"Well?" he said.
"What do you know about Axel Bellmann?" she said.
"Hardly anything at all. He's a financier, and my client works for him. That's all I know."
"And you call yourself a detective?"
She spoke scornfully, but without malice, and bent to sort through some papers at her feet. Her hair fell forward again; impatiently she shook it out, and then looked up at him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. He felt the familiar wave of helpless love, followed by the equally familiar wave of angry resignation. How could this untidy, half-ignorant financial obsessive have such a power over him?
He sighed, and saw she was holding out a paper. He took it and read her clear swift handwriting:
"Axel Bellmann - born Sweden(?) 1835(?) - first came to prominence in Baltic timber trade - match factories in Goteborg, Stockholm, factory in Vilno closed down on government orders following fire in which thirty-five workers died - shipping interests: Anglo-Baltic Steam Navigation Company - mining, iron-founding - buys cheaply companies that are failing, closes them down, sells off their assets - first came to England 1865 - obscure scandal involving Mexican railways - disappeared - believed gaoled in Mexico, 1868-9 - next heard of in Russia with partner Arne Nordenfels in scheme again involving railways (?) - no trace of Nordenfels either before or after - Bellmann arrived in London 1873, apparently with limitless funds - papers gave him nickname The Steam King - promoted new companies, principally mining, chemicals - financial interests in steam power, railways, etc. - North Star? - unmarried - addresses: 47 Hyde Park Gate; Baltic House, Threadneedle Street."
Frederick handed back the paper. "He sounds a shifty sort of character. Why are you interested in him?"
"I've got a client who lost all her money in the Anglo-Baltic Shipping Company. It was my fault, Fred; it was awful. I advised her to invest in it, and a few months later it collapsed. There was no warning at all. . . I looked into it, and I think he did it deliberately. Just wiped it out. There must have been thousands of people who lost their money in that company. It was very cleverly done; you'd never suspect. . . But the more I look, the more I feel things aren't right. It's too vague to be sure about, but there's something nasty going on. This man Nordenfels. . ."
"His partner in Russia? The one there's no trace of?"
"Yes. I found out something today; I'll have to add it to that paper. Nordenfels was a designer of steam engines. He designed the engine of the Ingrid Linde - that was an Anglo-Baltic steamship which vanished on the way to Riga. It wasn't properly insured, and that was one of the things which ruined the company. But Nordenfels just vanished; there's no trace of him after Russia."
Frederick scratched his head and leant back stretching his legs out, careful to avoid Chaka.
"And why's there a question mark after 'North Star'?"
"Simply because I don't know what it is. That's why this seance of yours is so exciting. What did she say again?"
She took the paper from him and peered closely.
"'It isn't Hopkinson, but they're not to know'. . . And then she says 'The regulator'. This is amazing, Fred. This company - North Star - no one knows what it is or what it's for; certainly the papers don't. The only thing I've managed to find out is that it's somehow connected with a machine, or a process, or something anyway, that's called the Hopkinson Self-Regulator. . ."
"Steam engines have regulators," Frederick said. "And he's called the Steam King, is he, this Bellmann character?"
"He used to be. I think he had someone working for him, a journalist perhaps, who'd put pieces about him in the papers - not real news but short pieces to make him seem interesting and important; to make him seem like someone worth investing in. When he first came here, five or six years ago, and set up his first companies, that was what they used to call him. But they haven't used that name for some time now. And the stories they print are more like real news - not that there are many of them. He's hardly visible. But he's the richest man in Europe - and he's wicked, Fred. He destroys things. How many other people did as my client did and put their money into his company, only for him to ruin it deliberately? I'm going to fix him. I'm going to make him pay."
Her fists were clenched on her knees, and her eyes were blazing. The great dog growled softly at her side.
"But what about this spiritualism business?" Frederick said after a moment. "Is this medium - Mrs Budd - is she genuinely picking the stuff up out of the ether, or is she lying? I can't make it out."
"I don't know about her," said Sally. "But I knew some people at Cambridge - scientists - who were investigating it. There's something in it, I'm sure. She could be reading your client's mind, I suppose. He must have all the information at his fingertips."
