TW08 The Dracula Caper NEW (26 page)

The old woman shook her head. "You will find it harder work than pleasing gentlemen," she said. "You will see. You may soon prefer working on your back to scrubbing on your knees. There is time enough for that. You should not waste your youth. I was young and pretty once, like you. Now I wash floors and empty chamberpots." The old woman cackled and waddled off down the corridor, carrying her pile of bedclothes.

Quickly, before she ran into anybody else, Jasmine made her way down to the door at the far end of the hall. She hesitated when she reached it. Now that the moment had arrived, she was suddenly afraid of declaring herself. What would he say? Would he be angry? What if he rejected her? There was no turning back now.

She bit her lower lip and knocked on the door.

"Yes? Who is it'?" she heard him say.

She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped inside.

"Jasmine!"
Moreau said, astonished. "Dear God! What on earth are
you
doing here? How
did you get here?"

"Do not be angry, Dr. Morro," she said. "I had to come! "It all came spilling out of her in a torrent of impassioned words, words that tumbled over one another in her rush to get them out, afraid that if she paused for breath, her fear would paralyze her or, worse yet, that he would stop her.

Moreau stood there in astonishment, unable to get a word in edgewise. She finally ran out of steam and stood before him, looking down at the floor, stripped bare in all but the literal sense, her face flushed, her lower lip trembling, her eyes ready to flood with tears.

Moreau started to say a dozen different things and realized that each one of them would have been wrong. What was he to tell her'? That he was old enough to be her father? It was a cliche and he was not her father and, in any case, the only time age made any real difference to a woman was if a man was too immature for her, a factor that was more often than not measured emotionally and not chronologically. And Jasmine was a woman, naive, perhaps, certainly inexperienced, but a woman none the less. And just as one did not treat a girl as if she were a woman, one did not treat a woman as if she were a girl. Was he to tell her that he did not love her? What purpose would that serve? Besides, she had not asked him if he loved her. She had opened up her heart to him, imposing no conditions, asking nothing, offering everything. A gift like that was not rejected out of hand. It was accepted in the same spirit in which it was offered. Whether or not it was reciprocated was another, much more complicated matter.

"Are you going to send me away?" she said, drawing herself up proudly, prepared to accept rejection with dignity.

"No," he said. "Please, sit down. It seems that we have much to talk about."

Andre was having a hard time keeping track of all the bodies. It was difficult enough, shadowing the indefatigable Conan Doyle, now she also had Bram Stoker to worry about and the man that
they
were following and the people who were following
them.

She had picked up Conan Doyle as he left the crime lab at Scotland Yard, almost missing him as he came hurrying out of the building, heading for a nearby pub. She had followed him to the pub, where he met Bram Stoker. As the two men left the pub together, Andre became aware that they were being followed by someone other than herself. She kept her distance, so as not to give herself away, and watched as the other shadower hopped on a bicycle and followed the coach taken by Conan Doyle and Stoker. She quickly hailed a hansom and set off in pursuit as well, wondering who else besides herself would be following the two writers.

There should have been someone from their team assigned to cover Stoker, but this was someone she had never seen before. A young Chinese man, dressed all in black, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, effortlessly pedaling the bicycle, even over cobblestoned streets.

They drove to the Lyceum Theatre and went inside. Andre lost track of the Chinese bicyclist inside the theatre. She had caught quick glimpses of him darting through the streets, following the coach, but he seemed incredibly adept at disappearing into the fog and shadows. Now she had no idea where he was. Conan Doyle and Stoker were nowhere in sight. She moved stealthily through the darkened theatre as the play progressed, but she was not able to catch sight of them until she sneaked backstage and saw them standing in the wings. She found a place to hide among the backstage clutter and kept an eye on them. They, meanwhile, were apparently keeping an eye on someone else, out in the audience. They kept glancing up at the box seats, but from where she was hidden. Andre couldn't see whom they were looking at. And if the Chinese man was still around, she couldn't see him, either.

