Page 100 of The Number of Love
“Without our knowing it?” Hall huffed. “Not possible.”
Margot’s lips twitched. “The law of large numbers, sir. It’s possible someone has evaded your knowledge all this time, however improbable it may seem.”
“Statistics that don’t particularly help just now. What we need are some hard facts. Margot?” Hall stepped closer.
Her smile had stalled and faded. “This is the last one of those we found in the flat, and it just references another plan by alphanumeric designation. The others were sent to South America. Not to our man, I should think.” With a frustrated sigh, she set her pencil down. “Useless. All of it. You two put your lives in danger for nothing.”
“I don’t believe that.” Drake sat beside her and bumped his shoulder into hers. “We needed that codebook. It’s given us pieces. Perhaps we’re still missing a few others, but we’ll find them.”
“Tomorrow is soon enough to renew the search.” Hall blinked, nodded, and motioned to the door. “Everyone to their beds—that’s an order. And Camden?”
The pilot paused with a foot already aimed for the door. “Sir?”
“Well done.”
His face didn’t exactly soften. The shadows didn’t exactly abandon their posts in his eyes. But a bit of light entered there, alongside them. After a moment’s pause, he nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He strode for the door. Though when he pushed it open, his next words had their usual snarl to them. “Well, look who it is. I didn’t know nursemaids made office calls.”
“Red?” Drake pushed to his feet, brows drawn.
Holmes was pushing past Camden with a scowl. “I haven’t time for your nonsense just now. Elton, you’d better get home.”
Margot slipped the two telegrams no one had picked up into the codebook and stood too. “Dot?” She met Drake’s questioning look. “She was properly upset this morning. Handed in her resignation, gave me a dressing-down, and stormed out.”
“She won’t answer the door.” Red motioned toward the general direction of her flat. “And she must have dismissed the guard you’d posted. But that’s not why I’ve come, actually. There’s an older Spanish gentleman at your building, Elton, demanding to see his grandchildren and causing a terrible uproar.”
Drake actually jerked, as if a bolt of electricity had coursed through him. “Well, it can’t bemygrandfather. He never leaves home.”
Red lifted dubious brows. “Then perhaps you can at least come and explain why whoever it is keeps yelling for a dragon. One of your neighbors is convinced he’s calling down dark magic or some such rot, and he keeps lapsing into Spanish, which no one else can understand.”
Drake jolted again, and Margot gripped his hand. “Dragon?” he muttered.
“That would be you, wouldn’t it, Eighteen?” She knew she looked a bit too amused at his expense. But she couldn’t recall ever seeing him caught so off guard. “Looks like your abuelo has a few surprises up his sleeve after all.”
31
Suddenly Drake thought he knew how those pilots with altitude sickness had felt. Utterly disoriented, he could only stand in the doorway to the landlord’s office, sure he was seeing an apparition. Or an illusion. Or a figment of his own imagination. Something other than what his eyes insisted he saw—Francisco Mendoza de Haro. Here, in England, where he had never once deigned to step.
It was Margot who stepped forward first, hand outstretched, and said, “You must be Señor Mendoza. I’m Margot De Wilde.”
Abuelo, ever the gentleman, even when he was only an illusion, took her hand and pressed his lips to it, despite that she’d clearly meant to shake instead. “Ah, my granddaughter’s new friend.Es un placer conocerle.”
Drake shook himself and stepped forward. “Abuelo. What are you—whyare you...?”
Abuelo’s eyes could sparkle with the best of them. “Rarely have I seen you unable to frame the right question, Dragón.” Then his too-dark brows lifted toward his white hair. “Is this how you greet your abuelo?”
“Lo siento.” Apology muttered, Drake moved forward to embrace him. “You look well.”
“As do you, which is a great relief to me.” Now he narrowed his eyes, rebuke in his gaze, and motioned with a hand.
Only then did Drake notice that Eneko stood in the corner, clutching a hat, which he now held out.
Not justahat.Drake’shat. He took it, knowing he looked as dazed as he felt. “How did you get this?” It ought still to be tumbling through the Spanish countryside. Or on the head of a farmer who laughed over his find.
“The better question, Dragón, is how didyoulose it?” Abuelo moved to the rickety chair behind the landlord’s scratched desk and sat in it with the same grace and authority he used when taking his own seat in Bilbao. Steepling his fingers, he narrowed his eyes still more. “Imagine my concern when thepolicíaknocked on my door two weeks ago, your favorite hat in their hands, saying they discovered it at a suspected murder scene in Madrid and traced the label to the haberdasher you favor there. He so very helpfully checked the number he’d put on the tag against his books and gave them your name. Imagine my concern, Dragón, when they said they were not certain whether it belonged to the victim or the culprit, but that you were a person of interest in this crime.”
Drake groped for support—a chair back, a shelf, something to keep him upright. Instead he found Margot’s hand in his. Which anchored him far better than furniture could anyway. “I beg your pardon?”
Abuelo shook his head. “I, of course, knew you were well. You had wired me since this mysterious death to tell me you were spending Christmas here. And, of course, you are no murderer. That was never in question. So I told the policíathey must have been mistaken. That my grandson was but a lackadaisical university student who could not seem to finish his studies in a reasonable amount of time. And one who further prolonged his graduation by deciding to winter here for some unfathomable reason.” His eyes darted to Margot, and his lips slid up just a fraction—not enough to be thought a smile on anyone else, but the equivalent of a grin for him. “Or perhaps not so unfathomable now. Why have you not mentioned yourcariñoin your letters to me, Dragón?”
