The Precarious Child Read online

precision. Verity squeaked a glance out the door before exiting silently. Mickey had disappeared as his sequence commanded and now the laudable ladies were once more at their tasks, but not without a few hairs out of place and nursing caps askew.

  Verity took up a pile of newly knitted socks from the table and began arranging them in a deep basket. Giving a quick glance around her, Verity hastily pulled from her pocket a small tin whistle to her lips. Though no discernable sound came out when she blew on it, Mickey soon appeared from a gap in the wall. The rat quickly scuttled to her foot and then went still.

  “Good boy,” she whispered to him, before replacing him back in her pocket.

  Passing the socks out to grateful veterans gave her an excuse to move in amongst the beds, remain useful, and keep an eye out for her prey. She spotted him easily enough, straight from the picture that Harrison had given her — a young man, red hair, his other leg a second-hand McTighe automaton device. He was pushing a broom around in a very sullen manner. Unlike those who had come of the street he looked less than impressed to be here. As Agent Thorne had insinuated, his investigations had forced him out of a very nice West End hotel and bought him here.

  Verity’s eyes fixed on his prosthetic leg. For the second time that day, she could hear a soft cacophony no one else was privy too. This time, however, the strange echoing tick in her ear seemed out of synchronisation with the workings of the leg. There was a strange syncopated pattern working against the anticipated rattle of the leg’s flex and bend.

  She’s never heard anything like that before. Verity knew Agent Thorne would want her to find him, alert him of Arthur Clayton, his alias, and his location, but that the longer she listened to the odd rhythm of Clayton’s leg, the more her skin tingled. Mechanical things turned her into quite the magpie; and if she really admitted to her namesake, Verity was curious.

  With Agent Thorne’s warning ringing in her ears alongside the odd syncopation of Clayton’s leg, Verity circled the room, watching and waiting. The tick-tock and the clatter of little gears did not leave her head as she watched the man. The longer she watched him, the more he exuded a nervous disposition often found in the streets of London. He kept pulling out his pocket watch and glancing at it.

  Verity had just finished fluffing one decorated soldier’s pillow when she heard the pattern shift in pitch. She looked across the room just in time to see Clayton walking out into the growing twilight.

  Luckily he wasn’t able to move terribly fast. Verity kept her distance discrete, even when Colin and Liam ran over to her, a sticky bag of gobstoppers still in the younger lad’s hand.

  Keeping an eye on the man hobbling up the street, she whispered, “Liam, come with me, Colin get back to the doss and let them know I’ve found the gent. I’ll send word on his location.”

  Colin’s reply was a nod, and then he disappeared into an alley. Liam dropped back, becoming another shadow among lengthening shadows, but far enough from Verity to be unnoticed. Close enough to lend a hand. Just in case.

  The chase was on, at it was. The man’s prosthetic kept him much slower than other prey, so Verity and Liam only needed to keep him in line of sight.

  Five streets over, he turned into an alley. For too quickly for either child’s liking. Verity ducked behind a flower seller while Liam stopped before a window, feigning interest in whatever was within. She peered around her cart, catching their mark looking up and down the street before rounding a corner and disappearing into a boarding house.

  Gesturing Liam over, she wrapped her arm around him. “Take a message to the dead drop—give Agent Thorne this address.”

  Liam stared up at her, his expression hard. “Why don’t we both do it?”

  “Don’t think I am silly enough to go in,” she replied smartly. “I won’t do any such thing, but we need to keep an eye on him. If he leaves for whatever reason, I’ll leave Mickey within sight so you can follow him to wherever we stop.” Verity turned Liam around. “Now hop to it.”

  For once he didn’t give her any lip, but scarpered off and melted into the growing darkness. It had been a long day, but Verity knew she might have to stay here awhile. She found a corner of the alley, where the shadows were darkest, and wedged herself in behind some abandoned crates from the nearby costermongers. She’d just got herself comfortable when a light appeared above her head. The crates seemed solid enough, so silently she crept up the tower of wood until she was on level with the window. She could just make out Arthur Clayton, but she almost fell when she caught a reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.

  Clayton was talking to another man, a man Verity knew.

