“Indeed. How did you find this place? You couldn’t have gotten any clues from Dr. Kavanagh’s laboratory. It was already burning when you arrived.”
At first I did not understand why Slade would converse so civilly with Stieber when he wanted to lunge at the man’s throat. Then I realized that he wanted to keep Stieber talking, to delay the violence that Stieber surely meant to do us, and give himself time to think of a way to escape.
“I consulted some members of the Royal Society in London.” Stieber smiled, smug and condescending: he’d seen through Slade’s ploy but he couldn’t resist the chance to show off his cleverness. “Dr. Kavanagh has many enemies among them. When I told them that I was an Austrian police official and Dr. Kavanagh was wanted for a murder in Vienna, they were glad to furnish me with information about his family. I then traveled to Ireland. Imagine my chagrin when his mother and father informed me that you-and your wife-had already been there.” Stieber brimmed with sly humor. “Congratulations on your marriage.”
“Many thanks,” Slade said evenly.
“Sir William and Lady Kavanagh were under the impression that you work for the British government,” Stieber continued. “I corrected their mistake. I told them that you were a mercenary hired by the Russians to kill their son. I said that I could save him if they told me where he was. They were more than eager to cooperate.”
I was horrified that he’d tricked the Kavanaghs. I felt anger flare in Slade, but all he said was, “You’re too late. Kavanagh is gone.”
“I know.” Stieber’s eyes narrowed with hostility, as if he blamed Slade and me for Kavanagh’s departure. “Where is his invention?”
“He took it with him,” Slade said.
I had gathered that Stieber was a man of rare intelligence and perception; now I watched him review the news about Dr. Kavanagh, combine it with facts already in his possession, and swiftly grasp the situation. “Kavanagh intends to deploy his invention.”
“Bull’s-eye,” Slade said, pointing at Stieber.
For the first time I saw Stieber confounded. He turned away, attempting to hide the fact that he’d suffered a devastating blow. For once he appeared fully human.
Slade hurried to take advantage of Stieber’s weakness. “Kavanagh is going to demonstrate his weapon in public. It will be seen by hundreds of people. It won’t be a secret anymore. And he’s sure to be caught. Too bad for Russia.”
I’d not thought of how Kavanagh’s actions would affect Stieber. Now I realized that Kavanagh had put himself beyond the grasp of Stieber and the Tsar. But that was small consolation.
Stieber faced us. He’d regained his smoothest, hardest, most imperious countenance, but the blood showed through his pale complexion. A vein pulsed at his temple; the sinews in his neck tensed like cords of steel. His rage was frightening, and Slade and I were captive scapegoats.
“Where did Kavanagh go?” Stieber demanded.
“He refused to tell us,” Slade said, “but he went not long ago. Maybe you can catch up with him, if you leave at once.”
I prayed that his attempt to send Stieber away would work, but Stieber glared, his rage magnified by contempt. “Do you think I’m so stupid? That I would let you go? After hunting you for so long? After you and your woman have caused me so much trouble?” His laugh flared his nostrils. “Dr. Kavanagh has evidently decided to let you live because he wants you to tell his story in case he can’t.” His intuition amazed me yet again. “But I won’t repeat his mistake.”
He gestured at the soldiers. The ugly one moved closer to the cage, his gun leveled at Slade’s chest. The other aimed his weapon at me. Stieber said, “Tell me where Kavanagh went.”
“I already told you, we don’t know.” Slade’s voice was steady, but I knew his thoughts were racing as fast as my own. Staring at the pistol trained on me, I wondered if all my life’s labors, all my striving toward publication, fame, and love, would soon end with a single gunshot. Would my remains never come to light? Would no one ever know what had become of me?
“I don’t believe you.” Stieber shouted, “Tell me!”
“All right, I do know,” Slade said in a startling about-face. “But you’ll have to torture the information out of me. Wouldn’t you like to finish what you started in Bedlam?”
He wanted Stieber to open the cage, I deduced; he wanted to lure Stieber within fighting reach.
“It would be my pleasure,” Stieber said. “You have sixty seconds to tell me where Kavanagh went. If you don’t, then my comrade will begin firing bullets into your wife. You will watch her die slowly and painfully. Then we’ll do the same to you.”
He began counting in a measured, ominous cadence. I was mute, paralyzed by terror. That Slade and I would die together was little comfort.
“Go ahead. Kill us if you like.” Slade’s brazenness didn’t hide his desperation. “But you’ll be making a fatal mistake. You need us to find Kavanagh.”
Stieber stopped counting. He regarded Slade with sudden, disappointed comprehension. “You really don’t know where Kavanagh is. In that case, you’re just wasting my time. You and your wife have outlived your usefulness.”
“You’re wrong,” Slade hurried to say. “Haven’t you noticed that we’ve always been one step ahead of you, one step closer to Kavanagh? Let us out, and we’ll help you catch him before he demonstrates his invention.”
Stieber laughed, a short burst of anger and hatred. “How? When you don’t have any more notion as to his whereabouts than I do?” He ordered, “Shoot the woman.”
The soldier cocked the pistol. Slade jumped between me and the gun and shouted, “No!” I looked around to see the other soldier take aim at my back. Slade wrapped me in his arms and held me against him as we stumbled about the cage, like dancers trapped in a shooting gallery. Now that all his ploys had failed, I tried desperately to think of a way to save us.
Our situation was akin to one I’d encountered while writing novels. I would reach an impasse where I’d created problems with the plot that I couldn’t resolve. I’d learned that the only solution was to relinquish logic and conscious rumination and let my mind float free. I had also learned to attain this state under circumstances not conducive to rational thought. I’d begun writing Jane Eyre in rented quarters while my father lay recuperating from delicate, painful eye surgery and I had a toothache. I had finished it at the parsonage while Branwell raved drunkenly. Those distractions had barely impinged on me. Now I closed my eyes. The sounds of Stieber’s threats and Slade’s protests faded. My mind spun backward through memories of the house in Whitechapel and the laboratory in Tonbridge. They swam around an image of Niall Kavanagh’s face. Time seemed to stop, my fate suspended.
Sometimes the solution to my problem strikes me like a stingray harpooning a whale. It did now, with such speed that I couldn’t reconstruct the line of intuition that snapped my eyes open and my mind back to the present. I blurted, “Mr. Stieber! What does Niall Kavanagh look like?”
Stieber glanced at me in surprise. I felt Slade inhale a sharp breath. Confusion spread across Stieber’s gaze. Slade laughed softly as he exhaled. He knew that I had found the coin with which to buy our lives.
“Describe Dr. Kavanagh,” Slade said.
Stieber glared instead of replying.
“You can’t, can you?” Slade said. “Because you don’t know what he looks like. You’ve never laid eyes on him. Or his invention.”
It was true; I could tell from the frustrated rage in Stieber’s eyes, the compression of his mouth. The fearful, suspicious, unbalanced Kavanagh had completely managed to evade Stieber.
“You couldn’t pick him out of a crowd,” Slade mocked Stieber.
“No matter,” Stieber said. “You’ve seen Kavanagh. You will describe him and his invention for me before you die.”
“Certainly. Niall Kavanagh is about forty years old, not very tall, with spectacles. His invention is a bomb.” Slade said, “Of course there are many men who fit his description. And the bomb is small enough to hide in a box.”
Stieber was silent. He regained his machine-like aspect, cold and calculating. His men stood immobile, their fingers on the triggers while he weighed his need to find Kavanagh against the likelihood that Slade and I would foil him. I knew he longed to kill us as punishment for Slade’s trickery and betrayal of the Tsar. All the air seemed to
