Lessons From Underground Read online

  “As we agreed,” Miss Cai said to Mr. Scant. “I will not be carried like a sack of potatoes.”

  Mr. Scant nodded, kneeling down so that she could climb onto his back.

  I went ahead with Miss Cai’s sticks, helping everyone get the injured safely down the basement steps and back up into the public house. The fire was even worse when we reached the pub, with most of the floor ablaze, but Ellie pulled down a curtain and used it to dampen the flames long enough us to cross. A bottle at the bar exploded when we passed, but there was no time to stop. We all made a dash for the broken window, using the bench and table beneath it as steps before jumping out to freedom.

  As I handed Miss Cai her walking sticks, Ellie pointed to me and said, “You’re bleeding.”

  “I am?” I raised a hand, and Ellie guided it gently to the left side of my neck. I winced.

  “Let me,” she said. A sudden sharp pain followed, like a bee sting, and then Ellie held up a small shard of glass. I reached instinctively for my pocket handkerchief, but of course I was still in my fencing garb, so I didn’t have one. Mr. Scant gave me his instead, and I pressed it to the wound. The cut ached, dully, but it was nothing beside the wounds some of the men had suffered.

  “You see what they did?” said Miss Cai. “Their targets were all from your British Empire. Britain, Canada, Egypt—British sovereignty. If anybody dies, this could be made to look like a foreign nation attacking Britain.”

  “Nobody’s going to die,” Mr. Scant said, moving to help Dr. Mikolaitis wrap a cloth tight around the Egyptian representative’s leg. Mr. Jackdaw stumbled toward me, looking crestfallen.

  “Made a real fool of me.” He was holding the side of his thigh, where the fabric around his improvised bandage was all wet.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Cut through the flesh on the side of my leg. A trifling matter compared with the chaps who got hit dead on. I wish I knew how that scoundrel found out about this meeting.”

  “Don’t underestimate the Society,” said Dr. Mikolaitis.

  “And what are you doing here, Doctor?” Mr. Jackdaw said.

  “I know how they think, that’s all. I was worried.”

  “Dr. Mikolaitis isn’t a traitor,” I said. “He hates the Society.”

  “I know,” Mr. Jackdaw said. “But I’m the one who will have to put all this in a report. From hospital, it would seem. Damn it all.”

  This was the first time I had seen Mr. Jackdaw look genuinely upset. He’d been so careful with his emotions until now.

  It took a long time to bring order to the situation, calling the fire service, the ambulances, the embassies and more. There was a lot of fretting over protocol as the representatives took their leave, and a lot of anger too. Mr. Jackdaw grimly joked that he was lucky he got shot or his supervisors would have been a lot angrier with him. Miss Cai and Ellie excused themselves but said they would be in touch.

  “Sorry we dragged you into this,” Miss Cai said.

  Eventually we took our leave as well, and Dr. Mikolaitis led us to his coach on the Thames Embankment. Although he took the coach to my house every time he tutored me, I hadn’t ridden in it since the time Mr. Scant and I had broken its roof by jumping onto it from the top of the National Portrait Gallery. Dr. Mikolaitis took up the driver’s seat, behind two fine-looking chestnut horses, while I stepped into the carriage with Mr. Scant. Soon we were in motion, one of the few horse-drawn carriages on Whitehall amongst the motorcars.

  “What a disaster,” I said. “I’d been worrying about Aurelian. I suppose I was right to worry.”

  Mr. Scant ignored me. Instead, he drew something out of his jacket pocket. The photograph Aurelian had given him. The picture’s subject looked to be a large white building, or at least a color that looked white in a photograph. A simple, unornamented structure with a tree outside that didn’t resemble any in England. A small figure stood outside it, too small for me to be able to make out any detail.

  “What’s in the photograph?” I said in a soft voice.

  Mr. Scant gave no reply, just went on staring at the picture as the horses slowly closed the distance between us and home.

  VII

  Out of Sorts

  ack home, Mr. Scant began to behave very strangely. He seemed preoccupied the next day, both in his valet duties and during our training session after school. He barely watched my knife-throwing practice and had no advice to give me. Then he asked me to study the Bow Street Runners even though I’d already written him a report on them.