"Possibly. . . Though he didn't know anything about this spark business. Or three hundred pounds. Seems a pitiful sum of money if we're talking about the richest man in Europe."
"It might not be money," said Sally.
"Weight? Is he fat, then?"
"Steam engines," she said.
"Ah. Pressure. Three hundred pounds per square inch. . . Impossible. Perhaps that's what this Self-Regulator does. Prevents the pressure from building to that level. But there are valves for that sort of thing. Interesting stuff, Lockhart. I had another client only yesterday - well, not really a client, Jim brought him home from the music-hall - conjuror chap. He's having visions or something - psychometry, he calls it - and he reckons he's seen a murder. I don't know what he thinks I can do about it. . ."
"H'mm." Sally seemed to be thinking of something else. "Are you going to take this seance business on?" she said.
"You mean, as a case? I have done already. I'm going to see Nellie Budd as soon as I've got the photograph developed, and see what she's got to say. Why?"
"Just don't get in my way."
He sat up angrily. "Well, I like that! I could say the same to you, you snooty frump, if I wasn't too polite. As it is, I'll hold my tongue. Don't get in my way indeed!"
She smiled. "All right. Pax." Then the smile faded, and she looked tired again. "But please, Fred, be careful. I must get that money back. And if you find out anything useful, I'd be grateful to hear about it."
"Let's work together. Why not?"
"No.We'll get more done separately. I mean it."
She wouldn't budge, Frederick knew; and after a few minutes he got up to leave. She saw him downstairs, with the huge, black dog padding ahead of them into the darkness. Frederick turned on the step and held out his hand and, after a second's hesitation, she took it.
"We'll share information," she said, "but that's all. Oh, by the way. . ."
"What?"
"I saw Jim this morning. You owe him half a guinea."
Chapter Six
LADY MARY
Frederick laughed.
"Well? What is it?" said Webster from the bench. It was the morning after the seance, and Frederick, having handed over half a guinea to a triumphant Jim, was developing the photograph of Nellie Budd.
"She's got four hands," said Frederick. "The light's good, too."
"Can't rely on it," said his uncle. "Stick to magnesium, that's my advice." He dried his hands and came to peer closely at the print Frederick was holding. "My word, she's up to a trick or two, isn't she?"
The medium was caught perfectly - one hand lifting up the edge of the table, while the other was pulling at a string or thread connected to the curtains. Jim, on the far side of her, was clutching what looked like a stuffed glove.
"Seems silly now," Frederick said. "But the one I was holding felt just like a hand at the time. Look at Jim's face. . ."
Jim's cheerful features were caught in an expression halfway between a respectful piety and the alarm of someone about to lose his trousers. Webster laughed.
"Worth your half-guinea, that," he said. "What are you going to do with this now you've got it? Go and put the old girl out of business?"
"Oh, no," said Frederick. "I liked her too much fo
r that. If the Streatham and District Spiritualist League are daft enough to fall for this, good luck to Nellie Budd, I say. I think I'll print a set and sell 'em. Call it 'Apprehension, or Jim and the Spirits'. No, I'll just use it as a calling-card when I go to see her."
Frederick had intended to go that same day, but at mid-morning something happened to put it off: Mackinnon arrived, wrapped in a long cloak and wide-brimmed hat to avoid being recognized, but attracting more attention as he slipped through the shop in this furtive rig than if he'd turned up with a regiment of cavalry.
Webster was busy in the studio and Jim was out, so Frederick saw him alone in the room behind the shop.
"I need your help," said Mackinnon urgently as soon as they were sitting down. "I've got a private engagement this evening, and I'd like you to be there. In case, you know, the man. . ."
"A private engagement?"
"A charity performance at Lady Harborough's. A hundred people or so. They pay their five guineas and it goes to a hospital fund. I give my services free, of course. With a nominal charge for expenses."
"Well, what d'you want me to do? I told you I wasn't in the protection business. If you want a bodyguard -"
"No, no, not a bodyguard. I'd feel safer with someone else to watch out for him - it's no more than that. If he tries to contact me, you could engage him in conversation. Distract him, d'ye see?"
