She told them succinctly, glossing quickly over any details that might have betrayed her own terror during the experience. Margo was one tough cookie, all right, for all that she was barely seventeen. Malcolm was luckier than he knew, to have a girl like Margo. She sighed, at length, nursing her own brandy and shifting the icepack on her cheek. "When that constable shouted, Kaederman ran off and disappeared down a side street. I sent the constable up to check on the poor cabbie, pinned under the wreckage, then got out of there as fast as possible and came back here."
"Quick thinking," Marshall Gilbert nodded approvingly. "Very quick thinking. You not only saved your life, you kept the authorities from asking uncomfortable questions that might have led them here. And God knows, we've been under enough official scrutiny as it is, thanks to Benny Catlin's shooting spree at the Picadilly Hotel."
Margo nodded and leaned her head back against the chair, drained and pale, but her hand on the icepack was rock steady. "They'll assume it was the Ripper, I suppose. That's what the bobby thought, anyway, and I didn't disabuse him of the notion. Look, we've got to find Kaederman. And we have to get Ianira and the others to safety—"
"They're in the vault," Noah said, attracting her attention for the first time.
She did a double-take, then laughed weakly. "God, that's startling. You really do look like twins, now."
"Do you have a photo of Kaederman?" Noah asked, voice grim. "Something we can duplicate and use, the way you traced us?"
Skeeter nodded and rescued his scout's log from his room, replaying their arrival through the Britannia Gate. Noah swore. "Good God! That bastard really must be desperate!"
"You know him?"
Armstrong tapped the screen on Skeeter's log. "That's Gideon Guthrie. Provides security for the L.A. gangland boss who's been doling out Senator Caddrick's payola. For Guthrie to be handling this personally, they're running scared. He hasn't actually dirtied his own hands in years. Maybe," Armstrong mused darkly, "he simply ran out of hit men to send after us?"
"And now he knows we're onto him," Skeeter growled. "Want to bet he bolts? Jumps on the nearest ship and runs?"
Armstrong shook his head. "He's got a helluva lot to lose, if he just ditches."
"Yes," Skeeter countered, "but he's gotta figure Caddrick will do time, over this, and maybe his own boss, as well. There's no way he can get back onto the station, not without somebody putting him in cuffs. So he's down to just a couple of options. He can run for it and start over, in this time period. And surely a guy like Kaederman has enough experience to set up shop someplace like New York or Chicago, even San Francisco, maybe, put together a sweet little gang of thugs with all the up-time tricks he's accumulated. Or he can do what Marcus and you did, getting here. He can hot-foot it to New York by the first trans-Atlantic steamer, board a train headed for Denver, and slip through the Wild West Gate in disguise, try and get back through Primary to New York."
"Will the Denver gate still be operational in 1888?" Armstrong asked quietly.
Mr. Gilbert answered. "I don't see why not. The Wild West Gate is very stable, has been for years, or we wouldn't be using it as a tour gate. I can't imagine it going suddenly unstable and closing."
"Then our boy might try it," Skeeter mused. "All he'd really need to do is mug a Denver tourist for his ID to get through the gate."
Armstrong gave him a grudging glance. "Not a bad point. So, we comb the steamship ticket offices?"
Margo eased the icepack into a new position as color returned to her cheeks. "It's a start," she nodded. "And we'd better put one of the groomsmen in each major railway station, in case he tries to catch a train for another port city. Liverpool did a lot of trans-Atlantic shipping, passenger as well as cargo." She grimaced, wincing slightly under the icepack. "James Maybrick certainly shuttled back and forth between Liverpool and the States for years. In fact, he met his wife on one of the crossings, poor woman. I wonder how many trains leave tonight? Or how many ships are scheduled to sail? It's going to be a long night."
Fortunately, the Gilberts were able to produce a table of scheduled ship departures from the day's newspapers. Hettie Gilbert copied them out while her husband retrieved a map of the docklands. He spread it out across his desk, then turned up the gaslight for better illumation. Skeeter stared in rising dismay at the immense stretch of land to be searched. Wapping, the Isle of Dogs, Poplar and Limehouse and Shoreditch, not to mention Whitechapel, of course, and Shadwell. St. Katharine's Docks, London Docks, Wapping Basin, Shadwell Basin, and the Old Basin below Shadwell. And there was the great West India Docks complex and the smaller Junction Dock, Blackwell Basin, and Poplar Docks. And east of there stood the East India Docks, the Royal Victoria and Albert Docks, and south of the Thames, the vast Surrey Commercial Docks...
Skeeter groaned aloud. Hundreds of acres, tens of thousands of people to question if the ticket offices didn't pan out, and very few of those teeming thousands likely to part with a word of information without palm grease of some sort, even if it were only a pint of ale or a glass of gin. "My God," he said quietly, "we'll never cover all of that."
"It isn't quite hopeless," Marshall Gilbert insisted. "Look, we can probably discount this whole complex, and this one," he swept a hand across the map. "They're cargo facilities only, no passenger services offered. And these, too, no point in searching naval shipyards. No commercial traffic, just military vessels. I'll get Stoddard in to help, he knows the docklands better than anyone else on staff. And we'll put Reeves on it, as well as all the groomsmen, footmen, drivers, and baggage handlers. I would imagine," he added, glancing from Skeeter to Noah Armstrong and blinking mildly at their startlingly matched faces, "Miss Smith will be keen to assist, as well."
"You'd better believe it," she muttered.
Twenty minutes later, Hettie Gilbert handed over her finished list. "There's only one ship scheduled to sail tonight, leaving in an hour, but a dozen are due to sail tomorrow."
Skeeter nodded. "We'll just have time to reach the docklands, if we leave right now."
Groomsmen and gardeners and footmen were already clattering out of the stable yard on horseback, dispersing for every train station in the city. A woman in a housemaid's dress was leading more horses from the stable, saddled and ready as riders were assigned. Iron-shod hooves rang against the paving stones. Skeeter mounted in silence as Margo, who had changed into warmer clothing, hurried out of the house and took her own horse, still in masculine disguise but looking now like a young man of the middle classes, rather than a ragamuffin bootblack.
"All right," Skeeter said tersely, "we'll follow your lead, Margo."
They set out in silence.
Kit was in his office at the Neo Edo Hotel, trying to placate outraged tourists and worrying about the rapidly dwindling supply of foodstuffs in the hotel's larder, when word came: Lachley had been spotted at Goldie's apartment. The security radio he carried everywhere crackled to life with a generalized call to every member of the volunteer security force.
"Code Seven Red, Residential Zone Two. Lachley's on the run, last spotted heading into the subbasements. All teams are hereby reactivated. Report in for a zone assignment."
Kit clattered the phone down in the middle of a wealthy dowager's tirade and snatched up the radio. "Kit Carson reporting."
"Kit, take Zone Seventeen again, same search team and pattern."