The Smoke Hunter Read online

  This was her chance—very likely the only one she would ever have—to make the life she’d dreamed of a reality. She would not simply hand the psalter over to the first thug who showed up and demanded it.

  But she could not let Aunt Florence and Uncle David get drawn into this. She would have to make it clear that they had no part in this business. As she stood in the window, watching the professor lose whatever argument the pair had been having, she realized there was only one way for her to do that.

  Ellie raced down the stairs, grabbing her coat and tugging it on as she passed the hook. She burst into the drawing room, her guardians looking up at her, startled.

  “Where on earth do you think you’re off to?” Aunt Florence demanded.

  “Out,” Ellie replied breathlessly. She kissed her aunt on the cheek, then quickly clasped and shook Uncle David’s hand. “I’ll wire,” she promised.

  “Wire?” Uncle David asked, confused.

  “But you’re not wearing a hat!”

  Ellie ran to the hall, Aunt Florence’s cry ringing behind her.

  Plucking the psalter from the umbrella stand, Ellie dashed out the door and down the front steps. Then she lifted the book over her head and gave what she knew to be an exceptionally loud whistle.

  Across the square, Gilbert Dawson sighted the slight, feminine figure waving her prize over her head. His stomach sank like lead.

  Not again, he thought to himself. Please don’t let this turn out like Ostrask.

  Ostrask.

  The name haunted him. A collection of hovels in a desolate corner of the Carpathians, Ostrask hardly deserved to be called a village. But Dawson would remember that miserable place until he died. How could he forget it, after what he had seen there?

  Such horror.

  It would all have been fine if he could just be left to his library, to his books and journals, his notes and sketches. That was where he flourished, where he truly belonged. Once, perhaps, he had nurtured ambitions to distinguish himself in the field, but even before he had begun work for his new employer, those had largely languished in favor of a preference for his comfortable easy chair, his glass of port in the evening, and a cozy fireplace to drink it by.

  His new employer. How could he really have believed that working for such a man would be nothing but books and journals? It had been clear enough the moment they had met in a cell beneath the Edinburgh jail.

  Dawson, the distinguished professor of ancient history, had sat in that dark filth awaiting the hangman’s noose—justly awaiting it.

  He had never thought himself capable of murder, and certainly not the hot, berserk slaughter of someone he had once loved.

  There was nothing in his history that pointed to this capacity for violence, hidden inside of him. Dawson had never been involved in so much as a brawl. He barely raised his voice during the most frustrating and heated academic debates.

  Drink. That was the culprit he grasped upon. He had never been a heavy drinker, but that night, the two—or was it three?—glasses of whiskey he consumed had resulted in an unusual intoxication.

  Perhaps that was all it took. Perhaps there was an animal lurking under the civilized facade of every man, waiting for its moment to emerge.

  It was a terrifying notion.

  Dawson had tried to resign himself to the death he knew he deserved. Then a man walked in and offered him a second chance.

  He was an utterly unremarkable figure, middling in height and slightly balding, with a comfortably bulging stomach under his plain waistcoat. Only his eyes revealed something deeper, a sharp and penetrating intelligence.

  He had offered Dawson a deal: his life, in exchange for agreeing to work as his employee for an indefinite time. When Dawson asked after the nature of the work, he was told merely that it would be a research position. The matter of his studies was to be kept private. There would be no publishing, no discussions with his fellow academics. Discretion was a primary requirement for the position. Could Dawson be relied upon?

  Dawson could. What did he care for journal articles and conferences when his life was on the line?

  He had consented with little more than a moment’s thought. Only three days later he had been released, the case against him dismissed. When he stepped outside the door, he had expected the man from the jail to meet him. But it was Jacobs who bundled him onto the train to London, Jacobs who delivered him to the town house there that had been prepared for him. From that day to this, Dawson had never again been graced with the presence of the man who saved him. He continued to live in almost complete ignorance of who had pulled the strings that gained him his release. What he knew could be counted off on a single hand.

