Judith Ivory (8 page)

The papers on the desk were picked up. The Old Man tucked them neatly into the humidor. “I have it on the best authority,” he repeated, “that this will be found on M. La Fontaine’s armoire tomorrow evening, if his grandson does not prevent that.”

Adrien stared at the box as it was dumped into his
lap. The sudden, concrete feel of it made his spine prickle. “You’re serious,” he said, still not quite believing it.

“Open it,” the Old Man encouraged. He took a small breath. “Read them.”

“I don’t need to.” Incriminating papers. Treasonous correspondence with Austria. Something of that nature was in the box. The right words in the right hands could, indeed, reverse his grandfather’s luck.

Adrien opened the box and withdrew a cigar. He rose and went to the fire to light it, using the papers to hold the flame to the tobacco.

It took the Old Man several seconds to realize what he’d done, then several more to react.

“Gregory!”

The move was predictable. The giant had, also, been predictable. Slow. But breathtakingly strong.

Adrien made only the smallest effort to defend himself and the burning papers. Just enough to test the giant’s reflexes. They were nothing special—nothing like the man’s strength. Adrien allowed his arms to be pinned back. This ended the scuffle.

The Old Man looked disproportionately frightened, considering he was free—by several feet—of the brief fracas. “Do you have him?” he asked.

With almost comic confirmation, Gregory grunted affirmatively. He gave Adrien’s arms a demonstrative pull for good measure.

Adrien winced. “This is unnecessary. Call him off.”

The Old Man came forward, still cautious.

“Truly,” Adrien re-petitioned, “he is dislocating my arms for no purpose. Call him off.”

The Old Man looked puzzled, even mildly disappointed. “It’s all right, Gregory. But what’s wrong?” he asked Adrien. “What’s become of the old, slightly violent temper?”

Free, Adrien rotated his shoulders. Then he began to
straighten himself, the lace at his sleeves, a button at his waistcoat. “I lost it in France,” he answered. “I had it surgically removed, if you’ll recall, by a band of French farmers.”

“Ahh…” It was a long, protracted sigh that reconsidered, reevaluated.

Then a small, old hand seemed to come from nowhere to Adrien’s face. His chin was lifted just enough to align his eyes with the old ones that looked into them.

It was an odd gesture, uncomfortably incongruous with any stretch of Adrien’s interpretation of his and Claybourne’s relationship. The condescension in it he would have expected. But an inappropriate almost-affection was implicit in the touch. And it went beyond—too intimately past—what liking Adrien himself could muster for the Old Man. Adrien felt himself, for an awkward moment, in the position of being openly cared for more than he could even pretend to care back.

Adrien jerked his head away.

“Ah, there we go.” The Old Man chuckled. “Traces of temper.”

He flicked the Old Man a look, ran his hands down his lapels one last time. “I think I’d better go.” Something in this situation was making his skin crawl.

A frail hand on his arm stopped him. He would, for some reason, rather have grappled with Gregory.

“We could be friends again,” the Old Man offered.

“That’s not very friendly, offering to see my grandfather to the guillotine.”

“You are perfect for this. There is no one else even half so good.”

He saw the new tack coming. He would be flattered and cajoled, if he allowed it. “You need to find a different man, I’m afraid. You won’t draw up more papers, will you?”

No reassurance on that point. Instead, the Old Man
removed the hand-on-arm to point a finger. “That’s it. I have you. There’s a very
different
sort of lady involved.” With triumph, the Old Man’s finger arced upward.
“Cherchez la femme!”

“Femme.”
Adrien corrected the pronunciation. It was involuntary.

“That’s what I said. It means ‘search for the woman.’”

“I know.”

“Do you remember the Frenchwoman?”

“No.” It was another involuntary response. Suddenly, Adrien didn’t want any part of the Old Man’s knowledge of her. He could all at once remember the relief of having his belly cut open: lying in a French courtyard, in a pool of comforting blood, lying there in the sure knowledge that he was out from under the Old Man’s thumb. “I’m handling my quota of women, Edward. I need my cloak.” He glanced toward the servant. “Does he fetch, too?”

