Peril in Paris. Katherine Woodfine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ grinned to herself. Three or four years ago, even the idea of working for a living would have been impossible to imagine, never mind doing a job like this. She’d certainly come a long way from her old life of piano lessons and pretty frocks. Now she was a detective, a businesswoman, and a government secret agent. She was a girl who knew how to crack a safe and pick a lock and throw a punch; a girl who had been taught to shoot a pistol by legendary New York detective Ada Pickering. She had found a missing diamond, had recovered two priceless paintings by the famous artist Benedetto Casselli, and had even helped to foil a plot to assassinate the King. She had outwitted the notorious villain who called himself ‘the Baron’ and, in doing so, had saved London from disaster. Not too shabby for someone who had only just turned seventeen.

      It was strange now, to look back on the person she had been when Papa had died and she’d first been alone in London. Then the city had seemed like such a vast and lonely and frightening place. Now it felt familiar and friendly, full of places and people she knew. Most of all, of course, there were her friends – Joe and Billy, and all the other members of the Loyal Order of Lions, the organisation to which her parents had once belonged. The Order were sworn to work against the Baron’s sinister secret society, the Fraternitas Draconum, who had been responsible for the murder of both Sophie’s parents. Even though they were gone, keeping the society alive made her feel closer to them. Not that the society had needed to do very much lately – after all, they’d heard nothing of the Fraternitas since the Baron’s death, over a year ago. But just the same, Sophie was glad it was there. Being part of the Order felt almost like being part of a family. She was very grateful to have a circle of friends she knew she could count on, no matter what.

      But as she hopped down from the cab outside the Inns of Court, she acknowledged to herself that even with the support of her friends, life wasn’t always entirely straightforward. Despite the success of Taylor & Rose, there were still plenty of people who did not care for the idea of young ladies being detectives. And running the agency was jolly hard work, especially without her best friend and business partner at her side.

      Nothing seemed quite right without Lil. Certainly nothing was anywhere near as much fun.

      Almost as though he had read her thoughts, Joe leaned out of the cab window and asked: ‘Reckon you can find out how she’s getting on?’

      Sophie smiled up at him. She knew that he missed Lil too. ‘I’ll ask,’ she promised. ‘I might be a while – shall I meet you back at the office later?’ He nodded and she gave him a quick wave goodbye, before she turned and went under the archway and inside.

      In the cool, echoing hallway, the sleepy concierge was sitting exactly as usual behind his desk. ‘Mr Clarke, is it, miss?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes please.’

      ‘Second floor and to the right,’ he instructed, exactly as if he hadn’t seen her here at least once a week for the last six months.

      Following his instructions, Sophie made her way up the stairs. At the top was a door marked with a small printed card that read simply: CLARKE & SONS SHIPPING AGENTS. She knocked, and when a voice inside called out: ‘Come in!’ she stepped inside the headquarters of the Secret Service Bureau.

CHAPTER FOUR

      Secret Service Bureau HQ, London

      ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said a sardonic voice.

      Captain Carruthers was lounging in his chair, his shirt collar slightly open, his feet resting on the desk beside the typewriter, as he flipped through a stack of reports. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I’m here to see the Chief,’ Sophie said shortly. She usually thought of herself as rather a polite person, but Captain Carruthers was always so rude that it was difficult to be anything but rude back.

      ‘Oh, well then, go through – you know where he is,’ said Carruthers, waving her away without bothering to look up from his papers.

      Swallowing down her annoyance, Sophie crossed the room to the door that led to C’s office.

      ‘C’ was a code-name, of course. She didn’t know what it stood for – perhaps C for Chief, as they often called him, or C for Commander, or even C for Clarke the Shipping Agent, though that seemed unlikely. Lil sometimes joked: ‘I say, I wonder what happened to A and B?’ but Sophie had noticed she never said it to his face. Even Lil was rather in awe of C.

      Now, as Sophie always did when she stepped into C’s office, she found herself looking around, thinking of all the secret business that must take place here. Not that there was anything especially mysterious or clandestine about the room itself – in many ways, it looked exactly like the ordinary shipping agent’s office it pretended to be. There was a big desk, stacked all over with piles of papers; a map of the world, dotted with pins; and a big bookcase crammed with fat leather-bound books. At the centre of it all was C himself, busily writing letters in his characteristic green-ink scrawl. To all intents and purposes, he too could have been a perfectly ordinary shipping agent. He looked like any affable older gentleman, with a gold watch chain and the traces of what Sophie suspected was his breakfast boiled egg on his shirt front.

      The only thing that was unusual about C’s office was that there was a very large wind-up gramophone playing on a table in the corner, and C was humming along to the melody as he worked. Sophie knew very little about C, besides the fact that he ate soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, but she did know he had a passion for music. She had grown accustomed to having a musical accompaniment to their meetings. Today, she noted, it was Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture that could be heard drifting from the gramophone.

      ‘Ah, Miss Taylor! Delightful to see you. Well, well, and what have we here?’ C rubbed his palms together in anticipation, as Sophie placed the box on the desk in front of him. ‘Oh, splendid!’ he said to himself as he lifted the lid, pulling away the brown paper with the air of a child with a birthday present. ‘Aha! Code books . . . Signalling manual . . . Ah, yes, this one does look rather important . . . Carruthers!’ he called out in a louder voice.

      After a moment’s pause, his assistant slouched in. He looked as surly as always, although C didn’t seem to notice. ‘Take these and check through them for me, there’s a good fellow, and telephone through to Admiral Stevens and let him know we have them. I rather think he might be worried about what’s become of them. Excellent work, Miss Taylor!’

      Carruthers accepted the parcel without saying anything, tossing Sophie a bad-tempered glance as he strode back out of the room.

      ‘Now, tell me, who was Ziegler’s agent this time? The fellow calling himself Dr Muller, was he one of our old friends?’

      Sophie shook her head. ‘I’ve not come across him before.’ She described the thin grey man, whilst C scribbled a few notes on the back of an envelope. ‘He wasn’t at all happy to have lost the parcel,’ she finished up.

      ‘I’m sure he wasn’t,’ said C, with a chuckle. ‘Well, I daresay we’ll meet him again before long. Now, I have a new assignment for you. Not parcels this time, but something rather different, which I think you may find interesting.’

      He pushed a folder across the desk towards her, printed with the name PROFESSOR BLAXLAND in large black letters. Flipping it open, she saw several densely typed sheets of paper: lying on top was a photograph of a handsome, well-dressed, middle-aged man. Scribbled beneath the photograph were the words SSB AGENT.

      ‘This man СКАЧАТЬ