After a concerned glance up to the bedroom window, Meredith crept back inside and made for the study. She kept to the walls as far as possible to avoid creaking the floorboards.
Damn! The telephone line had been cut, so the burglars had to have broken in since Derek’s conversation with his mother. Yet why hadn’t he heard them? Why hadn’t she?
Oh God, how many intruders were down there, rummaging through Father’s personal effects, his most secret possessions? They’d got in through the back door—the lock had been pried off the door frame—but how in the name of all that was Holy had they gained entry into the cellar? That iron door had multiple locks and was inches thick, like something from a bank vault. She and Sonja had tried everything to get in there over the years, and failed.
These obviously weren’t ordinary burglars as the display cabinets in the study, full of prized gadgets and archaeological artefacts, were untouched. And anyone who’d gone to all this trouble to break into an unbreakable cellar vault had an agenda, something specific they wanted to find. If they didn’t find it there, they might very well look elsewhere. They might ransack the entire house to find it, which would take them upstairs...to the master bedroom. To Sonja!
No. Not today. Not ever.
She fetched Father’s Moroccan steam-pistols from their case in the cabinet, but couldn’t find the bullets. Hell. They were the only lethal weapons in the house that she knew of. A kitchen knife or Father’s cricket bat or Sonja’s tennis racquet in the hands of a slip of a girl would scarcely intimidate professional burglars. And yet, the intruders couldn’t know she was bluffing, that the pistols were in fact unloaded. Attaching the fancy gilt-edged water and acid cylinders would still carry the desired deterrent effect. If she could simply point and threaten, get the bastards out of the house, away from Sonja long enough for Derek to return...
Yes, she had to do this. This she had to do, and it had to be now, while surprise was still on her side. With a monstrous inhale of toast-flavoured air—and a quick prayer that that smell didn’t reach the cellar before she did—she opened the oak panel door to the stone staircase and started down, one step, one breath at a time.
The metallic taps grew to clanging thuds as she approached the vault door left barely an inch ajar. She pulled the hulking thing open and slipped inside, pistols trained on the way ahead. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen inside the cellar, but it was her first time unaccompanied by Father. The sanctum had seemed enormous and magical once, a mad professor’s chateau dungeon from one of Sonja’s horror books. Now it was simply overstuffed and cramped. Its L-shape gave her further opportunity to sneak up on the intruders, who were around the corner, clearly having a go at the safe.
The heavy panels of Father’s miniature iron mole, a contraption he’d used to demonstrate the design’s potential in order to lure potential investors for the large-scale version, stood upright against the bare brick wall, faded and half covered by a dusty tarpaulin. A black Hi-wheel—a steam-powered penny farthing—stood in several pieces in the corner, its side-cars still attached to the crossbeam. All things she remembered seeing as a girl and hadn’t thought about since.
Clang, clang, clang.
“Snag this ‘un, too?” a man’s voice whispered. “Looks of it there’s more than a year of entries—a right good journal.”
“Bag it—in fact, bag the whole lot,” came the reply. “She’ll have a field day with this stuff.”
Meredith glimpsed three men, athletically built, strong-looking, dressed all in shades of grey. Their faces weren’t masked per se but were hidden under what could be boot blacking, as was their hair, slicked back and oily in the light of their dynamo lamps. One of them held a sack open while the other two deposited documents from Father’s safe into it: leather-bound journals, maps rolled up inside cardboard tubes, envelopes bearing airmail stamps, and bundles of foreign currency. One sack had already been filled; with what, she couldn’t tell.
On the floor in front of the open safe lay a number of tools, including an alarmingly small steam-powered drill for precision boring, a sledge hammer, a heavy duty chisel, a crowbar, and an assortment of strange-looking screwdrivers with transparent handles of variegated colours. Their hollow shafts were open at the end like tiny blowtorches. They came in a dozen sizes, and one was still attached to the lock. It appeared to have somehow melted the mechanism from the outside.
