“Foreign Office men. Blackmail. Is Armstrong selling State secrets?” A thought struck him, and he felt the nape of his neck prickle. “You said this morning that he needs another war.”
Da Silva took a deep breath. Then he patted the papers back into their folders, smoothing the edges down where they had been disarranged. “We get out of here now. We close up, leaving no trace. And you keep your mouth shut. Not one look, not one word to betray what you know till we’re out of this house. I don’t care how angry you are. This cabinet has enough in it to hang the Armstrongs five times over, and we’re in their house, outnumbered, and thirty miles from anywhere.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Can’t I?” hissed da Silva. “High treason? State secrets? Lafayette found in the river after he asked for help? Oh, hell. When did they invite you, Curtis? Before or after Lafayette came to you?”
“After.” Curtis felt a sudden prickle of alarm. “But Sir Hubert was at school with Sir Henry, my uncle. It didn’t seem odd…” Except that he’d thought at the time that the invitation was a damned fortunate coincidence. “Do you think they invited me to find out what I knew?”
“I don’t know. There’s something else. Lafayette isn’t the only man who’s been found in the Thames with a broken head.”
“What?”
“There was another victim. He got angry. He was deliberating whether to speak out, bring evidence of the blackmail to the authorities. Then he vanished, and his body was found a few days later, in the river, with a smashed skull. A street robbery gone wrong, the coroner decided.”
“Christ. You think—”
“I do.” Da Silva looked sour. “Lafayette and a blackmail victim in the river? Two more men vanished? Does that all sound like chance?”
“No,” Curtis said heavily. “It doesn’t.”
“I think the Armstrongs have killed to protect their secrets, and we must assume they’ll kill again. If we take this information out of here, the Armstrongs will swing. If they discover what we know, what choice have they but to silence us? And they hold all the cards while we’re in this house. If you don’t keep this quiet, we’re both as good as dead.”
Curtis frowned. “How many do you think we’d be facing? Just the Armstrongs, or—”
“Some of the servants too. I don’t see how the game could be worked without extra manpower. It would be risky to involve too many of them, but—”
“You know a lot of the groundsmen are ex-army,” Curtis said.
“I did not know that.” Da Silva didn’t look pleased to hear it.
“Sir Hubert’s older son Martin died in the first Boer war. Sir Hubert took on all the local men from his company that he could, in his memory. He was telling me about it just yesterday.” He’d talked at length, longingly, to Curtis about beloved, clever, much-missed Martin, a hero in his father’s memory. As though the men at Jacobsdal hadn’t had fathers to mourn them. “The army pension’s not much to live on, and this is a better post than a factory. They’re trained men, and they’ll likely be loyal to their master. Whether they’d kill for him…”
Da Silva winced. “I suggest we avoid finding out. Let’s not get caught.”
“I warn you, I’m a damned poor hand at dissembling.”
“Improve. We must get these papers to the authorities, and we can’t do that from a shallow grave under the redwoods. You have to appear your normal self until we can leave here. Play billiards with James Armstrong, talk soldiering with Sir Hubert.”
“I was invited for a fortnight,” Curtis said. “I can’t spend two weeks in this nest of vipers. Not with—” Not eating and chatting and socializing with the man who had murdered his comrades. The thought was intolerable, indecent. He felt stained even considering it.
Da Silva’s gaze was intent on him. “You won’t have to. I’ll get you out of here as quick as I can without rousing suspicion. Leave it to me, Curtis. I’ll think of something.”
Curtis nodded, absurdly grateful for the unexpressed understanding in those dark eyes. “I…that is, thank you.”
“Thank me when I’ve thought of it. We’ll discuss it tomorrow, we’ve been here too long.” He shut the last drawer as he spoke, locking the cabinet with the picks, and pocketed his flashlight. “All right, let’s go.”
Curtis turned to the door and pushed it open. On the other side, the connecting wire broke free from the putty on the contact plate. A light instantly illuminated the library, glaringly bright for dark-adapted eyes. Faintly, somewhere in the house, a bell began to ring.
Chapter Five
“Shit,” Curtis said, scarcely believing what he had just done.
Da Silva stood quite still for a second. Then he pushed Curtis into the library, following him, and shut the storeroom door behind them. “Hide the dark lantern, behind those books on the shelf. Quick, man.”