The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead (22 page)

“Captain Merryweather,” Earnestine said, “may I have the envelope back please?”

Merryweather took the letter from his pocket and passed it over, right handed.

“Georgina, would you be a dear and copy out the letter please.”

“Earnestine, I–”

“I’m sure there will be some writing implements at the desk.”

Georgina snatched the letter off her sister and stomped over to a small desk, where she took out what she needed from the drawer making the maximum amount of noise possible. She was such a child, but at least she wasn’t whining.

Earnestine sat at the table. The wooden chair was hard, but bliss as her feet throbbed from the running.

Merryweather busied himself with metal cups and a coffee pot.

“This is in German!” Georgina said.

“It uses the Latin alphabet, all you need to do is copy it,” Earnestine said. “And don’t whine.”

“I wasn’t…”

Georgina started writing carefully.

Earnestine started to think about everything that had happened, trying to fathom it all out.

“How would you like your coffee?” Merryweather asked.

“Coffee is a degenerate drink,” Earnestine said. “We’ll all have tea.”

“I’m afraid emergency rations on the continent don’t offer much choice.”

“I see.”

“I’ll make it medium with plenty of sugar.”

He paused at the pot with the coffee and a spoon.

“Five,” said Earnestine.

“Thank you,” he said, ladling five heaped spoonfuls in. “And one for the pot?”

“I think best, yes.”

The pot went on the stove, the heat finally thawing the cold room. Earnestine tilted her head back and closed her eyes. It was so seductive: she could fall asleep here or better still on one of the rude beds. She snapped awake – there was too much to do.

Merryweather was in front of her, kneeling before her, and for a moment she thought…. but he had cotton wool and a bottle.

“Antiseptic,” he said. “You’ve been…”

Earnestine nodded.

“It’ll sting.”

“I’m not a baby.”

He dabbed around her forehead, gently, but even so there was a shock. She kept her lip straight and it must have been the fumes from the antiseptic that caused her vision to blur. The man was thorough, wiping her left side carefully and checking her hairline.

“There,” he said, when he’d finished.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll check it later, just to be sure.”

“Didn’t one of you say that the school was attacked?”

Merryweather looked to her right; Earnestine realised that he and Georgina had exchanged a look.

“I’m afraid we found the school… everyone had been killed.”

“It was awful,” said Georgina.

“I’m sure,” Earnestine said, without looking round: “Everyone?”

“Except Gina,” Merryweather replied pointing behind Earnestine, “yourself and Charlotte, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You were lucky.”

“We can’t stay here.”

“No.”

Georgina interrupted: “But, I thought we’d prepared this as the base camp for the others.”

“Don’t whine.” Earnestine glanced back: “Sit up straight.”

“The plan didn’t include being chased about the mountains by half the Austro–Hungarian army,” Merryweather added.

“You exaggerate. We are outnumbered though. What ‘others’?”

“Caruthers and Mac, my colleagues.”

“Officers?”

“We’re mountaineers looking at possible climbs in the area.”

Earnestine raised her eyebrow: that was nonsense.

“And we thought we’d have a shufti at certain goings on with the Austro–Hungarians.”

“You were right too.”

“What do you know?”

Earnestine didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know much, so she changed the conversation: “Georgina, have you finished that?”

“Not yet,” Georgina said.

The coffee pot sighed and then began hissing angrily.

“Hurry up, will you.”

“There are dots and things.”

“Umlauts.”

“Nearly there.”

Earnestine scalded the roof of her mouth with the coffee, but she kept drinking such was the wonderful warming effect.

Coffee – jolly bohemian really.

Georgina finally finished and Earnestine handed the original to Captain Merryweather. While he was reading, Earnestine checked Georgina’s copy over, the umlauts and accents were heavy, but diligently present. She hid it away in her shoulder bag.

“I can make some of it out, it sounds serious,” Merryweather said. “Lacks details. An attack on the British, I’m sure. What else did you discover?”

“Not much,” Earnestine finally admitted. “A lot of areas in the castle were out of bounds.”