One of the men wore a gun belt, but she couldn’t identify the holstered weapon. From the rate they were filling the sacks she guessed the safe had to be almost empty by now. She had to make her move before—
She took the plunge rather than dwell on it. For a split-second the sanctum was enormous once again, its contents utterly alien as she stood in the open and aimed her quivering pistols. A gigantic spider’s web she hadn’t been able to see until now hung in the far corner. Its shadows wavered ominously on the bare bricks.
“Stop what you’re doing this instant or I’ll put a bullet in all three of you.” They froze, pivoted their heads a fraction to watch her askance. The whites of their eyes blazed with reflected orange light. “Very slowly...unfasten your gun belt and drop it on the floor. I don’t care who you are. Move a wrong finger and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
They obeyed without question. The man in the centre scanned the cellar around her, no doubt figuring a way to surprise her. She thrust her left pistol at him. “Whatever you’re thinking, Sludgehead, think again. I’m a crack shot,” she lied. “Now, we’re going to leave here—” She considered locking them in and standing guard outside until Derek returned, but that would make them desperate, and there was enough equipment in this cellar for them to give her all sorts of problems, even without their own tools and weapons. Father’s drills, pick-axes, surplus mining explosives he hadn’t needed on his current expedition, lead panels that could be used to stop bullets: it was a captive’s cornucopia. “I’m taking you outside, where the police will arrive presently. Remember, if just one of you tries anything, I’ll kill all three of you, so don’t test me. Now, one step at a time.”
So far so good. They rounded the L in total compliance, watching Meredith watch her footing as she back-stepped toward the exit.
“You’re a good ‘un if you telephoned the police,” one of them said, “what with your cable cut and all.”
“I used my housekeeper’s telephone—she lives across the way.”
“I think not,” replied the man in the centre, more well-spoken than his colleague. “They have no cable.”
Bugger. So they’d outsmarted her on that one. She was still the one dictating terms. “Well, that’s where we’re heading, and you’d best hope the police come soon. Unless you’d rather leave here in a hearse than a Black Mariah. It’s all the same to me.”
The man in the centre halted, stopped the other two. “I think we’ll just wait right here.”
“I think you won’t just wait right here, Sludgehead. Can you read?”
“I can read a frightened girl who runs away from trouble to get help, and leaves her baby sister to do the fighting.”
“What did you say?”
“Your dad was lucky that day. At least he had one daughter to fight for him.”
Father? That day...? “Westerfeld!”
“Miss McEwan.”
“What...what are you doing here?”
“Fulfilling a contract. As you’ve no doubt heard by now, a certain French party will stop at nothing to destroy Ralph McEwan. And if she can’t get to him personally, she’ll blight his reputation any way she can until he resurfaces, then she’ll try to kill him again. There’s no arguing with a woman like that.”
“A madwoman. A hellcat.”
“An insanely rich woman, Miss McEwan. That she’s entitled to her vengeance is beside the point. This is an errand, and she’s paying us well for it. I—we’ve nothing personally against you or your family. It’s Madame Clochefort you ought to be pointing those at, not us.”
“Oh
yes, I forgot, you’re the white hen that never laid away. And the attempted murder at the Steam Fair was another errand you take no blame for because you were paid to do it. Maybe the other Sludgeheads can trump that, but I doubt it.”
Westerfeld reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved a cigarette and a pack of matches. “Feel like running away yet, Meredith?”
“Stop that. I said stop that this instant!”
He put three cigarettes in his mouth, lit them and handed one each to his nonplussed colleagues. “You wouldn’t kill a man for smoking, would you?”
“No, but I’d kill him for trying to murder my family. Now follow me outside or we’ll see if you bleed black as well. I’ll not warn you again.”
The more he defied her, tugging away at his expensive gold-tipped cigarette, the more Meredith’s hands shook—adrenaline picking the lock of her resolve with a single tool—her bluff. It was not working. Either he knew it or suspected it or he saw something else in her, that fear he kept harping on about, a real enough fear she’d displayed to her shame at the Steam Fair. But this...this couldn’t end well. The bastard saw right through her.
