by V. Penley
“My sister,” Phillip said, when Eugenie turned back around. “An artist. I brought her with me today, hoping she would be of use.” He nodded at the picture Eugenie held. “I think she did an excellent job.”
Eugenie felt the air around her lighten considerably. If she didn’t know better, she would have imagined that the sun was shining. “How helpful,” she said, and turned around to try and see the woman once more before she disappeared. “I wish you had introduced me.”
“Another time,” Phillip said. “But now I think we are very close. We are certainly closing in.”
*
In an ice cream shop, the adults bought the children ice cream and sodas, and then Eugenie and Phillip sat at the table apart from the children. Maisie sat with them, having decided that she was an adult with information to share.
Phillip told them both how he had come to identify the man in the picture. First, he had taken Mr. Styles directly to his sister’s house to draw up a portrait of Jimmie. Cecil had then gone into store after store. The store clerk had seen the boy on multiple occasions, which Cecil then reported back to Phillip. Phillip and his sister had then paid the proprietor a visit.
“So the thief lives above that shop?” Eugenie asked.
“Yes,” Phillip replied. “He only comes out at night, the shop keeper said. And the windows were always covered up. However, she did see many children coming and going from the store.”
“But wouldn’t that suggest that the children weren’t slaves?” Eugenie asked. “Why would they be allowed to run free?”
Maisie interjected with her information, which she was proud to have shared. “Because some of the young boys are in on the theft!” she cried. “I spoke to several myself. They get paid money to send messages and things.”
Eugenie’s eyes were wide. If she lost a student to slavers…“And how did you find them?” Eugenie asked Maisie.
Maisie paused. “I spoke to a source,” she said.
Both Eugenie and Phillip burst out laughing.
“What? What?” Maisie asked. She was coloring—but only because Phillip had laughed at her.
“Are you going to tell me who your source was?” Eugenie asked mildly.
Maisie, with red cheeks, shook her head. Her defiant chin trembled slightly.
“Are you sure?”
Not even a pause this time. Maisie crossed her arms and shook her head.
“Well, then,” Eugenie said. She ordered Maisie another ice cream and sent her to the children’s table so that Phillip and she could talk.
“Did you find a name?” Eugenie asked, turning once again to the picture. It showed a man with a cleft chin, side whiskers, and what looked like a scar on his cheek. It wasn’t the most distinctive face, but she was sure that she could remember it.
Phillip shook his head. “I only just received the portrait.”
“Perhaps you should show it to the Metropolitan Police.”
“I think I’ll go there as soon as we leave.” He drank his soda, through a straw, and then glanced over his shoulder. “Are these all of your students?”
“About half,” Eugenie said. She rested her face in her palm. They were close to finding Jimmie Styles, and she could briefly relax. “The other half are locked in the school, though maybe Mrs. Cabot has returned to free them. I hope.”
“A good lesson for your students in the field,” Phillip said.
“Except it was your boys who broke open the case.” Eugenie smiled. She wanted to ask Phillip a question about his sister, but decided against it. First, she couldn’t think of what to ask, and second, it seemed like an inopportune time.
Instead, Eugenie asked, “How confident are you that we will find this man?”
“Very,” Phillip said. “We know where he lives, we know generally what he looks like. And we know what Jimmie looks like.”
“Do you have Jimmie’s portrait?”
Phillip drank his soda but managed to nod. He pulled a creased sheet of paper from his pocket. Eugenie smoothed it on the table in front of her and surveyed the face.
“He’s an adorable boy.” She shook her head. “It’s terrible what has happened to him.”
“He’ll be free soon enough.”
“And then what?” Eugenie asked. “He goes home to a father who sold him for 50 pounds, and to a mother who is too weak from working herself to the bone to look after him.” She folded up the picture. “It doesn’t seem like much of a rescue to me.”
Phillip raised his eyebrows. “Maybe I’ll invite him to be one of my boys. I could always use a third.”
