Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(110)

After receiving a nod from Alec, the guard fished a thin, sallow fellow of seedy appearance out of the cell and ushered him roughly to an unoccupied room. It was a barren little closet with four walls, a few hand-fuls of straw on the floor, and a heavily barred door. Memmery was shoved in there, and then the guard stood aside and allowed Alec and Carr to enter.

“Leave us alone with him for five minutes. Don’t lock the door,” Alec said, his tone low, flat, and utterly commanding. Though it was against prison regulations, the door was left unbolted. Nevertheless,Carr jumped slightly when they were shut in the room. He glanced at Alec with a mute plea in his eyes to make the interview fast.

“Your name,” Alec said to the pale-haired, pale skinned prisoner, who could not have been more than thirty.

“Memmery, sir,” the man mumbled. “Tom Memmery.” Something in Alec’s voice seemed to awaken his inter est, for slowly Memmery looked up at him. The palt skin whitened to the shade of a fish belly. “Hoiy Jesus,” he swore, his face contracting with fear.

“Do I look familiar to you?” Alec asked quietly. “1 should. I gather you and my cousin were acquaintances of a sort.”

“That’s a rapper.”

“Is it? I’ve heard differently.”

Silence.

Alec’s face contained all the warmth and animation of a slab of granite. Carr fidgeted uneasily, glancing at the door with an expression of longing. “Ever hear the name Leila Holburn?” Alec inquired, his voice a low rumble in the bandbox-size room.

Memmery studied the floor with absorption.

“Alec, he’s not going to talk—” Carr began, simmering with impatience.

“Oh, he will,” Alec said, sending his young cousin a silencing glance. “In fact, he’s going to become the most talkative inmate in Newgate—”

“Go swive yourself,” Memmery said politely.

“—because if he doesn’t,” Alec continued as if there had been no interruption, “I’m going to make certain that every slasher and shanker in this hellhole knows that Memmery whiddled the whole scrap on Stop Hole Abbey. In other words, Carr, they’re going to think he told everything he knows, including names, dates, and places.”

“Bleedin’ cur!” Memmery snapped, suddenly shaking with a mixture of hate and horror.”Do you know what will happen to him then, Carr?” Alec said conversationally. “He’ll be ripped apart, limb from flabby limb, after enduring several hours of ingenious torture. His cellmates aren’t the type who appreciate being discussed with the likes of us by a loose-tongued fellow like Memmery. Do you know why some of them are in here?... they’re chalkers, men who amuse themselves at night by leaping out of dark alleys to slash the faces of innocent passersby with knives. What great fun they would have with a companion who had snitched on them. In fact, just being in here with us right now casts him in rather a suspicious light—wouldn’t you agree, Tom?”

“What if I blab? It won’t save my ‘ide, now, will it?” Memmery asked darkly, his face taking on the resignation of a doomed man.

“It might. If your information proves to be useful to me, you’ll be smuggled immediately to the Berkeley shipping docks and taken aboard a packet bound for Australia. There at least you’ll have a chance to enjoy a few more years of your miserable life—you’re young enough still to want that. However, if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, you’ll be taken back to your ward and cast upon the infinite mercy of your companions.”

” ‘Ow do I know you’re not shavin’ me?”

“You’ll have to trust me.”

Evidently deciding that the risk was worthwhile, Memmery nodded briefly. “What do you want to know?”

“You’re a member of Stop Hole Abbey,” Alec said.

“Aye.”

“You were acquainted in the past with my cousin Holt Falkner.”

” ‘E didn’t give ‘is name. But ‘e looked like you.”

“And he paid you for information.”

“Aye.”

“What did you talk to him about?” ” ‘E was lookin’ for that dell… that girl you mentioned.”

“Leila Holburn?”

“Aye.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I wadn’t in on that part o’ Stop ‘Ole. But after ‘e told me ‘ow she disappeared, I told ‘im I thought she’d been christened.”

“Christened? What does that mean?” Carr asked sharply.

“White slavery,” Alec replied, his lip curling in a faint sneer. “A lucrative business, currently in greater vogue than ever before. The youngest and comeliest of the women they kidnap are shipped off to the West Indies and certain parts of Asia. I’m afraid Holt’s fiancee is probably located in some exotic bordello… or if she’s lucky, a harem.”

“How do we know where?” Carr inquired through clenched teeth.

“That’s what y’r cousin was tryin’ to find out,” Memmery said. “I told ‘im to look for a tall Frenchie by the name o’ Tilter—’e knew about that part o’ Stop ‘Ole more than most.”

“What is Tilter’s real name? And where do we find him?”