Cooper Isabel - Legend Of The Highland Dragon

“I need to see Carter.”

The voice was deep, with a pronounced Scottish accent and a distinct sense of urgency. The owner was already speaking before the door to Professor Richard Carter’s outer office had closed. The words were all too familiar to Mina by now.

“Professor Carter isn’t in at the moment,” Mina replied without lifting her gaze from the typewriter.

She spoke firmly, with emphasis on the Professor, careful to round off her vowels and clip her consonants and to leave time between each of the words. All of that had taken considerable effort when she’d first taken her position. Now, two years of constant practice—especially with that line—made her speech almost unconscious, like the motion of her fingers over the typewriter keys.

The next line was “If you’d care to leave your card, I can give it to him,” but as she finally looked up, the visitor’s appearance made Mina pause.

He stood in the doorway like a knight out of some storybook illustration, or perhaps an American outlaw from a penny dreadful: someone ready to do battle, at least, and not necessarily someone on the side of the angels. He was tall and dark, broad-shouldered and square-chinned. His clothes were well-tailored and the fabric looked like it was of good quality, but the respectable dark suit looked somehow incongruous on him, as if he were wearing a very expensive costume.

He also didn’t wait to hear Mina’s next line.

“Where is he?” the man asked.

That sort of response was not precisely new either, though it was rarer than the opening gambit. Most people had the sense to realize what not in meant, and the grace to respect it. This man was clearly going to be one of the other sort.

Mina put her papers to one side and fixed her eyes on the visitor. “He isn’t in at the moment,” she repeated, more sternly and with a greater if-you-catch-my-meaning inflection. “But I’d be happy to let him know you called.”

The man crossed the room, moving like a panther—or at least like what Mina imagined a panther would move like, as she’d never seen one of the beasts herself. “I need to speak to Carter,” he said, planting his hands on the edge of Mina’s desk and leaning forward. “The matter is urgent. Now, if he truly is out, you can tell me where he’s gone—”

“I’m afraid Professor Carter isn’t in the habit of leaving me with a detailed itinerary of his movements. Sir.”

“Then tell me the first place he went, and I’ll proceed from there.”

Up close, the stranger’s hair wasn’t just black. There were shades of red to it in the lamplight: not ginger, but true red, like wine. His brown eyes had more than a hint of gold in them, too.

Mina wasn’t sure why she was noticing such things, except that danger was supposed to make one more aware of details, and this man could certainly be dangerous. She shifted one hand to cover the ivory-handled letter opener on her desk.

Then she lifted her chin. “Professor Carter doesn’t employ me to give out his personal information to anyone who asks,” she said. “And there are at least three bobbies on this block, sir. I can scream very loudly.”

“What?” He seemed honestly surprised. Seemed, at least. He did back up a step. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I try never to be ridiculous, sir.”

Unconsciously, Mina had risen to her feet. The new position still left her looking up some distance to meet the visitor’s gaze, and she was by no means a short woman. Against the pale-papered walls and the chairs with their curving limbs and white upholstery, against the faint gray sky that she could see through the window, the man looked even bolder, more vital—as if he’d sucked all the color around him into himself.

She took a breath.

The man let his out. “My name,” he said, as if conceding a point, “is Stephen MacAlasdair. Lord…” Only it came out Laird when he said it. His accent was stronger now. “MacAlasdair. I’m an old friend of the professor’s, and the matter that brings me here is an extremely serious one.”

Every matter that brought someone to the office was “extremely serious,” in Mina’s experience, or at least almost every visitor claimed as much. Most of them sounded sincere, too. Still, if MacAlasdair was an old friend of the professor’s—

She looked around the office quickly. There was nothing particularly valuable or portable. A statuette of Anubis on one of the bookshelves and perhaps a number of the books themselves might have brought more than a few pounds, but the room held nothing whose absence would ruin Professor Carter.

“Have a seat,” Mina said. “Please. I’ll see if he’s come back.”

She waited until MacAlasdair had settled himself before turning and walking through the back door—and she made certain to lock it behind her.