"I don't even know what he looks like. You're being confoundedly vague about all this, Mr Mackinnon. You think he's pursuing you because he knows that you've seen a vision of him killing someone, but you don't know who and you don't know where and you don't know when, and you don't know what his name is, and you don't know--"
"I'm hiring you to find all that out," said Mackinnon. "If you can't do it I'd be obliged if you'd recommend another detective who can."
He looked austere and commanding, and a little ridiculous in his Bohemian cloak and hat. Frederick laughed.
"Very well," he said. "Since you put it like that, I'll do it. But I'm not bodyguarding you, mind. If this fellow tries to poke a sword through you, I shall whistle and look out of the window. I've had my fill of brawling."
He rubbed his nose, which had been broken during a fight six years before on a lonely wharf in Wapping - a fight he'd been lucky to survive.
Mackinnon said, "You'll come, then?"
"Yes. But you'll have to tell me what to do. D'you want me to act as your assistant on-stage, or what?"
Mackinnon's expression showed what he thought of that idea. Instead he produced an invitation card.
"Show this at the door, and pay your five guineas, and you can come in with the guests," he said. "Evening dress, naturally. Just . . . look around. Watch the others. Be where I can see you easily. I'll find a way of letting you know who he is - if he's there. I don't know if he's coming or not. And if you see him, find out who he is - well, you know what to do."
"Sounds easy enough," said Frederick. "There's only one flaw in it, which is that it'll be five of your guineas I hand over, not mine."
"Of course," said Mackinnon impatiently. "That's understood. Ye'll be there, then. I shall rely on you."
If you called at Burton Street and sat for a portrait, the photographer who'd take it, as likely as not, would be a dark, solidly built young man by the name of Charles Bertram, of whom Webster Garland thought very highly; he was imaginative and skilful, and his portraits caught a real air of life and movement. Charles Bertram had cause, as Sally had, to appreciate the casual Bohemian democracy of the Garlands, for his father was a baron and he was an Honourable; and he'd have been doomed to remain an aristocratic amateur if he hadn't met Webster. But in the company of artists and technicians, only ability mattered, and Charles Bertram had plenty of that. So he took his place in the establishment with Jim the stage-hand, Frederick the detective, Webster the genius and, occasionally, Sally the financial consultant.
He wasn't just training to be a working photographer, of course. Taking portraits at two shillings and sixpence a time was no great mark to aim at. He and Webster were working at something much more ambitious: nothing less than the capture of movement itself on a photographic plate. He'd put some of his own money into the business, and they were having a larger studio built in the yard behind the shop, ready for the time when their experiments demanded more space. In the meantime he helped around the shop and took his share of the odd jobs that arose including, this morning, fitting a new lens to the main studio camera.
Frederick was in the kitchen scribbling down his thoughts about Mackinnon, and Nellie Budd, and wondering if the two things did connect as Jim suspected, when Charles put his head around the door and said, "Fred?"
"Hello, Charlie," said Frederick. "Know anything about spiritualism?"
"Not a thing, I'm glad to say. Look, could you give me a hand with the new Voigtlander? I need someone to stand and. . ."
"Pleasure. And then you can do something for me," said Frederick, going with him into the cluttered, heavily draped room they used as a studio.
When Charles's task was finished, Frederick explained the job he had on hand that evening for Mackinnon.
"Sounds a slippery sort of blighter," said Charles. "I saw him myself a week or two ago - at the Britannia. Jim told me to go. Astonishing skill he's got. . . And he's being chased by someone, you say?"
"He says."
"It's Mephistopheles. Mackinnon's sold his soul, and the devil's coming to claim it."
"I wouldn't be at all surprised. But look, Charlie, you know all these people - Lord This, and the Countess of That - you couldn't come along, could you, and point 'em out? Give me a race meeting or an opium den and I know where I am, but the English upper classes are a closed book to me. You busy tonight?"
"No. I'd be glad to come. Think there'll be a rough house? Should I take a pistol?"
