The Paid Companion (37 page)

“You were looking for the snuffbox.”

“Yes. Jove’s Thunderbolt requires all three of the stones, you see.” He slipped the second dark gem into the device. “After George Lancaster was dead, I thought perhaps I had misinterpreted my destiny, but when I learned that St. Merryn was hunting me, it all became clear. I understood at once that he, not the old man, is the one who is meant to witness my great success. It is perfectly logical.”

“How is that?”

“George Lancaster and my grandfather lived in a different time. They were men of an earlier generation. They belong to the past. But St. Merryn and I are men of the modern age. It is only fitting that the earl, not his ancestor, be the one to witness my triumph.” Parker patted the machine “Just as it is right that I, not my ancestor, untangled the last mystery of Jove’s Thunderbolt.”

“Where did you discover this supposed destiny?”

“It was all there in my grandfather’s journals.” Parker eased the last stone into the machine, closed the opening and turned to look at her. “But like any good alchemist, Treyford often wrote in a coded language that is not easy to unravel. I made a few errors along the way”

“What makes you think that you have not made a huge mistake in bringing me here?”

“I admit that some parts of my grandfather’s writings were quite murky. But they were all clarified when the Earl of St. Merryn ensured that our paths would cross.”

“You mean when he set out to find the man who killed his great-uncle?”

“Precisely. When I realized that he was hunting me, I understood at last that we were, indeed, destined to be opponents in this generation, just as Lancaster and my grandfather were, all those years ago.”

She understood now. “You have brought me here tonight because you knew that would be the simplest way to get St. Merryn here and take him prisoner.”

“You are a very clever woman, Miss Lodge. St. Merryn chose well when he went to the offices of Goodhew and Willis. It is a great misfortune for you that he dragged you into this affair. But that is how destiny works sometimes. It is often the lot of the innocent to play crucial roles as pawns.”

37

Arthur jumped out of the carriage before it had come to a full stop in Rain Street and went up the steps.

“Do not put the horses away,” he called to Jenks over his shoulder. “We have another call to make this afternoon.”

“Aye, sir.”

The door opened before Arthur reached it. Ned stood in the opening, his face stark with dread.

“Ye got my message, then, sir?”

“Yes.” Arthur moved impatiently into the hall. “I was still at Parker’s address when the boy found me and said that there was a matter of great urgency. ‘What is it? I have another call I want to make today and I do not want to waste time.”

He saw Sally standing in the hail behind Ned. The stricken look on her face made his stomach knot.

“Where is Miss Lodge?” he rasped.

Sally handed him a sealed letter and started to cry.

“He threatened to cut my throat if she tried to run away or call for help,” Sally said through her tears. “And he would have done it. I saw his eyes, sir. They weren’t human.”

***

“It is true that my grandfather failed in his attempt to complete Jove’s Thunderbolt,” Parker lounged against the workbench, arms folded. “But the fault lay in his instruments, not in the old alchemist’s instructions.”

“What do you mean?” Elenora asked, trying to sound genuinely curious. She edged closer to the workbench, as though intrigued by the strange machine. Parker was eager to talk about the device and his own genius. He had assumed the air of a lecturer.

“The directions in the old lapidary call for using a cold fire to excite the energy sealed in the heart of the three stones,” Parker said. “That was the great stumbling block. My grandfather reported in his journal that he tried heating the gems in a number of different ways but nothing worked. Nor could he decide what was meant by a cold fire. He was conducting researches into the production of a suitably powerful heat source when he was killed in that explosion.”

Elenora stopped on the other side of the table, pretending to study the device. “You believe that you have found the answer?”

“Yes.” Parker’s face lit as though with passion. “Once I had read my grandfather’s journals and considered the instructions in the lapidary in the light of modern science, I understood at last what could be used to apply a cold fire to the gems.”

“‘What is it?”

Parker caressed the device. “Why, an electricity machine, of course.”

***

Arthur ignored the distraught butler who was attempting to announce him and walked swiftly into the study.

“Parker has kidnapped Elenora,” he said.