“I have a proposition for you, Miss McEwan.” He took a step forward, held up his hands in surrender when she panicked and clashed both pistols together. “If you escort us outside and watch us down the lane, I promise you’ll never see us again. Here, you can have all our tools and weapons. And this way you’ll never have to ask yourself, did I really have to end the lives of these men over a few bits of paper in a safe?”
“Ha!” She wiped her brow on her sleeve. “You must think I was born—”
He ducked low and sprang at her legs. Meredith instinctively pressed both triggers—click, click—and gasped. Westerfeld’s lunge fell short of her backward leap. “You little bitch.” Clambering to his feet, he yelled to the others, “Get my gun,” and immediately tore after her.
Meredith hurled the pistols at him. One hit his face, butt-first, which enraged him further. She flew up the steps two at a time, knowing she stood no chance without a weapon of her own. To run as fast as she could might save her, but she doubted it. These were tall, athletic men, and they were armed.
At full sprint through the study she spied the valise Donnelly had given her as a present in Vincey Park. She hadn’t opened it since that day. It stood on the floor behind the hat stand in the vestibule, boxed in by her hiking boots and Sonja’s Wellingtons and tennis racquet.
Westerfeld thundered across the carpet behind her. Was he gaining? No time to look behind. In one coiled fluid motion she snatched the heavy valise and yanked it up, throwing the boots and racquet aside, and swung it behind her. It missed his head by inches. The shock spilled him sideways onto his backside. She spat and swung again, this time cracking his shoulder with the corner of the wooden case.
He umphed and then kicked out in an attempt to leg her up, but Meredith had the front door open and was already drinking freedom, planning her next move. Westerfeld elected not to follow her out. That bought her a chance, this one chance to survive a little longer. But she had to work fast.
They had deadly weapons, yes, but so did she—people her age fought duels with them across the Channel. They’d been banned from schools there altogether. But they hadn’t yet caught on over here...
Maybe it was time to change that.
In all truth the fly-mech was an exceedingly clumsy rig to wear when moving at speed. Her left arm was locked in its outstretched form, encumbering her freedom to swivel or to keep balance while she ran, so that she moved rather like an automaton might, legs propelling her, both arms rigid, with only her head able to turn with complete freedom. A good thing she knew the forest intimately and her pursuers didn’t—several hiding places saved her bacon before she had chance to fire a single projectile.
At maximum extension, her fly-mech barrel girdled her as an iron belt. Donnelly had warned her about the kick it would give when released from such tension, but she daren’t risk anything less. These men weren’t playing a game. Westerfeld was the only one with a gun, but the other two bore a crowbar and a wrench. And they were keen listeners, not the bulls in a china shop that would stomp around aimlessly all day. Twice they almost made her, veering a few feet past her nettle bush when she wound the crank for the first shot. And their tight formation didn’t exactly help matters. Far better that they split up, so she could target them one at a time without immediate reaction from the others.
She crept low behind the thistle hedge, along the soggy bank of the brook bisecting the forest. It was in spate after the violent storm of two nights ago. Several times she nearly fell in. Damn the rigid contraption—it killed her agility, put the onus squarely on her sound footing. Icy water soaked through her slippers.
“There, tracks. Do you see?” someone whispered nearby. The notion skinned her in mid-slither. She let herself fall to one knee, and stopped breathing. It hadn’t occurred to her until now—leaving footprints wherever she went. Everywhere was damp, muddy, especially near the brook. Far safer to keep to where the leaves had fallen—being wet, they wouldn’t crinkle—or on the grass. That was if she escaped from this quagmire.
“Well she ain’t swimmin’ her way out,” came the reply. She sensed the follow-up was being demonstrated physically, one of them pointing out where they thought she might be. “No, behind that. Do you need me to draw you a map?”
Their boots squelched. One or two cold breaths appeared over the tops of the bramble thicket, not twenty feet behind her. She daren’t make a move. Even if she hit Westerfeld with her first shot, the others would be on her before she could reload. And if she missed, they could kill her any number of ways, without even needing the revolver.
