Blackstone and the Burning Secret (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 4) Page 9

  ‘Jack says you’re from Canada,’ the second, leaner, man said.

  American, Blackstone thought. Definitely American. ‘That’s right, I am,’ he agreed.

  ‘Don’t sound like a Canadian to me.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was born in Canada,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘It’s merely the place where I live now.’

  ‘And how d’ you happen to be rich?’ the American wondered.

  ‘Jack told you that, as well, did he?’

  ‘If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.’

  ‘I made my money in lumber,’ Blackstone said. ‘Lots of it. Whole forests of it.’

  The American and the Dutch/German exchanged quick, searching, glances, then the American said, ‘If you wish to join the club, we can see no objection to it. My friend here will propose you as a member, and I will second you. The membership fee is five pounds.’

  ‘Your man said it was only one pound,’ Blackstone said.

  The American shrugged. ‘One pound! Five pounds! Does it really make any difference to a man of your wealth?’

  No, Blackstone thought, because he had no wealth.

  But it would certainly make a difference to Sir Roderick Todd, when he found out how little of the money from the special fund—which he’d allowed the Inspector to draw on—would actually be returned.

  ‘Well?’ the American asked.

  ‘It makes no difference at all,’ Blackstone said. ‘So why don’t we call it ten pounds?’

  The American looked satisfied. ‘Five pounds will be just fine and dandy,’ he said. ‘You want to hand it over to Jack, here?’

  Blackstone reached into his pocket again, and produced the wad of notes—or rather the few notes, supplemented by many equally sized pieces of blank paper. He peeled off a five pound note, and handed it to the doorman.

  ‘Great,’ the American said. ‘Now if you’ll just sign our register, Mr Smith, the fun can begin.’

  ‘How did you know my name was Smith?’ Blackstone asked.

  The American chuckled. ‘Most of our clients are called Smith—and usually have John as their given name,’ he said.

  15

  There were three doors leading off the corridor of the Austro-Hungary Club. From one came the sound of the piano that Blackstone had heard earlier, from the second the incessant click of ivory billiard balls. But it was the third, the one which led to the gambling room, through which the Inspector was shepherded.

  In one corner of this room there was a bar. It was tended by a man who looked as if he had been selected more for his muscle than for his cheery attitude or ability to mix drinks. There were several customers sitting around the bar on high stools. Most of them were women, and were dressed in such a way as to indicate that while they would probably be prepared to surrender their virtue without a fight, they would certainly not give it up without some cash changing hands.

  But it was the baccarat table, located in the middle of the room, towards which most people’s interest was directed. There were six people sitting around the table—the banker and five players—but perhaps three times as many others standing and watching.

  Blackstone took them all in with a sweeping gaze. He recognised none of the people as individuals, though most of them were clearly instantly identifiable as types. There were three or four men who were obviously ‘something in the City’—stockbrokers or bankers—and several who looked like prosperous merchants or manufacturers on a visit to London from the provinces. Half a dozen men were wearing military dress uniform, though only three of the uniforms belonged to the British Army. It was an impressive gathering, by any standards, and Blackstone was a little surprised that he had been admitted to it—even with his disguise of a hired suit and fake wad of money.

  ‘The guy who’s running the bank is in real trouble,’ said a voice just behind him.

  Blackstone looked around, to see the American who had signed him in, standing there.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be in trouble to me,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘That’s because you’re not a regular, and don’t know what signs to look for,’ the American said easily. ‘Half an hour ago, he was making a stack of money and he was as cool as a cucumber. Now his luck’s turned, his money’s running out, and he’s starting to sweat like pig. Another five minutes, and he’s gone. Want to buy the bank when he leaves?’

  It wasn’t a casual question, Blackstone decided. It was a test to see just how rich—and how reckless—he was.

  ‘What’s the house’s take of the bank?’ he asked.

  The American laughed. ‘A miserable seven percent,’ he said. ‘I keep telling the management they should raise it, but they won’t listen. They’re fools to themselves.’

  ‘So you’re not one of the management yourself, then, Mr…?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Smith,’ the American said. ‘My name’s Smith, just like yours.’

  ‘So maybe we’re distant cousins,’ Blackstone suggested.

  ‘Could be,’ the American said indifferently. ‘Why should you think I was part of the management?’

  ‘You signed me in.’

  ‘Look on that as a courtesy from one punter to another,’ the American said. ‘But you still haven’t told me whether you might consider buying the bank when the current banker withdraws,’ he continued, his voice hardening.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Blackstone said firmly.

  ‘I thought you said you’d come here for a bit of excitement,’ the American said, his tone now almost inquisitorial.

  ‘I did,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘I even came here willing to lose money. But I didn’t come prepared to throw it away.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ the American said.

  ‘It’s a game of both percentages and odds, and the one affects the other,’ Blackstone explained. ‘If the house took four or five percent, which would be reasonable, I’d have a good chance of coming out ahead, and I might take the bank. But seven percent is just greedy.’

  ‘I thought you were a businessman, not a professional gambler,’ the American said suspiciously.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a difference between the two, but I’ve never been able to work out what it is,’ Blackstone said.

