Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond (20 page)

Maddie bit her lip. She had not intended to give that much away.

“But why? Working at menial jobs instead of living in luxury beyond imagining?” Curiosity did not stop Sarah circling partway around the chair. Maddie shifted too, until she was almost back to the bedroom door. To her left, the curtains by the balcony wavered. Was it the wind, or had Obie arrived to help her capture Sarah?”

“That luxury is a gilded cage,” she said, by way of distracting the woman. “You couldn’t have stood being married to Sir Ambrose another day. Imagine being shackled to someone like that for life, because your family arranged it.”

“You were escaping an arranged marriage? Supporting yourself?” Sarah edged closer. “That’s very brave.”

“You nearly ruined it all for me by using my identity. If my father learned of it, he’d have me shipped to a convent in the Shetland Isles.”

“The Shetlands . . . is that quite far north in Scotland?”

“Yes. A horrid, desolate, windswept stack of rocks in a churning, storm-wracked sea. Supporting myself is better by far. Although I’m not living in the luxury you do. Those jewels you took from Cairo were worth far more than my pittance as a fashion reporter.”

“Mrs. Midas-White refused to pay me for half a year’s work, because I lost the baron before he found the mask. Those jewels are merely recovering my expenses.”

“That’s between you and Mrs. Midas-White,” said Maddie. “I can write the story either way. Now, where are my visiting cards?”

“In my cabin. We can walk up together.” Lady Sarah glanced around the parlour. “It’s not safe to linger here anyway. I’ll just shut the safe and make all smooth.” She took two steps forward. Maddie took two steps sideways. Sarah looked past Maddie and gasped as a shadow fell into the room.

“It took you long enough, Obie,” said Maddie, just before she was struck hard between the shoulder blades.

She sprawled over the carpet, ending in a heap against an armchair. The mask fell half underneath it. Shoving it further under to be out of immediate danger, she rolled onto her back.

Colonel Muster was advancing on Sarah. “Where is it?”

Sarah said nothing, sliding along the paneling toward the open bedroom door. Muster’s left hand swung at her corset, knocking her sideways. She crashed against the table, tipping a vase of hothouse blossoms, and leaned there, gasping for breath. Across the room, Maddie scrambled to get her feet under her without tangling in her skirts.

Muster stepped up to Sarah again. “I know you’ve got it. The safe is open. Give it to me and maybe I won’t throw you overboard.” He raised his right hand.

Maddie leapt. Wrapping both hands around his wrist, she dug her heels into the carpet and clung. He flung her backward in a single, effortless wave of his arm. She tripped over the armchair and lay across it, dazed.

Muster had followed her. His fingers grazed her throat. “Where’s the mask, girl?”

Sarah backed into the bedroom. She must be giving up on the mask, going for the money in the safe. That tiny bit of outrage was the last attention Maddie could spare as the colonel’s thumb pressed on her windpipe. She choked. He put a second hand on her throat, pulling her upright. His teeth gleamed. He repeated his question.

Maddie clawed at his hands, shredding the skin, desperate to breathe. She’d give him the mask sooner than her life. But she could not get the words past his squeezing fingers. Spots whirled in her eyes.

With a resounding bong, the brass urn full of plumes bounced off the colonel’s ear. He reared back. Dropping Maddie, he clapped his bloody hand to the side of his head. He staggered toward Sarah, who was retreating, holding up the mask’s bag, leading him away.

Maddie rolled off the chair, gasping for breath. By the time she got to her knees, Muster had stalked Sarah halfway around the parlour. As he reached for the bulging velvet bag that had held the mask, blood oozed from the scrapes on his hands and wrists. Any moment now, he would grab Sarah instead of the bag. Maddie stretched to grasp the brass urn. Ignoring the feathers that fluttered to the floor, she struggled upright again. Staggering forward, she raised the pot and swung with all her might at Muster’s swollen ear. Another off-key bong and
his dark glasses flew off. He slumped sideways, bleeding from a gash on his cheek. As he collapsed to the carpet, groaning, Sarah scuttled out of his reach.

“Thanks,” she told Maddie. “Are you okay?”

Maddie grabbed Sarah’s arm to hold herself upright. “I think so. Just dizzy. You?”

“Just terrified.” Sarah led Maddie to a chair by the dining table. She pulled a linen napkin from the velvet bag, dampened it from the spilled flower water and wiped the smears of Muster’s blood from Maddie’s throat and fingernails. “He’d have killed either of us for that mask.”

Her neck aching from the colonel’s assault, Maddie nodded cautiously. “He must have killed the baron for it, maybe right on top of Bodmin Manor before moving the airship. He was one of only two people who could have been told Bodmin was back in England. He may have thought the mask was hidden on the airship. When he couldn’t find it, he set it adrift to confuse the trail, and searched the manor.”

Muster groaned again.

Sarah twisted the blood-streaked napkin in her hands, staring at the bright streaks of red on the carpet around the colonel’s head. “Had we better tie him up? I don’t dare be found here, but I can’t leave you alone with him. And I don’t suppose you’ll let me leave with the mask, either.” She looked around. “Where is it?”

Colonel Muster rolled to his feet, dragging the mask from beneath the chair in the same movement. He staggered out to the balcony.

“He’s getting away!” Maddie wavered as she stood up but went after him, with Sarah close behind.

Outside, the sun bounced off something bright. Beyond the railing, still tucked in its sling, bobbed one of the airship’s messenger craft. Its wings were already extended, its central gear ticking gently over. It waited only for a pilot.

