I considered that very fortunate.
Thank goodness I hadn't told anyone-even Dylan and Miss Adler-my suspicions about Lady Cosgrove-Pitt.
Dylan was looking hard at Evaline. "By the way . . . I've been trying to figure out how that all worked. The Ankh actually did move the lever, right? So, like, why didn't you get zapped? Or did you? What happened?"
"I felt a low, buzzing sensation just before I knocked us over. But it evaporated as we fell, and I hardly felt any shock at all."
"I suspect it was because the Ankh wasn't using the true diadem," I interjected. "Only the true diadem would extract the life force from the individual. If one believed in that sort of thing."
"Or," Evaline said, "the lever could have bounced back when we fell to the ground. And then everything went into chaos."
"And it was Dylan who created this distraction?" asked Miss Adler.
"It was all my plan, but he was the one who made it possible. I knew his telephone could make loud odd noises, and he arranged it so that it would do so at a certain time."
"I set two alarms," he explained. "One to go off first and to make a siren sound, and then another one to sound off later, with police voices shouting that they were surrounding the building."
"But the sounds came from across the room. No one was there," Evaline said.
I couldn't control my complacent smile. "Yes. That was precisely the point. We were able to employ Dylan's particular skill called . . . hockey-is that correct?"
"The game is called hockey," he said. "It involves shooting a puck across the ice-well, anyway, I'm really good at it and I can shoot exactly where something needs to go. Fast, straight, and smooth. That came in handy when I had to slide the phone across the room without anyone seeing it. The phone's about the same size as a puck. I sneaked in after Mina, and no one noticed me standing in the dark corner. And then I shot a smoke bomb into the fireplace without anyone seeing me either. It was like scoring two perfect goals."
"I heard it," Evaline said, turning to look at him. Interest shone in her eyes. "Both times, I heard it going across the floor. And then Mina started coughing, I suppose to warn me . . . but I didn't see anything to explain what was happening."
"But now," Dylan said, pulling the device from his pocket, "it's completely out of battery. I'm going to need to find a way to charge it again if I ever want to use it. Isn't there any way to get some access to electricity?"
"I know someone who could probably help." Evaline's face turned an interesting shade of pink. "His name is Pix."
That afternoon, I returned to my empty house. I felt bereft now that the adventure was over. I could return to my work in the laboratory and finish my treatise, but that no longer seemed as interesting or compelling.
Perhaps Princess Alexandra would contact me-us-again for another task.
Or since the Ankh had never been unmasked, perhaps Her Royal Highness wouldn't consider the project fully complete, despite Miss Adler's praise.
An unsolved mystery, riddled with my deductive error and an embarrassing incident with the Parliamentary leader's wife. I shuddered.
I might be discharged from working for the Crown before I'd hardly begun.
Depressed and irritated, I almost didn't see the package sitting on the kitchen table.
My name, in a dark, scrawling penmanship-written by a man, confident and perhaps even arrogant.
Inexpensive brown wrapping-the sort that could be purchased at any stationer or apothecary-the sender was practical and tight with funds.
Twine from a butcher shop-
My pulse increased as I unwrapped the packet.
A small note was attached. It read:
To replace the one which was broken.
It was signed with a firm, solid A. Grayling.
Inside was a very cognogginish, head-mounting glass magnifyer.