He employed the cool, carelessly cultured voice that he adopted when he dealt with men of this gentleman’s world. It was a tone that conveyed the impression that he had been born in the same circles, that he was one of them.
It was nothing less than the truth. His father and grandfather had been scoundrels and rogues by choice, but they had been gentlemen by birth. He was well aware that one’s social class was infinitely more important than one’s morals.
With a little luck he might be able to talk his way out of this affair. Gentlemen did not like to send other gentlemen to prison.
Stoner shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing gown and inclined his head, as though pleased. “Well done, young man. Not
every housebreaker would be capable of making polite conversation at a time like this. You’re thinking on your feet, or off them, as the case may be, and that is the important thing.”
Ambrose did not have the vaguest notion of what he was talking about, but at least Stoner was making conversation, not summoning the constables.
“I apologize most sincerely for this unfortunate meeting, sir.” Ambrose sat up cautiously. “I assure you, matters are not as they appear.”
“Indeed?”
“I fear that tonight’s work is the result of a few bottles of port and an unfortunate wager made with some of my friends.” He grimaced. “You know how it is among men who have Oxford in common. Can’t resist a dare.”
“What was the nature of the wager?” Stoner sounded genuinely curious.
“As I said, a group of us spent a recent night drinking. Someone, Kelbrook, I believe it was, brought up the stories that have been appearing lately in the sensation press. You may have noticed them? A great deal of nonsense about a burglar who is said to prey exclusively upon wealthy gentlemen.”
“Ah, yes, now that you mention it, I do recall reading one or two of those pieces. I believe the journalist who is writing them has nicknamed the rogue The Ghost.”
Ambrose grunted in disgust. “The sensation press is very fond of attaching fanciful names to villains in an attempt to make them more interesting to their readers.”
“True.”
“Yes, well, as I was saying, Kelbrook mentioned The Ghost. My friends and I fell to arguing about how difficult it would be to imitate a successful burglar. I claimed it would not be at all hard to do. Someone else disagreed. One thing led to another and I am sorry to say that I accepted the bet.”
“I see. What made you choose my window for this experiment?”
Ambrose exhaled deeply. “I’m afraid that you matched the description of the type of victim The Ghost is said to prefer.”
Stoner chuckled. “You really are quite quick, young man, I will give you credit for that. What is your name?”
“Ambrose Wells,” Ambrose said, using the name he had invented for himself the night he fled his father’s house. If he got out of this he would come up with another.
“What do you say we go downstairs and have a cup of tea while we discuss your future, Mr. Wells.”
“Tea?”
“I thought you might prefer it to the other option I am offering.”
“What is the other option?”
“A meeting with a police detective. I doubt if you would be likely to get any decent tea in that case, however.”
“Tea sounds like an excellent notion.”
“I thought you would see it that way. Come along, then. Let us repair to the kitchens. We shall have to see to the business ourselves. This is the servants’ night off. But then, you knew that, didn’t you?”
A
MBROSE SAT LASHED
to a wooden chair and watched in silent astonishment as his host made tea. Unlike the vast majority of men of his rank and station, John Stoner appeared quite familiar, even comfortable, in his own kitchen. In a matter of minutes he had the kettle on the stove and tea leaves spooned into an elegant little pot.
“How long have you been pursuing your career as a ghost, Mr. Wells?” Stoner asked.
“No offense, sir, but that is a rather awkwardly worded question. Regardless of how I choose to answer it, you will have me admitting that I am The Ghost.”
“I think that, under the circumstances, we can dispense with your artful little tale about a wager, don’t you?” Stoner carried the pot and two small cups to the wooden plank table and set them down. “Let me see, from what I observed upstairs in the bedroom, you are right-handed. Therefore you will likely be a bit less agile with your left hand, so I shall free that one.”
“You could see me that clearly in the shadows?” In spite of his predicament he was rapidly developing a great curiosity about John Stoner.
