Page 105 of The Duke and Lady Scandal
“You mean like you are right now.”
He bent to kiss her cheek, and then left her. He had to. He had to find M and put an end to his games.
As he climbed the two stairs toward the townhouse’s facade, it reminded him too much of his first time in Bedford Square. The afternoon waswaning toward dusk, but there were no lights on in any of the windows. No curtains on most of them either.
He feared it was another shell of a house. Another blind alley. Another trick.
Then he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. An old man emerged from a house two doors down. Not one of the M properties. He wore a dark wool coat with a bright white fur collar. Enormous gold-rimmed glasses obscured his eyes.
“Too much hubbub in this square if you ask me,” he said in an affronted aristocratic voice. “What are you all gadding about for?” He waved his cane. “Shouting and rushing and carrying on.”
“We’re seeking a criminal, sir.”
The man grumbled and harrumphed and then hobbled down his steps, leaning heavily on his cane. At the pavement, he turned toward Ben.
“I do hope you find him.”
Ben twisted the latch on the townhouse door, prepared to force it, but it gave way.
A madman criminal in an unlocked townhouse.
And that was the moment he knew. He cast a gaze at the old man hobbling unsteadily down the pavement. And his gut told him he’d just been taken for a fool again.
Ben approached the old man quickly but managed to keep himself from breaking into a run.
Not for the first time, he wished he could move with more stealth, that his boots hit the pavement more quietly. But if the old man was M, he’d notyet given up his ruse. He hobbled slowly, steadily down the pavement.
“Hold there, old man.” He lifted his revolver and pulled back the hammer. “I’d like to speak to you. Don’t you think it’s about time we met face-to-face?”
Ben heard a click, and then the hunched old man rose to his full height and spun to face him. He held the walking stick at the height of Ben’s chest, and there was no mistaking the hollow barrel of the cane, nor the little trigger that M had slipped his index finger around.
Ben had heard of cane guns, but he’d never been at the wrong end of one.
“There’s only one bullet,” M said. “But you’re ever so close. I can’t miss, can I?”
Ben held his revolver steady. “This square is crawling with Met policemen. You won’t get far.”
“Farther than you, Inspector.” His voice had flattened to a singsong tone. Not unlike a petulant child. “Shall we step back a few paces?” he said in mock seriousness. “Do it like an old-fashioned duel?”
The sky was darkening as they spoke, but in his periphery, Ben noticed movement in the green. He prayed it was one of his men, or preferably several, maneuvering to create a cordon around M.
“Yes,” Ben told him, “let’s do it like a duel.”
The madman smiled underneath his bushy mustache and stepped backward, his cane-pistol still trained on Ben. Ben took one step back, and the movement in his periphery shot forward.
A moment later, an object sailed through the air toward them. Toward M. The mastermind caught sight of it late and swung wildly with his cane in an attempt to deflect it.
Ben rushed him, pushing the cane from his hand and using the full force of his body to tumble the smaller man to the ground.
M let out a high-pitched scream, then he squirmed and squealed, kicking and flailing like an animal caught in a trap.
Alexandra rushed up a moment later, her gait uneven. Then she bent and picked up the object that had thwacked M’s head before Ben tackled him.
It was her boot.
She smiled and winked at Ben when he looked up at her.
“Constable,” she shouted, “we need your shackles.”
