by William Ray
As they moved into wealthier precincts, streets had been swept clear and were brilliantly illuminated by expensive limelights instead of simple gas. Marley’s restaurant was too exclusive to call much attention to itself and was housed in an unassuming building identified only by a tiny plaque by the door with type too small to be read from the street.
Their cab pulled to the curb a bit short of the restaurant, and the cabman pulled out his own dinner, pretending to take a break as his hack sat idle. A few eager customers tried to hail him, but he would simply raise up his flask and a piece of bread, and they would move on to seek other transport.
Terry fidgeted like a child, and Dorna suspected if his robes did not conceal it, she would see him trembling. Dougal sat in a seemingly peaceful contemplation that would have been the very image of serenity if not for the malevolent smirk he wore. Without the Wardens, Terry would no doubt have still had some career of middling success, but Dougal—seeing him staring blankly ahead in sadistic daydream, Dorna was sure he would have been a criminal of the worst sort. She worried for their cause if the Master was forced to rely on the likes of Dougal.
Most of the buildings here were empty this time of night, and as the play finished, a multitude of well-dressed attendees queued up to pile into the taxis lined at the door. Their own cab was far enough back to stay out of that, and Dougal pushed the shade slightly aside to watch the crowd.
Eventually, the famous engineer emerged. Laughing, Edward Phand and his wife strolled down the streets. In this brightly lit part of town, there were few places for an ambusher to hide, and the police were less cheaply corrupt. Normally the two of them would have had every right to their illusions of safety here.
Dougal called ahead to the cabman, identifying their target, and the horses began to stroll casually forward as they moved past the line of cabs waiting to pick up exiting theater patrons. Apparently, Dougal and the cabman had settled on the proper spot earlier on, and they pulled ahead of the happy couple and halted there.
As the cab creaked to a stop, Dorna pulled down her veil, and the other two followed suit, the three Wardens now facelessly cloaked in green, only distinguishable by their eyes and what little of their body shape the robes left hints of. Even in the robes, Terry’s thin figure was easy to tell from Dougal’s ape-like physique, but Dorna felt there were few hints she was even a woman. The anonymity made her feel powerful, and Dorna tensed in anticipation as she peered out at the sliver of the empty lane she could see around the drawn shade.
As they neared the door, the cabman gave them his signal, “Looking for a ride, sir?” At that, the three of them rushed out of the hack, spilling into the street, knives drawn. Terry circled behind Edward Phand, holding up his knife in silent threat, and as the engineer’s attention was on the blade, Dorna rushed forward with her ether. As the Master had promised, the engineer quickly collapsed once the rag was pressed to his face, and Terry caught him under the arms as he fell.
Dorna took the knife from her partner as he began dragging their quarry into the cab; she would have thought Dougal better for the heavy lifting, but the Master’s plan was quite clear on their roles. Only as that was done did she notice the man’s wife was shrieking. Turning to look, she saw Dougal threatening her with the knife as he pressed her up against the wall of a building.
His demands for silence were completely ignored, and in his struggle to muffle Alice Phand, had not noticed they had already seized their target. Whistles sounded from down the block as a pair of constables on their rounds began sprinting over, truncheons in hand. Against the Master’s instruction for her to remain silent, Dorna ran over and grabbed at Dougal’s arm, hissing out, “We’ve got him. Come on!”
Dougal nodded and started to back away but paused with a strange glaze to his eyes as if he felt he had forgotten something. The look cleared, and he jerked himself from Dorna’s grip. His free hand darted forward as the big man clutched at the pearls and tried to yank them free, but the clasp held stubbornly closed.
Yanking at the pearls just tugged the woman awkwardly forward as she continued to scream, and charging constables were already halfway down the block. He pulled again, and although the clasp held, the string gave way, sending large pearls spilling across the sidewalk and bouncing into the street.
Dougal looked down at the gems scattered across the pavement, and his knees began to bend as if he felt the need to pick them up. Grabbing at his arm again, Dorna tried to pull Dougal back to the cab, shouting, “Leave it! We have to go!”
He shook his head, cursed, and then sprang into the cab without any further hesitation. The panicked cabman slapped the reins as soon as Dorna leapt inside, and the hack jolted into motion, flying through the streets.
One of the policemen chased their cab down the street, but he could not keep up with the cabman’s horses. Dorna was glad they only carried clubs here—in some less settled areas of Aelfua, men of the law often bore pistols. The other constable had stopped, and shortly after they rounded the corner, they heard the loud cranking of the police rattle, sounding a general alarm through the area. Once out of sight, however, their cab simply blended in with all the others in the city and slowed to a more measured pace as they drove back to Tanner.
Terry began to laugh, semihysterical as they fled the scene of their abduction, and Dorna collapsed into her seat. Her heart was racing, and she felt like she could barely breathe under her hood, so she pushed the veil back up out of her face. In less than an hour, they arrived in the alley behind the shop, exactly as planned.