To her great relief, a falling acorn spooked them. It set them sprinting back the way they’d come. Meredith sighed with relief. She freed herself from the riverbank trap and scurried across the path to the relative safety of the forest floor, where dead leaves, bark and acorn cups provided a more compacted carpet for her to tread anonymously.
This time she resolved to fire a shot the first chance she got, try to even the odds a little.
She saw they were taking the main, long-winded path to the glade where Mr. Van Persie berthed his balloon, so she headed them off, waited behind the yew where she’d kissed Benjamin Higgins one bonfire night. She loaded the cork ball, cranked the gear to its absolute limit. Practiced her aim. Changed her posture. Aimed again. Good enough—from this range she couldn’t miss, seeing as she’d bullseyed Donnelly at several times the distance in Vincey Park.
They jogged into view too soon, and she barely hid in time. She thumped the tree in frustration. Westerfeld seemed to be the more cautious, the more watchful of the three. He brought up the rear. Perfect.
Not five seconds after they’d passed the tree she sidestepped out, sucked in a steeling breath, let it out slowly while taking careful aim...slightly ahead of him...no, up a bit for the trajectory...a bit more...and pressed the trigger.
The recoil jerked her sideways into a spin, but she saw the corky crack Westerfeld on the back of his neck. Right away he slumped forward in a heap, either out cold or dead.
“Oi, what was that? What hit him?”
She darted back into the forest as soon as she regained her balance, but it was too late. Both men spotted her and gave chase. Luckily for her they didn’t think to borrow Westerfeld’s revolver. The saplings lining the path were more densely clustered, and tall grass crowded a ditch that skirted the path. Here she hid on one knee. She loaded the next ball, her second of six held in a compartmentalized wire frame hanging over her crotch. That probably wasn’t the correct place to hang it, but she’d improvised well enough under pressure.
They hacked at the undergrowth with their tools, to frighten her out of hiding. Another thirty feet and they would succeed. Meredith couldn’t afford to be seen from this range—she’d never reload in time.
Her next shot missed its target but hit a tree trunk a
couple of feet away and rebounded. It struck the man on the chin, infuriating him. He tossed the ball in the direction he thought it had come from. Couldn’t have been more wrong. By the time she’d found a new firing spot the two men had split up, and were swiping, prodding, stabbing at the bushes with frightening tenacity.
Her third projectile didn’t miss. It slammed into the same man’s temple from no more than ten feet away, felling him on the spot.
“Quigley!” yelled the third man on hearing the thump, and again as he watched his colleague eat acorns. “Where in the hell is she? Where are you?”
Her answer, not a minute later, hit him on the right quad muscle and gave him a dead leg. Her worst shot so far. But Meredith was determined to make amends. The man hadn’t seen her, and anyway he was limping, wounded prey. She crept back along the path to the other side of the thicket he thought was giving him cover. Crouching low, she waited for him to get up.
And waited.
His string of muttered obscenities seemingly had no end, and precious little syntax. When he finally struggled to his feet, she sprang up, thrust the barrel through the upper nettle stems and fired at almost point blank range. The corky splattered his nose, snapped his head back and sent him reeling to the ground. Without pause she ran around the bush and picked up his crowbar. Hit him thrice on the skull. Snatched up the last ball that had hit him. Then she scurried away back to the house as fast as the rigid fly-mech—that beautiful, clumsy, life-saving fly-mech—would let her.
Two projectiles left. But would she need them now? The burglars were all down, unconscious, but not disarmed, damn it. As she made the turn onto Bitker Lane Meredith panted and wanted to double up to catch her breath, but the stiff rig wouldn’t allow it. It made her stand upright. She daren’t remove it, though. Not yet. Not until Sonja was unequivocally safe from the intruders. Not until—
The first bullet, fired from behind, whizzed by her left ear and ricocheted off one of the stone gate posts at the front of her house. She halted. Imagined the next bullet thudding into her back, exploding her heart. She stood there, halfway through a stride, and braced herself for the impact.
Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) Page 27