“No.” Lady Wilmington rose quickly from the chair behind the writing desk. “No, that cannot be possible.”

“He escaped from that private asylum where you sent him.”

“Dear heaven.” Lady Wilmington sank back down onto her chair, stricken. “No one sent word that he was gone. I swear it.”

“I believe you. No doubt they have not told you yet because they are hoping to find Parker before you learn that he escaped. After all, you are a very wealthy client. The proprietors of the asylum would not want you to take your business elsewhere.”

“This is a disaster.”

Arthur crossed the room in three strides and came to a halt on the other side of the little desk.

“Parker left a note instructing me to go alone to a certain address in the stews at midnight tonight. There I am to be met by two men who will convey me to some secret location. I can only assume that I will first be bound, blindfolded and disarmed before I am taken to see your grandson. I will not be of much assistance to Elenora in that condition.”

“I am so sorry. So very sorry.” Lady Wilmington seemed dazed with despair. “I do not know what to say or do. I never meant for this to happen. I thought I was doing what was for the best for everyone.”

Arthur leaned forward and flattened his palms on the dainty desk. “Where is Parker’s laboratory?”

Lady Wilmington was obviously confused by the question. “I beg your pardon?”

“I went to his house today and searched it thoroughly. The books and furnishings are nothing more than a stage set designed to imitate the lodgings of a fashionable gentleman.”

“What do you mean?”

“I spent a great deal of my youth in my great-uncle’s house,” Arthur said. “I know what to expect in the way of furnishings in the home of a man who is consumed with a passion for science. I found none of those things in Parker’s lodgings.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There should have been a laboratory cluttered with instruments, apparatus, glassware. There should have been books on optics and mathematics, not poetry and fashion. Treyford’s journals were not there either.”

“Yes, of course, I see. I was too overset yesterday to even think about such things.”

“Parker may be mad, but he is obsessed with his plans to build Jove’s Thunderbolt. He must have a secret laboratory somewhere in London. It will be a place where he feels secure. A place where he is free to labor all night without drawing attention. That is where he will have taken Elenora.”

“Treyford’s old laboratory.” Lady Wilmington rubbed her brow. “Parker no doubt discovered the location in the journals. He would have been fascinated with the notion of pursuing his research there where his grandfather had once conducted his experiments.”

“What do you know of it?”

“Treyford constructed it after he broke with your great-uncle and Glentworth. They were never aware of the place and likely wouldn’t have cared if they had known. But Treyford took me there on many occasions,” Lady Wilmington said wistfully. “He needed to share his research with someone who could appreciate his genius, you see, but by that time he was no longer speaking to Lancaster or Glentworth.”

“So he took you to his laboratory to witness the results of his experiments?”

“Yes. The location was our secret. It was the one place where he and I could be alone together without fear of discovery.”

***

The shorter of the two men waiting in the alley was the first to notice the flaring light of an approaching lantern.

“Well, now, what do you know? He came after all, just like Mr. Stone said he would.” The footpad pushed himself away from the wall and raised his pistol. “You’d think he’d be too smart to risk his neck for a female.”

A figure in a hat and greatcoat appeared at the entrance of the alley. He was starkly silhouetted against the light of the lantern.

“He’s a fool, all right.” The second man hefted the knife he held in one hand. With the other, he reached down to pick up the length of rope that he intended to use to bind their prisoner. “But that’s his problem, not ours. All we have to do is take him to the old abbey and leave him in the cage that Mr. Stone described.”

They went cautiously toward their prey, but the figure in the hat and greatcoat did not make any suspicious moves. He simply stood there, waiting.

“Stay right where ye are, yer lordship,” the short man said, holding the pistol so that his intended victim could see it clearly. “Don’t move so much as yer little finger. My companion here is going to play valet for ye and see that yer dressed right and proper for yer visit to Mr. Stone.”

The figure in the greatcoat did not speak.

“Not feeling in the mood to chat, eh?” The taller man moved forward, rope in hand. “Can’t say that I blame ye. I wouldn’t be anxious to be in your shoes right now and that’s a fact. Mr. Stone is a strange bird all right.”

