Scotland Hard (Book 2 in the Tom & Laura Series) (5 page)

“I’m not wearing any, sir,” Jane whispered back and winked.

She knocked at his door, which was promptly unbolted and opened so swiftly that Tom was certain someone had their ear glued to the door. Jane slipped out of the room, giving Tom a friendly wave as she left.

“Shouldn’t you take off your undergarments?” Laura repeated in an outraged voice. She appeared from the end of the tapestry with Tricky following behind her. She was fully clothed in riding regalia and looked upset.

“Thomas Carter, you are the most…. the most…” Words failed her and she stomped to stand in front of him, her hands on hips. Her voice unexpectedly softened.

“…honorable young man I know.”

Laura burst into laughter at the look on Tom’s face. “You are so noble sometimes that I could just smack you.” She put her arms around his waist and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “But you could have told her to be a bit quicker about it. We have been waiting behind that tapestry for ages.”

“I th-thought you were going to be angry with me,” Tom stammered.

Laura laughed. “Why should I be angry that you saved that poor girl from a beating? Why, I might not even have minded if you had given her what she was asking for. I believe that the man should be properly experienced before he plights his troth, and that was certainly the best opportunity you have ever had.”

“I would have minded,” Tom said so quietly that Laura only just caught his words. Her broad smile slipped for a second to be replaced by a look of anguish. She turned away so Tom could not see her face.

Laura faced the wall, a hasty finger wiping away a single tear.

“Then you are a silly boy indeed,” Laura said when she felt recovered. “I think we should go and meet Tricky’s companions, don’t you? Then we can plot our escape from this place.”

6.
  
On the Move

Grades of Magical Power

Magic skills are broken down by the Empire into five grades. The skills users have are complex and the guide below gives only a flavor of the capabilities involved. The rare skills of Telepathy and
Reading
are not categorized into grades.

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Talents are mostly useless at this level but are still detectable and may sometimes prove useful.

Class A
           
A level roughly ten times as powerful as Grade 1.

          
- from A Short History of Military Magics by Sir Anthony Barrett

Cam, Daisy and
Arnold
brought small travelling cases down to the imposing front door of Hobsgate where Mick stood waiting for them alongside his favorite pony and trap.

“Tha’s off to rescue Laura and Tom and I’d like ‘t wish thee all God’s speed,” Mick told them solemnly. “Happen, yer will find ‘em as well. I’ve got faith in’t three of yer.”

“I thought our mission was supposed to be top secret,”
Cam
said haughtily, though she belied her tone with a grin.

“Secrets in a school fer spies?” Mick laughed. “Well, it’ll still be a secret to some of ‘em, I expect.”

Mick handed each of them a thick envelope. The envelopes had their names on them and the
Cam
realized that Mick must have been briefed about their mission. She slit open her envelope and found it contained more paper money than she could ever remember seeing in one place. At least they wouldn’t be short of cash.

All three of them were travelling light. This did not seem to an appropriate mission to be taking trunks.
Cam
had packed little more than a change of clothes into her tiny suitcase.

As soon as they clambered into the little trap Mick set off for the station, driving at his usual breakneck speed.
Cam
wondered if he ever drove sedately. She suspected not as she felt one of the wheels lift from the ground as they turned a corner.

They reached the railway station in no time at all. A train was waiting for them. Mick drove the trap to the rear of the train and halted it besides the last of the carriages.

There was no platform at this station and the only steps to get onto the carriages were at the front of the train where the station keeper stood. Hobsgate had been a secret until recently, but now it was clear that the Americans and others knew of its location.
Cam
wondered whether MM3 would move the spy school.

Mick turned around to face them and gave them last minute instructions.

“The train will take t’ yer straight to
London
. There’s no point in lots of changes now everybody knows where we are and speed is of the essence. They’ll be passengers in t’ front carriage, but tha’ mustn’t talk to them. Just afore Paddington the train ’ll slow down to go through
Royal Oak
. The driver ‘as bin told t’ stop for a few seconds and yer must leave when he does. With luck, no one will see yer and yer’ll be free of the enemy.”

Mick gave the girls a leg up to climb into the carriage. He offered
Arnold
his cupped hands, but the young man insisted on scrambling up without help. Mick tossed their cases up after them.

The girls sat down in the carriage while
Arnold
stuck his head out of the window and watched what was going on at the front of the train.