The colonel stumbled toward the railing, his bloody fingers clutching the mask. Chirps and whistles filled the air. TD and TC, metal wings churning madly, darted around the murderer’s head. His blood-smeared hand flailed at them. Maddie called the birds away lest they be damaged. They zoomed through the doorway to perch on her shoulders.

“Images,” she told them, determined to get proof that she, herself, had not stolen the mask.

One of Muster’s feet was up on the rail. Both feet. The mask winked in his hand. A red gleam tickled the huge diamond. A trick of the light?

A beam of red shot out, angled toward the colonel’s face. It grabbed his unprotected gaze. He flung his free hand over his eyes, splattering more blood. The mask blazed with unholy fury. As the watchers cringed away, Muster screamed. He dropped the mask.

Its red glare winking out, the black face floated down to land on the outstretched wing of the messenger craft. Muster scrambled after it, crawling forward on his knees. He touched it again. The light blazed up.

He reared upright in the red glare. He mouthed something that might have been, “Help me.”

As Maddie and Sarah ran forward, the mask’s hellacious glow ballooned. Their limbs slowed, their breath seared. Eyes burning, they barely saw Muster stagger. He skidded over the wing and tumbled right off. His scream blew away on the breeze.

The mask, its glare winking out again, floated down after him.

Released from their temporary paralysis, the two women ran toward the railing. The mask was a black dot whisked hither and yon by the stiff sea winds, its diamond winking where the sun caught it. Beyond it, falling faster, was Colonel Muster. Beneath him was only the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, overseen by a rocky shore still many miles distant. He had stopped screaming.

Maddie watched, willing him to pull a cord, make a canopy appear to save his miserable life. For all his evil deeds, he was a man, and had once been a war hero.

COLONEL MUSTER WAS
so far below when he hit the water that they didn’t see a splash. As Maddie clutched the railing, shaking in every limb, Sarah pulled her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

It was too late. As they stepped into the parlour, Mrs. Midas-White entered like a tornado, her skirts whirling and voice shrieking.

“Thieves. Murderers. Arrest them.” Behind her filed half a dozen crewmen. They spread out across the doorway and stared at the wreckage, then at the women. Obie was among them. Maddie let go of Sarah and curtsied, simultaneously straightening her cap and smoothing her apron.

“It was Colonel Muster, Ma’am. I came in to freshen the tables and he was here, on your bed, pulling stuff out of your wall safe. He choked me and said he’d kill me. I screamed, and this lady ran in from the hall and beat him off me. Then I had to hit him with the urn when he tried to kill her. He pulled something out of the bag, a black thing, and ran out to the balcony. Oh, Ma’am. He lost his footing and fell into the sea!”

Mrs. Midas-White stared at her, narrow gray-black eyes growing wide with horror. “He fell? With my mask? Noooo . . .” She rushed to the balcony railing and stared over.

Obie hurried forward. “Young ladies, you must be very distressed. Here, let me help you to a chair. Would you like a cup of tea?”

The other crewmen took his lead, albeit with a few uneasy glances at the balcony, where their employer was waving her brass claws and uttering imprecations as she peered down. Two officers went into the bedchamber and began making an inventory of the safe’s contents. Soon a tea service appeared, in the hands of a wide-eyed parlourmaid. She served the two girls, mopped up the table, and went to her knees to begin smudging up the blood from the sky-blue carpet. Mrs. Midas-White would not be happy at having to replace that carpet, Maddie thought irrelevantly, and then the lady herself returned, and the moment of calm was over.

“They are lying. They stole my mask and murdered my head of security. Search them and throw them in the brig.”

IN THE NARROW
passage outside Maddie’s dormitory, Obie beckoned with his head. Maddie pulled Sarah along as he moved a few paces from the open door. Muffled sounds of a search could be heard within, and Maddie kept her voice barely above a whisper.

“Quick thinking, Obie. Thanks. If anyone else had taken charge, we’d be sitting in the brig now. Are there really ugly drunks in there?”

“Just Professor Jones. He was waving his gun during Plumb’s lecture.”

“I thought until the last possible minute that he might be the murderer.”

“You forgot he’s afraid of flying, didn’t you? He’d never have been able to jump out of an airship.”

“Murderer?” Sarah joined in. “Why would he kill Baron Bodmin? And why are you helping us?”

“Long story,” said Maddie and Obie together.

Maddie went on, “After losing the mask to Sarah, Muster came aboard this ship with Mrs. Midas-White, maybe just to escape England and maybe to steal whatever he could. I don’t see how he could have known where the mask was.”

“He came after me this morning,” said Sarah. “He saw my picture in the aether-news. I told him I’d given it to Mrs. Midas-White already. When I crept in here, I made sure he was attending her inspection. I thought I was safe until New York." A self-deprecating laugh escaped her. “The worst mistake I made on this job was underestimating him.” She glanced over her shoulder, but the designated crewmen were still searching every bunk in Maddie’s dormitory. “You said someone else could have known the baron had found the mask. Who?”

“Professor Jones,” said Maddie. “He was a temporary member of the same club where the baron sent a telegram on his arrival home. As well as being too afraid of airships to jump out of one, he would never have parted from his trunk full of research. But the mask was in the manor the whole time. How did you know where to look?”

“Hints from Bodmin in Cairo. His mother guarded his secrets, he said. I didn’t know that old bat over the fireplace was his mother until Ambrose said. It wasn’t a stretch to realize she was the girl in the parlour too.”