Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond (18 page)

As she turned away, however, the framed telegraph form on the wall caught her eye. The recipient of that telegram might have been the first, the only individual to learn of the baron’s successful quest and his return to Bodmin Manor. She had intended to send a query to Madame about tracing it. When writing up Hercule Hornblower’s report last night, had she told him about it? With resources she did not possess, either of them might still trace the telegram’s delivery. She hurried up the narrow stairs to the rooftop gangplank, and across to the bobbing ship without a thought for the narrow gangplank or the cobblestone paving far below. Shoving rather rudely past a fat farmer’s wife hung about with links of heavily garlicked sausages, she flung herself into a seat across from her employer to gasp out the information.

“Should I care now?” Hornblower shrugged beneath his shoulder cape and tugged the astrakhan collar tighter around his throat. “I am dismissed, like an incompetent footman. Hercule Hornblower is no lackey to be flung out on a whim. What care I now for some telegram the baron sent? It will earn me no money and no fame, and I will expend not one molecule of my invaluable grey cells upon it. Speak to me no more.”

“Does that mean I’m fired, too? No more report-writing when we get back to London?”

“I have no further need of your service. You, however, will be paid for your days here. Hercule Hornblower does not Welshman upon his workers like Americans do.”

Well, so much for that job. Maddie would hide herself with Madame and see if Lady Serephene had made her a new evening gown or forgotten all about it. Another job would come, somehow, somewhere. Maddie had acted the parlourmaid when she first ran away; she could do it again. Even on a White Sky airship if need be. Back to boring brown hair, though. Purple was too noticeable for a parlourmaid. She rested her elbow on the chair-arm and her chin on her hand, staring out the window as the moors receded beneath the keel.

There was no news from Obie at Exeter either. After a quick lunch Maddie was London-bound, and she had nothing to do but worry about Obie in the intervals of wondering how to trace one telegraph from weeks ago among all the thousands that came to London daily. She accepted Hornblower’s pay in the Central London terminal and, while his imposing figure parted the crowds en route to the taxi rank, she slid away, one working woman among hundreds, to the self-propelling streetcar.

“Claridge’s Hotel,” she answered the girl sharing her seat as the streetcar lurched forward. “I’m visiting an old employer there. And you?”

She had hardly tapped on the corner suite’s door before Madame pulled her into the room with an exclamation.

“Thank heavens you didn’t dawdle. We have only an hour to get you refitted for your next assignment.”

THE LUXURIOUS STATEROOM
was deserted, its lady occupant singing in her bath while Maddie stacked up the breakfast things. A
London Fog & Cog
lay open on the table, one corner soaking up butter and jam. Maddie flipped rapidly through the greasy newsprint and was rewarded by the sight of Imposter Sarah’s face, slightly enlarged and grainy, under a 15-point headline asking “Have You Seen This Woman?”

Investigating the last days of Baron Bodmin, this paper has learned he was keeping company with a lovely young widow whose name proved fictional. This woman, pictured above, was seen weeping at the aerodrome as Bodmin departed on his ill-fated treasure hunt. She stealthily departed Cairo under another assumed name, carrying away a small fortune in Egyptian jewelry set with diamonds, rubies, and lapis lazuli, all obtained through devious means. Posing as the wife of Bodmin’s heir, Sir Ambrose Peacock, this imposter arrived in England in March.

Yesterday this same woman fled Bodmin Manor, Cornwall, carrying away the Eye of Africa mask, which the baron had hidden in his home before his mysterious death. It is not known at this time if she was involved in his demise, but inquiries are being made. She is presumed to be attempting to flee the country.

If you see this woman, do not approach her but alert the nearest law officer. If you know this woman by any name, please inform the Fog’s nearest office and we will ensure the information reaches the proper authorities.

Not that the article would avail now, if Obie’s information was correct. Maddie collected the tray and let herself out of the First Class (with balcony) parlour stateroom. Along the corridor, Obie, in his white steward’s uniform, was raising his hand to tap at a door. She nudged him in passing and dodged into the first service pantry, sure he would follow.

