For the first time in all the years he’d known him, Del saw Rafe Carstairs’s hand shake.
Rafe lifted the letter, held it closer to his face, staring…
“It’s the seal.” Voice firming, Rafe leaned forward and turned the letter, held it so the seal, largely intact, was on a level with the others’ eyes. “He’s used his own seal. Bloody Ferrar finally made a mistake, and James- youthful-sharp-eyes-and-even-sharper-wits James-caught it.”
Gareth reached out and took the letter. He was the most familiar with Ferrar’s seal; he’d been the one to go through the man’s desk. He studied the imprint closely, then looked up and met Rafe’s eyes. Nodded. “It’s his.” The suppressed excitement coming off both of them was palpable.
Del asked, “Could he say someone had stolen the seal and used it to implicate him? One of us, for instance?”
A slow smile spread across Gareth’s face. He looked at Del. “That won’t wash. It’s a seal ring, and it never leaves Ferrar’s pinky. In fact, short of him losing the finger, it can’t. All the clerks and secretaries at Government House know that-he makes quite a show of his lineage and its accoutrements. The whole office knows about his seal ring-and there’s not another like it in all of India.”
“Could it have been duplicated?” Logan asked.
Gareth handed him the letter. “See what you think. And anyway, why would anyone bother?”
Examining the imprint, Logan grunted. “I suppose that’s why people use seals, but you’re right-this has curlicues, swirls, and they look like they’re cut to different depths. It wouldn’t be easy to duplicate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rafe said. “What matters is that
Del frowned. “What? Beyond being the most effective way for us to get this back to England.”
Rafe checked their surroundings, then leaned in, forearms on the table. He spoke soft, low, quickly. “He told us to make copies, and then separate and head home. What do you think Ferrar’s going to think-and do-once he learns we’ve done that, as of course he will? You said it yourself-he knows we’re investigating him. Suddenly, without warning-worse, immediately after James’s death at the hands of the Black Cobra-we up stakes and resign, something we’ve been thinking of, but no one else knows that. And, to cap it off, we all head home by
Logan had caught his enthusiam. “He’ll think we’ve found something that incriminates him.”
“And he’ll come after us, and by that very action prove the validity of our evidence.” Del nodded. “You’re right.” He looked at the others, met each gaze. “Gentlemen, thanks to James, we have our proof. Thanks to Devil Cynster and Wolverstone, we have a plan and know what we have to do. Thanks to Hastings, we have the freedom to do as we wish. I vote we follow the plan, carry out our last orders, and bring the Black Cobra to justice.”
While Del had been speaking, Rafe had recharged their glasses. They each claimed theirs.
“To success,” Del said, raising his glass.
“To justice,” Gareth offered, putting his glass alongside.
“To James MacFarlane’s memory.” Logan raised his glass to the other two.
They all looked at Rafe.
Who raised his glass to theirs. “To beheading the Black Cobra.”
They clinked, then drained their glasses.
Setting them down with a snap, they rose and left the bar.
They met in the back room of the Red Turkey Cock, a smoke-filled tavern down a minor side street in one of the seedier native quarters of Bombay.
The tavern’s back room was a small square chamber with no window, the only entrance the doorway behind the scarred bar through which they’d entered. Logan, the last to arrive, let a bamboo screen rattle down to the floor behind him, a sufficient impediment to interested eyes. With Gulah, a massive ex-sepoy, manning the bar, and the otherwise flimsy walls reinforced by countless boxes and crates stacked against them, they weren’t too worried about interested ears.
“I don’t think I was followed.” Logan sounded disappointed as he slipped onto the last of the four rickety chairs set about a square wooden table.
“I don’t think I was either,” Gareth said. “But in this district, four anglos like us will be noticed and remembered-the Black Cobra will hear about our meeting without a doubt.”
“Ferrar knows something’s up.” A grim smile curved Del’s lips. “He knows we’ve resigned, and isn’t swallowing the gossip that we’re all devastated because of what happened to James. He’s been asking questions about our plans for the future.”
“Perhaps he’d like to recruit us?” Rafe said. “Come to think of it, that’s a tack we never tried.”
“Because he’d never believe it. The man isn’t just a cold-blooded killer-”
“Torturer, maimer, fiend,” Rafe supplied.
“-he’s clever, and cunning, and a great deal too powerful. So”-Del looked at Gareth-“are we ready to move against him?”
Gareth reached down, lifted a woven basket from the floor beside his chair, and set it on the table. His chair squeaked as he reached into the basket and lifted out four wood-and-brass cylindrical scroll-holders. “As ordered. The subcontinent’s version of a diplomatic pouch.”
The scroll-holders were identical, each about ten inches long and a bit more than two inches in diameter. Formed from strips of rosewood clamped together by brass bands, their lids were secured by a complicated set of brass levers of varying length and thickness.
They each took a holder, fiddled. “How do you open them?” Logan asked.
“Watch.” Setting the basket back on the floor, Gareth picked up one holder and deftly moved the six levers, one after the other. “It has to be done in that order, or the metal teeth inside don’t disengage. Try it.”
They all practiced. Gareth insisted they worked at it until they could open and close the holders by touch alone. “You might need to at some point-who knows?”
Rafe reached across and took the holder Gareth held, compared it with the one he’d picked up. “They truly are identical.”
“I don’t think anyone could tell them apart.” Logan looked at Del, then Rafe. “So we have the holders. Now for what goes in them.”
From his pocket, Del drew the sets of instructions Wolverstone had sent. “Five packets.” He separated out one with
They all looked at the four letters. Rafe sighed. “Shuffle the four, I’ll select one, and we can open it and see what form of instructions we’re going to find when we open our own sets later.”
“Good idea.” Del shuffled the four packets, held them out. Rafe drew one and handed it to Logan.
Logan took it, opened it, scanned the sheets inside, then handed them on to Gareth. “Comprehensive, but not specific, of course. The route we should follow, but no dates, no specified modes of travel. He does specify which English port we’re supposed to head for-Brighton, in this instance. Apparently we’ll be met by two men, Dalziel’s ex-operatives, who will have our route through England and our ultimate destination, neither of which are included here.”
Del nodded as he received the sheets from Gareth. He scanned them, then handed them to Rafe, who exchanged them for four slim packets he’d pulled from his inside coat pocket. “The three copies and the original.” Rafe cast a cursory glance over the now-to-be-discarded set of instructions while Del and the other three carefully unfolded and compared the copies and the original.
Reaching the end of the instructions, Rafe looked up. “We should destroy this.”
Logan held out his hand. “I’ll burn it.” Rafe handed the folded sheets over.
Del and Gareth had lined up the four scroll-holders across the table. They laid one instructions packet and one letter before each holder, making sure the original letter with its incriminating seal was paired with the appropriately marked instructions.
“As per Wolverstone’s directions,” Del said, “I sent him word we were putting his plan into action. It went ten