Up a narrow staircase, where the smells of cabbage and bread mingled with that of old brick, she came to another door. This one opened onto a world of bookshelves and curio cabinets, with a desk and chair in the center of the room. The elderly man who sat there was short and stout, with white hair considerably longer than the current fashion. At the sound of the door opening, he looked up, his face lined and leathery and more worried than Mina had ever seen it.

Professor Carter tried to disguise that last aspect when he saw Mina, of course. He’d been trying for the last day and a half, and the strongest inquiries Mina could make had only been met with the staunch insistence that everything was fine, and he’d like a cup of tea when she could manage it, there’s a good girl. Or that there was nothing to worry about, and had the Museum received that letter he’d sent the other day? Why didn’t she go check, just to be sure?

She’d had more pointless errands over the last thirty hours than at any other time in her employment.

Now she knew better than to ask, and she hated to disturb Professor Carter yet again. Still, MacAlasdair probably wasn’t going to leave without some response—and perhaps he’d be a distraction.

“Professor,” she said, “there’s a Stephen MacAlasdair to see you.”

The professor stiffened. “MacAlasdair?”

“Yes, sir. I can send him away, if you’d like, but—”

“No. No, by no means. I’ll see him.” Professor Carter got to his feet, brushed at his coat, and pulled on his tie, the creases in his brow never fading. “Have Mrs. Evans send up tea and scones, Miss Seymour.”

The brief diversion to the housekeeper’s lair meant that Mina entered the office just a step ahead of the professor himself, who looked over MacAlasdair with, to Mina’s eyes, considerable shock. “Good Lord, MacAlasdair, you haven’t aged a day.”

“Flattering,” said MacAlasdair, “but untrue. It’s good to see you looking well, Carter. Professor, I should say.”

They each smiled, but Mina didn’t think either expression genuine. Professor Carter kept playing with the top button on his coat, a sure sign that he was nervous, and MacAlasdair had lost none of the tension in his frame. There was more to this than two old friends meeting again.

When the door closed behind them, she broke her own rules and listened for as long as she was able.

“And when did you post Cerberus at your gates?” MacAlasdair asked.

Mina nurtured a brief but intense wish that he’d trip on the stairs and break his leg, or at least his nose.

Professor Carter made a reproving noise. “I’ve become an object of interest for more than a few people. Antiquities have caught the popular eye, you know. Miss Seymour does an admirable job of keeping the peace. And I daresay she’d have been more amenable if I’d known you were going to call.”

“I didn’t know I was going to call,” said MacAlasdair, and now his voice was grim. “Not until I read the news. I take it you’ve seen the same piece.”

“I—yes—” said the professor. They were climbing the stairs now, and their footsteps drowned out most of the conversation. Mina caught one name, though: Moore.

She stood very still for a second.

She’d read the paper too.

Colonel James Edward Moore, age sixty-three, had been found dead in his flat two days before. The Times said that “signs”—they wouldn’t be more specific, and Mina was glad—pointed to assault with a heavy weapon. Scotland Yard was investigating but had named no subjects.

Apparently the professor had known Moore. Well, that might have explained his mood over the last day and a half. MacAlasdair had known him too. On the stairs, though, they hadn’t sounded like they were discussing a brutal and mysterious crime. They’d sounded as if they might know what was behind Moore’s death, and fear it.

Mina sat down again and resumed her typing. But she kept listening for noises from upstairs, and she kept one eye on the clock.

She knew, therefore, that half an hour had passed when MacAlasdair stormed down the staircase, slammed the back door open, and stalked through the office and out into the street. He didn’t so much as look in Mina’s direction on the way, and she found herself rather glad of that.

As soon as she’d closed the door behind MacAlasdair, Mina started toward the stairs, moving at a fairly rapid clip herself, and ran into her employer as a result. Her “Sorry, sir!” had a distinct note of relief to it.

Mina didn’t think that Professor Carter noticed. He barely seemed to notice the collision. “Miss Seymour.”