The Iscariot Sanction Read Online Free Page B

sure to bring her with me.’ He jerked his head towards Lillian.
    The man nodded fearfully, and Arthur left him kneeling in the dirt. Police whistles sounded in the distance as more officers arrived to break up the scuffles outside the Jolly Sailor. Sir Arthur and Lillian pushed past the three underlings, who parted warily, as if seeing Sir Arthur in a whole new light.
    ‘You played your part wonderfully, Sir Arthur,’ said Lillian, when they were out of earshot. She handed him back his pistol.
    ‘Well, I am a Majestic,’ Sir Arthur said. ‘I know the role well.’
    ‘Yes, well, there’s no point taking any unnecessary risks. Although he didn’t have to know that.’
    ‘Unnecessary…’ Arthur said, flabbergasted, waving a hand to indicate the fighting still erupting in the street.
    Lillian began walking up the street, ignoring the trouble she had incited.
    ‘And where are you off to now?’ Arthur called after her.
    ‘To catch a cab,’ she replied, looking back over her shoulder at him with a wicked grin.
    Sir Arthur Furnival raised his hands in resignation and followed her, as he always did.
    * * *
    John opened the shutter of his dark-lantern as much as he dared, casting a narrow beam of light around the windowless room. The office was ill kept and dirty, the desk scattered with papers. John looked through the only set of drawers in the room, finding them stuffed to bursting with accounts books and bills of lading and ledgers, seemingly without order.
    He rifled through the papers, scouring them for some clue. There were copies of receipts for steel from factories in Sheffield, and coal from as far afield as Newcastle, which John folded neatly and slipped into his pocket. A docket for the delivery of five hundred howitzer shells to a dockyard in Hull was likewise secreted away. He scowled when he found a similar dispatch note, and saw that the recipient was a private individual in Austria. The desk drawers contained several demands from the War Office for unfulfilled orders. Finally, he found a delivery note, positioned beneath a mould-filled teacup, and gave a smile of satisfaction.
    ‘Thursday, 16th October. A delivery of twenty-one carts of guncotton, three carts of gunpowder, and two carts of “sundries”,’ he read aloud.
    These were supplies delivered to the factory for the manufacturing process. John had no idea what the ‘sundries’ were, but he intended to find out. He scanned the right-hand column of the note marked ‘delivery area’. All of the powder had been dropped off at the warehouse adjacent to the factory. All except for the mysterious extra two carts, which had been taken to the cellars.
    John shuttered the lantern completely and slipped out of the office. He was about to head back to the stairs, but froze as a pair of shadows slid along the far wall, warped silhouettes thrown against the brick by blood-red light from the smelters.
    A moment later, John saw the unmistakeable forms of two men. John moved away as quickly as he dared to the door at the end of the catwalk. He guessed from the chill draught emanating from it that it led outside, but he did not know for sure. There was no other option.
    The cold air hit him, a merciful change from the smoke and heat of the factory behind. John stood on a platform atop a spindly iron fire escape, which clung tenaciously to the side of the massive building like ancient ivy. Left and right, huge chimney-stacks belched thick, black smoke into the chill air. So far from the chaos of the city, the skies did not burn with dreadful ethereal fire, and yet the rare treat was spoiled by the smoke from the forges, which blotted out the stars and moon. Beyond the iron stair, the roofs of a dozen huge storage sheds and warehouses stretched out for half a mile or more, before meeting a thick line of black trees.
    John knew he should make his way to ground level—he had what he needed, for now, at least. He should return to London at the earliest