“Our other passengers are Sir Ernest and his secretary,” he informed the girls as another pony and trap arrived from Hobsgate.

“Her name is Miss Mann,”
Cam
informed him. “Or it might be Mrs. Mann,” she admitted.

“Mrs. Mann, that’s a funny name,” Daisy said and grinned. “It’s like being called Mister Girl.”

The train began to move with a jerk and
Arnold
reluctantly took a seat alongside Daisy.
Cam
leant forward to speak to them over the rhythmic clickerty-clacking of the wheels as they passed over the joints on the rails..

“I think we will have to use first names when we talk to each other from now on,” she informed them gravely. “Tompkins, we shall call you Arnold, though I must admit I’m going to have trouble remembering that, and Drew will be Daisy, of course.”

“I shall have fun calling you Camilla,”
Arnold
said and he smiled wickedly.

“If you want to keep all those lovely white teeth I suggest that you stick to using
Cam
,” she replied sweetly.

“I don’t see why we can’t just carry on as we did at school,” Daisy said.

“Because, by using first names we give much less information about who we are to anyone overhearing us,”
Cam
explained. “If Trelawney is right and MM3 has been infiltrated by the enemy, one of their spies might hear our names and identify us from them.”

“I suspect that if any spy discovers us they will be too busy trying to kill us to bother remembering our names,”
Arnold
said sarcastically. “But I will do it if you promise to stop wearing those terrible disguises. The last thing we need is a whole street of
London
ruffians laughing over your attempts to be taken for an old woman.”

Cam felt hurt by
Arnold
’s comment. She had always believed her disguises were good despite the fact that she played them for laughs. She nodded her reluctant agreement. It didn’t seem likely that they would need disguises on this mission. What they really needed was a piece of amazing good luck to help them find their friends.

Tricky led Laura and Tom down the secret passage to the floor below. He put his finger to his lips as he got up on tiptoe to put his eye to a spy hole in the wall. When he was satisfied that it was safe for them to leave, he pulled a lever that moved a part of the wall aside and bustled them through the door into a storage room.

Tricky closed the secret panel carefully, making sure the mechanism clicked fully closed. When he finished, their exit looked like every other wood panel in a wall full of them. Tricky crept passed them and quietly opened the door a crack to look outside. He gestured for them to follow. They crept out of the room in single file and along a dark narrow corridor designed for servant use.

They came to a curtain that covered the end of the corridor. Tricky slowly moved one side of the curtain and looked out. Then he came back to whisper instructions.

“This is the dangerous bit. We ‘ave to get to the room on the left. They’ll be nobody from the ‘ouse in it, as it’s the library and Lord Smee don’t ‘ave any use for books, ‘cepting for ‘itting people with. The corridor ‘as lots of people coming and going, so we ‘as to go one at a time and you ‘ave to check the coast is clear before you go.”

“I’ll go first,” Tom offered. Laura sniffed disdainfully as he had managed to volunteer before she got the chance.
Boys could be such a pain in the posterior
.

“Shssh,” Tricky complained, as her sniff had been rather loud.

Tom moved over to the curtain and moved it aside. He stifled a yell of surprise as he saw the
Butler
walk past. Fortunately, the man didn’t look around and Tom breathed a silent heartfelt sigh of relief.

The library door Tricky had mentioned was about ten feet away. Another impressively long corridor ran at right angles to their corridor on the right. Paintings hung from its exquisitely polished paneled walls. Tom thought that whoever had built this house must have been very fond of wood paneling.

“The others are waiting in the library. They’ll be expecting you,” Tricky whispered in Tom’s ear without warning, making him jump again. “The stairs lead up to your rooms.
Alice
’s bin telling me what the servants are up to by looking through the keyhole.”

“Get a move on, Tom,” Laura whispered in Tom’s other ear, the two of them making Tom feel surrounded. Tension was building in Tom’s belly and he knew he had to go before he lost his nerve.

Checking that the corridor was clear of people Tom burst from behind the curtain and ran as fast as he could for the library door, pushing it open with considerable force. He was breathing heavily with his heart pulsing as he gratefully shut the door behind him.

“I suppose you think that was funny?” a voice asked from the library floor. Tom spotted the girl, who might be thirteen or so, sprawled on her back on the polished parquet flooring some distance away. Her legs were spread wide and she wore the sort of clothes poor people use in the cities, worn and faded. For some unknown reason she looked angry with him.