However, she spotted him in the crowd during the intermission. when Conan Doyle and Stoker went out through the lobby and upstairs, to the box seats. She was unable to follow them into the box, where they spoke with someone for a short time and she was unable to get close enough to hear what was being said, because the Chinese man had already beaten her to it. She spotted him skulking just outside the box, eavesdropping on their conversation. She pulled back quickly, before he could spot her.

In the crush that followed the conclusion of the play, she lost the Chinese man once again, but she was able to spot Conan Doyle and Stoker leaving in their coach.

Without waiting to try and hail a hansom amidst the bustle of the audience dispersing and risk losing them. Andre took off after their coach on foot, jogging through the streets, cursing the Victorian clothing which made running difficult and interfered with her breathing.

Fortunately, thanks to her being in superb physical condition and the coach having to drive slowly in the reduced visibility due to the fog, she was able to keep up without too much difficulty. But after several blocks, it became obvious that Conan Doyle and Stoker were following another coach, albeit at a distance, and there was another hansom following them, as well as the Chinese man on his bicycle.

"What the hell is going
on
here'?" she said to herself. as she paused on a street corner to catch her breath. "This is turning into a goddamned parade!"

The "parade" proceeded along the Strand, to Fleet Street, past the offices of
The Daily Telegraph
and St. Paul's Cathedral, winding along roughly parallel to the course of the Thames. They passed London Bridge and proceeded on a rough diagonal away from the river, towards Whitechapel Road and the London Hospital before plunging into the maze of Whitechapel itself. Finally, the lead coach stopped and a tall man in a high silk hat and opera cape got out and started walking rapidly down a narrow street, disappearing into the mist. Conan Doyle and Stoker followed after paying off their driver and the last hansom disgorged a single man, dressed in a brown tweed coat and bowler hat, who hurried after Conan Doyle and Stoker. Once again, the young Chinese was nowhere to be seen, but Andre had no doubt that he was there as well, hidden somewhere in the
mist.

She wished she was not alone, that Delaney was with her or Steiger: There were too many people to keep track of and she had no idea what was happening.

She was exhausted from the long run. She unbuttoned her dress and loosened her corset, cursing the ridiculous garment, wishing there was time to take it off entirely. Breathing hard from her very long run, her feet hurting from the high-button shoes, she quickly closed the distance between her and the shadowers, using the fog for concealment.

Who was the man everyone was following? Could he possibly be unaware that he was being followed by so many people and was it possible that they were all unaware of each other? In the thick London fog, it was more than possible. But the same fog that offered such good concealment also made it difficult to keep everyone in sight. Andre slipped around the corner of a building, into a narrow alleyway, and fell sprawling as her foot struck something soft and large.

She quickly got up to see what she had tripped over. It was the man in the brown tweed coat, lying face down on the cobblestones, his forehead bleeding. He was alive. but unconscious. Andre quickly searched his pockets and came up with a badge. The man was a policeman, an inspector from Scotland Yard. He had been knocked out by someone. By the Chinese man'? Andre quickly looked around, suddenly feeling vulnerable in the fog-enshrouded streets. She had long since lost her hat, now she grabbed her dress and ripped it up the side, so she could have greater freedom of movement. She squinted hard, trying to penetrate the mist. She could see nothing.

Standing motionless, she strained to hear the sound of footsteps. In the distance, she heard the clatter of horses' hooves upon the cobblestone. Closer, she heard a baby cry; a man and woman's voices raised at one another in the dark; a chorus of far-off, drunken singing . .

And then another sound, close, too close, right behind her—

Linda Craven knew she was being followed. She tried not to show it as she walked down the street, waiting for an opportunity to lose the policeman. He wasn't very good. She had spotted him within two blocks of leaving Scotland Yard. It made sense that Grayson would have had her followed. He hadn't believed her for a second. But unlike some of the men under his command, such as the one now tailing her, Grayson was very good indeed. He had put it all together very neatly, only he had no idea what it meant. When he realized she wasn't going to tell him anything, he had put a tail on her, obviously hoping that she would lead him to Steiger and the others. Well, thought Linda, he was in for a major disappointment.

