something familiar about him, though Dragan couldn’t think where he had seen him before. He gave the man a faint nod in passing, and the man nodded back and strode on in the opposite direction to Dragan.
Did Penelope Derryn have another admirer? Or was it her brother? More likely, for the man was oddly like her.
Dragan stopped dead and turned his head to stare. The man had vanished round the corner, but the impossible suspicion remained.
Abruptly, he sat down on the nearest step and dragged out his pencil, drawing the man he had just seen in his top hat and collar. The pencil seemed to obey his urgency and his perception, quickly creating the effete, elegant young gentleman’s features. Leaving it, he hastily turned the paper and sketched Penelope Derryn, large-boned and awkward for a woman.
But they had the same eyes, the same bone structure.
The same height. The same shape.
And everything fell into place. Simple, neat, and appalling.
The door behind him opened, and a superior manservant instructed him to move along there before he was obliged to send for the constable.
Dragan needed no encouragement. He sprang up, stuffing the pictures and pencil into his pocket as he strode away, making as fast as possible for Park Lane and Griz. His need to tell her, just to see her, superseded everything else.
The large house on the corner did not blaze with lights, so he presumed the family was out for the evening. He just hoped Griz had not accompanied the rest of the household.
The door opened quickly to his peremptory rap.
“Lady Grizelda, if you please.”
“Her ladyship is not at home,” the butler said loftily.
Dragan narrowed his eyes. Had the man been told by the family to deny her to him?
“But,” the butler said, reaching behind the door to the little booth normally inhabited by the porter, “she left this for you, should you happen to call.”
“Did she, by God?” Dragan almost snatched the note and read it by the light filtering out from the house.
Mudd Lane with PD. Did you know there’s an old drainage tunnel that opens there? G.
Blood rushed into his ears. “Dear God… When did she leave?”
“About twenty minutes ago, sir.”
Twenty minutes! While he had sat drawing pictures and walked round here when he should have followed—
“Tizsa?” said a surprised male voice, as Lord Forsythe, dressed for the evening, brushed past the butler. “You look as if you’re about to murder poor old Berry. What’s he done?”
“Nothing. Griz is in danger. I have to go.”
“Danger?” Forsythe repeated, startled, seizing his arm to prevent his escape. “If ever there was a troublesome…I’ll come with you.”
And at last, Dragan could think beyond sheer instinct. “No. Fetch the police,” he commanded. “Use the name of Inspector Harris—or Lord Horace if you need to. Send them to Mudd Lane, behind Covent Garden, where Nancy Barrow died. And sir, it is urgent!”
“Use my carriage then,” Forythe said, indicating the hackney that had just pulled up at the door. “Peter and I will summon the police.”
Dragan might have thrown a grateful thank you over his shoulder as he flew down the steps. He meant to.
“Covent Garden! Quickly!” he yelled at the driver before hurling himself inside and slamming the door.
***
There were no crowds in front of the opera house when he all but fell out of the carriage and thrust a pile of uncounted money at the driver. At once, he sped toward the road he had trodden so often since the night Nancy died.
“Looking for me, handsome?” asked one of the women lurking in the shadows of the square.
Too focused to acknowledge anyone, he ignored her, but another woman stood directly in front of him, forcing him to swerve. It was Junie.
“Here, don’t ignore me,” she said indignantly. “I saw that bloke again. And just a few minutes later, your beautiful lady went, too.”
“Went where? Up that way? Going to Mudd Lane?”
“Maybe. She wasn’t close enough to talk to, or I’d have warned her.”
Hastily, he dragged his latest pictures from his pocket and showed the gentleman to Junie.
“That’s him,” she said excitedly.
“Bring everyone you can to Mudd Lane,” he said grimly. “It’s a matter of life and death. And watch out for a drain hatch.”
Without waiting to see what she made of that, he sprinted up the side of the theatre and into the back lane that led to Mudd Lane.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Having learned from her previous trip to Mudd Lane in the dark, Griz brought her own lantern and lit it before venturing