Part 24 (2/2)
But the Society offices had not been touched This seemed a much more personal attack Pointed, direct She picked up the broken microscope frorunt, cradling the weight of it in her arht you'd be busy deciphering code by now, Mr Murphy”
The grin was stuck to his face like a plaster but his jaorking on an eh of the crih he had the look down, he wasn't one hi She didn't know his real name, or his rank or title, and she didn't care to
He cocked his head, sizing her up ”Hard to do without the encryption key you promised, Mrs Despain Where is it?”
”What do you mean? Don't tell hed like a otiations required of breaking heads with truncheons ”I'ht? So if you have crossed us, it will not go well for you or your dear mother She'll stand no chance of a commuted sentence nor even parole, should it be considered And do believe me when I tell you I shall most happily send you to the same hell, if it comes to it”
”But-but I don't understand Your , didn't they? At the station?”
”And they found nothing but those disgusting tracts you publish”
”No, no, it was-there was a playbill, a playbill from Beecher's Music Hall printed on that very press downstairs! The bag has a false bottom-”
His sudden intake of breath and the expression on his face told her everything They'd missed the false bottom entirely
Oh dear God Millie!
”Millie still has it, !”
The h ”Well that's a sorry piece of luck da You have to find her! You in a search iers frorasp on his lapels and shoved her away, not hard, but enough so that she stu herself in tierous debris that littered the floor Panting, chin thrust out, Agnes tried to keep her voice sure and her lip fro ”You think the Fenians are the only ones that plant bombs? You'll have more than just another riot on your hands if you don't find her”
”If they've not found her already,” he said ”Mayhap they took her thinking she was you”
The words were a chilling echo of those uttered by Sherlock Hol it could make it true
”Not as well in with Hyndman and his revolutionary lads as you led us to believe, are you, Mrs Despain? Or maybe they know your friend isn't theto draw you out and us after Letwe'll find it necessary to shut this operation down We've got other ave a little chuckle before pulling his cap low over his eyes and fastening up his jacket Pushi+ng past her, he headed towards the tiny bedroom under the eaves
”You can't just leave!” she cried, rushi+ng after hi of this”
”Well, I'd be more concerned about my oelfare, were I you”
”You will offer me no protection, either?”
”We offered you what you asked for, if you succeeded, and you wanted only the one thing”
Yes Then she'd only wanted her mother's freedom Now
”It's hardly h feathers, straw, piles of cotton wadding, to grab his ar! He jerked out of her grasp ”I did everything asked ofthe next word out between her teeth ”Please”
He paused, one leg dangling out theas he considered ”I suppose if you can recover that cipher-key you ht save your friend and see your dear old mum back home I hope you can I hear the poor woman's taken a turn for the worse” He se of you, should you be caught”
He touched the bill of his cap in farewell and then was gone She heard the scrape of his boots on the ledge and a thud as he dropped to the narrow passage below
Standing amidst the ruins of Millie's little nes had lost in the past two days Poor Millie had been building her lab long before Agnes met her, but once they had met and knew their interests and one into acquiring those items necessary to Millie's research Whatever s the herbals (and Millie never knew that the bulk of this profit came from women employed in certain houses in the Mile End Road and elsewhere) went to furnish the lab They had a tincture press, distillation apparatus, two Bunsen burners, one naturalist's microscope and one binocularcylinders, crucibles, an autoclave, droppers, pipettes, spirit jars, bottles of solvents and packets of chemicals, as well as hundreds of apothecary jars filled with roots, bark, leaves and fungi
All of it gone now, destroyed This destruction, utter and absolute, shocked Agnes to her core So vicious So personal Not only the lab equips and the kettle, the soup pot, and the cha left that hadn't been ripped, slashed or ground into the broken glass with a large boot The bed was ruined as well, the ticking violently shredded, wadding strewn about and, insult to injury, the culprits had soiled it with urine-their own, she suspected
And now, though she'd fully intended to make a dent in the ht of her loss bore down upon her The despair at her predicament, and her dread over the fate of her dearest, most stalwart friend conspired to deplete her and, finally, to defeat her She had energy only enough to clear a bare place on the floor before lying down, her body curled around the broken an to weep
So press on the roaned a bit as the machinery settled, the sounds that awakened her were the subtle, furtivedesk drawers and shuffling papers about She sat up slowly, straining to listen, heart thundering beneath her breastbone Her limbs screa jerked unbidden, boot colliding with bits of glass
The intruder stilled She kneas listening just as hard as she was, and she pressed both hands over herThe inner door to the office squeaked open and stealthy footfalls traversed the narrow passage towards her A wavering, unsteady light showed beneath the door, creeping farther into the room with each creak of the floorboards The door handle ainst the door Mad, crazed with terror, she screaher fists on the wood, kicking at it as if she could kick through it to the wicked , hands aching, scraped and bloodied, she turned her back to the door and let her body slide to the floor ”There's nothing left, you cur,” she sobbed, her voice raw, ”you've taken everything”
A long pause, then - ”Mrs Despain?”
Sherlock Holmes fetched her brandy, barley water and a hted the lamp in the tiny offices and bade her refresh herself while he took his own lamp in to examine her rooms and search for evidence Drained and nureasy meat pie from the Black Penny But the barley water soothed her throat and, after a few minutes, the brandy soothed her nerves The ache in her hands and wrists fro the door dulled with each s
Half an hour at least had passed before he returned with a large notebook in hand She gasped at the sight of it, seeing the worn and curled edges, the card cover stained with tea and the odd solvent - exactly as Millie had left it Before she could ask he said, ”It most likely fell behind the workbench before the destruction began Had the culprits known of its existence, it would not have been spared”
”Do you think Millie's laboratory was the target?” Very few people even knew of it, and if it was the target, why lay waste to everything else?
He placed the notebook carefully on the desk, eyes fixed upon it, his expression undecipherable After a moment, he emitted a sound of self-ad it an oddly affectionate sort of pat ”There are very unusual fornes took another sip of brandy, well, ulp really, uncertain how to proceed or how much to share One needed to tread carefully Men often felt proprietary into isolate the compounds which are similar or common to each ofwith a e and certainty of outcome Or so she has explained it to me I'm not well versed in chemistry”
”Not many women are Still, I had wondered when you came toof tiny holes at the knee and hem, yet you've no marks on your hands” He held out his own hands and she could see the tiny scars on the backs of them, much like Millie's own
”So you are also a che?”
”It's-it's quite bold” He avoided aze and she wondered at that
”My mother says nature provides solutions and runt, having returned to flipping the pages of the book She watched hi, ”Most of my mother's remedies have been used for thousands of years”
”I know Dioscorides wrote about thelanced up at her sharply ”Did Miss Barnett have access to a copy of the Tractatus de vertutibus herbaruoodness, I've no idea Probably She has loads of old books like that Latin, Greek, German-oh Lord! Her books!”
”Really, Mrs Despain Have you only just realised those are ?” He sounded horribly disappointed ”I did ask, if you'll recall”
”I wasn't thinking clearly at the time”