I stepped from the shadows to meet him. If he was looking to keep from calling attention to himself, though, I didn’t think he’d done a good job of it. The dark clothes gave him a somewhat menacing air, but I supposed it was less conspicuous than his uniform would have been.
“Good evening, Miss McDonnell,” he said, as politely as you please. If we hadn’t been on the way to commit a burglary, he might have been picking me up for an evening on the town.
“Good evening,” I said.
I got into the car and he slid in beside me. Then we pulled away and rode along in silence. I glanced again at Major Ramsey, wondering if he might say something about the mission, as he liked to call it. But he didn’t even look at me.
I tried to gauge his mood. I didn’t detect any tension in him, not more than usual anyway. From what I had seen of him thus far, he was never completely relaxed. I had begun to realize, however, that this wasn’t a mark of tension, exactly. It seemed to be more a constant state of readiness, as though he was waiting for whatever might spring up. I supposed it was a good trait for someone in his profession, and it would definitely be useful if we encountered any trouble tonight.
The driver seemed to know where we were going, but it was difficult for me to see in the darkness, and I found it hard to maintain my sense of direction. After a while, we reached a part of town with which I had no familiarity, but which I pegged as probably somewhere in South Kensington.
The car stopped suddenly, and Major Ramsey opened the door and stepped out immediately, motioning for me to follow him.
I got out, and, almost before the major had closed the door softly behind me, the car drove away.
Without hesitation, Major Ramsey took my arm and led me into a nearby alleyway. It was almost completely dark in the narrow space, most of the moonlight obscured by the buildings on either side, so I found myself glad that his hand remained on my arm as we moved forward. I wasn’t sure how he was seeing his way in the dark, but I trusted his instincts and allowed him to pull me along after him.
A few moments later, we came out on another street, stopping in the shadowed mouth of the alleyway, where we couldn’t be seen. With the buildings no longer towering overhead on either side, there was a bit of light from the night sky, and I could make out the layout of the street.
It was a posh area, that much was certain. The houses were large and imposing, and there was an air of grandeur that seemed to permeate even the trees and iron gates. Not Belgravia or Mayfair, but certainly plummy.
As I was casing the neighborhood, the major was looking up and down the street, and at last he nodded, taking my elbow again, and led me out into the street.
“I’m not going to run from you, you know,” I said, looking down at his hand on my arm.
“Of course not. But if anyone happens to come along, we’ll merely look like a couple taking a walk.”
It wasn’t the best of plans; I was sure anyone with half a brain could see that we weren’t a couple, not with him dragging me down the street by the elbow.
“Then perhaps you’d better let me hold your arm rather than the other way around,” I suggested sardonically.
He looked at me for just a moment and then, dropping his hand, held out his arm in an exaggerated gesture of courtesy that was all the more ridiculous for the fact that we were standing in the middle of the street dressed all in black, preparing to break into a house.
But I slipped my arm through his, noting in a disinterested sort of way the hard muscle beneath the smooth fabric of his shirt.
We walked at a steady pace, not leisurely enough for a couple out for a romantic evening stroll. Neither of us spoke, and I knew that, if we were being observed, we must make a strange picture. We saw no one, however, and I hoped that it was late enough for us to avoid detection.
Finally, he stopped in a patch of shadows before an iron gate. “This is it,” he said in a low voice.
I looked at the imposing residence. It