“I suggest you leave,” continued Sebastian. His voice was firm yet calm. He seemed to be a man easily driven to annoyance, but not to anger.
“I’ll be in touch,” said Harold as he made his way toward the door. He felt he’d handled that quite well.
“So where’d you get those balls from?” asked Sarah after she and Harold had made it onto the street below. They walked along Abbotsbury, under the older Oriental planes that grew closer to the park. They hadn’t discussed where to go, but that didn’t stop them from walking. Harold was deep in thought, processing the new information. He felt as if he were at the edge of something, just at the precipice between not-knowing and knowing. He was so irritatingly close to figuring it all out, and yet, damn it, he didn’t quite have it.
“Sorry?” said Harold, awakening from his thoughts.
“Balls. All of a sudden. Up there.” She gestured behind them toward Sebastian’s building. “Do you really think he killed Cale?”
“No,” said Harold after a sizable pause. “I don’t. I suppose there’s a lot of evidence that points to him. Motive, means. And the guy creeps me out, I’ll be honest. But I don’t think he killed Cale.”
“Great way to show it.”
“I don’t think he did, but I could be wrong. And I wanted to see how he’d react. Maybe he’d break down and confess the whole thing. Murderers do that in the Holmes stories all the time, once they’ve been confronted. Even if there isn’t any real evidence against them.”
For a few minutes, they walked in silent lockstep. Holland Park turned into Notting Hill and then Bayswater. The buildings grew a few stories taller, and the street noise a few decibels louder.
“So,déjà vu, we’re being followed,” said Sarah suddenly.
“What?” Harold was incredulous.
“Older man. Mud-brown suit. Glasses. Wing tips so loud I can hear them from here.”
“Christ,” said Harold. “How did they find us? And how are you so good at telling when someone is watching you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they had a man on Sebastian’s flat, figuring that ten to one we’d show up there eventually? And you try being a woman walking down a busy street sometime. You become acutely aware of each set of eyes that’re on you. It’s better training than the CIA.”
Having no experience being stared at himself, Harold felt obligated to accept her reasoning. “You said he’s older?” he asked as they continued walking, faster now.
“Yes,” she replied. “Seventies, maybe.”
“Seventies? You don’t see a lot of goons in their seventies. Unless… Unless he’s the boss of the operation! He hired them to follow us, they screwed it up, and now he’s doing the trailing himself.”
“Shit,” said Sarah, suddenly more nervous. “You see the alley up ahead on the left? Ten paces? Eight?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn into it with me. Right… now.”
Sarah slid suddenly to her left, and Harold followed into the alley. In an instant she had thrown out her arm, pressing him up against the wall. The bricks felt hard and cold against his back. Her arm felt hard and warm against his chest.
“Don’t move,” she said.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her retractable knife. She flipped out the blade. It was dark in the alley, even for a foggy midday, as the tall buildings on either side blocked out the sun. The steel blade appeared a murky blue in the dim light.
Sarah flattened her own back against the wall, next to Harold but closer to the alley’s entrance. Harold saw her breath in the cold air, even and measured. He realized then that he’d been holding his breath. He was too scared to exhale. He heard loud footsteps approaching the alley. The man’s wing tips sounded like hooves on the pavement. Harold let out a tiny wisp of air.
There was an instantaneous flash of violence. The old man turned into the alley, and Sarah leaped at him. Her movements seemed half professional and half bestial. Before Harold’s single puff of hot breath disappeared into the cold alley, Sarah had the old man on the ground. Her knife was pressed into his neck.
The old man clutched at his knee. Sarah must have kicked it.
“Ahhhh!” he yelped.
Harold’s eyes settled on the man’s face. His big glasses. His patchy gray skin. His thick, dark eyebrows. His nose, seemingly too large for his face, looked soft and mushy. As if it were a costume nose, knocked halfway off in the man’s fall…Oh, Jesus.
“Don’t! Ah! It’s me!” yelped the old man again.
“Let him up,” said Harold.
Sarah didn’t budge, keeping her eyes firmly on the old man and her knife scraping against his neck.
“Harold, please, owww, don’t let her kill me!”
“Sarah,” said Harold after a deep gulp of oxygen. “It’s okay. Let him up.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. For the first time, she took her eyes off the old man and looked up at Harold.
“It’s okay,” said Harold. “It’s Ron.” His face grew flush with embarrassment. “From the Irregulars. It’s Ron Rosenberg.”
CHAPTER 25 Surveillance
“Danger is part of my trade.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
“The Adventure of the Final Problem”
November 12, 19oo
Arthur inhaled a deep lungful of Morris tobacco, then coughed it up, sputtering as a mist of gray smoke floated up into the gaslight above him. He leaned against the streetlamp and inhaled again on his cigarette. Arthur was not a regular cigarette smoker, and yet he felt that while one was engaged in the work of surveillance, smoking seemed the only practicable method for passing the time. He glanced across the street, into the third-floor window of a moderate four-story. The lights were on inside, and they shone clear out into the night. He saw a figure move in front of the window, framed in the light like an actor in a Chinese shadow play. Arthur instantly stepped backward, out of the narrow beam of the streetlight above him, and dipped his head. The figure in the window was Emily, the petite suffragist from the night before, and it was of the utmost importance that she not discover Arthur spying on her. She passed out of the window’s frame, deeper into her flat and out of Arthur’s vision. He took another puff of his Morris, this one a bit less full. Goodness, was not surveillance the most infernally tedious activity to which he’d ever submitted himself?
The “chase” the previous evening had been so utterly typical that Arthur felt he must have scripted it himself. Emily had dashed into a passing two-wheeler on Palmer Street, and Arthur and Bram had quickly found another free cab behind her. They had shown their driver a handful of coins and let him know that it would be his fee were he to successfully follow the two-wheeler up ahead to its destination. He’d given Arthur a heartening “As you say, ma’am” and whipped at his reins. If the cabbie had any concerns as to the disassociation between Arthur’s clothing and his voice, he did not express them.
They had ridden from Westminster all the way to Clerkenwell, as the whole while their driver kept Emily’s hansom in view. They arrived at the four-story on Aylesbury Street just as Emily was turning her key in the front door. Arthur had the cabbie stop a few houses before Emily’s and then instructed him to pull up outside it after she had entered. They’d waited a few moments, until a light turned on inside the thirdfloor flat. Arthur and Bram couldn’t see far enough into the windows to tell what Emily was doing, but they now knew where she lived.
After they had let the cabbie go, there’d been considerable disagreement over what to do next. Arthur had wanted to bang on the front door, demand to be let up, and then confront this girl as to her role in the affair. Bram noted that this plan carried with it a considerable amount of danger. It was likely that Emily was a clandestine associate of at least two murdered suffragists. She had been involved in the murders of Sally Needling and her friend, and perhaps the letter bombing of Arthur’s study. They still didn’t know what the tattoos meant. And most importantly, they had no information about the murderous husband they were after. If Emily knew him, or if she even conspired with him, he might come calling on her at any moment. Perhaps it would be helpful to have a little more information before they confronted her.