  The American laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘So if you’re not going to gamble, why don’t you come over to the bar?’ he suggested. ‘There’s somebody I’d like for you to meet.’

  *

  ‘My name’s Sophia,’ the woman said.

  ‘John,’ Blackstone told her.

  ‘John Smith?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The woman giggled girlishly. ‘We get a lot of John Smiths in here, most nights.’

  That was probably the house joke, Blackstone thought, and laughed, since it was obviously expected of him.

  He gave the woman an appraising look which she—missing the policeman’s eyes lurking behind the man’s—would probably consider to be one of frank admiration. She was twenty-four or twenty-five, he guessed, though she would no doubt pretend to be older—or younger—when the situation called for it. She had a pretty face, though heavily enhanced by make-up, and a good figure which was more than adequately revealed by her tight-fitting, low-cut gown. And if she really was called Sophia, he was a Chinaman.

  ‘It was very nice of Robert to bring you over, don’t you think?’ the woman said.

  ‘Robert?’ Blackstone repeated.

  ‘Robert Mouldoon. The American gentleman.’

  ‘Yes, it was nice of him,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘Because otherwise I might not have had the chance to talk to you, and I can already tell that you’re a fascinating man.’

  There was a pause, during which he was obviously expected to come back with some kind of compliment of his own, but when it became plain he wasn’t going to do any such thing,

  Sophia said, ‘You wouldn’t, by any chance, like to buy a lady a drink, would you?’

  ‘
Of course,’ Blackstone said. ‘What’s it to be? Champagne?’

  Sophia giggled again. ‘Champagne! That’s my favourite drink. You must be a mind-reader.’

  ‘Yes, I must be, mustn’t I?’ Blackstone agreed, signalling to the bruiser behind the bar, and pulling out his wad of money.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?’ Sophia suggested, flickering her eyelashes at him.

  ‘Why don’t we talk about you, instead?’ Blackstone countered.

  Sophia ran her index finger down the top of her cleavage and batted her eyelashes again. ‘Me?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you,’ Blackstone replied. ‘I’m sure that you’re much more interesting than a boring old millionaire.’

  *

  Sitting in a cab across the street from the Austro-Hungary Club, Sergeant Patterson lit a cigarette and, while the match was still burning, checked the time on his pocket watch.

  Blackstone had been inside the club for over an hour, he noted. He wished the Inspector had allowed him to go too, but the other man had been adamant that it wouldn’t work.

  ‘You’d have to pretend to be either a gambler or a lady’s man, Sergeant,’ Blackstone had said. ‘And, to be honest with you, I doubt if you could carry off either of those roles.’

  It had hurt at the time Blackstone had said it, but thinking about it, Patterson had been forced to conclude that his boss had been right. He looked, he had to admit, like a plump detective sergeant who was walking out with a very nice girl whom he eventually hoped to marry—which, by some strange quirk of fate, was exactly what he was.

  Still, there were compensations in that. He was almost certain that he would end up happy—or, at least, reasonably content. Blackstone, on the other hand, was never destined to achieve either of those states. The Inspector was a driven man who would never rest—would never settle for anything that was less than perfect, even though he knew perfection was totally unattainable.

  Patterson glanced across at the club door again, and just at that moment, the door itself swung open and two figures stepped out into the thick fog. One of them, Patterson saw immediately, was Blackstone—there was no mistaking that tall, almost-gaunt figure—and the other was smaller, and appeared to be a woman.

  As Patterson watched, the two walked over to his cab, and Blackstone opened the door.

  ‘I told you we’d get a hansom, even in the fog,’ Patterson heard Blackstone say.

  ‘But there’s already somebody in it,’ the woman told him.

  ‘Of course there is,’ Blackstone answered. ‘That’s my secretary—Mr Patterson. I never travel anywhere without him. Get into the cab.’

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ the woman said doubtfully. ‘It isn’t what we agreed at all.’

  ‘What we agreed on—and what you seemed most interested in—was twenty pounds,’ Blackstone reminded. ‘Now get in the cab—or I’ll go back to the Austro-Hungary Club, and find another young lady who will.’

  The woman climbed into the cab, and sat at the opposite end of the seat to Patterson. ‘I’ll go along with this, but I want to make one thing clear from the start,’ she said.

  ‘And what might that be?’ Blackstone asked, sliding deftly into the space next to her.

  ‘My arrangement was with you,’ the woman said. ‘If I have to do him as well, it’s extra. An’ if I have to do both of you at one an’ the same time—as I know some gentlemen likes—then it’ll be a lot extra.’

  ‘I’m not sure my secretary knows what you mean when you say “do”,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Then he must be pretty thick,’ the woman said.

  ‘He is,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘If he had brains, I’d be the secretary and he’d be the millionaire. So would you mind spelling it out for him?’

  Sophia sighed. ‘I mean that if you’re both goin’ to get your ends away with me—if I’m takin’ you both for a ride in the woods—it’s not goin’ to be the same price as if there was just one of you.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Patterson said, in a bemused mumble.