Crowding behind her into the narrow galley between cupboards and dumb-waiter, he asked, “Did you spot her?”

“No. I’ve been in every First Class cabin now, too. Are you one hundred percent sure she embarked on this airship?”

“I watched her with my own eyes. She’d changed clothes on the passage from Cornwall, to something brown and boring, but it was her right enough. There wasn’t another woman on that little courier airship. I could see most of it from the cargo compartment.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t travel all that way to London dangling from a ladder,” said Maddie. “But for her to embark on a transatlantic crossing under the very nose of Mrs. Midas-White! It’s insanity. Not that the owner brushes elbows with the traveling hoi-polloi. She wouldn’t even allow Hornblower to travel to Cornwall with her. The other maids say she rarely leaves her cabin except for tours of inspection.”

“This ship’s the kind of risk a confidence woman would take.” Obie off-loaded the dirty dishes from her tray into the appropriate bins. “One place nobody would expect the lovely Sarah to be. But if she’s not in First Class, she must be in Second. Dozens of women up there, all bunking in random pairs. I was too slow off the mark to get her current name from the boarding steward; she’d waited until a gaggle of women came along and mingled with them. Half of them were wearing brown suits too.”

“Working women do. They don’t show the dirt.” Maddie gave her tray a wipe and stacked it with the others. “On to Second Class then. What if we don’t find her?”

Obie flicked her cheek with a finger. “We will. We’ve another forty hours to New York yet. Don’t forget to look out the windows first thing tomorrow morning. You might catch a glimpse of Greenland.”

“We’ve been there, Obie. Did you forget stealing that dogsled?”

“It stole me. All twenty-four legs running like stink as soon as I fell into the seat. You’re finding your way around the ship all right?”

“It’s identical to the one we flew on from Cairo to Venice. I thought trans-oceanic ones would be bigger.”

Obie shrugged. “Cheaper to make them all the same, I expect. Anyway, Professor Jones is at ship’s liberty, bunking in Second Class 13. It’s an inside single cabin. He’d likely not recognize you anyway, seeing as he was tanked to the goggles at Bodmin Manor. And Professor Plumb’s in Second 22, on the other corridor. I’d like to know how he wangled another guest-lecturer passage.”

“He was making eyes at Mrs. Midas-White at the Manor. I suppose this is what he was after. But why does he want to go back to America already? And on the same ship as Professor Jones, too.”

“I hope they don’t run into each other.” Obie stuck his head out into the corridor. “All clear. Next lull when they all go down for supper. Meet me outside the staff mess-hall at seven to compare notes.”

Maddie climbed up the nearest steep stairs to the Second Class corridor. She cranked up a towel-cart as she’d been shown, imprinted it with her ID tag, and it followed her obediently as she began working her way along the staterooms. If Lady Sarah was up here, the Eye of Africa mask was too, for TD had faithfully recorded her search of the paneling above the fireplace in the Bodmin Manor parlour. Although his oculii weren’t entirely adapted for dim lighting, they had easily picked up the gleam of a very large gemstone in the midst of a dark blob approximately the size of a human face. Would Sarah dare to keep the mask in a shared stateroom? Would she dare leave it anywhere out of her sight?

At each door, Maddie tapped, called out, and then opened. No waiting, not for Second Class. Twice she surprised people in states of undress, handed in their towels, and retreated before they could demand her name to complain. If they did make a fuss, well, she intended leaving the ship in America anyway, traveling with Obie and sending home articles to CJ as long as he’d pay for them. Assuming they could wrap up the Eye of Africa affair first, while they had the erstwhile Lady Sarah trapped on board. She rapped, flung open another door, and gasped.

Colonel Muster’s dark lenses looked up from a schematic-covered desk that was crowded in beside the stateroom’s sole bed. “What?”

“Towels, sir,” she said, in a wobbly approximation of an American accent. What was he doing here?

