Part 31 (2/2)
”Even though you choose not to appear in uniform, I hope you are professional enough to possess handcuffs.”
”They are in my coat pocket.”
”Put them on the Opium-Eater.”
”Excuse me?”
”When you address me, call me 'Colonel.' Put the d.a.m.ned handcuffs on the Opium-Eater.”
Becker hesitated.
”Perhaps you too would enjoy a night's lodging at Coldbath Fields Prison,” Brookline suggested. ”You could pa.s.s the time with men you arrested.”
”Do what he wants,” Father said. ”At the moment, there's no alternative.”
”For a change, the Opium-Eater makes sense,” Brookline noted.
I had difficulty catching my breath as Father held his wrists in front of him and Becker pressed the shackles onto them.
”The key.” Brookline extended his hand.
”Any constable's key will fit any set of handcuffs,” Becker said, ”but if you're determined to have mine, here it is.”
Becker gave him the key.
When Brookline reached for Father, his impatience prompted him to push Ryan out of the way.
Ryan b.u.mped into me. ”I'm extremely sorry, Miss De Quincey.” In the confusion, he pressed something into my palm.
It was the key to the handcuffs that Ryan himself carried, I realized. The key would fit any set of handcuffs, including Becker's.
Brookline tugged Father toward the door.
I forced myself to burst out weeping. ”No!” After pus.h.i.+ng my way past Brookline, I grabbed Father, doing my best to sob hysterically.
”Everything will resolve for the best, Emily.”
”We're wasting time.” Brookline pulled Father toward the door.
”I'll pray for you, Father.”
While I clung to Father, I put the handcuff key into his coat pocket.
”Your Lords.h.i.+p,” Brookline told Palmerston as he pulled Father from the room, ”it's dangerous for you to go to your office tomorrow. For the time being, I recommend that you conduct your business here.”
The next moments were a blur as Lord Palmerston's guards urged Becker, Ryan, and me down the marble stairs. We followed Father and Brookline across the foyer and out the front door, into the lamp-lit fog, where we watched them climb into the coach that had brought us to the mansion.
Father leaned out, shouting, ”You know where I'll be, Emily!”
”Yes, in prison,” Brookline mocked.
”Where I listened to the music.”
”Completely insane.”
”Remember, Emily! Where I listened to the music!”
Brookline pulled Father all the way inside the coach. A guard stepped in with them, slamming the door. Another guard joined the driver on top.
The gate opened. The horses clomped forward. Almost immediately, the coach disappeared into the fog.
”Please bring another coach,” Ryan told a footman.
”Not for you.”
”I don't understand.”
”Colonel Brookline's instructions were emphatic. He said the three of you can walk.”
Beyond the illumination of Lord Palmerston's mansion, the coach entered dense shadows, b.u.mping over paving stones on the unseen expanse of Piccadilly. A lamp next to the driver cast a faint glow through an opening and permitted the occupants an indistinct view of one another's faces.
Colonel Brookline sat across from De Quincey. A security agent sat beside him.
The handcuffs pained De Quincey's wrists.
”I met your son, Paul, in India,” Brookline said.
”Indeed?”
”In February of eighteen forty-six. After the Battle of Sobraon in the first Anglo-Sikh War.”
”India's a ma.s.sive country. How surprising that you happened to meet him.”
”Yes, a remarkable coincidence. Your son told me he enlisted in the military when he was eighteen.”
”That is correct.”
”I received the impression that he wanted to get away from home. To put considerable distance between you and him.”
De Quincey refused to show that his emotions had been jabbed. ”My children who survived to adulthood turned out to be wanderers.”
”Now that I think of it, another of your sons joined the military and went as far as China.”
”That is true also.”
”He died from fever there.”
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