The Wild Princess

Forty-six



Byrne whistled up another hansom cab and rode directly to the address Prime Minister Gladstone had given him. He could have taken one of Buckingham’s carriages when he’d set out earlier, but he didn’t want to mark himself as coming from the palace.

Philip Rhodes lived in Bloomsbury, a respectable area of professional families. The town house appeared to have been divided into three ample flats. He knocked at the door and an aged man promptly answered. A quick conversation established that he was the landlord/owner who let out the two upper floors while he lived on the ground level.

“Is Mr. Rhodes in?” Byrne asked.

“He is expecting you, sir?”

“Actually, I’d rather hoped to surprise him.” Byrne showed off his most winsome smile and hoped for the best.

“Well, you can knock if you like. He’s right above me. But I’ve neither seen nor heard from him in three days, which is odd I have to say. He is a man of impeccable routine, he is, Mr. Rhodes. In and out of the house like clockwork.” He chuckled. “Private secretary to his honor the PM. Did you know that?”

“So I’ve heard. I’ll give it a go then, just in case,” Byrne said pleasantly.

He climbed to the next floor. Instead of knocking, he pressed an ear to the door and listened. Nothing. The rooms had the feel of a vacuum. No living sound from within, not even the buzz of a fly.

“You may have to knock rather louder,” the landlord shouted up the stairs. “He sometimes gets involved in his little hobbies and takes no note of the outside world.”

“Thank you,” Byrne called back to him. “But I think I hear someone stirring inside.” Although he did not.

He snapped open the blade of his knife and ran it along the crack between door panel and jamb. Its tip stopped at what felt like a latch. He manipulated the blade cautiously. Heard it give. But he did not swing the door open. Ever so gently, Byrne eased the door less than half an inch. Although the light in the hallway was limited by the single window at its end, he could just make out a slender wire as delicate as a spider’s web.

Clark’s handiwork, no doubt, on behalf of his boss.

He remembered seeing such an arrangement once before. That time his sergeant had beat him to the door. Before Byrne could warn him, the older man shouldered his way into the booby-trapped shed. The explosion had killed him instantly.

Now Byrne gently angled the knife blade and then two fingers through the crack and slowly sawed at the wire, supporting it with his fingers to avoid putting pressure on whatever it was attached to. He held his breath. Sweat dribbled beneath his shirt, pooling at the base of his spine, chilling the flesh in a spot the size of a silver dollar.

At first he worried the knife might only be sliding over the wire, doing no real work. But at last the strand divided. Standing back in the hallway, as far away from the door as possible, Byrne lifted one boot and eased open the door with his toe.

The hinge creaked but made no louder complaint. He breathed again.

When he walked in he left the door ajar behind him. The single window in the combined sitting and bedroom was closed but unlatched—Clark’s means of escape after setting the booby trap.

The room was not what he’d expected of a highly organized man. No clothing remained in the freestanding cupboard, but two flannel shirts and several pairs of socks in need of darning lay on the floor. The mattress had been slit open and sagged in a deflated lump off the bed frame. A mirror that had hung on the wall, as evidenced by the less faded rectangle of wallpaper, rested with its reverse side to the room, its brown paper backing torn off and hanging in shreds. Books were stacked against one wall on the floor and on top of the dresser. It was as if all that had been deemed important in the room had been hastily removed and all else abandoned.

The landlord would not be pleased.

Byrne went first to the mirror. The paper backing appeared newer than the mirror itself, which had undoubtedly come with the room’s furnishings. In fact, as he squatted over it he could see that it already had a much sturdier cardboard backing, probably the original. So Rhodes had hidden something of value here. Something thin. Letters or money? Maps? Or plans of some sort. Maybe blueprints of a targeted building. Whatever it was, it was gone now.

His stomach churned. Why remove something you’d hidden in a presumably safe place . . . unless you are ready to use it?

He turned to the disheveled bed. More than half of the straw stuffing was gone from the mattress. Not just pulled out, totally gone. Something had been stored in its place, stuffed up inside the mattress casing.

Byrne squatted down to study the canvas sack. He thrust his hand inside, felt around. Just straw. He ran his hand along the bed frame. He stretched out flat on his belly and slid head first beneath the oak frame.

“Hey, what you doing there, mister?” The landlord, at the door.

Byrne paid him no mind.

“You’re destroying private property. Won’t have none of that, will we now? I’m fetching the bobby down the corner, I am. Mr. Rhodes he’ll be furious when he sees . . .” The voice faded down the stairwell. An outside door banged shut.

Byrne rolled to his side, letting in more light from the window, through the frame’s slats and past his shoulder. There. There it was, as he’d suspected. He licked his finger and touched it to the floorboards midway across the width of the bed. When he scooted out from beneath the frame and lifted his finger to the light, fine blue-black flecks speckled his fingertip.

Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. Black powder.

Rhodes had stored it here. A terrifyingly powerful supply, he estimated from the portion of the mattress that had been left empty. And now it was gone.

Which meant the Fenians were about to use it. For all he knew, the bomb might already be in place.

The question was—where?