“When did that ever stop you?” Georgina said.

“Gina!”

She was going to have to take that girl to one side because clearly a good talking to was long overdue. It was self–evident that spending a lot of time with this man – officer or no officer, he was still a man – and alone together too, had clearly had a debilitating effect on the poor girl.

“There’s also this,” Earnestine said, taking out the small envelope that she’d filled with the strange chemical and handing it to Merryweather. “Careful!”

He examined the contents, picking up a few of the yellowish–grey granules to inspect them more closely. He sniffed them, felt the substance in his fingertips and finally, gingerly, he tasted it.

“What is it?” he asked finally.

“I don’t know, but they had crates of the material and were filling canisters with nozzles to load it onto their airships.”

Georgina pushed closer. “Let me see?”

“Gina, please, you’re not going to know.”

“It’s silver iodide,” Georgina said, and, when they looked at her as if she was mad, she added: “It’s used in making daguerreotypes, the natural philosophy of making automatic pictures.”

Earnestine realised that Georgina had been spending too much time in museums.

“It’s as we feared,” Merryweather said as he considered the information much as he weighed the sample in his hand. “They must plan to fly their airships up and down the country photographing. They’ll know everything about us: our defences, deployments, railway lines, everything… they’ll know more about us than we do.”

“For photography, they’d mix the silver iodide with egg white or some fixing agent on the paper,” Georgina said. “They wouldn’t have it in canisters.”

“Perhaps it’s a new process,” speculated Merryweather.

“How much silver iodide was there?” Georgina asked.

“Canisters,” Earnestine made a shape in front of her with her hands about a yard long and perhaps a foot in diameter. “I’d say five by five in a crate, twenty five, times at least three dozen crates that I saw. There was a variety of designs to the canisters.”

“That would be enough silver iodide to supply all the photographic experts in the whole of Great Britain for ten years.”

“Gina, you must be mistaken,” Earnestine said.

Georgina shook her head.

“Then something else?” Merryweather wondered. He sprinkled the chemical back into the envelope and brushed his hands absently on his trousers to remove any residue. “The letter talks about military manoeuvres in London?”

“You can read German?” Georgina asked.

“A little,” said Merryweather. He shook his head. “It suggests that they are amassing an army in London. They have regiments already there and the last divisions will be en route soon.”

“With all respect, that seems impossible,” Earnestine said.

“They could move whole regiments in those Zeppelins,” Georgina suggested. “They’re huge.”

“It’s mostly gas, hydrogen, for buoyancy,” Merryweather said. “According to our reports, there are cabins in the gondola underneath, and the actual body of the airship is hollow; there are softer balloons for the hydrogen inside, so you can store things and the crew live there, but most of the space is taken up with balloons and fuel in the form of what’s called ‘blugas’ for the engines.”

“And there’s the weight,” Earnestine added.

“Yes, you couldn’t move an army by air.”

Earnestine grimaced: “I agree, but they were very confident, particularly that Graf Gustav Zala – a nasty foreign piece of work.”

Merryweather stowed the original letter and the packet of silver iodide away, and took out a map. He brought it round to show Earnestine, pointing out Innsbruck and Geneva. He traced the rail lines back towards the college and then on into France.

“They’ll expect us all to go that route,” Earnestine said, thinking aloud. “If I go this way, Vienna, then I can catch the much faster Orient Express.”

“Deeper into the Germanic countries.”

“A risk I’ll have to take.”

“And our route?”

“Our?”

“Georgina and myself.”

“I think not: I would have to travel alone and a woman travelling alone is… and Georgina would need protection as well.”

“I hardly think that I’m much of a threat.”

Earnestine gave him one of her tight smiles: “Georgina and I will take the train, you will take the other letter and find another route.”

“Ness, it would be better to have a few of the officers with us,” said Georgina.

“Gina! I’ve spoken.”

“Perhaps if we stayed together,” Merryweather suggested. “I could post this letter to Caruthers and McKendry, with instructions, and that way our forces will increase.”

“Very well.”

And that, thankfully, was that.

