Passing a penny to a red-cheeked lad yelling the lead from tomorrow’s early edition, “Rudolf” took a copy of The Times and scanned the headlines as he walked. Nader Reasserts Afghan Claim. Nothing good could ever come from that part of the world, he reflected; especially Shah Nader’s thirst for black gold he could sell to the king’s navy via the oiling base at Jask. Saboteurs Apprehended in Breasil. All part and parcel of the big picture. Crown Prince James Visits Santa Cruz made it sound like a grand tour of the nation rather than a desperate hope that the Pacific warmth would do something to ease the child’s ailment. “Rudolf” turned a corner into a narrower street. Prussian Ambassador Slights French Envoy at Gala Opening: now that didn’t sound very clever, did it? As the joke put it, when the French diplomat said “Frog” the Germanys all croaked in chorus. Murdock Suit: Malcolm Denies Slur. All the best barristers arguing the big libel case on a pro bono basis—a faint smile came to the thin man’s face as he read the leading paragraph, squinting under the thin glare of the lamps. Then he folded the paper beneath his arm, palming something between the pages, and strode on toward the intersection with New Street. The crowds were thicker here, and as he stepped onto the pavement at the far side a fellow ran straight into him.
“I say, sir, are you all right?” the man asked, dusting himself off. “You dropped your paper.” He bent and handed a folded broadsheet to “Rudolf.”
“If you’d been looking where you were going, I wouldn’t have.” “Rudolf” snorted, jammed the paper beneath his arm, and hurried off determinedly. Only when he’d passed the outrageously expensive plate glass windows of the Store Romanova did he slow, cough once or twice into his handkerchief, and verify with a sidelong glance that the paper clenched in his left hand was a copy of The Clarion.
Queen’s Counselor Denies Everything, Threatens Libel Suit! screamed the headline. “Rudolf” smiled to himself. And so he should, he thought, and so he should. If Farnsworth said there was no substance to the rumors then he was almost certainly telling the truth—not that his loyalty was above and beyond question, for nobody was beyond question, but his dislike for her majesty was such that if there had been any substance to the rumors, the dispatches he sent via Jack would almost certainly have confirmed them. “Rudolf” took a deep, slow, breath, trying not to irritate his chest, and forced himself to relax, slowing to an old man’s ambling pace. Every second that passed now meant that the incriminating letter was that much further from its origin and that much closer to the intelligence cell that would analyze it before making their conclusions known to the Continental Congress.
At the corner with Bread Street, “Rudolf” paused beside the tram stop for a minute, then waved down a cab. “Hogarth Villas,” he said tersely. “On Stepford High Street.”
“Sure, and it’s a fine night fir it, sor.” The cabbie grinned broadly in his mirror as he bled steam into the cylinder and accelerated away from the roadside. His passenger nodded, thoughtfully, but made no attempt to reply.
Hogarth Villas was a broad-fronted stretch of town houses, fronted with iron rails and a gaudy display of lanterns. It stretched for half a block along the high street, between shuttered shop fronts that slept while the villas’ residents worked (and vice versa). One of the larger and better-known licensed brothels at the south end of Manhattan island, it was anything but quiet at this time of night. “Rudolf” paid off the cabbie with a generous tip, then approached the open vestibule and the two sturdy gentlemen who stood to either side of the glass inner door. “Name’s Rudolf,” he said quietly. “Ma’am Bishop is expecting me.”
“Aye, sir, if you’d just step this way, please.” The shorter of the two, built like a battleship and with a face bearing the unmistakable spoor of smallpox, opened the door for him and stepped inside. The carpet was red, the lights electric-bright, shining from the gilt-framed mirrors. In the next room, someone was playing a saucy nautical air on the piano; girlish voices chattered and laughed with the gruff undertone of the clientele. This was by no means a lower-class dive. The doorman led “Rudolf” along the hallway then through a side door into understairs quarters, where the carpet was replaced with bare teak floorboards and the expensive silk wallpaper with simple sky-blue paint. The building creaked and chattered around them, sounds of partying and other sport carrying through the lath and plaster. They climbed a narrow spiral staircase before arriving on a landing fronted by three doors. The bouncer rapped on one of them. “Here’s where I leave you,” he said, as it began to swing open, and he headed back toward the front of the building.
“Come in, Erasmus.”
She sounded amused. Erasmus—Rudolf no more—set his shoulders determinedly and stepped forward. No avoiding it now, he told himself, feeling a curious sinking feeling as he met the opening door and the presence behind it.
“Ma’am.” Most of the girls downstairs bared their shoulders and wore their fishtail skirts slit in front to reveal their knees, in an exaggerated burlesque of the latest mode from Nouveau Paris. The woman in the doorway was no girl, and she wore a black crêpe mourning dress. After all, she was in mourning. With black hair turning to steel gray at the temples, blue eyes and a face lined with worries, she might have been a well-preserved sixty or a hard-done-by thirty. The truth, like much else about her, lay in between.
“Come in. Sit down. Would you care for a sip of brandy?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” The room was furnished with a couple of overstuffed and slightly threadbare chairs, surplus to requirements downstairs: a bed in the corner, too narrow by far to suit the purposes of the house, and a writing desk, completed the room. The window opened onto a tiny enclosed square, barely six feet from the side of the next building.
Erasmus waited while his hostess carefully filled two glasses from a brandy decanter sitting atop the bureau, next to a conveniently burning candle—the better to dispose of the desk’s contents, should they be disturbed—and handed one to him. Then she sat down. “How did it go?” she asked tensely.
He took a cautious sip from his glass. “I made the delivery. And the pickup. I have no reason to believe I was under surveillance and every reason not to.”
“Not that, silly.” She was fairly humming with impatience. “What word from the palace?”
“Ah.” He smiled. “They seem to be most obsessed with matters of diplomatic significance.” His smile slipped. “Like the way the French have pulled the wool over their eyes lately. There’s a witch hunt brewing in the foreign service, and an arms race in the Ministry of War. The grand strategy of encirclement has not only crumbled, it appears to have backfired. The situation does not sound good, Margaret.”
“A war would suit their purposes.” She nodded to herself, her gaze unfocused. “A distraction always serves the rascals in charge.” She glanced at the side door to the room. “And the . . . device? Did you give it to our source?”
“I gave it to him and showed him how to use it. All he knows is that it is a very small camera. And he needs to return it to us to have the, ah, film developed. Or downloaded, as Miss Beckstein’s representative calls it.”
Margaret, Lady Bishop, frowned. “I wish I trusted these alien allies of yours, Erasmus. I wish I understood their motives.”
“What’s to understand?” Erasmus shrugged. “Listen, I’d be dead if not for them and the alibi they supplied. Their gold is pure and their words—” It was his turn to frown. “I don’t know about the aliens, but I trust Miriam. Miss Beckstein is a bit like you, milady. There’s a sincerity to her that I find more than a little refreshing, although she can be alarmingly open at times. There are strange knots in her thinking—she looks at everything a little oddly. Still, if she doesn’t trust her companions, the manner of her mistrust tells me a lot. They’re in it for money, pure and simple, Margaret. There’s no motive purer than the pig in search of the truffle, is there? And these pigs are very canny indeed, hence the bounteous treasury they’ve opened to us. They’re our pigs, at least until it comes time to pay the butcher’s bill. As Miss Beckstein says, money talks—bullshit walks.”