“But he’s generous when it comes to our pay so we try not to notice his odd ways,” the short man said. “Let’s get on with it. Put your hands behind your back so my associate can truss ye up. We don’t have all night, y’know.”

“No,” Jenks, said, removing his hat. “We do not have all night.”

Ned and Hitchins stepped quickly out of the shadows of the doorway behind the two footpads.

At the sound of the footsteps behind them, the pair started to turn. But Ned and Hitchins were already upon them. They jammed the barrels of their pistols into the spines of the two footpads.

“Drop the weapons or you’re both dead men,” Hitchins said.

The villains froze. The pistol clattered on the stones. The knife followed.

“No hold on. My friend and I were hired to take his lordship to our employer,” the short man said, unnerved. “We were told it was all arranged and that his lordship was agreeable to the plan. There’s no crime here.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Hitchins said.

The taller of the two villains squinted at him uneasily. “Are ye St. Merryn?”

“No. St. Merryn decided to take another route to meet up with your employer.”

38

Parker pulled his gold watch from his pocket and checked the time again. “Another half hour until my employees leave St. Merryn, neatly bound and secured, in the iron cage in the chapel above this room.”

“You mean your men know about this laboratory?” Elenora asked, astonished.

“What do you take me for?” He gave her a disdainful look. “Do you think that I would risk telling a couple of footpads such a great secret? They were given instructions to secure St. Merryn, leave him locked in the cage in the back of the chapel and then depart. No one knows about this place except me.”

“I now know about it,” she pointed out.

He inclined his head, amused. “I stand corrected.” He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. “And, in a short time, after the cage is lowered through the hidden trapdoor in the floor of the chapel, St. Merryn will learn of it also. I trust the two of you will both be suitably cognizant of the great honor that I have bestowed upon you.”

“The honor of allowing us to view the secret laboratory of England’s second Newton?”

“You sound so scathing, Miss Lodge. Really, you wound me.” He chuckled and reached out to take hold of a handle on Jove’s Thunderbolt. “But you will change your tune after you see what this device can do.”

He began to turn the crank very quickly.

Elenora watched uneasily. “What are you doing?”

“Building up a strong store of electricity. When it is ready, I will use it to activate the machine.”

She studied the device with mounting anxiety, paying close attention now. “How does it work?”

“Once the charge of electricity has been properly stored, I can release it by turning that knob on top of the machine.” He pointed to it. “That is also how one turns off the thunderbolt. When the sparks of electricity come in contact with the three stones in the chamber it excites the energy stored in them, just as the old alchemist predicted. A very narrow beam of crimson light is released. I tested it once, just before my grandmother had me carried off It worked perfectly.”

“What does the beam do?”

“Why, the most amazing thing, Miss Lodge.” Parker exclaimed. “It destroys whatever happens to be in its path.”

She would not have thought it possible to be any more terrified than she had been already. But when she saw the madness burning in Parker’s eyes, the icy sensation in the pit of her stomach became a thousand times more intense.

She knew then that whatever else he planned to do with Jove’s Thunderbolt, he intended to turn it on Arthur and herself first.

***

Arthur had thought that the darkness would be the worst part of the business, but in the end it was the odor that bothered him the most. The smell that emanated from the enclosed riverbed was so foul that he had been forced to wrap his neckcloth around his nose and mouth to block the stench.

But at least he hadn’t had to walk along the narrow, rat infested banks of the lost river, Arthur thought, dipping the pole back into the black water. He had found a small, shallow bottomed boat and a pole at the secret dock beneath the old warehouse.

“Treyford kept extra boats and poles at both the entrance to the laboratory and here in the warehouse,” Lady Wilmington had explained when she had led him down into the dark basement of the abandoned building and showed him the secret underground dock. “He told me that this way he could enter or leave the laboratory through the abbey or this place, according to his whim or if it became necessary to escape due to some disaster with an experiment. Parker appears to have followed the same practice.”