  “Shouldn’t I study about Africa?” I asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Isn’t that where Aurelian said the diamond came from? And that there’s a ‘buyer from the Union of South Africa.’ I don’t know where that is. I don’t know anything about Africa, except for ancient Egypt.”

  “I see, I see,” rumbled Mr. Scant. “I don’t think I would be much help to you in that regard.”

  I frowned. This was the first time I’d ever seen Mr. Scant look as though he hadn’t already thought of everything I was going to say. “Are you all right, Mr. Scant? What was in that photograph Aurelian showed you?”

  “I have no wish to speak of it,” Mr. Scant said, and turned away.

  That evening, Dr. Mikolaitis came to see Mr. Scant, meeting him in the Ice House—the underground ice store that Mr. Scant had uncovered near my home and made into his lair. When Dr. Mikolaitis emerged, he appeared frustrated.

  “Acting strange, isn’t he?” I said to him, as I walked with him toward his little coach.

  “Yes. Very distracted. It’s something to do with his past. That much I learned.”

  “Aurelian showed him a photograph,” I said. “It was of a building, I think—someone in front of it too—but Mr. Scant wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “ ‘Aurelian,’ you say?” Dr. Mikolaitis almost laughed. “Why do you still call Heck ‘Mr. Scant’ and me ‘Dr. Mikolaitis,’ while the Binns boy is ‘Aurelian’?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. “He’s too old for me to call him ‘Master Binns,’ and ‘Mr. Binns’ is his father. Maybe I got mixed up because Elspeth Gaunt asked me to call her Ellie. And of course I can’t call you or Mr. Scant by your given names. That would be too strange.”

  “Too strange, is it?” said Dr. Mikolaitis, with a look that made it clear he thought I was the strange one. “Tell me about this photograph. An old one?”

  “It looked old. Maybe from another land.”

  “Africa?” he said.

  “Er, maybe. What made you think so?”

  “Heck lived there in his youth. Spent time in the Cape Colony, which recently became part of the Union of South Africa. One of the only things I know about his past. That’s where he got the scars on his hands.”

  “Ah! I remember the girls talking about the scars once. Our maids Meg and Penny, I mean. But Mr. Scant told me he didn’t know anything about Africa.”

  Dr. Mikolaitis looked thoughtful. “Is that what he actually said?”

  “Well, I don’t think those were his words, exactly. He just said he couldn’t help me.”

  “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. Only that he will not speak of it.”

  We had reached Dr. Mikolaitis’s old coach, where he put the bit back into his horse’s mouth and then climbed up into the driver’s seat. It was a strange arrangement, a man driving his own coach about and leaving it wherever he chose to step down. But Dr. Mikolaitis was rather a strange man. “You will be needing a lift?” he asked.

  “Me? Where to?”

  “I thought you wanted to learn of Mr. Scant’s past. If he is not willing tell you, and I cannot help you, there’s only one man who’s known him longer than I have.”

  “Uncle Reggie,” I said. “Yes, please. I’d like to visit him.”

  Dr. Mikolaitis didn’t join me as I called on Mr. Scant’s brother. Rather, he left me at Uncle Reggie’s doorstep and told me to fetch him from the nea
rby pub when I was finished. Reginald Gaunt and his wife, Winifred, had moved to a townhouse in Tunbridge Wells to be closer to Mr. Scant, though their new home was a characteristically eccentric one. In the small front garden, two of those ugly garden gnomes from Germany watched me pass from beneath their bright red caps. Somehow, their blank eyes and broad grins reminded me of Mr. Jackdaw. I wondered how he was doing.

  I rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by the man Uncle Reggie had hired as his manservant, Mr. Twiggs. He was an elderly fellow, at least seventy, and a little slow but very friendly and good at his job. Though without Mrs. Twiggs, who did the cooking, he tended to forget what he was meant to be doing.

  “Who is it?” I heard Uncle Reggie call.

  “Come in, come in,” said Mr. Twiggs, so I wiped my shoes and stepped inside. Uncle Reggie didn’t care for indoor shoes, so everyone walked around his house in socks. Mr. Twiggs led me to the living room, announced me as “the young master,” and left it at that.

