The Vanishing Thief

His laugh turned into a sob. “I won’t have another chance. My creditors will seize my laboratory. I’ll hang. Anything that’s left will go to either my creditors or a distant cousin as the next Lord Hancock. I’ll miss out on the accolades and the successes that should have been mine. Mine! All my life I’ve had to take second place to someone else. My perfect older brother. Other scientists. Well, no more.” He held a match against the friction paper.

I had to say something to stop him. “Surely you haven’t done anything so terrible. And what about your niece, Daisy? Who will take care of her?”

“Who cares about Daisy? All she cares about is money and parties. I never guessed she’d kept her last letters from her parents. Stupid chit. Or that her father would write her about his discovery. She should have died with her parents.”

What a terrible man. I looked at him, furiously trying to think of something to calm him down while my own blood boiled. I tried to sound serene. “Perhaps if you talk to Sir Broderick—”

Jacob was inching his way to the left when Hancock looked at him and said, “No. Sir Broderick can do more damage than Drake. He’ll recognize the importance of those papers. He’ll give them to the police. It’s finished. All I can do now is as much damage as I can to the Archivist Society and Drake and Blackford. That’ll give me a chance to escape the country. I’ll either escape or hang, and I won’t hang.” He lit the gas and stepped away.

I dove straight down the middle of the room. Fogarty and Sumner both took the right side, after Hancock, and Jacob the left. The rope seemed to weaken almost immediately as the jelly in the saucer began to liquefy from the heat.

There was no time to cut Emma’s bonds and set her free. I ran for the chair and shoved it in front of me until we smashed into a heavy table on the far side of the room. I heard glass break and something sizzle behind me.

I stepped to the side and looked back. A puddle of glass melted into liquid steaming and bubbling on the wooden floor. I checked my skirt and shoes. Apparently I’d moved far enough away not to be splattered by the breakage.

Jacob ran down an aisle between beakers and gas jets, knocking things over in his rush to reach us. He pulled out his knife and cut Emma free as I removed her gag. She choked and coughed, but she managed to gasp out, “He covered my face with something noxious. The next thing I knew, I was tied up here.”

I looked Emma over for signs of injury. Her face and arms were bruised and she had small cuts on her hands. “Are you all right?”

“Where did he go?” she cried out frantically, whipping her head from side to side.

I glanced around. Lord Hancock, Fogarty, and Sumner had all vanished. I didn’t see any door or stairs to exit. “I don’t—oh, dear Lord. Let’s get out of here.” A fire had broken out on one of the worktables and was spreading from beaker to vial as glass shattered and acrid smoke rose.

The room was rapidly filling with a noxious fog, hiding any escape. I could hear Jacob coughing and something nearby sizzling. Breathing burned my lungs. The air smelled like a sewer. We were trapped.

For one terrible moment, I stood paralyzed. To my right, flames shot toward the ceiling. My parents’ voices cried out to me from the fire, telling me to save myself. The way they had shouted to me the night they died.

Not this time. This time I would save my friends.

I grabbed Emma’s arm and lifted. She rose stiffly and then Jacob pulled her along. I pushed her, following in the trail of their coughs as the smoke grew denser. Then I heard breaking glass in front of me.

The smoke cleared enough for me to see Jacob had smashed a metal stand through a window. Smoke slid out the gaping hole in the glass, but iron bars kept us in.

“We’ve got—to get out,” Emma managed between coughs.

“This way. Through the house.” Fear paralyzed every thought but one. I was determined not to fail again. I grabbed her hand and led her along the wall until we reached a corner. Perhaps ten strides more and we’d be at the door leading into the house. And freedom.

A popping, swishing sound came from in front of me. A bright band of fire raced for the barrels in the corner. I had no idea what was in them, but it couldn’t be good. “Run.”

I pulled Emma behind me as I rushed for the door. I wouldn’t leave her behind. Yanking it open, I hurdled through the doorway and ran, tripping over my skirt. Emma collided with me and Jacob brushed our sides as we fell. He jerked Emma up by the grip he kept on her arm.

“Get out!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, not certain if anyone else remained in the building. Pulling myself up by clutching a door frame, I held my torn skirt up with one hand and raced after the other two Archivists.

I was in the front doorway when a great wind and a huge boom blew me forward. I crashed into Jacob. We both fell into the tall grass and weeds as fire arched over our heads. I kept my face down as searing heat scorched my back and objects pummeled me.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, the wind died away. I looked behind me to see fire in every window of the house. Smoke glowed pale in the night sky above my head. Jacob and Emma lay sprawled on the grass in front of me. We were alive. I rose, my hairdo slipping into my eyes and hanging to my shoulders, and looked for Fogarty, Sumner, and Lord Hancock.

They were nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Twenty-one

A TALL, antique carriage rumbled up the street behind matching black horses and stopped behind our borrowed conveyance. I walked to the edge of the road, putting one foot wearily in front of the other. Now that Emma was safe, now that Lord Hancock and the others were missing, I lacked the energy to speak, much less walk. This night, with its glamorous ball, had been horrible.

The duke leaped down from the ancient carriage, his highwayman costume ridiculously appropriate in this setting. He plucked the tiara off the side of my head where it had come to rest. “You’re a wreck.”

I glared in reply. “You’re very kind. What papers did Drake have of Hancock’s?”

I could hear the fire wagons racing toward us and a bobby blowing an alarm on his whistle. A series of coughs left me unable to catch my breath. The smoke from the house made my lungs burn.

The duke put a protective arm around me. “You need to sit down. I’ll help you into the carriage.”

“Not until I find out what Drake stole from Lord Hancock and where Hancock, Fogarty, and Sumner are now.”

I shivered and the duke pulled me closer, supporting my weight. His breath warmed my ear as he said, “Daisy invited Drake to a large gathering here last season. During the party, Drake pinched a letter from Daisy’s room. A letter written to her by her father, the late Lord Hancock, dated shortly before his death while she was visiting her mother’s family in the country. It contained his formula for the amylnitrohydrated sulfate.”

“Hancock’s one big success.” I tried to remember what I’d learned about the formula.

“Published by Hancock a few months after his brother’s death. Whatever honors he received in the world of chemistry came from stealing a formula from a dead man.”