PENDERGAST SHUFFLED ALONG, CHAINED hand and foot, as the three guards escorted him back to his cell. Their ascent had been briefly interrupted by a surge of noise and activity erupting from below, but when it grew fainter, the guards resumed forcing him up the stairs heading back to the iron room.
“You’re an arse-dragging cove, aren’t you?” one of the guards said, giving Pendergast a shove with his rifle. “Here, get a wiggle on.”
Pendergast stumbled and fell to his knees, then laboriously got to his feet.
“For Jayzus sake—”
They were now opposite the door to the third-floor room Pendergast had barged into on his way down. Just at that moment, the cuffs fell almost magically from Pendergast’s hands, and with that he whirled around, snatching a revolver from one guard and, continuing his pivot, shooting him and the man beside him, ending up facing the third man, barrel planted in his ear. Taken utterly by surprise, the guard froze.
“Live or die?” Pendergast asked quietly.
The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Live.”
“Drop the gun.”
The man did so.
“Unlock these leg irons.”
With shaking hands, the guard knelt and did as instructed. Pendergast kicked off the irons, picked up a candle and matches from a nearby table, then rummaged through the pockets of the two dead guards until he found a penknife. Keeping an eye on the remaining guard, he used the knife to split the candle lengthwise, then—carving away excess wax—he extracted the wick. He slid the wick under the doorsill of the room he’d entered earlier, wedging it in place with the penknife. Then he lit the end of the wick, which would act as a fuse to the chamber, now full of explosive gas: a result of the torchlight stopcocks he’d managed to twist open in the moments after he broke into the room on the way to see Leng. He watched long enough to ensure it was burning steadily, the wick inching down toward the doorsill. He hoped they could escape the mansion before the improvised bomb went off—it all depended on how quickly, or slowly, that candlewick fuse burned.
Then he rose, keeping the gun trained on the guard. “Walk ahead of me. Unlock the door to our room.”