  “Ollie!” said Reginald. “What a delight! Oh, let me get you a slice of cake. We had cake today. You like cake, don’t you? What am I saying, everyone likes cake. I’ll get you cake.”

  “You just sit down,” came a voice from another room. “We’ll bring cake in with the tea.”

  “Hello, Uncle Reggie,” I said, then called to the other room, “Hello, Aunt Winnie! It’s me!”

  “I saw you from the window, dear!” came the reply. “Be out in a tick!”

  “Here, let me get those.” As usual, the Gaunts’ house was a mess of newspapers, books, an empty ink pot, and what looked like some sort of navigational compass on the sofa. Uncle Reggie gathered all of it up and carried it to a side table, shoving a lamp aside so that he could put it all down.

  “How are your injuries?” Poor Uncle Reggie had suffered a terrible beating the year before at the hands of Aurelian Binns’s men. He now had a purple bruise across his hairline that didn’t seem to fade, though otherwise he seemed to have recovered well.

  “I’m not as bad as I might be,” he replied. “So what can I do for you today? Has Heck done something dreadful again?”

  “Well, it’s about him, but he hasn’t really done anything. Before that, I should probably tell you we had a run-in with Aurelian. You know, Mr. Binns’s son.”

  “No!” Uncle Reggie’s eyes widened as he sat in his comfy chair. “What’s the little pustule done this time?”

  “He came to stop a meeting about an international police force. Whoops. I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that. Anyhow, some people got shot. In their legs, but still. It was a horrible thing.”

  “You were there during this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, are you both all right?”

  “They shot at Mr. Scant, but he got out of the way.”

  “Seems to happen to him a lot.”

  “Ellie was there too. She’s fine. She was looking out for me the whole time.”

  Uncle Reggie sighed. “Well, that’s a good thing, to be sure. Could be worse. Not a bad thing, overall. I do wish I’d hear this news from her, not from you. A father worries about his child. In my day it was unthinkable to go about like that unchaperoned. And right when I thought we could stop worrying about her, another Binns . . . I tell you, if I could ask God to shuffle one lineage right off of this mortal coil . . . Ah.”

  Aunt Winnie and Mrs. Twiggs had appeared. Aunt Winnie brought in all the cups and saucers, plus a plate of snacks, while tiny Mrs. Twiggs held a small tray with the teapot on it. Uncle Reggie lowered his voice and gave a little nod toward his wife. “Best keep mum about this, don’t want her worrying overmuch.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. Aunt Winnie didn’t notice, as she was keeping a close eye on Mrs. Twiggs and encouraging her with some kind words. It was as though Mrs. Twiggs was the one receiving assistance rather than the other way around, but there was something very sweet about the scene. At their feet, looking up hopefully at the cake, were the two cats—plump, haughty Lady Hortensia and a sleek gray creature who must have been Baroness von Cuddlepaws.

  “There now,” Aunt Winnie said as she set the trays down and took the teapot from Mrs. Twiggs, who bowed a little and shuffled away. “Nice to see you, Oliver.”

  “Nice to see you too.”

  “How are your mother and father?”

  “They’re doing well, thank you.” I would have answered the same if they were lost at sea—it was just the sort of thing you said to be polite.

  “That’s nice. Oh, Reginald, you could have tidied up a bit more. I keep telling him the place is a pigsty, but he won’t listen to me.”

  I smiled and said nothing. I didn’t know Aunt Winnie nearly so well as I knew Uncle Reggie, and although I’d visited many times during Uncle Reggie’s recuperation, I always remembered my first encounter with Aunt Winnie. She had spent most of the time shrieking at me, Uncle Reggie, and Mr. Scant as we tried to escape from Mr. Binns and his men. Now, of course, we pretended none of that had never happened.

  “The lad was just telling me about some problem Heck’s been having.”

  “Is that so?” Aunt Winnie said, pulling the little table closer so she could pour the tea.

  “Not exactly a problem,” I said. “He’s just been acting strangely since Aure—I mean, since he saw this old photograph. I think it’s from Africa, but he won’t tell me anything about it. I don’t think he’s told anybody about that time. But I’m a little worried, and you’ve known him longer than anyone else, Uncle Reggie, so I thought you’d be able to tell me something.”

