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Naturally there ensued a rather spirited discussion on which of us ought to break into the Curiosity Club. We stood on the pavement, tucked into the leafy shadows of the square across the street. The club had once been a private residence, deeded to the organization by one of the founding members. It stood in a quiet street not so very far from a royal palace. The houses that stood like sentinels around the square were tastefully embellished and uncompromisingly white—austere wedding cakes, I always thought of them. During the day, the square would hum with discreet activity, nannies pushing their charges in perambulators buffed to a perfect gloss, maidservants moving on silent feet, starched aprons and cap ribbons snapping behind them. There were a hundred such streets in London, each of them pristine and tidy and secure in their own respectable prosperity. It seemed nothing scandalous or criminal could ever happen in such a place. Except that we were currently bent upon thievery.
We argued in hushed tones as we surveyed the building that housed the Curiosity Club. Stoker pointed out his greater skills in the art of lockpicking—to say nothing of shinning up a drainpipe like a monkey, a product of years spent in circus tents and on naval ships. But I replied that his skills were entirely immaterial in this case.
“I have a key,” I told him, brandishing the article in question.
“Veronica, you cannot just bloody well walk inside and steal Alice’s notebook,” he protested.
“Of course I can. I am a member of the club and you are not even the proper gender to be allowed inside its hallowed walls. I shall enter and slip upstairs to the exhibition room. If I am detected, I will simply say that I have come at Lady C.’s behest to attend to a detail regarding the exhibition and that the hour may be unconventional but was the only time I could spare.”
“And what if Lady C. is the one who apprehends you?” he demanded.
“That is a river I will ford when I come to it,” I told him. I lifted up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Stay in the shadows and try not to look quite so menacing or someone will report you to the police as a lurker.”
He grumbled something entirely unprintable in a polite memoir and I hurried off, drawing in great lungfuls of cold, crisp London air. The door of the Curiosity Club sat in a tiny pool of warm light from the gas lantern hung next to it. Around me were silent shadows. In this quiet and largely residential part of the city, there were only houses and private clubs barred to outsiders. Even the garden in the center of the square was locked and barred against those who did not belong. Stoker had moved backwards to conceal himself still further against the high iron gate of the garden in the square, and I could not see him as I moved on careful feet to the top of the stone steps and fitted my key to the lock.
I gave a soft call—the cry of the hoopoe and our arranged signal. One call for success and two for danger. I waited for Stoker’s answering call and slipped into the club, closing the door silently behind me and thanking providence for Hestia. As portress, she was a ferocious guardian at the gate and took exquisite care of the property as well as the organization itself. Her exacting standards meant that there were no creaking hinges, no groaning floorboards to betray my presence. Inside the hall, a night-light burned, a single gas jet illuminating the interior. I groped my way up the stairs, keeping one hand lightly on the stair rail as I moved, fingertips skimming the freshly polished wood. It smelt strongly of beeswax and lavender. I forced myself to move slowly, advancing a step with each new breath, willing my heartbeat to calmness. The walls were thickly hung with paintings and photographs, framed maps and expedition gear. The last thing I needed was to upset one of them and send something crashing down to rouse the household. Hestia slept on the premises, I recalled, and there were a few rooms always reserved for members who did not live in London but wished to use the club as a sort of base camp whilst in the city. Heaven only knew how many women might be sleeping under that roof while I crept about, but my plan was to leave them to their slumbers.
The door to the exhibition room was unlocked. As I turned the knob, I heard a soft noise—a footfall? a snore?—and instantly stopped, standing as still as one of Stoker’s stuffed specimens. I waited an eternity, but there was no further noise, only the occasional gentle creak of an old house settling its bones against the icy weather. After a thousand heartbeats, I slipped inside the room, shutting the door gently behind me. I took the precaution of turning the key in the lock and slipping it into my pocket. Without it, there would be a delay of several hours at least before anyone was able to gain access to the room and discover the theft of the notebook.
I was conscious at once of how cold it was in the room, far colder than the rooms downstairs, and I shivered as I crossed the carpet to the display case where the notebook had been locked. It was darker here as well. No night-light softened the darkness, and the heavy draperies had been drawn across the window. It was a large French window giving on to a small, balustraded parapet that overhung the ground floor, making the house far more attractive than the buildings with flat façades, I thought, but desperately drafty in winter, it seemed. The draperies even stirred a little in the chill of the night air, and I realized I could, quite possibly, leave that way, eliminating the need for a return trip through the club. All it required was a convenient bit of ivy or even a few architectural embellishments upon which to place my weight. I was no climber in the fashion of Alice Baker-Greene—or even as skilled as Stoker in such matters—but butterflying required considerable scrambling over rocks, hauling oneself up and down steeply scrubby hillsides and modest mountains. I had more than once launched myself into ravines or over a precipice, and the thought of doing so under these conditions caused my pulse to quicken with excitement.
So distracted was I by such thoughts that once I struck a vesta, the burst of light blooming into the darkness and dazzling my eyes, I did not realize at first that the door of the case stood open, a twisted wire lodged in the lock. On the shelf, where the notebook had been left, there was only an empty place. I like to think that my wits might have functioned more quickly had my eyes not taken a moment to adjust to the change in the light, but the truth was, I had approached the endeavor far too complacently. When I am coursing along the trail of a most elusive butterfly, I must still be watchful, vigilant against poisonous vipers, assorted venomous spiders, rock falls and sinking sands, and the occasional brigand. In the cushioned security of the Curiosity Club, those lessons deserted me, and I did not scent danger until it was upon me.
The drapery at the window bellied out with a sudden frosty gust, and I realized too late that the window was not poorly fitted and drafty—it was open. The gust caused my vesta to gutter and die just as a figure launched itself at me from behind the drapery. I had but a fragment of a second’s warning. I dodged to my right, eluding the heaviest part of the blow, but still a solid strike from a closed fist landed upon my jaw, hurtling me to the ground and causing stars to sparkle across my vision.
Without thought or hesitation, I forced myself up onto my hands and knees in time to see the intruder flee through the open window, pausing only briefly, entangled in the thick curtain before vanishing out the window and onto the parapet. Our collision had cost me a second or two at most, and by the time I reached the parapet, the villain had only just swung a leg over the side of the balustrade. The figure was male, with a cap pulled low over the brow, concealing the features. The head turned, the shadowed eyes seeming to bore into me, and then he was gone, as silent and weightless as if he had dropped from the parapet.