A Thousand and One English Nights (Book Three of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Forty Five: Night Work

Jack had a night secretary as well as a day one. He was sleeping more now, but there was still night work to be done, and it wasn't the sort of thing you could ask Danvers to help with, unless you wanted him to splutter in outrage all over your suit.

Fortunately, Brandt had survived the rebellion in India to become a detective at Scotland Yard. He was the same Brandt—curly-haired, composed and cautious—but now he had contacts in the London police force, and was ideally placed to help Jack unearth the remnants of the Order which had captured and enslaved his girls.

It was unfair to call him the night secretary, maybe. There was nothing shady about him, except that he'd been forced to live his private life in the shadows due to society's unaccountable hostility to who he was. And he restrained Jack just as much as Danvers did—although he had his work cut out for him tonight.

He arrived at the Academy two hours earlier than expected, clutching telegrams, and wearing an expression so English it might have been copied, muscle-by-muscle, from the face of John Danvers. Jack knew that expression. It was the face of reluctant but determined duty – a face which knew it was going to suffer for telling the truth, but had made up its mind to suffer anyway.

Still, he ushered Brandt into his office, with its ivy-shrouded windows, and offered him a seat. It was all very civilized, even if he did have to stuff his fist in his mouth when Brandt took his usual minute-and-a-half to get to the point.

"There's been some kind of... co-ordinated attack... on the girls living outside of Oxford. Mostly, our men were able to deal with it, but three of them were found this morning with their throats cut, and the girls they were guarding..."

Jack vaulted over the desk and grabbed Brandt by his collar, lifting him out of his seat and slamming his back into the wall. "Finish that sentence very carefully, Brandt," he breathed. "The girls they were guarding?"

"Missing," Brandt wheezed. "Not dead."

"But could be dead?"

"I doubt it, General. The attackers were wearing black, and tattoed on the wrist with the Eye of Horus. They sound like the assassins who captured the girls in the first place."

Jack let him go – or flung him to the floor, he wasn't sure which – and took his anger out on the furniture instead. He kicked Brandt's chair across the room, where it shattered a window and got lodged in the ivy.

"A pre-emptive attack, I assume," said Brandt, over the stream of swear-words. "They knew we were looking for them. Perhaps we weren't subtle enough about that."

"We were subtler than I would have liked to be, Brandt."

They had been searching for the Order for months now. The gems were the best way. Any slave-girl could spot them from a mile off. They were a cross between opals and rubies—blood-red but rainbow-hued.

Jack had taken Emma Hope to Regent's Park, where the richest and most well-dressed people in England paraded their splendour, and asked her to watch the brooches, bracelets and rings that passed under her nose.

And then he would go up to their owners – introducing himself as 'Sir Jack', because that always helped – and enquire how they had come by such fascinating jewellery.

It was an achingly slow process. At first, all they found were jewellers and merchants and brokers, people who traded in the gems but had no inkling of the slavery. Or, if they had – and this was the agonizing bit – nobody could prove it.

The early days, when he'd been angriest, had been full of delicate work. Gentle enquiries. Examining accounts and receipts. Carefully sifting through information to find the source.