Those will make better reading than Cameron's old fossils, by a damn sight!
He undressed carefully, as always; got into bed and turned off the light, and composed himself as if for sleep, but his mind was going at full speed. What can possibly require my presence in the city for an indefinite length of time? It will have to be business matters. I must look through all the recent correspondence and try to find something appropriate, then blow it up out of proportion.
Planting doubts into the Hawkins girl's mind would not be at all difficult. The circumstances under which she had been brought here were duplicitous; she should be ready to believe that Cameron had told her further lies. She was a scholar, and they were notoriously unworldly. And anyone who prided himself on being clever, the way she did, was an easy target for deception. People who considered themselves to be clever, to be more intelligent than those around them, simply would not believe that they could be fooled. A large lie will be better than a small one. The best thing I can do is to hint that I have found things in Cameron's correspondence that indicate he is a party to the white slave trade. I can point to the nearness of his townhouse to the Barbary Coast as circumstantial evidence—also to his friendships with Chinese of dubious repute, and the presence of a man with connections to India in his very service. Did Beltaire only wish her to flee, so as to remove the only potential witness to Cameron's destruction, or did he have some further goal in mind? Did he plan to offer himself as the girl's protector, in the most innocent sense? If she were frightened enough of Cameron—and if Beltaire presented himself in the guise of someone to be trusted, say a clergyman, he just might be able to pull it off. Perhaps it would not do any harm to mention again that Jason is not mentally stable, hint at an addiction to opium. That would give further connections, for the white slavers were also the men who supplied opium to the dope dens. Before he left, the wench would be terrified at the very thought of encountering Cameron in the flesh!
Now, how to convince Jason he should have his own apartment...?
Whatever I choose to be my excuse for being in the city, I shall make certain most of the business will take place at odd hours and as far from the townhouse as possible. It will then be only logical for me to lodge where the business is, rather than disrupt the household with my comings and goings. He knew that the help at the townhouse had complained to Cameron in the past when he had come and gone at odd or late hours—they could not all go to bed until the last of the "guests" were seen to, nor could they lock the place up until everyone who should be in residence was safely in his bed. If some aspect of Jason's business required him to be out late at night—
Then, all at once, he knew his answer. I have it! The shipping company in Oakland he just purchased! It had been part of a larger acquisition, but the relatively small company had proved to be unexpectedly key to much of his rail business up the coast into the great lumbering areas. There were bound to be problems with such a new purchase, problems that Paul could not only exaggerate, but even make worse by communicating ambiguous orders to those in charge. Cameron did not have an agent in Oakland; Paul could volunteer. Shipping companies kept late (or early) hours, for consignments must be on their way long before a "normal" business day began. And in addition, a daily crossing of the Bay would waste an intolerable number of working hours—if he could find a ferry that operated at such times!
This would be perfect. Beltaire had a home of his own across the Bay—placing him as far as possible from his rival Firemaster, and yet still remaining within the area. That home was probably where he did most of his Magickal Work, and being in Oakland would put Paul near enough to him to receive frequent personal instruction.
Beltaire has a private motor-launch, and I suspect he will be reasonable about my use of it if I want to visit the city after dark.
Yes. He smiled to himself as he put the final mental touches on his new plans. This was going to work out wonderfully well.
The last place that Rose expected to find du Mond was in the conservatory. She had taken to doing her reading there, soothed by the sound of the fountains and the twittering birds, but today, when she rounded a corner, there he was, sitting across from her favorite bench with a book in his hands. She doubted that he was reading it, since he didn't seem at all absorbed in it. He had never struck her as the kind of man who would find anything interesting about plants or small birds—
Except, perhaps, to find a way to do something unpleasant with them—
She shook the uncomfortable thought from her head. It was too late to turn around and leave; he had already seen her, as if he had been waiting for her, and was smiling that particularly false, bright smile at her, the one that made her feel as if she should check her hemline for an immodest display of ankle. She sighed, and continued to walk in his direction.
He stood up, and met her halfway. "I beg your pardon if I am intruding. I was not aware that you ever came here to read, Miss Hawkins," he said, before she could greet him. "And since I really should be getting back to my work, I shall leave you to the solitude you would obviously prefer and not inflict my company upon you."
Oh, drat. Did I make myself that obvious? Annoyed by her twinge of guilt, further annoyed by the fact that she had been patently impolite, she now felt moved to protest, even though she would rather have thanked him for being observant. "Oh, don't go on my account," she replied, doing her level best to cover her irritation. "Please. It is not as if you were practicing a trumpet, or something of the like. Surely two people can read quietly without annoying each other."
But he only laughed. "No, indeed, the only reason one could wish to come here would be to enjoy the illusion of summer and the quiet, and I will not spoil these things for you with my presence. I could wish you felt more comfortable with my company, but you do not, and I am not the kind of man to force myself upon you in any way."
The deuce you aren't! she thought rebelliously, feeling certain she had caught him in an outright lie, but he was continuing.
"I don't know what has put you off about me, and I do apologize. It may be that—that I am aware of many uncomfortable truths about our employer, and you are insensibly aware of this," he said earnestly, as if he actually meant every word of it. "Even hardened skeptics will admit that a woman's instincts are surer than a mere male's, and that a woman is far more sensitive to nuances. It could be that it is the burden that I carry that makes you uncomfortable in my presence, and not my presence itself."
She knew he was waiting for her to ask about the "uncomfortable secrets," and she was not about to oblige him. Instead, she bowed her head as if hiding a blush. "Most men of power have uncomfortable things about them," she murmured. "It is not my place to inquire about my employer, and still less to go hunting what may be nothing more than gossip."
But he took that slender rebuff as the invitation to confide! "I have recently learned some things that would make many people more than merely uncomfortable," he said, in a low, persuasive voice. "It is not gossip, I do assure you, but fact, and in his own handwriting."
Now I know you lie! Now that I have seen him I can understand why he cannot write anything for himse—those poor paws of his could never hold a pen!
But du Mond was hardly privy to all that Jason had revealed to her. He probably still thought that she believed she was translating obscure works for an eccentric invalid. Everything he told her was based on that assumption, and as a result, she was in a position to catch him in quite a few lies, if she cared to.