Eugenie was happy to hear it. But still, her heart was worried. “But there are so many others. We’ll rescue Jimmie, but what about the thousands of others who are sold each year.”
Phillip shrugged. “I know you don’t think much of my time in Parliament, but I can assure you that it gives one perspective. Even Parliament can’t save everyone. Not even close. But you don’t make that your goal. Instead, you do what you can with what you have. It’s enough.”
Eugenie tried to place the phrase: you do what you can with what you have. “Is that Malveaux?” she asked. It didn’t sound familiar.
“It’s too plain spoken for Malveaux,” Phillip said. “Malveaux would have said it better.”
“Who said it, then?”
“Phillip, Duke of Clowdhorn. He hopes one day to represent you in Parliament, after he resigns his peerage.”
Phillip drank the last of his soda and then called over his shoulder to Cecil and Thomas. He turned to Eugenie with a dazzling smile. “I think we have an appointment with the police. Wish us luck.”
Chapter Fourteen: The End of the Chase
Phillip and his two boys left, but not before Phillip promised to send Eugenie a telegram later, to let her know if they had captured the man. Eugenie thought about buying a slice of cake but opted not to. She needed to get back to school, and they had spent enough time in the field.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked her four girls.
They were slumped around their table, empty mugs in front of them. Each girl slowly nodded. Eugenie stood and gathered them round, getting their jackets buttoned up and adjusting their collars. Through the window, Eugenie could see that the overcast skies had finally loosened. Rain fell.
They went out onto the sidewalk anyway and took shelter under the eave, to wait out the light rain. Eugenie’s eyes glazed over the people who passed by, wearing hats or holding slick umbrellas, people she didn’t know. She was looking for Mrs. Cabot but assumed she had returned to the school an hour ago.
After a fitful minute, the rain ceased, and the sky brightened. And it was at this moment that Phillip came back around the corner, walking quickly. His chin was down, but his eyes bore straight ahead.
He acknowledged Eugenie with the slightest nod. “There!” he said under his breath.
Eugenie spun around to find what he was after. All she saw were people, walking singly or in pairs, out of the Garden and toward Bloomsbury. Phillip passed Eugenie, following someone. Eugenie had to wait for the sea of people to part before she saw quite clearly a man in a black suit walking beside a boy, the man’s hand clamped on the boy’s shoulder. For a split second, the boy turned around and looked worriedly over his shoulder.
It was Jimmie!
Swiftly, Cecil and Thomas ran past Eugenie and her girls, and the clouds parted, sending a shaft of light onto the entire group.
“Celeste and Ivie,” Eugenie said, stepping away from the building. “I need you two to run back to school as quickly as possible, do you understand?”
“Wh—,” Ivie began to say, but Eugenie cut her off with a look. Both girls nodded and with Eugenie’s prompting—“Now, go”—they ran off.
Eugenie then touched Maisie and Pippa on the shoulder, to signal they should follow her. Together, the three plunged into the crowd.
For several seconds, Eugenie couldn’t see anything. All around her were bodies, interchangeable, dark colors. She cou
ld smell people, as they were all too close. But then she spied, up above the crowd, Phillip’s light hair. He was taller than nearly everyone on the sidewalk, and the sunlight rimmed his head.
“This way,” she said to the girls, taking their hands.
Together, they dodged people, Maisie elbowing slow walkers out of the way.
They walked North for several minutes, where the crowds began to thin considerably. People shot into buildings, returning to work, or else took side streets to go elsewhere. Eugenie could now see Phillip quite clearly, though the boys were gone. Perhaps Phillip had instructed them to spread out and try to cut off the man and Jimmie at an angle.
Eugenie could also see, much farther ahead, Jimmie and his captor. The man did not release his hold on Jimmie’s shoulder. Indeed, he seemed to be strangling the boy as they began to trot, Jimmie’s feet clumsy. Phillip himself began to run. They were moving through Bloomsbury, toward the British Museum.
