Page 86 of A Ruse of Shadows
Lord Ingram wanted to laugh at the frustration on Bancroft’sface, but he didn’t dare. He didn’t dare tempt Fate by laughing too early.
They could still show up, the people Bancroft was waiting for. And if they did, then Sherlock Holmes and company would be in greater trouble than even Holmes’s cleverness could handle.
“I wonder what has delayed them, your allies,” murmured Holmes. “I wonder.”
Twenty-nine
A few hours ago
De Lacey, Moriarty’s chief lieutenant in Britain, was uneasy.
Since he’d joined De Lacey Industries, there had been three other de Laceys, each a wilier, more capable man than he, and each had met an unnatural demise. So the former Timmy Ruston dared not be too comfortable in his new identity, his new authority, or his new surroundings.
A man of extremely moderate ambitions, he believed in sticking to one’s primary proficiency. In the case of De Lacey Industries, it meant doing what they’d always done, what they’d proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be good at: the fleecing of other enterprises.
But forces beyond his control always pushed new and uncertain tasks on him. Case in point, Lord Bancroft Ashburton.
De Lacey did not want to traffic in state secrets. But Moriarty, referred to by his subordinates as Mr. Baxter, much as Timmy Ruston was de Lacey, hankered for state secrets as opium addicts needed their next puff. For months, Mrs. Kirby, the woman he’d sent to negotiate with Lord Bancroft, had prowled in and out of de Lacey’s fiefdom, treating it quite as her own.
When Moriarty and Lord Bancroft had at last settled on theterms of their agreement, de Lacey had almost laughed to learn that Lord Bancroft had wanted a disposable woman agent and Mr. Baxter had said why not sacrifice Kirby the negotiator—neither had any use for her afterward.
But the pleasure de Lacey took in her misfortune was quickly displaced by fear. She might have been annoying, but had she been any less capable or less loyal than he?
What, in the end, would be his fate?
At least Mr. Baxter had been pleased about Lord Bancroft’s partial surrender.
De Lacey, who had to do the actual work of arranging for Lord Bancroft’s escape, was less pleased. His lordship had devised a plan he proclaimed to be foolproof, not realizing that de Lacey wasn’t worried about fools but gods.
The gods punished hubris.
He’d learned the word from Mr. Baxter. Immediately after Mr. Baxter had executed a previous de Lacey at a company soiree, he’d said, “The man had too much hubris. And too much hubris displeases the gods.”
Yet men like Mr. Baxter and Lord Bancroft feared no gods.
But that was because the gods had not yet acted.
Charlotte Holmes, of course, wasn’t a god. But to de Lacey, she was a countervailing force, a reminder from the gods to the Mr. Baxters and the Lord Bancrofts of the world not to go too far.
One ought to leave some people alone. A woman who managed to escape Mr. Baxter’s trap unscathed—and who now had Lord Remington Ashburton’s protection—ranked high among “some people.”
Of course, de Lacey, with his sheer mediocrity, could not make the great men around him understand that. But at least his own part in all this was coming to an end. Tonight, in fact. He didn’t mind in the least the request to pick Lord Bancroft up from the abandoned old abbey a day or two early. The soonest over, the best.
He planned to arrive at the abandoned abbey fashionably late, at quarter to four in the morning. Which meant he needed to reach DeLacey Industries by quarter past eleven, to load the body into a second vehicle.
For the sake of comity and politesse—the vocabulary he’d acquired since he’d first met Mr. Baxter!—he’d acceded to Lord Bancroft’s request to hold Underwood’s body. But after tonight, it didn’t need to stay hidden anymore. Might as well get rid of it at the ruins. It would bother no one there and might even provide sustenance to carrion eaters.
His brougham stopped. De Lacey, who had dozed off a little, if with worrying thoughts crowding the landscape of his head like so many uncounted sheep, opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. Perfect timing.
His coachman opened the door. But instead of standing back respectfully to let him descend, the man leaned into the vehicle and whispered urgently, “Mr. de Lacey, something ain’t right! Men are coming out from the front door.”
A jolt went through de Lacey. “What do you mean?”
He pulled aside the carriage curtain. Across the street, there were indeed men exiting the wide-open front door of De Lacey Industries. Moreover, there were several police vans piled helter-skelter in the street, with uniformed men milling about.
De Lacey, having been a petty criminal in his youth, had a healthy fear of the police, especially a uniformed bobby wielding a nightstick. But Mr. Baxter was a criminal of a different order of magnitude, the kind who never had to deal with the law. And De Lacey Industries, on the outside at least, was a legitimate business with legitimate assets generating legitimate profits.
De Lacey swallowed his instinctive trepidation, leaped out of the brougham, and charged toward his fiefdom.