The Old Man blocked his way; a silly two-step dance. “You’re being difficult,” he accused. “You’re too perfect for this. I
have
to have you do it.” He tacked back across what he must have thought was a terrific, strong point. “The woman spy is said to be loose, as well as beautiful.” He crimped his old face. “A real tart.”

“This may surprise you,” he said, “but I’m not particularly interested in being pimped out to strange women.”

“Well, you could do it. You’re not shy.”

Adrien let out a laugh. “Just what is it you’re asking me to do?”

The wrong thing to say. The Old Man had now been invited to discuss the matter. His old face lit.

“Remember the French spy I was telling you about at the Haverings, the one claiming an Englishman was raiding French prisons? Well, the French have lost her, too. No one knows what has become of her. And they have asked—no, demanded—our help in finding her
and the mad prison raider, who they insist is English—though I have my doubts. They never can take the blame for their own problems. Anyway, given our present relations with France, I can’t openly give their demand the proper horselaugh it deserves. What I want is for you to go to France, track down the woman, if you can, and see what she knows. Then humiliate the authorities of the New Republic by capturing this madman before they do.

“There. I have you, don’t I? It interests you, I can see it. You are so right for this! This madman works so much of your old stamping ground in France. I don’t know why I didn’t think of you sooner.”

Adrien was standing, frowning, smiling. This was surely a joke. Adrien
was
the “madman” raiding French prisons. Was the Old Man actually asking him to go out and find himself?

“You see,” the Old Man continued, “the French think the woman is now protecting the man for some reason.” He snorted. “Leave it to the French to make it into
l’amour.
”

He had pronounced it
la mort.
Death. Adrien blinked. The Old Man anglicized every French syllable he spoke. But in this instance, the mispronunciation made Adrien’s stomach knot up. None of this seemed quite real. Adrien sat, with a
plomff,
back on the settee.

“Are you all right?” The Old Man halted.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

Claybourne patted Adrien’s shoulder. He beamed, pleased with himself beyond measure. “I’ve captured you, haven’t I?”

Again, the sensation. He knew. The old goat was pulling his leg. This was only his way of getting even, an elaborate punishment for not asking permission. Adrien waited, expectant that he would be let off momentarily….

But he wasn’t let off.

Through the course of the rest of the night, Claybourne discussed the project quite seriously, point by point.

War between England and France was in the air. Both countries were in the antagonistic position of considering it without wanting to trip it off accidentally—before they’d tallied and sealed up every possible advantage.

The French were considerably more upset over their prison absentees than Adrien had believed. They had listed a reward for any information leading to the raider’s capture, and they were tightening security at every prison and detention center. Prison rescues were going to become more difficult.

And England—at least the English Minister of Foreign Affairs—was equally unhappy with a free agent mixing into French politics and waving the flag of England over acts against the French government. “It could upset a very delicate balance between two nations trying to avoid war.”

Then, there was the French informer for whom Adrien’s band had mistaken Christina Pinn. The Frenchwoman was a wild card. No one seemed to know where she was or what she knew. This particularly bothered Adrien—as there seemed to be a woman somewhere who might have all the information needed to see him arrested in France—and what? reprimanded? in England?

All of this left Adrien very uneasy. This, and the fact that the Old Man had an incredible amount of implicating information. Adrien couldn’t, for the life of him, understand why he wasn’t being confronted as the mad prison raider rather than being sent off to go find him.

But the full scope of the disaster didn’t hit until the end of the meeting.

The old minister had begun to reorganize the papers on the desk, as if looking there for anything he might
have overlooked. Adrien sat with maps, diagrams, forged French identification in his hands—even a draft on a Parisian bank where money would be routed to him. It was like an afterthought that the Old Man stooped and opened another of the desk’s drawers.

“Here.” He offered Adrien something else from this strangely well provided desk.

“What is it?”

It was a woman’s scarf. A red one. Adrien took it. It was silk, of very fine quality. He rubbed it between his fingers, then, almost without thinking, drew it to his nose. It was strong with the musky smell of a woman’s heavy perfume. Too strong. Its brazenness offended, like the sly smile of a soliciting whore. But it attracted, too.