“As I mentioned, my night vision is not what it used to be, but it is still a good deal better than most men my age.”
Stoner sat down on the opposite side of the table and poured tea. Ambrose noticed that the delicate cups had been fashioned without handles. Like the pot, they were decorated with exotic scenes that he
could not identify. Not Chinese or Japanese, he thought. But there was something about the designs that let him know they had come from somewhere in the East.
He picked up one of the cups very carefully and inhaled the fragrance of the tea. It was delicate, complex and intriguing.
“Would you mind telling me how you discovered that I was upstairs?” he asked. “I thought you were engaged reading a book in the library.”
“I have been expecting you for the past several days.”
The elegant little teacup nearly slipped from Ambrose’s fingers. “You noticed me?”
Stoner nodded absently, as if it were no great feat. But Ambrose knew that was not the case. None of his previous victims had ever detected him while he was following them about, making notes of their habits.
“I cannot say I was greatly surprised when you showed up here tonight,” Stoner said. “From what I had read of The Ghost in the papers, I suspected that he made a thorough study of his victims before he entered their houses. I was interested in your methods. Most burglars lack either the intelligence or the patience to take such a careful approach. They are, by and large, opportunists, rather than strategists.”
“I told you, sir, I am not The Ghost. I was merely trying to copy him for the sake of a wager. As you can see, I made a poor job of it.”
Stoner sipped tea, looking thoughtful. “Actually, you managed the business quite skillfully. Who taught you your trade?”
“I’m a gentleman, sir. I would not think of lowering myself by going into trade.”
Stoner chuckled. “This is going to be a very one-sided conversation if you insist upon evading all of my questions.”
“I beg your pardon. You asked me a question. I attempted to answer it.”
“The Strategy of False Sincerity is a useful tactic upon occasion and you appear to have a talent for it, but I can assure you that there is no point employing it with me tonight.”
For the first time Ambrose started to wonder if John Stoner was a madman.
“I don’t understand, sir,” Ambrose said.
“Perhaps I am going about this in the wrong manner.” Stoner held the little cup between his fingers in a way that implied both elegance and control. “Since you are not disposed to tell me your story, I shall tell you mine. When I have finished with it, we will discuss your future.”
T
he offices of the Jervis agency were on the top floor of an ugly stone building located in an unfashionable part of town. Shortly after midnight Ambrose let himself inside with the aid of a lock pick.
He moved into the room, closed the door and stood quietly for a moment, savoring the familiar frisson of excitement that flooded through him.
He suspected that he had been born with an addiction for the rush of icy energy that he experienced at moments like this one. It ignited all his senses and left him feeling as though he could fly like some great night bird. The drawback was that, like any other powerful drug, there were aftereffects. It would take some time for the feeling of intense arousal to evaporate from his bloodstream.
The reception room had been closed up for a long time. An invisible miasma of stale air and the vague taint of another, more unpleasant odor drifted through the space.
Tonight there was more than enough moonlight slanting through the
undraped window to enable him to see that there was nobody in the room. Yet he would have been willing to wager a great deal of money that death had occurred here at some point in the recent past.
The area around the heavy desk was littered with broken glass, papers and pens. There had been a struggle.
He went through the desk drawers, but there was nothing out of the ordinary inside, just the usual assortment of notebooks, stationery, extra bottles of ink and sealing wax.
He found a black muff in the bottom drawer.
He crossed to the filing cabinets and opened the first one. It was crammed with papers. He struck a light and went through the folders in a swift, methodical fashion.
He was not greatly surprised to discover that there was no file for anyone named Bartlett. There had, after all, been nothing to indicate that she had been employed through the agency. The fact that there were no records for either a Concordia Glade or an Irene Colby, the false name Concordia had used in her previous post, was, on the other hand, extremely interesting.
He closed the drawers, put out the light and stood thinking for a time.
After a while he went back to the desk and reopened the bottom drawer. He took out the muff. There was a small pocket inside, but when he slid his fingers into it he discovered only a handkerchief.