  He was powerful. No simple man could free a murderer from prison with the snap of his fingers.

  He was ruthless. Ostrask had taught him that.

  And the interest that drove that power and ruthlessness was both bizarre and specific.

  Dawson’s work—the employment for which he had been liberated from a just execution—consisted of a series of research assignments. Jacobs would arrive on his doorstep at irregular intervals, carrying a plain yellow envelope. Inside, Dawson would find a typed note with some frustratingly obscure request. He was to provide details about a particular artifact, or dig up the roots of a little-known myth. Magical cauldrons, legendary swords, kings with godlike powers… the assignments crossed cultures and eras, skipping around history like stones on the surface of a pond. The only thing that connected them was their strangeness.

  But what did Dawson care? He was a researcher by both trade and inclination, and thrived on digging out secret threads of knowledge. It was only the mystery of it that nagged at him. Why had these pieces of ancient trivia been worth the trouble of organizing his exoneration? What did they say about the man who now controlled his destiny?

  His lingering ignorance about his employer was the only dark mark in what had otherwise proved a remarkably pleasant existence.

  Dawson was given what every scholar dreamed of: seemingly unlimited resources to acquire whatever texts he desired. Was there a rare tome on Egyptian hieroglyphics available only at Sotheby’s for a prohibitive reserve? He merely need mention it, and a few days later it would arrive at his door. He had an entire town house to himself with a set of taciturn but dependable servants. There were crackling fires and a choice of easy chairs. After a few weeks, he had found himself so comfortable that when he spotted a small article in the newspaper about the execution of a foreign itinerant convicted of murdering one Anne Dawson, he felt only a quick pang of guilt that someone else had suffered the punishment Dawson justly deserved. The feeling was largely overwhelmed by a shaking sense of relief. In that moment, Dawson had discovered an uncomfortable but undeniable truth about himself: He was, in his essence, a profoundly selfish man.

  After all, whether he worked for a criminal mob or a determined and unorthodox collector, Dawson was alive. A bit of mystery and the death of one poor Russian peasant whom he’d never so much as set eyes on seemed a small price to pay.

  He knew better now.

  Before Ostrask, it had never occurred to Dawson to question what the consequences might be should he decide he no longer wished to continue his employment. Why should he? The job was an academic’s dream.

  Ostrask changed all of that. After what he witnessed there, Dawson wanted nothing more than to escape, to get as far from Jacobs and his master as he possibly could.

  That was when he realized there was no escape.

  A man who was capable of saving Dawson from the gallows could just as easily return him to them, or deliver him to an even viler fate.

  No polite letter of resignation would end this contract. Dawson was as much a prisoner now as he had been in Edinburgh. Those months spent in the cozy confines of his library were an illusion. His captivity was comfortable only by default. At any moment he could be yanked from that familiar world and thrown into a nightmare.

  But the worst part of a
ll was that it didn’t matter. Dawson was still a coward. He knew he would do anything—anything—to cling to the life he’d been granted. To survive.

  Even if it meant living in hell, with a devil beside him.

  When Jacobs arrived on his doorstep that afternoon, Dawson had known, with a sinking, terrified feeling, that his world was about to be shattered once again.

  Just authenticate the map, he had said. A short excursion to The City.

  But after their meeting with Henbury, Dawson had jogged along behind Jacobs to the telephone office, where Dawson had sat on a bench between a large-bosomed woman with a squalling infant and an elderly man with a prodigious snore while Jacobs made and received a round of calls. In what seemed to Dawson a surrealistically quick amount of time, he had received new orders from their superior. The day’s work was far from over, and they began the trek to Golden Square.

  He saw the look in Jacobs’s eyes as they riveted themselves on the figure of the girl, standing there boldly on the doorstep with the book in her hand, daring them to come for it. Dawson had an unwelcome suspicion that the night was going to get even more unpleasant before it was over.