Frederick laughed. "You know the manners of your peers, dear boy," he said. "If that's the usual form at a charity function, you'd better come prepared. But if people start throwing things, I shall nip out smartish, and I've told Mackinnon so."
Lady Harborough's house in Berkeley Square was crowded when they arrived. They presented the invitation to a footman, paid their entrance money, and were shown into an overheated salon where gaslights and chandeliers blazed and glittered on the jewels of the women and the studded shirt-fronts of the men. Double doors opened into a ballroom where a small orchestra, playing discreet waltzes behind a stand of potted palms, was almost drowned by the bray of aristocratic voices.
Charles and Frederick stood by the entrance to the ballroom and took glasses of champagne from a waiter.
"Which is Lady Harborough?" said Frederick. "I suppose I ought to know who she is."
"The old trout with the lorgnette," said Charles. "Over there by the fireplace, talking to Lady Wytham. I wonder if her daughter's here. She's a stunner."
"Whose daughter?"
"Wytham's. That's him talking to Sir Ashley Hayward - the racing man."
"Ah, yes, I know Hayward. By sight, that is. I won a tenner on his horse Grandee last year. So that's Lord Wytham, is it? The Cabinet Minister?"
Lord Wytham was a tall, grey-haired man with a strangely nervous look; his eyes flicked this way and that, he chewed his lip, and from time to time he lifted a hand to his mouth and gnawed at a finger like a hungry dog.
Near Lady Harborough, still and silent, sat a girl who Charles told him was Lady Mary Wytham. A couple of young men were talking loudly in the group around her, and she smiled politely every so often, but for most of the time she sat with her eyes cast down and her hands folded in her lap. As Charles had said, she was beautiful - though Frederick thought, as he felt the breath catch in his throat at his first glimpse of her, that "beautiful" wasn't quite the word. The girl was astoundingly lovely, with a grace and shyness and delicate coral colouring that made him want to reach for his camera - except that nothing, surely, could catch the bloom on her cheeks or the nervous animal tension in the line of her
neck and shoulders.
Well, perhaps Webster could. Or Charles.
But it must be a strange family, he thought, for the father and daughter to share this controlled desperation. Lady Wytham, too, had a haunted air; she was handsome rather than beautiful like her daughter, but her eyes were dark and preoccupied in the same tragic way.
"Tell me about Wytham," he said to Charles.
"Well, now: seventh Earl, seat on the Scottish borders somewhere, President of the Board of Trade - at least he was, but I gather Disraeli's moved him out of the Cabinet. Lady Mary's his only child; don't know much about his wife's people. In fact, that's about all I do know. He's not the only politician here - look, there's Hartington as well. . ."
Charles mentioned half a dozen other names, any of which, Frederick supposed, could have belonged to Mackinnon's pursuer. But he found his eyes drawn back again and again to the slim, still figure of Lady Mary Wytham on the sofa by the fire in her white evening dress.
They had time for another glass of champagne, and then the main entertainment was announced. Through the double doors into the ballroom could be seen a wide curve of chairs, several deep, which had been laid out facing a little stage. A velvet curtain was hung across the back of it, and the front was lined with ferns and little palms.
The orchestra had gone, but a pianist was waiting by the instrument that stood below the stage. The audience took five minutes or so to settle themselves; Frederick made sure that he and Charles were sitting close enough to the stage for Mackinnon to see them clearly, and with a clear run to the door if they should need it. He explained this to Charles, who laughed.
"You're making it sound like one of Jim's yarns," he said. "We'll have Spring-Heeled Jack leaping in next, or Deadwood Dick holding us all up and demanding our money. What are you actually expecting?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Frederick. "Nor's Mackinnon, and that's half the problem. Look - here's our hostess."
Lady Harborough, assured by her staff that all the guests were ready, was making a short speech from the platform in which she described the valuable work her hospital fund was doing. It seemed to consist largely of rescuing unmarried mothers from poverty, and subjecting them to slavery instead, with the additional disadvantage of being preached at daily by evangelical clergymen.