  ‘For Gawd’s sake, ain’t it obvious?’ Sophia demanded. ‘I’m talkin’ about sex! Is that clear enough for you?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Blackstone said. ‘Would you be so good as to strike a match, Patterson?’

  The Sergeant did as he’d been instructed, and in the light of it Blackstone held out his warrant card.

  “Ere, what’s goin’ on?’ Sophia asked.

  ‘Ain’t it obvious?’ Blackstone asked, imitating her earlier comment. ‘You, my girl, are nicked.’

  16

  Though the dead were strangely unaffected by it, the living who worked in the morgue at University College Hospital viewed the descending fog with something like mild alarm. They knew, from previous experience, that a good fog could completely shut London down—that omnibuses ceased to run, and that hansom cabs would be notoriously hard to find. Thus it was that the doctors and researchers who had been loudly proclaiming the urgency of their work only minutes earlier suddenly discovered that this same research could easily wait till morning after all, and, grabbing their coats, rushed out into the ever-increasing murkiness.

  Dr Ellie Carr did not join the mass exodus. This was in part due to her obsession with her work, and in part because her soulless lodgings were not somewhere she felt inclined to run home to.

  Ellie circled the dissection table for perhaps the twentieth time, wondering if her unease was the result of her wanting something to be wrong, or whether things were not, in fact, as simple as they appeared.

  ‘Thought you’d have had him well and truly gutted by now,’ said a voice from the doorway.

  Ellie turned. The speaker was a man in his early forties, who had managed to keep his hard body in shape, but was rapidly losing the battle to retain his hair. As he walked into the room, he moved with grace and authority. A watcher might have guessed he was a policeman, and the watcher would have been half-right. Jed Trent had served with the Metropolitan Police for twenty years. He was now employed as a general factotum in the morgue, though, in his head, he had already decided that he was really a special assistant to Dr Ellie Carr.

  Trent reached the dissecting table, came to a halt, and looked down at the dead body. ‘You normally can’t wait to start digging,’ he said. ‘Why the delay this time?’

  ‘There’s more to criminal pathology than simply cutting the cadavers open,’ Ellie Carr said.

  Trent smiled affectionately. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘The way I see it, my job is to be half doctor and half detective,’ Ellie continued.

  ‘And have you informed our employers of this fact?’ Trent asked, his smile broadening.

  ‘What we’re doing here is breaking new ground,’ Ellie said, side-stepping the question.

  ‘What we’re doing here?’ Trent asked.

  ‘Of course. I’d never get anywhere without your help, Jed.’

  ‘Call me Trent,’ the ex-policeman said.

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘I get worried when you call me by my first name, because it’s usually a sign that you’re going to ask me to do something that could get both of us into trouble.’

  ‘This won’t get us into trouble,’ Ellie Can said airily.

  ‘So there is something?’

  ‘One small favour—so small that it’s really hardly worth calling it a favour at all.’

  ‘And what would this one small favour entail?’

  ‘You must know some soldiers from your days working in the Met,’ Ellie said.

  ‘A few,’ Trent agreed reluctantly.

  ‘And you’re such a kind-hearted, helpful man that these soldiers you know must owe you a few favours.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Trent demanded.

  ‘A field gun.’

  ‘A field gun!’ Trent repeated incredulously.

  Ellie Carr frowned. ‘Or should I have called it a cannon?’ she asked. ‘You men are so much more knowledgea
ble about these things than we mere women could ever be.’

  ‘A field gun!’ Trent said for a second time.

  ‘Only a little one,’ Ellie said reasonably. ‘The smallest they’ve got. And, of course, we’ll need somewhere to fire it. And a couple of soldiers to fire it for us, because I’m sure we’d be too frightened to fire it ourselves.’

  ‘Not to mention the fact that neither of us would know one end of the weapon from the other,’ Trent said.

  ‘Quite,’ Ellie Carr agreed.

  ‘But I still don’t see why you want it,’ Trent said.

  ‘It’s because I’m…’

  ‘I know! I know! It’s because you’re half doctor and half detective.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Ellie said. ‘I knew you’d understand, Jed.’

  *

  The fog seemed to be thickening by the hour. The police were on patrol—as was their duty whatever the weather—but they were patrolling empty streets and protecting absent citizens. The buses had stopped running long ago. Now even the last of the cab drivers had given up—for what was the point of searching for customers when there were no customers to be found? Had a foreign army chosen to invade the capital that night, it would have met with no resistance—but how could foreigners have been expected to find their way, when even the natives could get lost in the swirling maze the fog had created?

  The two men with the heavy canvas bags were not worried about losing their way. Why would they have been, when the barge on which they had been waiting all afternoon was so close to their target? For them, the fog was not an inconvenience but an ally—a friendly act of nature which would enable them to do their work without fear of interruption.

  They stepped off the barge, and made their way to the two towers which loomed massively—but indistinctly—in the near distance.

  It had taken eight years to complete this bridge, and it had been opened to massive public acclaim. Londoners had pronounced it one of the wonders of the modern world—and there were few people anywhere who would disagree with them. But even a wonder such as this was not immune to the other wonder which the men carried in their bags—a wonder which had been developed by a Swedish chemist, and went by the name of dynamite.