  “This what you’re looking for?” she shouted across the green.

  Then, to Dawson’s horror, she dropped it into her pocket and dashed down the pavement away from them in a sprint that was not the least bit ladylike.

  Jacobs was after her like a hound on a fox. Dawson made a futile effort to follow but was immediately outpaced. He fell back, hands to his thighs, panting.

  “God help her,” he muttered grimly.

  Ellie could hear the pounding footsteps behind her and knew with a sinking heart that she would not be able to simply outrun her pursuer. She was going to have to lose him, and quickly.

  Dodging a pair of carriages, she dashed onto the road and turned toward the glow of bright lights a few short blocks away—the shining shop windows of Regent Street.

  She burst onto a wooden pavement packed with bodies. She forced her way into the crowd between a pair of grande dames clutching spaniels in their arms, followed by footmen staggering under the weight of a dozen packages. A street urchin skidded out of her path as she ran forward, slipping nimbly through ephemeral gaps in the press of bodies fashionable and rough, old and young. Hawkers flashed their wares at her, calling in high voices, and gasps of indignation followed her as she used her shoulders to wedge her way through the crowd.

  She risked a glance behind her. She could see Jacobs doing the same, the bodies in his path seeming to part more readily. He was gaining on her.

  She vaulted over a vendor’s crate of young, yapping poodles and stumbled off the pavement onto Regent Street itself. She heard the shout of an angry coachman and stepped nimbly out of the path of heavy wheels.

  At this time of night, traffic on the street was near a standstill, and for once Ellie was grateful for it. She dodged among the carriages, surprised faces gesturing at her through windows, giving herself a bit more of a lead on Jacobs—a lead she knew was temporary.

  She caught sight of a glittering facade—Liberty, Regent Street’s most luxurious emporium, its windows glittering with silk kimonos and graceful Oriental tables. Wheeling abruptly, she ducked past the attendant, who was holding the door for a pair of elderly, top-hatted gentlemen, and ran inside.

  The grand atrium soared overhead. Its glass ceiling was dark now, but Ellie had seen it by day, filling the impressive space with light. It was still impressive in the dusk of evening, the sunlight replaced by the gleam of hundreds of electric lamps. It was also far too open.

  Shouts sounded behind her, and Ellie dashed into the ladies’ department. She raced past glass-topped counters with displays of gloves and leather wallets.

  There was another bark of protest from the atrium. Ellie knew what it meant. Jacobs hadn’t missed her maneuver. He had followed her into the store.

  She looked around frantically. She needed someplace to hide, but ducking behind a Chinese armoire full of silk scarves didn’t seem like it would fool Jacobs for more than a moment.

  Her eye lit on a more promising possibility: a heavy damask curtain hanging across the far wall. The colors nearly blended into the beige silk of the wallpaper, making it almost invisible at first glance.

  She ran for it as the outraged exclamations of the wealthy matrons browsing the front of the department told her Jacobs was getting closer.

  A thin young shopgirl clutched her arm, eyes wide, as Ellie reached the curtain.

  “Miss, you can’t…”

  “Please,” Ellie begged. She pressed a coin into the girl’s hand, then slipped behind the damask before she could make any further protest.

  She peered anxiously through the narrow gap between the curtain and the wall, watching as Jacobs stalked into view. He paused, scanning the space. She saw his gaze linger on the armoire, then move on to the shopgirl, who stood gaping at him.

  “Did a woman come through here?” he demanded.

  The shopgirl raised her hand and pointed to the rear of the store, a warren of fabric samples and cutting tables.

  Ellie felt her shoulders sag with relief, then detected an odd, muffled murmur behind her. She turned and saw an array of equally surprised faces staring back at her. It seemed she had selected the brightly lit shop window for a hiding place. A little girl, her cheeks stained red from the lollipop she held, waved at her. Ellie flashed her a nervous smile, then ducked back into the store.

  She paused by the shopgirl.