He started to return the muff to the drawer. But something about the proportions of the interior space made him pause. They seemed slightly off. The drawer was too shallow.
Crouching, he felt around inside with his right hand, probing gently
with his fingertips. The small depression in the wood was at the very back. It would have been nearly invisible to the casual observer, even in broad daylight.
He’d had some experience with false and secret drawers.
He pressed cautiously and felt a tiny spring respond. The bottom of the drawer rose with a tiny squeak of hidden hinges, revealing a concealed compartment.
The hiding place was empty except for a newspaper that had been folded in half twice, reducing it to a small rectangle.
He took it out of the drawer and opened it once so that it was only folded across the middle. He struck another light and read the familiar masthead.
The Flying Intelligencer
was a particularly lurid example of the sensation press, well known for its dramatic accounts of bloody crimes and its overheated serialized novels.
Why had Jervis gone to the trouble of concealing a newspaper? Perhaps she had put it out of sight so that a prospective client would not catch her with it.
The Flying Intelligencer
was occasionally entertaining, but it was hardly the sort of thing that the proprietor of an agency that supplied teachers and governesses would want to be seen reading.
Still, it seemed rather extreme to conceal it in a secret drawer in her desk. If Jervis’s goal was to place it out of sight of visitors, it would have been sufficient to simply drop the paper into the top of the drawer along with her muff.
He slipped the folded paper inside his coat and let himself out of the office.
Downstairs he exited the empty building through a rear door.
Outside in the alley he turned up the high collar of his coat, pulled the low-crowned hat down to veil his face and walked away into a maze of unlit lanes and cramped streets.
He took a different route out of the neighborhood than the one he had used to enter it, emerging near a nondescript brothel. A number of hansom cabs waited in the street. He chose one at random.
Seated in the cab, he turned down the carriage lamps. It was unlikely that anyone would notice one more drunken gentleman making his way home after a night spent pursuing various vices, but there was no point in taking chances.
He lounged deeper into the darkness of the cab and wondered if Concordia would still be awake when he returned. The urgent desire to see her and talk to her about what he had discovered tonight was disturbing in some ways.
The newspaper crackled softly under his coat. He would wait until he got home to examine it more closely. His night vision was excellent, but not even he could read in the dark.
T
he click of the dogs’ nails dancing on the floorboards of the landing was the first indication that Ambrose had returned.
Concordia experienced a profound rush of relief. He was safely home. Now, perhaps, she would be able to shake off the feeling of dread that had descended on her after he had left.
Her second reaction to his presence in the house was a jolt of anticipation. She could hardly wait to learn what, if anything, he had discovered in the course of his investigation of the offices of the Jervis agency.
She heard him say something very softly to the dogs. There was another soft patter of paws on wood and then silence. He had sent Dante and Beatrice upstairs to the floor on which the girls were sleeping.
The deep shadows beneath her bedroom door shifted faintly. Ambrose had paused in front of her room. Expecting to hear his soft knock at any instant, she pushed the covers aside, sat up and groped for her spectacles.
When she got the eyeglasses securely on her nose, she reached for her robe.
Still no knock.
The shadows under the edge of the door shifted again. She realized that Ambrose had changed his mind. He was continuing on down the hall to his own bedroom.
Alarmed, she tied the sash of her robe, slid her feet into the new slippers that Mrs. Oates had provided and rushed to the door. If Ambrose thought he could get away without making a full report to her tonight, he could think again.
She yanked open the door and leaned out into the darkened hall just in time to hear the hushed whisper of sound made by the closing of Ambrose’s door.
She stepped into the chilly corridor and walked briskly to his bedroom.
Ambrose opened his door just as she raised her hand to knock. As if he had been expecting her, she thought. He stood silhouetted against the light of the lamp that glowed on the small desk behind him. His black linen shirt was unfastened. It hung loosely outside his trousers.