Dorna had half-expected the sound of police rattles again and to see hundreds of olive and gold uniformed officers descending upon them the moment they arrived, but to her relief, all was quiet. For several moments after the wheels stopped, they all just sat in the hack, everyone catching their breath. Edward Phand lay completely limp but was still breathing when she checked. With Terry’s help, she pulled the engineer from the hack and then up into the private carriage they had kept in the small stable behind the shop.
The cabman seemed understandably nervous; it had looked very little like some club’s playful hazing or whatever Dougal had claimed he was involved in. He had to know that if the constables or Alice Phand had caught the number on his cab, he would soon be arrested.
Dougal pushed back his hood and climbed up next the driver. He put on a reassuring smile that made Dorna’s stomach turn and then helped guide the hack back into the stables as he promised the man that everything would be fine.
Wincing in anticipation, Dorna looked away but still heard the strangled gasp and then the wet coughs that followed as the cabman died. She murmured another Elven prayer, unsure of the meaning of the words but drawing strength from them. The world must be healed. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the Great Restoration.
~
“Week in Sport”
In the match between Oulm and Whitby, the former team spiked an epic 521 before the game was called. Lord Brex (176), Lord Gimley (82), Mr. S. Opple (64), and Mr. A. Pendelton (not barred, 62) were the chief contributors to this gigantic total, and though the Hon. J. Blackacre (107) threw exceedingly well, he had little assistance from the other Whitby men, who were eventually defeated by the third, with the final roundings called off as untenable. Also this week, Garelsby has beaten Derphon by 47 over. Alston has won the Inter-University bracket by seven.
– Gemmen Standard, 8 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 5 -
Having successfully located his flat the night before, Gus was in a good mood as he strolled down the lane towards his office. The sun was shining, and it was nice enough to walk the half-mile between. He had no plans to do any work, of course, but Emily would be upset if he didn’t put in an appearance. Despite the previous night’s libations, he had awoken very nearly on time and was looking forward to astonishing Emily with his relative punctuality.
The bustle of morning traffic was mostly over,
but newsboys still stood at the corners, the morning editions not yet all sold, but they were already promising extra news for just a few bits more. Whistling to himself, Gus tipped his hat to the woman who ran the restaurant on his block.
As usual for this time of day, she stood out front smoking a cigarette as she tried to hawk her services. In more polite neighborhoods, a woman would never smoke in public, and Gus half suspected she only smoked on the street here to catch more attention from passersby. She glanced him over as he walked by but quickly dismissed him from her consideration when it was obvious he was not a customer.
A gang of young boys darted out of the alley, and Gus lowered one hand, preparing to guard his wallet, but they were laughing and throwing garbage at one another, apparently having as upbeat a morning as he was. He paused a moment to avoid the flying detritus of their passage and then slipped into his building.
He bounced up the stairs to his office two at a time and grinned at Emily as he stepped inside. Her reaction had an entirely unsatisfying lack of surprise. Looking up at him, she simply gestured to a pot on her desk and asked, “Would you like some tea?”
Gus’s first impulse was to playfully insist upon coffee, but she was clearly not in the mood, so he nodded and let her pour him small cup of the stuff as he shed his coat and hat. It was every bit as bitter as expected, so he tossed in a bit of the sugar she kept on her tray. As he stirred that in, she stared at him pointedly until finally he asked, “What?”
“Should I take it from your good mood that you have a plan for this mess?” she asked, one eyebrow arched.
Gus shrugged as he took another sip, but she continued to stare until he finally asked, “Which mess?”
With a roll of her eyes, Emily handed him the paper. The top left article was another report on a plague in Tulsmonia and a warning that ships full of sick refugees had been seen sailing for Verinde.
Rampant disease in Tulsmonia seemed to be the top article every few days, and Gus felt a little insulted that they still felt it merited as news. Either the Tuls weren’t sailing here, they weren’t sick, or they were always turned back. He gave Emily a quizzical look, and she jerked the paper out of his hands, folded it so only the top right article was visible, and then handed it back.
‘Prominent Architect Kidnapped By Wardens’, proclaimed a histrionic, smaller headline next to the one about the Tuls. It didn’t seem relevant to him as he didn’t know any architects, but he supposed maybe she thought it was a mess they could make money from. Francis Parland was obsessed with Elven stuff, so maybe it was something the petitioner might be interested in. A potential distraction to get Parland off his back hardly seemed like a ‘mess’.
Looking over the body of the article, he saw the architect was kidnapped after leaving the theater by a masked trio cloaked as Wardens. It made for a good headline, and he was sure everyone over fifty would be in a tizzy over it.
The Wardens were a bogeyman of his parents’ generation rather than his own. A thousand years ago, they had fielded armies against their fellow men who were fighting for independence from the Elves. A few centuries back, those accused of being elf-worshipping Wardens were periodically put to death by the religious orthodoxies of the day. They had cropped up for the last time during humanity’s final war with the Elves.
By the time of that war, no sane man could have seen the horrors wrought against humans and imagined that the rulers of Aelfua wanted anything but their extinction. The deluded few that had remained served as spies and saboteurs working in isolation against their own kind until the Elves all suddenly vanished. Those who had stuck it out to the end either surrendered or killed themselves once they realized that their ‘living gods’ had abandoned them.
