cotton twine. He stuck this fuse into the tube, then unpacked four jars of his culture, positioned them closely around the container, and secured them with a buckled leather strap. He proudly surveyed his handiwork. “There!”
Slade and I stared, aghast.
“When the bomb is detonated, the jars will shatter,” Kavanagh explained. “The blast will disperse the powdered culture. The wind will spread it far, far abroad.”
“It won’t work,” Slade said, but he looked as shaken as I was.
“It will,” Kavanagh said, all preening confidence. “The world will see.”
“What are you talking about?” Deepening horror pervaded Slade’s voice. “How will the world see?”
“At my demonstration,” Kavanagh said.
“You mean to set off the bomb?” I said, shocked beyond shock.
“Yes, in a public place where many people are gathered, where many can witness its effects firsthand.” Kavanagh rubbed his hands together and smiled with gleeful anticipation. “It will be the biggest experiment ever conducted in the history of science!”
“But the bomb will kill hundreds of innocent people,” I said, even though I knew Kavanagh wouldn’t care. “Hundreds more will become infected with the disease and die.”
“Thousands, most likely.” Kavanagh was nonchalant. “That’s an inevitable consequence of scientific research-experimental subjects must be sacrificed.”
There was that chilling word again, which had made me shiver when I’d read it in his journal. Slade said, “You’ll die, too. If the bomb doesn’t blow up in your face, the disease will kill you. You’re not immune to it, even though you think you’re a god.”
“That’s all right. I’m willing to be a martyr.” The hubris suddenly drained from Kavanagh; he turned sorrowful and resigned. “I haven’t long to live, anyway. This morning I woke up feeling more unwell than usual.” He drew a deep, wheezing breath, then coughed so hard that his face reddened and he held his ribs. “I must have inhaled some of the culture.” He shrugged. “I’m as good as dead right now.”
Slade and I looked at each other with fresh consternation. Kavanagh might have infected us!
“Don’t worry,” Kavanagh said. “You haven’t been exposed to the culture, and the disease doesn’t spread from person to person. You’ll live to tell the world everything I’ve told you, after I’m gone.”
This, then, was the role he intended Slade and me to fill: he needed his story publicized, his genius revealed, and we were to be his spokesmen.
Kavanagh tenderly placed the bomb on the cart. “I’ll say goodbye now.” His burning eyes had the farsighted look of a soldier going to the battlefield. He grasped the cart’s handles.
“Wait,” Slade protested. “You can’t leave us in this cage. How are we going to tell anyone anything while we’re locked up? You have to let us out!”
“Oh. I almost forgot. Here.” Kavanagh tossed a long, slender object into the cage, at our feet. It was a metal file. “Use that to saw through the bars. By the time you get out, my demonstration will have taken place already.”
“When?” Slade demanded. “Where?”
“Within two or three days,” Kavanagh said. “That’s how much time I have before I’m too ill to do it. As to where-” His parting glance at us was mischievous and chilling. “You’ll know soon enough.”
Then he shuffled away, pushing the cart laden with death.
37
“Dr. Kavanagh!” I called. “Please come back!”
“Come back, damn you!” Slade shouted, rattling the bars of the cage.
Kavanagh did not heed our pleas. After their echoes faded, all we heard was the draft sighing through the dungeon.
We looked at each other, and in spite of our dismay, my heart lifted. Even though Slade and I were trapped in this dire predicament, we were together. Our marriage had multiplied our individual powers. If anyone could escape this prison, Slade and I would.
Slade smiled; he’d read my thoughts. “It may be all over for Niall Kavanagh, but it isn’t for us.”
“Not yet, at any rate.” I gave Slade my hairpin.
He set to work on the lock, but the mechanism was stiff; the hairpin broke. So did the others I gave him. Slade took up the file that Kavanagh had left us. He sawed a few strokes on a bar of the cage, then on the shank of the lock. “The lock seems to be made of a softer alloy, and there’s only one piece we need to cut in order to get out.”
He filed two scratches on opposite sides of the shank, indicating where we should cut. We took turns filing. It was slow, tedious work. The file was dull, and soon became duller. After some three hours we’d barely managed to nick the lock. We developed sore, running blisters on our fingers. The oil in the lamp burned down; the flame went out. Slade and I continued working in pitch darkness. We blindly passed the file to each other. My ears rang with the rasp of metal against metal. The lock seemed to grow thicker as I labored. We must have continued all day, or night, or around the clock-I knew not which. We grew hungry, thirsty, and tired. After an eternity, we stopped to rest.
“If you have any new ideas about how to free ourselves, let’s hear them,” Slade said.
I started to say I did not, when a faint noise stopped me. “Did you hear that?”
We listened to the quiet sound of a door creaking open, somewhere above us, then soft, stealthy footsteps descending. “Dr. Kavanagh is coming back!” I whispered.
“It’s not him,” Slade said. “That’s not his gait. And there are several people coming.”
I was so weary, my mind so disoriented by the darkness, that it took me a moment to think who they might be. “Lord Eastbourne and his men?”
Then I heard low, masculine voices with a foreign accent. Slade tensed beside me as a current of dread ran through both of us. He said, “I would prefer Lord Eastbourne.”
We stood up in the cage and waited helplessly. A yellow glare burst like a sun in the darkness. All I could see was that brilliant, radiating spot. Slade and I raised our hands to shield our eyes as it drew nearer. Squinting, I perceived three figures approaching. One man held the lantern from which the light emanated. Another walked by his side. Each held a pistol aimed at Slade and me. The third man followed. My eyes adjusted as the two men in the lead stopped at the cage. I recognized their blond hair, their military bearing, the cold, classical handsomeness of one and the puffy, unwholesome face of the other. They moved apart, and the third man came to stand between them. Dressed in black, he seemed made of the same darkness as the shadows in the dungeon. His silver hair, his pale, hooded eyes, and his gold-rimmed spectacles gleamed with a light of their own.
It was Wilhelm Stieber and his two Prussian soldiers.
Terror stabbed deep into my heart, which pounded so hard that my ears filled with the sound of my blood roaring. My bowels turned to water; my lungs contracted; I felt weak with cold, sickening despair. All our running to keep one step ahead of Stieber had been futile. He had caught up with us at the worst possible time.
A smile of gratification curved his cruel, sensual mouth. “Ivan Zubov,” he said to Slade. “But of course that is not your real name. The time for pretenses is long past. John Slade, what a pleasure to meet you again.”
I sensed the animosity Stieber bore toward Slade, a malicious presence that consumed the air, as threatening as the pistols that his men aimed at us. Slade stood firm, his shoulders squared, his head high. His own hatred for Stieber radiated like a hot, fierce energy from him toward his foe. The space around the two men crackled, as if two bolts of lightning had met.
“Wilhelm Stieber,” Slade said. “I could say that it’s a pleasure to see you, but that would be a lie.”
Stieber peered at me. “Ah, Miss Charlotte Bronte. How convenient to find you with Mr. Slade. You have spared me the trouble of tracking you down.” Evil cheer crinkled his smooth skin as he noticed the file lying on the floor of the cage and the lock with the two tiny notches we’d worked so long to make. “Did Dr. Kavanagh imprison you in this cage?”
“Yes,” Slade said.
Stieber chuckled. “He did me a favor.”