  “I had a beau like that myself,” the girl said before Ellie could speak. She shuddered. “Best hurry.”

  Ellie swallowed the instinctive retort that Jacobs was nothing remotely approaching her “beau.”

  “Thank you,” she muttered, then moved quickly back the way she had come, slipping amid the shoppers crowding the grand atrium.

  She made her way to the door just as a clatter and raised voices resounded from the ladies’ department.

  The door attendant’s eyes widened with recognition as Ellie approached, and she saw him open his mouth to protest. She was gone before he could call, slipping into the crowd that packed the wide pavement.

  She let the river of movement carry her forward. She knew her chances now depended on blending in. She needed to look as much like one of the crowd as she could while hatless and flushed from a chase.

  It was a fine sort of torture, forcing herself to move with the plodding pace of the crowd, refusing to glance back and see whether she was safe, or if Jacobs stalked behind her like a tiger after a gazelle.

  Just to the next corner, she made herself swear. It seemed to take an eternity, but when at last she reached it, she took a neat step to the side, ducking behind a carriage stopped to unload a gaggle of giggling debutantes.

  She peered around the side of the coach and was rewarded with a glimpse of Jacobs standing by the entrance to Liberty.

  He looked up and down the street with clear frustration, then turned abruptly and punched the lamppost, earning a surprised look from a pair of nearby loungers. He stalked away in the opposite direction, fading into the crowd.

  Ellie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and stepped back into the press of bodies as the carriage pulled away. She remained hidden in the ranks of fashionable shoppers until at last she reached Oxford Street, and waved her hand to hail a passing hackney.

  The driver frowned at her, and Ellie realized how she must look, her face red from exertion, hair wild, and hatless.

  “Stanwick Gardens, Bayswater.” She pulled out a coin and pushed it into his hand. “You can keep the change.”

  The driver shrugged and she climbed in, sinking back against the worn upholstery with relief.

  The hackney rattled to a halt at a quiet corner lined with the tall, graceful forms of town houses with early flowers springing from window boxes. The driver opened the door for her, his attitude having improved with his tip and her destination.

  The very air s
melled cleaner, the lamplight seeming to shine with greater elegance. She could hear the sound of chamber music echoing from one of the houses, accompanied by laughter and voices. A stately carriage rolled down the street, and a pair of well-dressed older gentlemen strolled by, their walking sticks tapping evenly on the pavement.

  She walked past the entrance to Stanwick Gardens, slipping instead into the mews that ran behind the great houses. She moved along in the gloom until she found a familiar spot in the brick wall adjoining one of the carriage houses. She grabbed the gaps that formed such ideal handholds in its surface and hauled herself up. It was comforting to know they hadn’t changed in the ten years or so since she’d last used this entrance.

  She paused at the top of the wall, listening for the voices of the footmen. The coast looked clear. She swung her legs over, turned, and let herself down onto the soft, still-damp spring grass.

  The garden was quiet. Ellie avoided the places where light spilled through the windows, keeping to the shadows until she reached the house. Stooping, she picked up a pebble from the path and threw it with sharp accuracy at an upstairs window.

  The sash was raised a moment later and a very pretty blond head appeared, peering out into the darkness with a little frown.

  “Who’s down there?” she demanded.

  “Constance!” Ellie whispered.

  “Ellie?”

  Ellie stepped to the edge of the shadows, and her friend’s face shone with a bright grin.

  “What a delightful surprise! Do tell me you’ve gotten yourself into trouble. Preferably the sort involving a man.”

  “For the love of… can I come inside before the coachman sees me?”

  “I’ll be right down,” Constance promised. The blond head vanished from the window, and a few moments later the back door opened, Constance motioning to her from inside of it.

  Ellie hurried across the lawn and slipped in after her friend. Constance put a warning hand on her arm. Her hair was braided loosely, and she wore a silk-embroidered dressing gown over her lace-edged nightdress.