There were no Elves left to warden for, so Gus supposed that particular wrinkle just added a bit of tastelessness to their crimes. It was a bold choice of disguise.
The architect’s wife was offering a reward for his return, a full thousand peis, but a substantial sum like that also immediately struck him as an opportunity rather than a mess. It was probably an opportunity for someone else though, since Gus hadn’t managed to drink away the profits from their most recent venture. It seemed odd though—if she was offering a reward, why not just pay the kidnappers and be done with it?
Reading more carefully, he saw no demands had been made yet, which explained the reward on offer. A chance to show up the Chandler’s Crossing inspectors to be sure, but Gus didn’t understand Emily’s urgency until he glanced back up to the first sentence for the name of this prominent architect; despite the headline, he was not an architect at all but a famous engineer named Doctor Edward Phand.
He felt a chill wind blow away the vestiges of his good mood. Suddenly, his leg ached from the morning’s stroll, and he wished he had slept in a bit longer. He wondered if perhaps he was more hungover from the night before than he had realized. “Oh. Well, that is a mess.”
“Exactly. And you know we’ll be suspects. We were hired by the wife, and they always blame the wife first,” groused Emily, moving around to hover over his shoulder as he read the paper again.
Gus nodded absently, glancing through the story a third time, hoping some new detail might pop out at him and make things better. “If it was her, why would she offer so large a reward, though? Seems a risky prospect with at least four accomplices who might try to claim the cash by saying where he was.”
“Murder, then? You think she came to us to find the best place to set him up?”
“No, if the point was murder, he’d just be dead. If they’d simply stabbed him and snatched her purse, she’d have an alibi with plenty of witnesses and far less police attention than a kidnapping. A sham kidnapping doesn’t make sense if their aim was murder; the possibility of effecting rescue just makes search efforts for the culprits more intense.”
Emily nodded, then said, “And why was the wife there at all, instead of the mistress?”
Reading the details again he added, “It says they grabbed for her pearls in the attack though, which doesn’t make any sense for a kidnapping. Why mug her and then toss him into a cab? The public spectacle, the robes, the half-hearted robbery—it’s too strange, almost like they wanted to make headlines and keep us guessing.”
Emily stepped back and paced for a bit, an annoying habit of hers when she was trying to work things out. Pausing and looking back at him, she said, “The man downstairs said it was probably some secret society.”
Benbow, in the office below theirs, was an accountant or maybe a petitioner or perhaps a petitioner’s accountant. It was something dull that left him eager to share his very dull opinions, so Gus immediately discounted the idea and then worked backwards to figure out why.
As near as he could tell, secret societies were a game the wealthy played amongst themselves, where the moderately influential would pretend at vast importance. They were cliques that thrived on an aura of mystery, and usually some claim of mysticism that was obvious hokum. They were nothing but an excuse to drink among friends and socialize, for those who felt they needed such excuses, although sometimes they did get carried away with their premise.
Though loathe to agree with Benbow, Gus still thought it made more sense than an elaborately staged mugging. “It’s too high profile to just be a membership hazing. Was he already a member but with past dues? An enemy of the club?”
He tossed the paper onto his desk and took another sip of tea; terrible stuff, but he was feeling a bit more awake. Looking down at his cup, Gus wondered if he should buy something of better quality since Emily was proving more fixedly against coffee than he had anticipated.
Emily didn’t offer any other ideas though, so Gus continued along his own train of thought. “Dressing up like Wardens doesn’t make sense if they wanted to make a point about their own club by going after someone. It’s probably just a blind to keep us looking in the wrong places.”
That made her grin at him, which seemed totally ou
t of place until he realized he’d just implicitly agreed to look into the case. He sighed in defeat at the sight of her already counting the reward money. For a mere employee, Emily proved to be a relentless taskmaster.
Trying to pluck his deflated spirits back up, he said, “It should be easy, right? We know it can’t really be Elves, and we already have a few leads from earlier. I’ll check around. Since the wife was about to be rid of him, it’s probably not her or the boyfriend; it might be a business rival or one of his girls on the side.”
“What about the police? Won’t the Crossing suspect us as being involved?” She paused then added, “You think Missus Phand mentioned us to them?”
Rising to fetch his coat, Gus shrugged and said, “Maybe. Detecting-Inspector Clarke would love an excuse to kick down our door, but his first move will be to find that cab. All the cabs are numbered, so it’s a terrible choice for the kidnappers to use, right? But these guys are smart enough to think up a blind like the Warden robes, so finding the cab probably won’t help Clarke find the kidnappers anyway.”
He nodded to himself, gradually resigned to the job even though he felt a few more days insensate between jobs would have been nice. Reward money, getting himself out of trouble, and making Ollie Clarke look foolish were each, on their own, perfectly good reasons to take on a case, so he could hardly afford to skip an opportunity that offered all three at once.
Emily was still staring at him quizzically, so he explained, “It’s too obvious. Someone with the guts for a scandalous distraction like being Wardens would cover their tracks, maybe a false cab number covering the real one or something like that. With the police chasing down a false lead, I can probably stay a step or two ahead and get to Phand before the police.”
