‘Let me give you a lift back to your lodgings,’ Sophy urged Cat, having decided to take a cab home in view of the weather. ‘It’s beginning to rain quite hard now.’
‘No need. I’m going straight to the theatre – it’s only a street or two away, so it makes sense. I’ll buy something to eat before I go in, as I’ve got a matinée and I’ll be cutting it fine if I go home first.’ Cat smiled at her, pulling her felt hat further over her head and opening her umbrella. ‘What did you think of Mrs Pankhurst?’
‘She’s an amazing woman.’
‘I know. Promise me that somehow you’ll come and see the play I’m doing at the moment. It’s Elizabeth Robins’ second work and it’s sheer propaganda for the Cause, which is wonderful. It finishes with a suffragette rally in Trafalgar Square, and the political speeches are tremendous. We regularly have one or two men escorted from the premises in the evening when they’ve had a few drinks, and there’s a number who are barred from the theatre now because of their obnoxious behaviour. They only come to disrupt the performance but it doesn’t work. Everyone’s all the more determined to see it through and make the point.’
Cat was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and clearly pleased with herself, but Sophy felt a stab of unease. ‘Have you ever been threatened personally?’
‘We all have,’ Cat said airily, giving Sophy another hug before turning and saying over her shoulder, ‘I’ll see you at Dolly’s on Saturday morning. You haven’t forgotten it’s her birthday?’
‘Cat, please let me give you a lift to the theatre,’ Sophy called after her friend as she began to walk away.
‘No need,’ Cat said again, raising her hand without turning round. ‘See you at the weekend.’
Sophy stood hesitating for a moment or two before hailing a cab. The meeting had been held in a hall off Ludgate Hill near St Paul’s Cathedral, and she knew Cat’s theatre, a tiny one in compari son to the West End giants, was only a short distance away by foot. Nevertheless, as she sat back in the cab and settled her damp skirt about her legs, she wished Cat had agreed to ride with her.
Quite when Cat became aware of the footsteps behind her she wasn’t sure. There were a few people about although the rain had driven some folk indoors and it wasn’t as busy as when she’d walked to the hall from her lodgings earlier. She had kept glancing over her shoulder then, feeling she was being followed, but the amount of people on the pavements had made it impossible to be sure. She had told herself that the vile letters she had received from someone who called himself ‘A devotee of your art’ had made her uneasy and that she was imagining things, but now the feeling was stronger than ever and the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling.
She had turned off Ludgate Hill into one of the side roads leading down to Queen Victoria Street, and had just reached the back of a printing works which was probably midway between the two main streets, when she was grabbed from behind by one of the two rough-looking men she thought she’d glimpsed at the hall that morning. Lifted right off her feet and with a large hard hand across her mouth, she was held against the man’s front as he carried her into the narrow alleyway at the side of the building which appeared to have a dead end, his companion following him. She kicked and struggled but it had no impact on the burly body.
‘Calm down, calm down.’ The man holding her spoke above her head. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you, that’s all. Seems you didn’t reply to his letters, even though he asked you to reply in the Agony Column of The Times. Not polite, that. Ignoring him. Upset him, it has. Especially with how you flaunt yourself on stage, saying women should be able to choose where they give their favours and that you’re as good as men. Little tease, aren’t you, an’ you’ve excited him, see?’
Fear was making Cat light-headed. Her feet still weren’t touching the ground, and he was holding her as casually as though she weighed nothing at all, the other man not looking at them but peering towards where they’d entered the alley.
The man holding her now said, ‘You told him where we’d be? That we’d have her?’
The second man grunted a reply, and then, as the clip-clop of horses’ hooves came to them, Cat gathered all her strength and kicked out viciously with her boots at the same time as twisting her body.
She almost got free and she knew she’d hurt her captor from the groan he made, but as she opened her mouth to scream, the hand clamped even more firmly across her mouth. He was muttering foul curses as he carried her to the end of the alley and thrust her into the open door of the carriage that was waiting. She sprawled on the floor, but as she tried to scramble towards the opposite door, the man climbed in beside her and hoisted her up none too gently.