“Trashy, but nice?” The Old Man’s smile wanted a confirmation.

“It’s nice,” Adrien responded. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Tuck it into your pocket. Remember it.”

“To whom does it belong?”

“The disappeared Frenchwoman. It was all that was left of her by the time we tracked her down to the room she used in London.” Claybourne sighed. “I have a sneaking suspicion that, if we could find that woman, we could unravel much of this.”

“You think she knows who the man is you’re looking for?”

“She said she did. In a one-line note we intercepted on its way to France. But there were no particulars, and she vanished before we could get hold of her.”

“Is there a way to know her if I found her?”

The Old Man pointed. “For one thing, she might smell like that. But, no, we don’t have a good physical description. I wouldn’t count on finding her. We haven’t turned up a clue. I would simply keep the idea in the back of your mind. In case she finds you.”

“I see.” Adrien had put the scarf in his coat pocket. He fondled it absently, fingering the smooth folds, the wad of silk. Even out of sight, the smell insinuated. It was overpowering, hypnotic.

Claybourne began to gather up his belongings. Adrien stood, as well. He picked up the humidor that lay open on the little table beside him. Then the oil lamps behind him whiffed out.

“Coming?” he heard the Old Man ask from the dark.

“I’m keeping this,” Adrien said. He snapped his grandfather’s humidor shut and tucked it under his arm. Not that it would make any difference in regard to Claybourne’s threat. The little box was only an indication, a token, of what he could do. It was for himself that Adrien wanted the box. As a material reminder: Before anything else, he was going to physically drag his grandfather from France, out of harm’s way. Then he would have to decide what to do about the “meddling prison robber” Claybourne seemed so desperate to have out of the way.

“This prison robber,” Adrien asked as they entered the empty waiting room. “After I find him, what do I do with him?”

“I thought that was obvious.” The Old Man had been about to blow out the one oil lamp in the room. He looked up. He had cupped his hand about the lamp glass. His visage waxed hellish above the flame. He must have known the effect, for he held the pose for several seconds.

Adrien looked away. The game was wearing thin.

“After you find him,” the Old Man said. He blew out the flame. “You simply alert me. I shall dispose of him.”

‘Dispose’ sounded rather lethal. “I’m not going to kill anyone for you,” Adrien said.

“I wouldn’t ask you to. You leave that to me.”

“You do intend to kill him?”

No reply.

“But suppose the man were cooperative,” Adrien offered. “Suppose he would even fall under your—jurisdiction?”

They had reached the front door. Dawning light flooded suddenly bright over the Old Man’s compact figure as he stood poised in the doorway. He seemed to think over what Adrien had said.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he answered. More thinking. Then: “Yes. If you can convince him to that sort of arrangement, by all means, bring him to me peacefully, alive. I would love to talk to this man.” Claybourne sighed. “What a fascinating mind. He reminds me of me. Yes, I should love to visit with him.” He turned and spoke over his shoulder as he walked out of the dilapidated house. “Before I hang him.”

“Hang him?” Adrien wondered how calmly he managed to say that. He walked quickly after Claybourne. “How can you hang him? He’s done nothing for which to be hung?”

The old minister’s carriage was waiting some yards away. Gregory stood by its open door—no driver, no footman, no other servant about.

The Old Man stepped in and sat, then leaned his head out the doorway. “I applaud your humanity, but you must learn some crucial lessons—if you ever decide to be a regular in this business. First, one never lends credentials to a promising usurper. The man will be discredited—French, English, or Hungarian, he will be discredited and hung. And, second, power and good reputation allow one an occasional misdeed. I shall capture the man for English diplomacy, then hang him for myself. And get away with it. Because, with the reputation I have so painstakingly built for myself, no one will consider a selfish motive. When I say this madman is a traitor and an enemy of England, I will be believed.”

The Old Man cleared his throat, letting what he’d said sink in. Then he added, a little sadly, “You, my young friend, unless you change your ways, will always be the victim of reputation to the other extreme. Your few good deeds—if there ever are any—will be mistaken for bad, your truths for lies. God’s mercy on you. Good night.”