Eugenie was walking as fast as was ladylike, but she felt herself falling behind. Soon, however, she would see that her slowness was a benefit.
As the group advanced up Endell Street, the man and Jimmie shot over to Broad, where traffic was waiting to cross. But before Phillip could reach them, the carriages and motor cars which had been waiting formed a steady stream and completely blocked Phillip’s advance. Phillip was trapped, helplessly, to wait for a break in the traffic.
Eugenie wasn’t. Instinctively, she plunged into the road. What am I doing, she thought, as she reached the center. Her life—and the lives of her girls—flashed before her eyes.
“Hurry!” she shouted to her girls, the words barely audible over her heartbeat. In a blur, the entire group raced across the road and gained the other side of Endell before the traffic could run them down.
“Hey!” someone shouted and a motor car honked as Eugenie took the other side of the road, Pippa and Maisie at her side. They had safely made it across.
“Well then,” Eugenie said, the blood at her temples giving her a headache. The traffic streamed past and Eugenie looked ahead, hopefully.
The man—and Jimmie—stood some distance ahead of her. They were waiting to cross Broad Street now. The man looked around, somewhat absent-mindedly, while Jimmie stared straight at Eugenie. No one else walked on their side of the street.
“Go slowly,” Eugenie whispered to her girls. She did not know entirely what would happen when she reached the man. Would she put him under arrest? Was a policeman around for her to call?
Jimmie watched them approach, clearly recognizing that they were friendly. He blinked his eyes rapidly, and his parted lips muttered something.
Suddenly, the man turned around. And Eugenie, looking at his face, stopped dead cold. His face was exactly like that of the portrait—the same malevolent expression, the whiskers, the red scar on his cheek.
Look away, Eugenie told herself.
But it was too late. The man instantly recognized that Eugenie was following him. With a start, he grabbed Jimmie’s arm and raced away, crossing Broad and then hopping onto Drury. Maisie and Pippa began running before Eugenie even lifted a foot.
The group crossed the road and then passed a newspaper stand. By now, the Museum loomed up ahead of them, seeming to dwarf St. George’s Church which was directly ahead. Crowds were gathering on Russell, in front of the Museum, pouring in through the gate toward the building’s entrance. Without looking to his right or left, the man crossed, almost getting struck by a carriage, and slipped with Jimmie through the gates.
If Eugenie didn’t hurry, she would lose them. And given how slow she was moving, she knew they had but one chance.
“Wait!” Eugenie told her girls, and they stood on the other side of Hart Street, breathing deep. Eugenie waited for a break in the traffic, and then hurried across.
She grabbed Maisie’s shoulder and turned her around to face her. “Maisie, they’re headed into the museum. I need you to trap them in the Reading Room. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Maisie said. No hesitation.
“Good. Go.” She watched Maisie race through the gate and the crowds. Pippa soon followed. Unseen by Eugenie, the man and Jimmie were entering the Museum, her two girls fast behind them.
But Eugenie stood with the crowd, a hand on her chest. The Little Frenchman had not prepared her for how physical detective work could be.
*
Eugenie needed less than a minute to recover. When she did, she turned to look for Phillip, but she couldn’t see him. By now he had surely gotten across New Oxford Street. She stared at each light-haired man, but they returned a look of surprise or curiosity. There was no more time to wait.
After looking for a policeman, but finding none, Eugenie strode after her girls, purposively.
How many afternoons had Eugenie come to the British Museum to use the library? She came at least twice a week, when afternoon lessons had been completed. But now she had the sensation of entering for the very first time. The butterflies in her stomach made her ill.
“Please trap him,” Eugenie whispered to herself.
The crowds had bottlenecked at the entrance, and Eugenie waited in queue, all the while seeing in her mind Jimmie and the man in the library. When she finally entered, Eugenie moved directly toward the Egyptian rooms. This would be the very first time she could use the secret passage, the one she had learned about from Malveaux. She prayed it would be useful.
