A Study in Silks

his future—and if that meant playing Harriman’s games tonight, so be it. And there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to achieve his ends. As an ambassador, Bancroft had sat down to dinner with men who had slaughtered villages for sport and bartered their virgin daughters for a strip of barren land. He had always been willing to face the unthinkable if that meant getting the right result.

Bancroft stopped, having reached the end of the civilized portion of his journey. And I am about to enter the underworld. The mouth of the alley was a narrow crevasse between two buildings off Bond Street—one the first in a row of shops, the other the offices of an insurance broker. Behind the respectable facades was a seemingly uneventful string of small warehouses and other utilitarian structures. Those needing access could enter by a large gate kept locked at night by a watchman, or this small gap between the buildings.

Bancroft folded his umbrella, which was too wide to fit through the entrance. Then he felt for the hilt of his gun, listening to the street noise and trying to pick out stealthy footfalls or the whisper of drawn blades. After another heartbeat of procrastination, he angled sideways and slid between the buildings, careful not to brush against the sooty bricks.

After a dozen steps, the alley widened until it was almost a small street on its own. Unlike most of London, it was eerily empty. And, it was very dark. Confident that he was out of sight of the main road now, he pulled a brass tube from his coat pocket and twisted it, then waited as chemicals mixed and a faint green glow began to radiate from the glass window in the side of the tube. When it was bright enough to see, he began walking again, scanning every shadow and niche. He could hear distant hammering, a man and a woman hurling heated words, and far away, someone squeezing out a sad tune on a concertina. But those noises were distant. In the alley itself, his only company was the sound of his own feet. Grace walked here, along these very same cobbles. The thought unnerved him more than he cared to admit. Was she frightened?

The warehouse he wanted was on the right. The front was guarded by a large automaton—he could just make out the hulking shadow—so his instructions were to circle the warehouse and knock on the rear window. He rounded the corner, picking his way carefully through weeds and refuse, and then rapped on the dirty glass with the ebony handle of his umbrella.

A smear of light flared, as if someone had moved a light closer to the glass. For a brief instant, he saw the pale outline of a face, and then it disappeared again. In another moment, a lock rattled and a narrow door opened a few feet away.

“You’re punctual,” said Harriman as Bancroft entered. The man had stripped off his jacket and rolled up the fine white sleeves of his shirt. The silver buttons of his waistcoat glinted in the wavering light of the old oil lamp he held.

“I see no point in delay.” Bancroft looked around. A mop and bucket leaned against the wall close to where they stood. The rest of the warehouse was a cavernous jumble of packing crates, a few workbenches, and inky shadows. His gaze traveled back to the bucket. “I smell blood.”

“I was just cleaning it up,” Harriman said with a shrug, hooking the lamp over a nail in the raw planks of the wall. “Unfortunately, the wood is old and thirsty and the stain is impossible to get out of the grain. I’ll scatter some sawdust from the crates to hide it.”

An uneasy tingle crept up Bancroft’s spine, making him scan the warehouse a second time. Suddenly, everything looked a good deal more sinister, especially Harriman. “Whose blood is that?”

“Big Han was taking care of some details. I told him to keep it in the underground, but he let things get messy.” Harriman picked up a rag and wiped his hands. “Then I was left with the unfortunate task of mopping up.”

Big Han was the mountainous foreman Harriman had hired to look after the craftsmen who did the actual work. Bancroft had met him but once, and that was enough to last a lifetime.

“Is details your word for loose ends?” Bancroft asked. Perhaps he had underestimated Keating’s weakling cousin.

“Loose ends,” Harriman laughed uneasily. “If you like. We couldn’t risk them talking. I debated, you know, wondering how far I really had to go. There aren’t that many Chinamen in London to speak up if one of their own went missing. Still fewer officials who would care if they did. That’s why we used them.”

Used. Not are using. Bancroft didn’t need a slide rule to figure out which way Harriman’s decision had gone. The twelve workers had died. It wasn’t just Grace anymore, but thirteen souls who had perished to buy his gold. A wash of dizzy nausea swamped Bancroft, but he let it pass through him. He’d had years of practice at this sort of thing. “All the workers were unknowns? There won’t be family pounding on the door?”

“No. The Chinese here are a transient group. Sailors—here one day and gone the next. Many of these were fresh off the boat. No one to recognize their handiwork, even if there was something in the replica pieces to recognize.”

“But surely master goldsmiths cannot be that common amid a population of sailors?”

“I’m not sure how Big Han found them. He has contacts that stretch back to Canton. But in any event, we only had two masters. The rest were ’prentices and laborers plucked off the ships.”

Bancroft’s mind raced, looking for weaknesses in the plan. “All the workers are gone? All twelve?”

“As Han put it, he fed them to Mother Tyburn tonight. In pieces.” Harriman threw the rag onto a pile of debris stacked against the wall. “Come. I will show you.”

“Is this something I really need to see?” Bancroft asked warily.

“If you want your gold,” Harriman answered. “If I had to mop up blood all night, the least you can do is take a look at the pit I’ve been suffering with for all these months.”

Bancroft bristled. Harriman had been the workhorse while he had been the instigator of the plan. That had been the deal, and the man had no grounds for resentment. But all too often, that wasn’t how things worked— especially now that Bancroft was having difficulties with Harriman’s powerful cousin. It was far more expedient to appease Harriman than to try to put him in his place, so Bancroft made himself nod. “If you wish.”

Harriman gave a derisive laugh. “Good of you, Your Lordship.”

He kicked aside a pile of sawdust, exposing an iron ring in the floor at least three hand spans across. It clattered as he gripped it and then, with a grunt, he heaved a trapdoor open. There was a light on below, because a faint yellow wash illuminated a crude flight of wooden steps. Bancroft caught a dank waft of sewer stench. It stinks as badly as the rest of this.

Harriman watched him closely. “You have no taste for what lies below the surface?”

“Are you trying to be metaphorical, Harriman?” Bancroft growled. “Leave it to poets.”

The man had the gall to smirk. “I’ll go first.”

Harriman’s footsteps echoed on the stairs. Bancroft followed, one hand on his pistol, the other holding a handkerchief to his nose against the acrid smell. “Does this lead right to the banks of an underground sewer?”

“Not quite. That’s some ways off.”

“I hear water.”

Harriman reached the bottom and turned. “We’re near the Tyburn down here, or that’s what the locals say.”

Now Bancroft could see the basement clearly. It seemed to wander far beyond the confines of the warehouse—less part of the warehouse than a cavern under the street. There were proper walls on two sides of the space, but ahead of the stairs and to the right, the space seemed to wander on forever. It looked as if the street might have been raised at some point, covering over older levels, or perhaps man had simply added to nature’s plan for underground caves. The ceiling was rough stone, higher in some places than others. “I had no idea this was down here.”

“London is full of surprises.”

And some of them are nasty. Bancroft reached the bottom of the stairs and froze. Now he could see what Harriman had referred to as the pit. It occupied the space directly under the warehouse. Here the ceiling was high, showing the wooden supports of the building above, and lighting was in place. Gas lines ran along the wall and supplied a small generator. A series of workbenches made a loose square. A forge, equipment for electroplating, a kiln, and a plethora of other tools neatly lined the work area and hung from the