  Uncle Reggie looked at me contemplatively for a moment, then sat back with a heavy breath, crossing his arms. “Africa, hmm? Now that was a long time ago.”

  “Were you there too?”

  “No. I would have liked to have gone, but Heck went alone. For research.”

  “He wasn’t fighting there?”

  “Fighting? Oh! You mean with the Boers? No, no, it was before that business. This happened back when we were only a few years older than you are now. My dear brother was maybe 19 or 20 when he went. Heck trained with the Royal Navy afterwards, yes, but he’d left for university before the first Boer war began. That would have been in . . . the very end of 1880, it started.”

  “I don’t really know about Africa,” I said. “Just what I read about Mr. Churchill going to war.”

  Uncle Reggie seemed to find that very funny. Even Aunt Winnie smiled a little as she handed me a slice of sponge cake with a cherry on the top. “Heck’s not a madman like that Churchill.”

  “Now, now,” said Aunt Winnie.

  Uncle Reggie leaned forward. “Your Aunt Winifred used to be quite a fan of Mr. Churchill. Thought he was most dashing, didn’t you?”

  “He’s a very brave man,” said Aunt Winnie. “I’ll thank you not to tease me. He was rather handsome before he went bald.”

  “He only cares about himself and people who are just like him,” Uncle Reggie said. “And it’s not that he’s brave. He’s just addicted to war.”

  “Then he’ll do well as First Lord of the Admiralty, won’t he?” Aunt Winnie said, taking a sip of her tea with a haughtiness that matched Lady Hortensia’s. “No need to be jealous of his accomplishments.”

  “Hmmph.” Uncle Reggie began loading his tea with his usual copious amount of sugar. “To return to the point, when Heck left England, it wasn’t to fight, and there wasn’t a war on. Back then, we were dreaming of being scientists. His field and mine were different, of course. England was a good place for chemists, so I was right at home here. Oh, it was a good time, I can tell you. It’s grand, being young. Can’t recommend growing up in the slightest. But if you want to know why Heck went all the way to the south of Africa, I’d better start at the beginning. Do you need more cake? Well, you’re welcome to more if you want it. Now, where shall I begin?”

  VIII

  Uncle Reggie’s Story

  nce Heck and I decided to become scientists, our poor dear m
other, who I wish I could go back and thank properly, did all she could to find us chances to study. Some of Father’s old navy friends were very helpful too. My field was chemistry, and there was plenty of research for me to do here in England. I did apprenticeships with various Royal Society members. I tell you, if I could relive those times, I would be a happy man! A happy man indeed.

  Heck’s subject was optics. He was studying to become an engineer, but it was light that fascinated him most. The ways we can bend it and refract it. Luminescence and phosphorescence. You know. Bit of a mystery to me, I have to admit. And you see, back then, and it must have been 1871, or 1872 at a stretch, they had just started digging up those diamonds they’re so famous for over in the Cape Colony. Part of the Union of South Africa, as they call it now. Not the big business it is today, when Heck set sail. Just the first rumors of unbelievable riches.

  I remember it well. We were sat down for dinner. Our mother, may she forgive me my sins, had made one of her wonderful roast beef dinners, and Heck just sits down and bold as you like, says, ‘I’m going to abroad to study diamonds.’

  ‘Study them in your pocket, you mean.’ That’s what I said, and then we got in trouble because Heck threw a roasted parsnip at me.

  In fact, Heck didn’t care about the riches—and it’s not as though a man there could pick a diamond up in the mud. As soon as the first ones were found, hundreds of people tried getting their hands on them, buying property rights here and claiming family rights there. They called the place New Rush because so many people went, trying to get rich. And some did find their fortunes. But that’s not what Heck wanted, and besides, he was much too late for that. His big idea was, well, with so many diamonds being found, he could ask to research some of them, find out what they would do paired with photographic film or lenses or, I don’t know, Hertzian waves.

  Mother let him go with her blessings, of course. The only thing she asked was who was going to pay for his passage and living costs.

  ‘Captain Pritchard’s helping me get sponsored by the Royal Naval Academy,’ said Heck. ‘He says it’s a done deal. I have to enlist in the navy afterwards and get through basic training, but I don’t have to do any more than that if I don’t want to.’