She had to lose this cop and do it quickly, so she could get back to Steiger and the others and let them know what happened. She was sick over the death of Dick Larson. It had been entirely her fault. He had argued that it was too dangerous to go back to the suite at the Metropole, but she had insisted, shaming him into going along with her, and now he was dead. And Scott Neilson was probably dead, too.

Larson had been right. She had allowed personal feelings to get in the way of duty, to get the better of her professional instincts, and it had cost Larson his life.

"Professional instincts." she thought ruefully. What a joke. She wasn't a professional at all. She had no business being on this mission, which had turned into
a
complete disaster, a large part of which was her responsibility. She had cried back in Grayson's office and it hadn't been entirely an act. It was all falling apart and she felt utterly helpless to do anything about it.

At least there was one thing she could do right. She could lose the policeman Grayson had set upon her trail and get back to the command post, face Colonel Steiger and tell him what had happened. Own up to her responsibility. At least they got one of them. Perhaps it wasn't much, but it was something. If only the cost hadn't been so high.

She headed towards Charing Cross, at the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street. It was the place where proclamations were once read, criminals were once pilloried in stocks and executions had been carried out. Now, in the late nineteenth century, it was one of the busiest intersections in London. A large cross stood atop an ornate pedestal with eight statues of Queen Eleanor of Castile, wife to Edward I, who had ordered the first crosses erected there in her memory at the close of the Thirteenth century. Linda quickened her pace, heading towards the Charing Cross Hotel.

She went into the hotel lobby, then quickly mingled with a group of people coming out, using their bodies to shield her from the policeman who was pursuing her. He
ran into the hotel just as she was coining out. They passed within several feet of one another and he never saw her. Quickly, she hailed a hansom and jumped inside, directing the driver to take her to Mornington Place, near Regent's Park.

Having shaken the policeman, she leaned hack against the cushion of the scat and shut her eyes, feeling miserable. Her first assignment in Minus Time and she had made a complete mess of it. She had allowed Moreau to escape with Wells; she had been
the only one of the entire team who had a shot at Drakov and she had flubbed it
and
now she had caused Dick Larson's death. She would not be surprised if she was court-martialed, assuming they ever made it back to their own time. It was a nightmare. Scott had told her about the pressure, about how he did not believe that anyone ever really learned to handle it, but she didn't see anyone collapsing under the weight of it, either, as she felt herself about to do. She simply didn't have anything left. She wondered whatever made her think she had what it took to be a temporal agent in the first place. She looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking.

She tortured herself with self-recriminations all the way to Regent's Park. She felt numb by the time the hansom reined up in front of H. G. Wells' house. She paid the driver and started towards the house, then saw the shattered window and the front door standing ajar.

"Oh, God," she whispered, "no. please . . ."

Without thinking of the danger, she ran straight up to the entrance and inside the house, where she was confronted by two uniformed policemen standing in the living room, talking to Amy Robbins and H. G. Wells.

"Wells!" she said, astonished.

"And who might you be, miss?" said one of the policemen.

"Linda!" Neilson said, coining in from the next room with Delaney, whose hand was bandaged.

"Do you know this young lady, sir?" said the policeman.

"Of course," said Neilson quickly. "She's my sister. It's all right, Linda. No need to be alarmed. We've just had a minor accident."

"It is all entirely my fault," said Wells. He turned to the policemen once again. "I can see that I have only managed to upset everyone, including my poor neighbors. I shall have a devil of a time explaining it to them. I must ask you to forgive me, Linda." he continued, looking at her apologetically. "I invite you all for dinner and instead, it turns into a veritable disaster."

"Now let me see if I have it all correctly, Mr. Wells." one of the policemen said. "You were showing this Colt pistol to Mr. Neilson here, believing that the weapon was unloaded; Mr. Neilson cocked the hammer, squeezed the trigger—thinking the revolver was empty—and it went off, startling you and causing you to knock into that lamp there, which fell and broke the window, is that correct? And Mr. Delaney cut his hand upon a piece of glass, is that it?"