With a faint oath, he forced the thought of Isabelle from his mind. What was wrong with him anyway? Time and time again, he found himself thinking of the silly girl, someone he had given no thought to whatsoever for years!
It was enough to put him right off enjoying his brandy and cigar, and with irritation he extinguished the latter and left the table to go up to the top floor of the club, where the rooms reserved for the Master’s Circle were located.
The top floor was called the Founder’s Suite, and had once been the residence of the founder of the club who had himself been an Elemental Master. It had been vacant for years; no one had the temerity to consider taking over the space that had once housed so formidable a personality. But a good half the space was taken up by a Meeting Room and a Working Room, and when David had brought the Master’s Circle to his club, it had been with the idea in mind of using these rooms.
That Founding Member in question had been an Air Master, and the light blues and whites with which the area was decorated had not fared well over the years. By the time he got permission to use the rooms, the whites had yellowed and the blues gone to muddy blue-gray. The net effect was of ingrained grime. At his own expense, David had arranged for it all to be redone in Turkey red, ocher, and other colors he found comfortable. No one seemed to object, though he suspected one or two of the others found it amusing that the place was clearly a haven for a Fire Master. But he consoled himself with the knowledge that the colors were practical, unlike lighter tones that honestly would not survive a winter of soot and pea soupers.
There should be no work tonight, so he went straight to the Meeting Room. Deliberately, with the vague idea that King Arthur’s Round Table was a good idea to establish equality among peers, there was no “head” or “foot” to the square table in the middle of the room, and no difference in the quite comfortable chairs. As he had requested, the gaslights had already been lit; he brought in a newspaper and settled down to read it until the rest arrived.
It would not be a full meeting tonight by any stretch of the imagination, so as the others trickled in, they all clustered at the end of the table where he was. When they were all assembled, he rang for the servant, who brought the decanters of port and brandy and glasses, and left. As was their custom, they served themselves; the brandy had been supplied by David from his father’s private stock, the port by Atherton Crey. Both liquors were over a hundred years old. The pouring of the drink signaled the start of business.
“So, Nigel,” David said, cradling his snifter in his left hand to warm the contents and release the aroma. “Give us the full report on that anarchist incident.”
Nigel, Lord Lytton, was an Earth Master, and as such acutely uncomfortable in London, where so much of the soil was covered over, poisoned, or both. He always looked half-choked whenever he came into town, and today was no exception. His long, solemn face looked even longer than usual, and was certainly several shades paler than it ought to be. “If you don’t mind, I’ll begin this where I think it ought to start, and not with that rogue Talent, Connor O’Brian,” he said, passing his hand over his thinning, nondescript brown hair. “And that is with a little girl. Two of them actually, since they seem to be inseparable, but the one that concerns us is already a powerful medium, and she’s barely ten.”
David, who knew some of this already, merely nodded, but the others looked variously surprised or impressed, depending on their natures.
“There’s a lady and her husband who have a school for the Gifted children of expatriates mostly posted in India,” Nigel continued. “Not all the children are Gifted, of course, but this is where they’re sent if their parents know of the place. Harton School. Isabelle and Frederick Harton; she met him in India, where they picked up some more Gifted servants from among the natives there. My wife knows the woman; old school friend of hers that went off to India once her school days were over.”
The name “Isabelle” had struck David Alderscroft with the force of a blow, and to hear that the woman was a school friend of Nigel’s wife only made it worse. To sit there and listen to a description of a woman that he was more convinced with every word was “his” Isabelle took all his strength of will. It took a great deal of effort to wrench himself out of his numb shock to listen, even with half an ear, as Nigel explained how the little girls had been lured to the building in question and shut in, while an Earth Wight specially conjured and bound to an existing spirit that already haunted the place there was loosed on them. He wasn’t the least interested in two little girls, no matter what their plight had been—
He managed to get his attention back on the subject as Nigel described capturing the creature, then interrogating it as to who had brought it there, then banishing it. It was a strong Elemental; it had taken Nigel and three friends to do the job.
“It didn’t know the Master’s real name, of course, but what it knew led us to O’Brian who was, by that time, dead,” Nigel concluded. “The problem with all of this is that those little girls,
“Unless what?” asked Crey.
“Unless he—or someone using him—wanted to be rid of that specific little girl.” Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose, probably to relieve a headache. “That she is already a powerful medium could make her dangerous to someone.”
“Who?” demanded old Scathwaite—old in years and experience, but keen in mind and as agile in body as some of David’s contemporaries.
“I would say, ask that of those in psychical circles,” David said slowly, slowly getting control back over his runaway emotions. “Especially those who claim mediumistic powers and have none. They have the most to lose, and are the most threatened by a real medium. And if you wanted to hide what you were in order to prevent being caught by your own kind, what better than to hide behind an Elemental Master?”
“By heaven, David, you may be right!” Nigel sounded surprised and relieved at the same time. “It’s the psychical ones who knew about the girl in the first place. All right, I’ll go back to Mrs.Harton and suggest that if she hasn’t checked her friends and acquaintances for someone willing to use anyone and anything to further his own ambitions, she ought to. Then see if any of
“The simplest solution is often the right one,” David replied, and shrugged. “Of course the simplest solution is usually something not very palatable.”
He had managed, by dint of great effort, to shove his emotional reactions off to the side, and cool masculine logic had reasserted itself.
“The point is,
“And Bea has made sure that the children and school are protected from all sorts,” Nigel put in eagerly—no doubt thinking with relief that now he would be able to go back to his country estate and escape the miasma of London again. “I think everything has probably been done now.”
Nods all around the table. David smiled. “Good!” he said. “Now, I would like to discuss some of our tentative plans for becoming more involved with those in political office who are at the moment unaware we even exist…”
***
Nan had decided that if heaven was anything like Highleigh Park, she was going to have to put a lot more effort into being good so she could end up there.
There had been some initial reserve on the part of the servants about a horde of strange children running loose; not that Nan blamed them, no, not at all. They all got rooms in the area that held the nursery, which also held the rooms for the servants of visiting guests.
That was not at all bad; the rooms were plain and they had to share, but the rooms at the school were also fairly plain and they had to share. The littlest children, too young for lessons yet, got the best of it, Nan thought, because the nursery and schoolroom were both enormous, and the nursery was full of old, worn, but perfectly good toys from previous generations or left by visiting children. All the toys were new to the Harton School toddlers, of course, so they were very happy.
The first of the children to get into trouble was, predictably, Tommy, who seemed to gravitate toward trouble
