“There is.”
“Then I ask you to tell me. You can count on my discretion. Mr. Gooch, would you leave us, please?”
“It's all right, Captain,” Gooch said. “You have authority over me on this ship but, as a Technologist, I hold a more senior position and happen to know the details. I apologise for having kept them from you, but our superiors felt that certain aspects of this expedition should remain hush-hush.”
Lawless looked from one man to the other. “That's all well and good, but if the Orpheus is in danger, I have the right to know why.”
“Agreed,” Burton said. “The truth, sir, is that while I hope to finally identify the source of the Nile, it is only a secondary consideration. The priority is to locate and retrieve a black diamond, known as the Eye of Nāga. In this endeavour, I am almost certainly opposed by a Prussian spy named Zeppelin.”
Lawless's eyes widened. “Are you telling me that our saboteur is a Prussian agent?”
“In all probability, yes. I should say he was commissioned by Zeppelin to interfere with the ship.”
Lawless raised a hand and ran it over his closely cropped white beard. His eyes flashed. “I'll keelhaul the bastard!”
“I'm not sure that's possible in a rotorship,” Gooch muttered.
“I'll bloody well make it possible!”
“We have to catch him first,” Burton observed.
“It's puzzling, though,” said Gooch. “If the saboteur intends to delay your expedition, don't you think it rather peculiar that he's committed an act which causes the ship to fly faster—albeit destructively so; an act that'll cause you to arrive at Zanzibar considerably earlier than planned?”
Burton frowned. “That, Mr. Gooch, is a very good point. A very good point indeed!”
Burton spoke to Swinburne, Trounce, Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Bhatti, Spencer, Miss Mayson, and Sister Raghavendra, and arranged for them to patrol the ship, keeping a close watch on the crew and their eyes peeled for suspicious behaviour. He then returned to his quarters, intending to update his journal. Pulling a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stopped in his tracks.
There was something on the desk.
He stepped into the room and looked around. The cabin was rectangular and of a medium size, carpeted, wallpapered, and well furnished. One of the thick ventilation pipes ran across the ceiling and four oil lamps were suspended two to each side of it. There were two other doors, one to the small bedchamber and the other to a tiny washroom.
The afternoon sun was sending a shaft of Mediterranean brilliance in through the porthole. Its white glare reflected brightly off the object, which hadn't been on the desk when Burton left the cabin a couple of hours earlier. He'd locked the door behind him. There were no other means of ingress.
He picked the thing up, went back out into the corridor, closed and locked the door, then knelt and squinted at the keyhole. He stood and paced away, heading toward the prow of the rotorship. Doctor Quaint was coming the other way.
“Doctor,” Burton said. “May I have a minute of your time?”
“Certainly. I say! What have you there?”
Burton held up the object. “A mystery, Doctor. It was on the desk in my quarters. Tell me—who else has a key?”
“To your cabin? Just Sister Raghavendra and myself.” Quaint reached into his pocket and pulled out a crowded key ring. “As stewards, we have access to all the passenger rooms.” He picked through the keys one by one. “Here it is. This is yours.”
“And have you used it today?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Could you prove that, should it be necessary?”
Quaint bristled slightly. “Sister Raghavendra will attest that I've been working with her all morning, throughout lunch, and up until a few minutes ago, when I left her in order to report to the captain. I've just come from the bridge.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I'm sorry to have troubled you. I'd better see the captain myself, I think.”
“Very well.” Quaint glanced again at the object.
Burton left the steward and proceeded along the corridor and up the metal stairs to the conning tower. He stepped onto the bridge, which was occupied by a number of crewmembers. Captain Lawless turned as he entered, saw what he was holding, and uttered an exclamation.
“Great Scott! Where did you find that?”
“On the desk in my cabin, Captain. Am I correct in assuming it's the missing bearing cradle?”
“You are. Let me see.”
Burton handed the metal ring to Lawless, who examined it closely before pronouncing it undamaged. He addressed Oscar Wilde, who was cleaning a console at the back of the room.
“Master Wilde, would you run this down to the engine room, please? Ask Mr. Gooch to have it fitted as soon as we land at Cairo.”
Wilde took the cradle and departed.
“In your cabin?” Lawless said. “How did it get there?”
“That's the question. I locked the door when I left and it was still locked when I returned. Doctor Quaint assures me that neither he nor Sister Raghavendra entered the room in my absence and I saw nothing to suggest the lock had been picked. That doesn't mean it wasn't, but in my experience there are usually tiny scratches left after that manner of break-in.”
Lawless removed his captain's hat and rubbed his head. “Well, whatever method your intruder used, this is rather an inept way to implicate you.”
“It would only implicate me if the stewards had found the bearing cradle while servicing my cabin. And you'd think it would at least be hidden under my bunk, rather than placed on top of my desk in broad daylight. Besides which, it makes no sense that I would sabotage my own expedition.”
Lawless hissed softly, “Curse it! I won't rest until we find this bloody traitor!”
“Nor I,” Burton whispered back. “I have my people patrolling the ship. Our villain will find it hard to cause any further damage without being caught in the act!”
The explorer remained on the bridge for the next three hours. He kept a close eye on the men at their stations, but saw nothing suspicious.
The Mediterranean slid beneath the big rotorship.
A hollow whistle sounded.
Lawless crossed to a brass panel in the wall and pulled a domed lid from it. As it came away, a segmented tube followed behind. Lawless flipped the lid open, blew into the tube, put it to his ear, and listened awhile. He then moved it to his mouth and said, “Hold him. I'll be right down.”
He clicked the lid back into the panel and said to Burton, “Apparently your assistant is causing merry mayhem in the engine room.”
“How so?”
Captain Lawless ignored the question and turned to his first officer. “Take command, please, Mr. Henson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Playfair, how long to Cairo?”
“Two and a half hours, sir, unless we can slow her down. All four stern engines are already overheating, according to my instruments.”
“Thank you. Mr. Bingham, report, please.”
The fat little meteorologist replied, “Clear sailing all the way, sir. Not a cloud in the sky. Breeze is northwesterly, currently less than five knots but building.”
“Mr. Wenham?”
“Steady going, sir.”
“Good. Follow me, Sir Richard.”
The aeronaut and explorer left the bridge, descended through the conning tower, and entered the corridor that ran the length of the rotorship.
“Mr. Swinburne claims to have caught our saboteur,” Lawless said.
“Ah!” Burton replied.
They entered the lounge and descended the port-side staircase, then moved past the standard-class cabins and on into the first of the engine-room compartments. The rumble of the turbines sounded from the next chamber, muffled by thickly insulated walls.