  “Uncle Octavius,” she whispered.

  Her father’s best friend, who had been with them in Africa, Spain and even Egypt — standing there before Clayton, clearly as where she had last seen him as a child. Tall, brooding, with the long line of a scar on his left cheek. She’d been there when he got it.

  She’d also been there when her father had got the news that Uncle Octavius had been killed on the Nile.

  Yet now, there he was, in much better health than his dearly departed brother, Thomas.

  When she looked at her Uncle Octavius in the mirror, though, he was different. There was no smile. No mirth. He was cold. There was something else Verity noticed—the rattle of Clayton’s prosthetic leg. There was nothing peculiar about it now.

  Verity was about to ease back into her hiding place when Uncle Octavius and Clayton switched places in what she could only assume was a spirited conversation. When she saw her lost relative, the rat-tat-tat she originally heard from Clayton was now centred around him.

  Prosthetic legs were wonderful devices that could contain armaments, maps, or cavities used to smuggle items you might not want to certain government agencies to find in your possession. Whoever this red-headed one-legged man was, he must be some kind of courier. Whatever he’d had in his leg was now in her uncle’s possession.

  She watched her uncle gesture sharply at where Clayton stood, more words that sounded like distant shouts. She could just make out Clayton pointing at Uncle Octavius, then it grew still again. He then limped around him and left through the doorway. Verity gave the drainpipe close to her a tug to test its surety. Then she wrapped her fingers around it and leaned forward to risk a wider view.

  Uncle Octavius’ attention was at the door. He pulled what appeared to be a call for a butler, but the man that appeared look far too menacing for such a refined position. Her eyes grew wide as she watch Uncle Octavius produce from a small table what she recognized from the streets as a garrotte. He handed it to the imposing man, nodded, and watched him leave. Octavius then went to the mirror, straightened his tie, and then retired deeper into the boarding house.

  The off balance rattle now filled her ears. She felt it as clearly as her own heartbeat. It rose up through the house, to the top storey. Her eyes fixed on the spot. She swallowed hard, gripped hard the drainpipe, and made up her mind.

  Boarding houses were easier to break into since there was always a lot of comings and goings. No one would react to an odd rattling from the drainpipes outside on occasion which they did as she worked her way up to the next ledge. The clockwork curiosity seemingly passed on to a thought-dead uncle now took precedence over Agent Thorne’s original charge.

  Hugging the ledge as closely as she could, Verity pulled herself up to the darkened window. Thankfully, the housekeeper had tended to the windows well as she gave its frame a slow tug. The pane slid easily, and now she was inside the boarding house. The odd ticking was easy to trace as she crept quietly from darkened room, through a brightly lit corridor, up another flight of stairs, to another room in the far corner of the building.

  She leaned into the door and held her breath. Uncle Octavius, apparently, had stepped out for the night.

  Quick as a flash, she’d whisked out her lock-picks and soon found herself in the room where the syncopated rat-tat-tat was so clear it made the hair on the back of her neck s
tand. The room, on quick examination was as bare and desolate as one could imagine in a boarding house. Why was her uncle here? How was her uncle alive? Her questions coupled with the steady noise made it difficult to concentrate.

  It also made it difficult to hear the scrape of another lock pick at the door. All the warning Verity had was the sound of the cylinder tumbling disengaging. There was no wardrobe to hide in. The bed so low to the floor she couldn’t swiftly stuff herself under it.

  And that was how she found herself in the here and now, hanging precariously on the ledge of a dead uncle’s rented apartment. However her arms were weakening, and she was terrified if she inched her feet out of the toe-hold she had, then the arms would give way entirely.

  She heard the intruders moving around upstairs, and imagined that whoever was looking for Uncle Octavius and the device would not be happy to see her. The ticking was deep in her head, and it made everything more difficult.

  Either way she was going to end up on the cobblestones, now or later. Her mind raced through the possible things she had in her pocket. But again, one hand down meant less ability to hold on and that didn’t seem like an option.

  Above she heard a shout, furniture being thrown about, a pop that sounded awfully like a gunshot, and then something like a scream. Her imagination