Miss Georgina

Vienna was a gorgeous city by all accounts. Georgina had been asleep in the carriage by the time they arrived and she’d seen nothing of it. She was so sore when they climbed out: her limbs ached, everywhere, from walking, climbing, falling and running, and then sleeping awkwardly. She wanted a hot bath and then some hot Cadbury’s cocoa essence, preferably with a dash of rum. And sweets.

The smells around the station were mouth–watering: stalls with pretzels, chestnuts and…

“Come along, Gina!”

Clearly, her sister never ate and probably survived by drinking the blood of virgins.

“What are you sniggering about, Gina? Honestly.”

Merryweather had gone ahead to the postal service and to organise their tickets. He’d also nipped into the telegraph office to contact Caruthers and McKendry. In other words, he’d done everything that her big sister had wanted. Georgina pictured them together: Merryweather kneeling in front of Earnestine back in the mountain bothy, touching and caressing her face with antiseptic, agreeing with her every word and forgetting that Georgina even existed. Not that Georgina minded: what was he to her, after all; they’d only just met and never actually been introduced properly and it was so unfair.

“Don’t sniff!”

“Sorry Ness.”

“Use your handkerchief.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t whine, you’re such a baby – ah, there he is now!”

The Orient Express was an elegant triumph of the railways with its blue livery and its embellished gold coat of arms of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons–Lits. Fine ladies and smart gentlemen walked along the platform looking for their particular coach. Uniformed porters weaved their way through the throng as they expertly wheeled fancy luggage, including their own hastily bought belongings, to and fro. In contrast to all this splendour, the three of them looked bedraggled, tired and hardly the right sort. Conversations and shouts in many languages filled the air pierced by a periodic shrill whistle. The steam engines themselves were like sleeping dragons awakening.

Captain Merryweather arrived and took Earnestine’s arm to guide her through the maelstrom. Georgina was left to hurry behind. Smoke hissed from the engines across the platform as they passed.

“I managed to book a cabin,” Merryweather explained.

“
A
cabin?” Earnestine stressed the indefinite article.

“Yes, in the last coach.”

Earnestine looked at the tickets: “I see.”

When they reached the last sleeping coach before the baggage car, Merryweather swung the door open and helped them both on board. The Captain had to squeeze past Georgina to reach Earnestine, who had found the right cabin first.

Earnestine looked the facilities up and down, turned around and looked them up and down again. Georgina was still stuck in the corridor unable to see what her elder sister was double checking. People pushed past, a porter, some ladies and a man with his wife.

“There are four bunks,” Merryweather pointed out.

“I’m sure Georgina and I will find it adequate.”

“I was thinking…”

Earnestine pointedly raised an eyebrow in his direction. She was a tease; that was it: she’d got him eating out of her hand, attending to her hand and foot, rubbing her face with ointment – which had not hurt that cold harridan – and just generally ignoring Georgina.

“Wouldn’t it be safer if Arthur…” Georgina paused deciding what to say: “I mean Captain Merryweather is here to protect us.”

“Protect us!? We are two young ladies travelling alone in a foreign country. We need protection from his sort… no offence.”

“None taken,” Merryweather said.

“What will people say?”

“It is an emergency,” Georgina said.

“How will people know it’s an emergency? Will you go and announce to everyone that we are being pursued by hostile forces?”

“I didn’t think that–”

“We are travelling incognito, which is all the more reason to observe proper decorum.”

“Yes, but–”

“We will sleep here and I’m sure the Captain has slept in worse places than somewhere else on the train.”

“I’m sure there’s a suitable easy chair in the restaurant carriage that’ll do as a billet,” said Merryweather.

“There, see,” said Earnestine, “do you see, Gina?”

“Yes, but–”

“I specifically told you not to go on an adventure.”

“It wasn’t an adventure.”

“What do you call running out from school and tagging along with various army types? I mean who are they? What regiment do they come from? Have there been proper introductions?”

“It wasn’t a bally adventure.”

“Georgina! I will thank you not to use such language!”

“It’s not a swear word.”