Page 26 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
“Show me first how to load the cartridge belt.”
The Maxim gun had become almost unrecognizable. Not only had a large canister—the cooling jacket—been fitted to the barrel, steel plates, too—shields—were fastened to the top and the sides of the assembly, giving it an oddly leonine appearance.
The long cartridge belt came neatly folded in a box. He fed the first round into the barrel, made sure it was held firmly in place, and said, “That’s it. The rest will load by recoil.”
He demonstrated the process one more time, then stepped aside for her to try.
Shouldn’t he remain right behind her, his hands over hers, so that the two of them were practically in an embrace? Years ago, she had seen a gentleman instruct a lady in archery in such a manner. They had married other people but subsequently came together in a torrid affair.
Alas the operation was simple enough that she managed on the first try and was able to perform the feat three consecutive times without any mistakes, obviating any need for him to give hands-on demonstrations.
“Go ahead and take the gun apart,” he said, handing her a spanner. “Then you’ll be able to put it together next time.”
Charlotte was raised in the country and had done her share of shooting. She knew how to take apart ordinary firearms for cleaning and maintenance. The Maxim gun was different, but not so different as to render her experience useless.
The joints had been properly oiled and separated with only moderate effort. She handed each component to Lord Ingram. The trunk the disassembled Maxim gun had come in had been specially built with padded trays to accommodate all the parts. She kept track of how the parts fit together, and also where everything went in the trays.
They worked largely without speaking. Having been correspondents for almost as long as they’d known each other, their exchanges were easier and more relaxed in writing. But in person, especially after a lengthy absence, they tended to revert back to silence.
Some silences felt like a cool shade under summer foliage, others like dark, foggy nights. This silence made her think of reading in the branches of a tree and lifting her head because a breeze had brought with it the scent of a rich yeast dough rising nearby.
A silence filled with anticipation.
But was the anticipation mutual, or only on her part?
She calculated the weight of everything, the Maxim gun itself, the shields, the ammunition, and the water required in the cooling jacket to keep the barrel from overheating. “Would you have been able to move this thing, fully assembled, to where you could provide a burst of fire for me to escape out the back into Mrs. Watson’s town coach?”
Or had he really prepared for the bleakest outcome, a last stand right here in Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom?
“Of course,” he said lightly, packing the box of cartridge into a different case. “You can go wash your hands now, Holmes. I’ll do the rest.”
She regarded him a moment, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the alignment of his torso at once perfectly straight and perfectly loose, before she rose to leave. When she came back from the basement, Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom was spotless and he was no longer there.
She returned to the parlor. She had just picked up the book on Hermetic teaching from Moriarty—she had not lied about that—when he entered with a black umbrella and held it out toward her.
She was about to tell him that she already had a weighted umbrella that doubled as a rapier when she took this umbrella in hand. The bulbous handle felt different. She turned it around and spotted a hidden firing mechanism. She opened the umbrella. Aha, halfway up the stalk was a chamber which—she peered inside—looked like...
“It takes two rounds?”
“Two rounds. However, sometimes the fabric of the umbrella catches on fire,” said he, his eyes crinkling a little. “I assume you won’t care too much about that if you choose to use it as a firearm.”
“Oh, rest assured I will care. It would be mortifying to carry a burnt umbrella afterward,” she said airily, even as her stomach tightened.
Between the hiding place for his children, the umbrella, and the Maxim gun, he had prepared for cascading catastrophes—and she could not deem him to be overreacting.
“Well, with this umbrella, you’ll be safe enough walking back home by yourself.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek, as if he were her affectionate but not terribly amorous husband. Or, God forbid, her fond brother. “I’m off to bed. Enjoy your studies of Hermetism.”
He was gone the next second, closing the parlor door behind himself and mounting the steps.
Charlotte played with the umbrella some more. Then she sat down and picked up the book again. From upstairs came the soft sounds of someone moving about, opening and shutting a drawer. In the grate, a piece of coal in the fire that had been banked hours ago popped softly. The spine of the book creaked as she flipped the pages from beginning to end.
She returned to the first page, reading more carefully. Six pages in she snapped shut the book, left the parlor, climbed up the steps, and knocked.
He opened the door without too much delay, a quizzical expression on his face. “Yes?”
She walked past him. The room was about the same size as Sherlock Holmes’s and furnished simply, but with extravagant-looking orange-and-gold wallpaper, the gaudiness of which was tempered somewhat by a pair of landscape paintings that consisted largely of sky and meadows.
Her quarry moved to the grate and smoothed the banked coals with a fireplace rake. He had removed his jacket and necktie. His shirt, open at the collar, revealed a lovely triangle of skin.
