefore other diners had no great reason to remark when certain august persons, upon presenting themselves to the headwaiter, were conducted through the door marked MEMBERS ONLY.

Had any importunate visitor opened that door without the headwaiter’s permission, he would have seen beyond only a corridor with four beautifully furnished rooms opening off it. Three of them contained tables, chairs, china, crystal, cutlery, linen napery, all of the finest and most costly sort but otherwise unexceptional. The fourth room was identical to the others save for an immense wine cabinet against one wall.

“Gentlemen.” The headwaiter pressed the concealed switch and the entire wine cabinet swung smoothly outward, revealing the ascending room beyond it. He bowed them in.

“How thrilling,” said Pengrove, as the cabinet closed behind them. The room descended and they watched rough bricks and plaster slide past, before a new view presented itself: an elegant room, dark paneled, thickly carpeted, and rather old-fashioned were it not lit by vacuum lamps behind tinted glass shades.

Beside one of these sat a woman of a certain age. It was plain she had not chosen her chair for its advantage of lamplight; for she wore smoked goggles, and her right hand rested on a cane. She turned her face as a bell rang, signaling the arrival of visitors.

“Welcome to Nell Gwynne’s, gentlemen,” she said. Her accent was that of the lower classes, but she spoke quietly.

“Good evening, Mrs. Corvey,” said Ludbridge. “I have brought three deserving fellows for an evening’s entertainment. May I present to you Mr. Hobson, Mr. Pengrove, and Mr. Bell-Fairfax?” They murmured their compliments.

“Welcome, my dears.” Mrs. Corvey set aside her cane and groped about on the tea table to her right. Finding the tea service there, she deftly poured out four cups. “Please be seated and take a little tea with us, won’t you?”

“We should be delighted, Mrs. Corvey,” said Ludbridge. They took seats on a long divan opposite her chair, shifting about awkwardly, and Ludbridge handed around the teacups and saucers. Hobson and xsPengrove drank, as did Ludbridge; Bell-Fairfax raised his cup to his mouth and halted, staring into it with an expression of consternation.

Mrs. Corvey turned her face in his direction.

“One of you doesn’t care for his tea, I perceive.”

Bell-Fairfax reddened. “I . . . believe someone may have adulterated your tea, ma’am.” She responded with a dry chuckle.

“How keen your senses are, sir, to be sure! But you needn’t be alarmed. What’s in the tea will do you no harm; indeed, it is a mild prophylactic, as is only proper.”

Pengrove and Hobson lowered their cups at once, taken aback. Ludbridge smiled and drank the rest of his cupful. “I assure you, Mrs. Corvey, my recruits are clean fellows and in the best of health.”

“Ah! They are Residentials, then?”

“They are.”

“Then pray excuse me, my dears, but I do have the greatest regard for my young ladies, and after all one cannot be too careful, don’t you think?”

“Commendable caution,” agreed Ludbridge. “Drink up, gentlemen.” They obeyed. Mrs. Corvey made a graceful gesture of acknowledgment.