“Blimey! Mr. Holmes himself? This is like one of those Boy’s Own adventure stories. I’ll ask to see Wiggins himself.…”
“Yes, but get going, and don’t let the guards see you,” she said, impatiently.
“Right. I’m off!” He ground out the gasper under one boot heel, and for a moment she could see his bare legs running away. Then he was gone.
For a moment, she was tempted to run away herself. If the guards really were playing poker… But her mother had said she would be able to tell if Alice tried to leave, and Alice believed her. She was much more afraid of her mother than of the guards! And anyway, she still needed to adulterate the heroin. If she poured it down the sink and substituted the salt, whoever injected the drug into Mr. Holmes’s veins would be injecting harmless salt water. He would, slowly but surely, recover from the drug—wouldn’t he? Besides, she couldn’t leave while there was a threat to Her Majesty. It was Alice’s duty as an Englishwoman to stay and do her best in this situation, whatever the result.
As quietly as she could, since she did not want to attract the Mandelbaums’ attention, Alice made her way back along the corridor. Would her message reach the Baker Street boys? Would Dr. Watson come to rescue Mr. Holmes—and her? Would he arrive in time? She had no idea. As she climbed back up to the second floor, where the great detective lay drugged and inaccessible, she hoped against hope that someone would come to save her and Mr. Holmes—soon.
CHAPTER VIII
Ayesha’s Story
Why in the world did you bring Clarence?” Catherine whispered to Beatrice. They were standing outside the door of Ayesha’s office in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She hoped he could not hear her—he was speaking to Frau Gottleib about something or other.
“He asked to meet Ayesha,” said Beatrice, raising one hand in a gesture of helplessness. The other was holding the sort of portfolio used by legal clerks. “If I had said no, it would have seemed—strange, would it not? What reason could I have for refusing him? And she said that she would like to meet him, after I mentioned that we were having a meal together at the Centrál Kávéház.”
“No reason, other than the fact that she’s inhumanly beautiful, and can tell him what life was like in ancient Egypt based on personal experience. And that you don’t want him falling in love with her, the way all sorts of men—and probably women—seem to.”
“You are not being helpful!” whispered Beatrice.
Just then, the door opened. “Come in,” said Leo Vincey. He sounded as sour and unwelcoming as ever. He still had four red scars on his face where Lucinda had scratched him, but they seemed to be healing well. He obviously did not like Catherine—and she did not particularly like him either. But he could at least be courteous! She and Mary had warned him and Professor Holly about Van Helsing’s attack on the Alchemical Society, and he had not listened. Ayesha was probably angry with him, which was not Catherine’s fault. It was easier for him to dislike her than to blame himself—she could understand that. It was just human nature—cats were so much more rational!
Ayesha’s office looked exactly the same as the last time they had been here—the wooden desk, now with papers scattered over it, the plain wooden chairs, the shelves with back issues of the Journal de Société des Alchimistes. It was a utilitarian space, although behind Ayesha, who was seated at the desk, Catherine could see a magnificent view of the Danube and the Buda hills.
She rose when they entered. “Hello, Beatrice. And Catherine—it’s a pleasure to see you again. Do come in.” Today she was looking her usual self, which was unfortunate for Beatrice. But surely if anyone could resist Ayesha’s charms, it would be Clarence! Ayesha was dressed in the same dress she had worn for the opening ceremony of the Alchemical Society meeting, a cloth of gold gown that Beatrice had identified as a House of Worth model from the fall collection, whatever that meant—Catherine did not speak Fashion. She was tall, as tall as Clarence, and her hair hung down in a hundred black braids. Her eyes were outlined with kohl. Also in the room with her, sitting around a table with documents piled on it, were Professor Horace Holly and Kati, Count Dracula’s former parlor maid. Kati smiled and nodded at them. Professor Holly scowled, but that seemed to be his usual expression—indeed, he was scowling in a more welcoming way than usual.
“We were just sorting through the latest submissions to the journal of the society,” said Ayesha. “Many of the members bring their submissions directly to the meeting to save on mailing costs. Have you come for any particular reason, or merely to visit?” Although her voice was gracious, they were clearly interrupting.
“I’ve brought the research protocols for the committee,” said Beatrice. She held out the portfolio she had been carrying. So that was what she had been so laboriously typing in Mina’s study! “They contain the criteria for our approval of research in biological transmutation. Frau Gottleib thought it would be best if we made the criteria explicit, so alchemists who wished to perform such research could know ahead of time what the committee required for approval.”
“Did she indeed?” Ayesha looked at Frau Gottleib skeptically.
“You appointed me chairwoman of the committee,” said Frau Gottleib in her heavy German accent. “Did you expect me not to take that role seriously? Beatrice came up with some excellent proposals. You know I always believed in curtailing—or at least controlling—those experiments.”
Ayesha opened the portfolio, took out a sheaf of closely typewritten papers, and rifled through them. She shook her head and sighed. “You modern young people, with your scruples! But who is this?” She looked at Clarence.
“Clarence Jefferson, ma’am, at your service.” He bowed.
“I don’t need your service at present, Mr. Jefferson,” she said crisply. “But if and when I do, I shall certainly call upon it. You are the Zulu Prince in the circus Beatrice has spoken about, are you not? She has told me about you. I was curious to meet a fellow African who has lived among these colonial powers.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s me,” he said. “At least, that’s what I am, not who. It’s a job, is all.”
“Yet you are not a Zulu. You remind me of the people of Kôr—the Amahaggar. They too were tall and strong and comely, like the Nubians, my father’s people. They too had lost their great civilization, which lies beneath the jungle. By the time I came to Kôr, it was already a city of the dead, and the Amahaggar had become a tribe rather than a great nation. Your ancestry is East African, is it not?
“I don’t know,” said Clarence. “All my mother could tell me was that her people came from Virginia. Her mother was a slave on a plantation there. Her father was a freedman, a blacksmith who had to buy her to marry her. And I don’t know about my father’s family. He died before I was born of typhoid fever. He was working for one of the railroad companies in Colorado, building the railroad, trying to make enough money to send back home, when he caught sick and died. He never told my mother where his folks came from, so that’s all I know.”