A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(75)
For a moment, the idea seemed a sound one. But then he remembered. . . .
And he had to shake his head. “That won’t work,” he sighed. “I wish it would, but the entity told me that the girls all have to go to the same place. It seems the three we already took went to some private hospital, and without wealthy parents, anyone you got at a hiring hall would just be sent off to Bedlam.”
“Mebbe. Lemme look inter hit, guv,” Alf urged. “Meantime, Oi c’n git boys easier’n girls from ’iring ’all. Oi c’n git a boy fer each girl we git, we c’n keep ’im nice’n’snug, till we needs ’im, then we c’n concentrate on them girls. But we needs t’be extree careful naow. Tha’s three girls we took, an’ coppers gonna take notice.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Although this was the last thing he wanted to contemplate this morning—well, they were on the subject, and it was clear Alf was actively looking for solutions for him. And for all his lack of education, Alf was smart and clever. And while he himself was not a magician, as far as Alexandre was aware, he had a lot of practical experience in what a magician needed, and how a magician worked. “We can’t do another gallery. We can’t do the theater again.” He briefly thought about the bookstore . . . but no. Of all things, he should not take a victim from anywhere he himself was known to go. That would leave him open to being recognized and remembered with the victim in tow. He’d taken enough of a chance at the gallery; it was entirely likely he could have run into some of the people who knew him from artistic circles—although he had done his best to minimize that chance by picking a time and day that set was unlikely to come.
“Church?” Alf asked, suddenly. “Lotsa good girls in church. An’ the thing don’t care wut they look loik.”
“Too many people, most of whom know each other.” That would not be true for the vast majority of the parishioners in a London church, of course, but the anonymous herd would all be unsuitable—not wealthy enough. The wealthy patrons of any church in question would all know each other, and so would the resident clergy, and a wealthy newcomer would be spotted immediately, and more to the point, remembered. He’d have to keep going in order to throw suspicion off himself—
“Too bad yew cain’t drive a cab,” Alf observed. “Yew’d hev yer pick, an’ they’d jest walk right inter yer open harms.”
Now, that was true. Impossible, of course, since all the cabbies knew each other, and a newcomer would be watched like a hawk by all the other cabdrivers. Not even in the rush at a train station would he be able to get away with impersonating a cabbie.
Nowadays only the very rich, the kind who could still afford stabling or carriage houses behind their townhouses, kept private carriages in London. Even many of the merely well-to-do used cabs instead of relying on their private carriages these days. Especially those who were staying in their clubs, or hotels—
“Hotels!” he exclaimed aloud. “Americans!”
Alf looked at him oddly, puzzled by his outburst. “Wutcher mean, ’Muricans, guv?”
“Wealthy Americans stay in hotels. Their daughters are very . . . bold,” he explained. “The girls are accustomed to being allowed to go where they want without chaperonage to a far greater extent than English girls are. They’ll be ever so much easier to acquire than English girls. And when the girl turns up witless, the parents will want ‘the best care in London,’ and the best care in London is exactly where we want her to go.” He pondered this again. “If we work fast, and we have good luck, we might be able to get two or even three in a single day.”
“Oi c’n get eight boys in a single day, guv, betwixt takin’ ’em off street an gettin’ ’em at ’iring ’all,” Alf chuckled. “Oi think we got a plan.”
“Not quite. We need to be precise about this,” he cautioned. “This will have to be by daylight, and we’ll have to be fast. We need a very detailed map of the area around each of the best hotels. We’ll need to have a secure spot for the coach near each hotel where you won’t be bothered, and where no one will see us putting the girls into it. And we’ll need one more thing.” Because while getting the girls was a difficult proposition . . .
“Wut’s thet, guv?”
“We’ll need to find a secure place to get rid of them from out of the coach. Once the entity spits them out, we’ll need to load them back into the coach, and take them somewhere else to drop them. I can’t just turn three girls out into the street in front of the flat all at once, and I can’t turn them out an hour apart, either. Someone is almost certainly going to be able to backtrack them if I do that. And it will have to be a safe place for them.” It did him no good at all with regards to the entity’s demands if some enterprising fellow reabducted them to use as prostitutes.
“Roight. Yew c’n leave thet part t’me. An’ th’ mappin’. But yew need ter talk t’thet thing in basement, an’ foind out if it c’n ’andle more’n a pair, an if it loike’s th’ ideer.” Alf tapped the side of his nose with a finger. “Be jest our luck fer us t’nobble three girls an’ three boys, an’ hev it turn up its nose, eh?”
Although going down into the basement this morning was the very last thing he wanted to do, Alexandre sighed, and nodded. “Let me get dressed, first,” he told his man. “I don’t fancy shuffling down there in slippers and a dressing gown.” He had no more appetite for breakfast, so he got up from the table and went to his room.