He pointed to a rack by the tiny closet and bent over his papers. She exchanged the towels while keeping her face turned away, and crept out without drawing his further attention. Her hands shook as she stuffed the used linens into the bin on the cart and walked on. He had not seemed to recognize her, either as the brown-haired journalist from Cairo or the purple-tressed secretary from Cornwall, but who knew how much he truly saw from behind those lenses?

“Maggie,” she reminded herself fiercely. “My name now is Maggie Hatley from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”

When she reported to the crew mess-hall for early lunch, there he was again, at the head of the room with the Chief Steward. His expression was unreadable. Had he fingered her after all?

“Staff, attend,” the latter barked. “Our new head of fleet security will address you while you eat.”

Muster took a pace forward, his military bearing ominous among the less restrictive hierarchy of the civilian airship liner. He turned his face from one side of the narrow room to the other. When satisfied he had all their attention, he spoke, coldly and to the point.

“I will be reviewing all personnel records and conducting spot inspections of all duty stations during the remainder of this voyage. Answer my questions promptly and truthfully, and you won’t have a problem. Anyone caught pilfering or lying will be brigged in transit and turned over to shore authorities at our destination. That is all.”

He strode out. By the uneasy glances around her, Maddie thought she might not be the only person whose file was not entirely truthful. Would she first see America from the brig? No, she would simply dodge Muster whenever she saw him. It was only thirty-seven hours now. She could manage.

But when she next saw the colonel, he had no interest in interviewing her. On the port-side Promenade, in the continual breeze of the airship’s forward movement, he was overseeing the slinging-down of one of the liner’s small messenger craft from its pod up in the envelope. Somewhat larger than a pterodactyl in the British Museum, the machine had similar wings and a skin of stretched, oiled canvas. When it was level with the railing, crewmen cranked up the machine’s central gear and hoisted the contraption over the side. Muster clambered out onto the frail, folded wing and strapped on a flying helmet. He raised one gloved fist in a heroic pose before hopping down into the cockpit. Crewmen swung the sling out parallel to the airship. The tail-feathers waved. The wings creaked out to full extension. Ladies and gentlemen crowded the railings to watch as the craft’s wings angled to take the wind, and gasped as one when it dropped smoothly away from the airship.

“How will he ever catch up?” one young lady asked. “There’s nowhere for him to land,” said another. “He wouldn’t do it if it weren’t safe,” a slim gentleman assured them.

Maddie, well remembering his heart-stopping plunge from a tethered balloon in Cairo, thought he didn’t much care about danger if there was applause and adulation to be gained. She moved through the crowd with her tray of magazines, following the deck stewards with their travel blankets and extra cushions, but wasn’t surprised that most passengers clustered at the railing.

Between their backs she caught glimpses of the messenger craft. First it swooped low, losing way against the airship, and then, with a slight shift in the wings and a spin of the central gear, it soared upward again, higher and faster, passing only a wingspan from the vast gas envelope. At the top of one such arc it flipped right over. Amid shrieks and gasps from the watchers, Colonel Muster’s flying helmet turned toward them, upside down. Sun glinted off his dark lenses. His teeth gleamed in a maniac grin. He flipped his small craft right-side up and dropped away again, down and to the rear. This time he fell so far behind that passengers began uneasily to turn away, muttering.

The craft purred forward again, up-up-up and higher still while the viewers strained to follow that speck against the sun. It vanished, taking its whirring gear and wing-noise with it. For a long moment, the breeze along the airship’s deck struts was the only sound. Then the whirring grew again, and as passengers craned their necks in wonder, the machine’s long beak rose from beneath. Wings straining, central gear spinning wildly, it climbed directly upward and leveled out alongside the railing. With one more mad whirl from the gear, it slid smoothly into the sling, folded its wings and was still.

“Begorrah, did you see that?” “He looped right around the liner!” “That’s airmanship, sir. By gad, that’s airmanship.”