The secret passage ran from the Egyptian room down to the basement, but then up again. It was one of a network of tunnels and passageways. Eugenie had learned about them from Malveaux, who had included a diagram in a letter and had reprinted the letter in an appendix to his final volume of memoirs. Few people read his later volumes, and she was sure she must have been the first to uncover the secret passageways, which Malveaux had mentioned off-handedly.
The Museum had initially used the passageways to transport large items which couldn’t be brought easily through the doors. The passageways led to the basement, and others to tunnels underneath the basement. Malveaux had used them to make shortcuts in order to rest his legs, which as he aged had become severely arthritic, and also to hide from the crowds, in front of whom he was too embarrassed to move in such a stiff-legged fashion.
One passageway ran from the Egyptian Room up into the Library, and Eugenie was about to enter the Egyptian Room when she heard a shout. She turned swiftly around. It was Phillip, finally running up, with the police in tow.
“They should be in the Reading Room,” Eugenie said. “Or at least I hope. Two of my girls are on their tail.” Phillip wiped his brow with a silk kerchief and nodded.
Then he raised an eyebrow. “And where are you headed? The Reading Room is this way.”
Eugenie had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. So she knew something that he did not. Finally.
“Why are you smiling?” Phillip asked. “This is serious business.”
“I know,” Eugenie said. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” He looked confused.
“Trust that I’ll see you in the Reading Room.”
“O…okay,” he said.
Eugenie reached out and shoved his arm. “Now go!”
Phillip smiled, a confident grin, and then gestured for the officers to follow him as he ran North. Eugenie turned into the Egyptian Hall—and was pleased that nearly no one milled about.
Maisie’s footsteps resounded in her head as Eugenie moved toward the statute of King Ramesses. High on his pedestal, he surveyed the gallery in God-like fashion. Eugenie tried to see Malveaux’s diagram in her mind, to identify whether the door was on the North or South side of the pedestal. She ran up to it and place her hand against the stone.
The pedestal gave the appearance of being made of four separate square stones, one on top of the other. In truth, it was all one stone—with a door set on a spring. You had to press the pedestal at the right place to activate the spring, but then it was a flight of stairs down to the basement, which woul
d lead her to the Reading Room.
Unfortunately, the pedestal gave nothing away. Eugenie walked all round, dragging her fingertips over the rough surface, and then peeked over her shoulder. She had only seconds before people came spilling into the gallery. She tried the North side of the pedestal and ran her hand up and down.
Voices echoed in the room as Eugenie found the dead spot, where the pedestal felt hollow. She pressed hard with her hand, and the door immediately popped open. Without further thought, Eugenie pulled the door open with both hands, step around it and into the darkness, and then found the bar on the back of the door, which she pulled to lock herself in.
She heard a satisfying snap. And now everything was dark.
She was inside the tunnel, standing on the steps. Ten steps down, she remembered, and then she would have to run. Inside the pedestal, she couldn’t hear anything but her own breathing—and the sound of something squeaking. Probably mice.
“Steady yourself, Eugenie,” she whispered, and, feeling the rough stone walls, she walked down the steps, counting in her mind.
One, two, three, four, five. She counted five more and then felt around with her toe. No, she was right. Ten steps.
Ahead of her was the basement, which she could still not see. Everything was darkness. But another line from Malveaux came to her: “In the darkness lies all possibilities.”
Eugenie gathered her skirt in her hands so that she wouldn’t trip, and ran.
*
Maisie had tracked the man and Jimmie Styles into the Reading Room, which was filled with mid-afternoon patrons. The man had noticed her and tried to hustle quickly out the other end, but Pippa suddenly appeared in the door and the man knew he was trapped.
“Steady,” he whispered to the boy. He could feel the clavicle through his fingers. “If you say a word, I’ll kill you.”
A patron opened a book and looked at the man. Tensely, he smiled.
“Walk,” he whispered.
Slowly, the man and boy walked around the hushed library, as if looking for a place to sit. Maisie, her fists clenched, followed.
