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A clatter and a cry of alarm rose from the kitchen.
“Oh bother,” Florence cursed. “Major is after the bacon again.”
Florence hiked up her skirts and made an energetic dash toward the kitchen, where Major, her beloved and thoroughly spoiled Jack Russell, was raising havoc.
Ellie tugged Constance up the stairs. They slipped into Ellie’s bedroom, which faced the front of the house, and pulled shut the door.
“He hasn’t come,” Constance concluded.
“It would appear not,” Ellie agreed, beginning to pace. “Perhaps we were unfair to Mr. Henbury. Maybe after giving that criminal my name, he resisted any further betrayal of my circumstances.”
“I rather doubt that,” Constance retorted dryly.
“Then why isn’t Jacobs here?” Ellie demanded.
She was answered by a burst of hysterical barking from below—the sound of a manic terrier demanding the opportunity to maul and destroy whatever lay on the far side of the front door.
Someone knocked.
By silent consensus, Ellie and Constance shot to the window and peered down at the front step.
A man stood there. He looked to be in his early thirties and was dressed in a well-made but unremarkable black suit. Ellie couldn’t see the details of his face from this angle—only a flash of pale skin and dark hair from under the brim of his bowler hat.
“Is that him?” Constance demanded in a whisper. “Your Mr. Jacobs?”
“I think we must assume that it is,” Ellie returned grimly.
Constance craned her head, trying to get a better look around the hat.
“He’s a bit dashing,” she commented.
“How on earth can you tell that from the top of his head?” Ellie shot back.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Major’s frantic barks were silenced as Florence presumably snatched the dog up in her arms. A moment later, Ellie heard the distinct creak of the front door opening.
She and Constance exchanged an alarmed look.
Ellie quickly weighed her options. She knew Jacobs was not averse to using violence to achieve his ends. Ellie refused to put her friend or her stepmother at risk.
There was an obvious solution to that problem. She might simply give Jacobs what he wanted.
The very thought of it was anathema. Hand the key to a potentially revolutionary archaeological discovery over to someone who walked on historical documents and threw people into doors?
She grasped for an alternative.
A train whistle drifted through the window, emanating from the nearby East London line. The sound was as familiar to her as the clatter of carriage wheels.
Ellie’s gaze shot to the books packed neatly onto her shelves.
She hurried over and unerringly pluckedOsgood’s English Rail and Steamer Timetablesfrom among its brethren. It took Ellie only a moment to find what she sought—the list of steamer departures for the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America.
Her finger stopped on a single tidy row of type, and her heart began to beat a little faster.
Could she possibly…?
She could, she realized, feeling a jolt of excitement and alarm. She very possibly could.
Ellie flipped to the local rail timetables at the rear of the book—and stopped, staring down at the lines.
