Page 84 of The Art of Theft
Lord Ingram had first suggested that his wife might be at the château. But judging by his reaction, one would have thought the idea had never occurred to him.
He mastered himself quickly. “Did you learn anything from her about Moriarty?”
“Yes, that he’s been deposed and Madame Desrosiers is in charge now.”
The men stared at her, then looked at each other, then back at her again.
“Does this mean—” Lord Ingram began.
“Yes and I don’t think the château is prepared for what is going to happen.”
“They handled the ferret attack with perfect aplomb,” saidLieutenant Atwood. “Are you sure they will be unequal to tonight’s travails?”
“I’m afraid Moriarty’s people have seen that nonchalance and realized that the château could handle any distractions dreamed up by art thieves. And I’m afraid that they will now try devices and methods that art thieves couldn’t even conceive of.”
“Such as?” ask Lord Ingram, his expression tense.
She shrugged. “Whatever it will be, let’s finish what we need to do and get out. I’m going into the passage.”
Lord Ingram gripped her arm. “You realize that you mean to empty the contents ofMoriarty’ssafe?”
“I can’t prevent his return. But I do believe I can make it a little less triumphant.”
For Mr. Marbleton’s sake, if nothing else.
She glanced at the young man who had become so important to her sister. From his post outside the linen closet he watched them, his face solemn. They’d been speaking in low voices. She didn’t think he had overheard anything, but their demeanor would have been enough to indicate the gravity of the situation.
“Tell Mr. Marbleton for me,” she said to Lord Ingram.
“Tell him yourself. Let me go into the passage instead?”
He could. But all she had were twelve digits, not a fixed combination for the safe. She trusted that she could do the trials faster.
“I’ll be fine.” She lifted Lord Ingram’s hand from her sleeve and held it for a moment. “And now more than ever, I need you gentlemen to keep an eye on things. Give me all the cigarettes you are carrying, by the way.”
The request was met with a look, but Lord Ingram extracted a cigarette case from his jacket and handed it to her. There were three cigarettes inside. “Do you have any?” she asked Lieutenant Atwood.
He did, adding four more to her collection. She thanked them and went on her way.
As she passed Mr. Marbleton, he looked at her inquiringly. But she could only give him a quick pat on the shoulder.
Time to go into the belly of the beast.
The guard in the linen closet had been removed. Charlotte reversed her jacket and put it back on—the material was ordinary black wool on this side.
The walk from the linen closet to the stone door of the secret passage felt like squeezing down the esophagus of some very large beast, especially as she went down the steep steps. The descent was greater than she expected, from the position of the spy port in the room where she and Lord Ingram had acted out their little scene. It was possible periscopes had been built into the spy ports, so that the watchers wouldn’t have the tops of their heads bump up against the ceiling of the secret passage.
The walk space widened a little toward the end. She kept close to the left wall—Lieutenant Atwood, while giving her the cigarettes, had warned her about the piss bucket to the right, though of course he had not called it that.
The mechanism, too, was on the left, a lever that would swing a portion of the wall open. There was a bolt that would keep the door shut—as always, Château Vaudrieu worried about infiltrators—but now it was unbolted.
She took a deep breath and inhaled cigarette smoke. When she opened the door, even in the dark, she could see a cloud of smoke billowing her way, overwhelmingly pungent.
“You already back, Mercier?” said a man not far to her right, startling her.
She gave a deep grunt of assent and turned left to head to her spot.
“What did you do down below?” the same man asked. “They never tell us anything. Just do this, do that.”
