“A trap,” Lenox murmured. He turned to Cohen. “Do you have your revolver?”
Cohen patted his jacket pocket, where evidently he kept his weapon, the snub-nosed Webley that Dallington, a good shot, had selected for all of their investigators. “I do.”
“The constable and I shall go then, if you lend it to me. You must wait here with Mr. Leigh and Lady Jane, please.”
Jane put a hand on his arm. “Will it be safe?”
“Oh, quite safe,” said Lenox. He leaned across her toward the Society’s president, who was engaged with the fellow on his right. “Mr. Rowan, I wonder if you could tell me whether there is a less-traveled corridor with access to the upper courtyard.”
Rowan frowned. “The main staircase will not do? The porter may be able to guide you there by some other route. I’m afraid I do not know one. And I should warn you too that the toasts are about to begin.”
“I hope we shan’t miss them.”
A servant in a swallowtail coat met them at the door as they left. Lenox turned back, hesitating. Was it a ploy to leave Leigh alone—a double trap? But no: an attack inside of this room would be both treacherous and certain to fail.
The servant did know an alternative route to the upper courtyard. Leading them through the kitchens quite tranquilly and without any questions—perhaps these scientists were eccentric masters as a general rule—he brought them to a small half door.
“Through here, sir,” he said.
Lenox’s nerves were on edge. “Blackjack out, I think,” he said to the beefy constable behind him.
“Yes, sir.”
He pushed through the door silently. It was a small terrace that he came out upon, gleaming in the snowy moonlight, and in its center stood a tiny, very upright figure, hands behind his back, gazing up at the sky.
“Don’t look much,” murmured the constable.
Indeed, the man, as he rocked on his feet, came into clearer view, and it was obvious that he was well beyond seventy, perhaps even touching eighty. White hair curled around his temples, and he had little half-moon spectacles that sat delicately upon the tip of his nose. He wore a heavy coat and a thick wool scarf.
Lenox scanned the terrace. It was empty, and offered nowhere to hide except perhaps the small row of columns from which they themselves were emerging.
“How do you do, sir,” Lenox said in a sharp voice, stowing the pistol behind him.
The man turned without any appearance of undue concern and peered at Lenox and the constable. “Who are you, sir?”
“Who are you, sir?”
“I am a person desirous of speech with Mr. Gerald Leigh.”
“And I am a person desirous of knowing why you are desirous of such speech,” said Lenox, though he did just smile, to soften the edge of his words.
“Because I have his best interests at heart—and I cannot presume that everyone does.”
Lenox frowned. Was this man someone who knew about Anderson and Singh, or about Terence Fells? “You had better tell us what you mean,” he said. “I am accompanied by Constable Watkins, as you can see, and Inspector Frost may be fetched here very quickly. There have been attempts at violence upon Mr. Leigh, and if we find you have been involved in them it shall—”
“Violence!” The old man looked alarmed. “Only an intellectual violence, sir. Violence!”
Lenox was nonplussed too, in his turn. “Intellectual violence?” he said.
The old gentleman glanced from Lenox to the constable. “I heard Mr. Leigh’s speech this evening. I am a fellow of the Society, sirs. One of the few amateurs remaining in that company. I wanted to tell Mr. Leigh that I believe there to be unscrupulous parties who may be willing to take advantage of his work on the microbe, without the due correspondence learned men owe each other.”
Lenox, confused, said, “I’m sorry—can you be clearer?”
“Theft, sir. Mr. Leigh indicated several promising courses of inquiry this evening that may be taken advantage of by our very own British scientists, like it or not, should he fail to take steps to protect his intellectual property. I am also a solicitor, you see, sir—though a botanist in my free time, which has increased since my semiretirement.”
Suddenly it all became clear. Lenox breathed a sigh of relief. A solicitor. “I see,” he said, “and may I ask your name?”
“Joseph Bartram, sir. What is yours?”
“Charles Lenox.” The detective passed the old man a card. “I’m sorry to say that Leigh is extremely busy at the moment. If you call upon me this week, or write me, I give you my word I will convey your concerns to him.”
The old man looked at the card. “The utmost secrecy is required in matters of scientific endeavor, when the—”
“I understand. Believe me.”
Bartram looked him in the eye and then nodded. “Very well. Thank you.”
The amateur took his leave through the main stairwell, Lenox watching him go with a powerful sense of reprieve. A false alarm. He would be happy when Leigh had returned to Paris the next evening; the Farthings frightened him.
Lenox was as good as his word to Rowan, returning in time to catch the toasts to Leigh. At the end of them, the honoree rose and gave the audience a well-placed joke, and thanked them. Thus the evening was concluded.
Rowan urged them to come to his club for a whisky. “It’s only two streets away,” he said, a last effort after his offer had already been declined several times.
Leigh smiled ruefully. “I still have that faint buzzing in the base of my skull that I get after speaking to a large group of people. Anyhow it is late, and I am pleased with the evening’s work.”
“Oh—so am I,” said Rowan gamely, though he looked disappointed.
“And there is always lunch tomorrow,” Leigh added.
“Yes, true,” said Rowan, acquiescing. “Still—it did go well, I think.”
Lenox walked downstairs with Leigh and Lady Jane, their coats waiting for them in the arms of a porter. He saw Leigh and Cohen into a cab—the fourth or fifth at the cabstand, chosen at random, a usual precaution—and then, with an unburdened feeling, found his own carriage, ready to return home with Lady Jane.
It was late, and she laid her head against his arm as they rode through London, shutting her eyes. For most of the journey he let her rest, but then, when they were close to Hampden Lane, he said, “Tell me, did you know Toto was going to have another child when we were in Sussex?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And is that—”
“Yes,” she said, and after a beat squeezed his arm, as if hoping that he wouldn’t pull away.
He put his hand over hers. Trying to think what he could say, at last he came up with a commonplace. “Sophia will be five this year!”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?”
“I wonder what she shall be like when she’s our age.”
“Better at spreading jam on toast than she is now, I expect.”
He thought for a moment. “It will be 1917.”
She smiled, eyes still closed. “Imagine that.”
“And we shall be very old.”
“Or gone.”
“No, not gone,” he said decisively. “But very old. And she will have her own family. Probably with uncountable numbers of grandsons and granddaughters.”
“That’s true,” said Lady Jane, struck by the thought. “I wonder where they’ll live. Heaven preserve us from a military husband. I cannot imagine having to wait for them to post home on holiday from Calcutta.”
“No, she’ll marry someone a street or two away.”
Lady Jane laughed. “Now you are daydreaming.”
“And you and I will still live in Hampden Lane.”
“Will we?”
“Oh, yes. We shall be there in 1917. And I will love you and Sophia just as much on that day as I do on this one.”
“Will you?”
He nodded. “Yes. Possibly more.”
They were turning onto the very lane under discussion. She opened her eyes, and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s a nice thing to know.”
“I think so.”
“And if we aren’t here?” she asked, looking into his eyes.
He smiled. “Then I shall love you wherever we happen to be.”
“All right,” she said. “Good.”