tight and I’ll see you home.’
He shook his head one last time as he drove away at a smart pace, leaving the grey man standing empty-handed, glaring furiously after them.
London
Inside the cab, the girl settled herself back comfortably against the seat.
‘So . . . where to?’ asked the driver, a young, good-looking fellow, with curly hair showing from beneath his cap.
‘The Inns of Court,’ she said, pulling the hat-box on to her knee and taking off the lid. ‘I expect the Bureau will want to see this straight away.’
‘All right, but let’s go the long way round,’ said the driver, reflectively. ‘You never know. That fellow might have some pals around who could still be watching us.’
‘Good scheme,’ agreed his passenger. Beneath some filmy tissue paper, she had unearthed from the hat-box a small, rectangular parcel, wrapped in brown paper. She weighed it in her hands.
‘What d’you reckon it is?’ asked the driver.
‘Probably Navy weapons manuals or signal books. Something highly confidential, at any rate.’
‘Something our old friend Ziegler would very much want to get his sticky hands on?’
‘Absolutely. That fellow was one of his agents. He’d paid someone in the Navy to steal these for him.’
‘And I s’pose he had to give him a tidy sum to get him to do that? No wonder he looked like he’d lost a shilling and found a sixpence.’ The driver grinned. ‘Unlucky for him – and old Ziegler too – that we just happened to be passing through the station, Soph.’
‘Oh, jolly unlucky,’ she agreed, smiling cheerfully back.
Sophie Taylor knew she had plenty to be cheerful about. Their assignment had gone like clockwork; the stolen package was safe; and it was very pleasant to be driving through town with Joe on a beautiful summer morning. The London Season was in full swing and, although it was still early, the day already had an air of gaiety about it. The long period of court mourning after the sad death of King Edward VII the previous year had come to an end, and now the city had cast off its sombre greys and mauves, and burst into summer colour, just like the new Queen Mary, who had been seen strolling in Richmond Park wearing a yellow hat with blue feathers. Clerks were strolling to work in their shirt-sleeves; flower-sellers were offering baskets of summer blooms on the street corners; and even London’s hansom cabs had been arrayed in brightly coloured tassels. As they drove through the park, she saw that people were reclining in the green-and-white sixpenny deckchairs, and that children had taken off their shoes and stockings to paddle in the lake.
Out on to the busy streets beyond, already thronged with buses and bicycles, the air was hot and shimmering, thick with the smell of horses and hay and motor-car fumes. Some people might have found it too hot, or too loud, or too crowded, but this was Sophie’s London, and she loved every buzzing, electric inch of it.
Now, she gazed out of the window as they rumbled along Piccadilly, past the Royal Academy, past the Ritz Hotel, and past the magnificent Sinclair’s department store, where doors were opening to the morning’s shoppers, and the uniformed doorman recognised them and tipped his hat.
Sophie knew that inside, on the first floor of the great building, the Taylor & Rose team – her team – would already be hard at work. Since their detective agency had first opened its doors two years ago, they had gained an excellent reputation, and were rarely short of clients. Now that they had expanded their offices and taken on more staff, Sophie could leave the others to deal with the day-to-day cases, whilst she concentrated her efforts on their most unusual client.
She had been working for this particular client for six months now, and she felt that she was getting rather good at intercepting telegrams, retrieving parcels and monitoring suspicious characters on their behalf. Working on assignments like this one, she felt a little thrill knowing that the people around her on London’s crowded streets couldn’t possibly have guessed that she was not an ordinary girl, but a government agent, doing vital work for the Secret Service Bureau.
Of course, most people didn’t know that the Secret Service Bureau existed. It had been set up by senior government officials to conduct highly confidential intelligence work. It was terribly mysterious: even Sophie herself wasn’t quite sure what all of the Bureau’s official work involved. What she did know was that a lot of it was concerned with what she had learned to call espionage – in other words, spies.
Although everyone seemed to be talking about the growing threat from Germany, and the Kaiser’s new warships, what the ordinary people around her on the streets of London didn’t know was that a network of enemy agents had already been established in Britain. The brilliant German spymaster, Ziegler, had been recruiting spies whose job it was to collect secret information to pass back to the German government. It was part of the Bureau’s job to stop them and, as one of their agents, that made it Sophie’s job too.
She grinned to herself. Three or four years ago, even the idea of working for a living would have been impossible to imagine, never mind doing a job like this. She’d certainly come a long way from her old life of piano lessons and pretty frocks. Now she was a detective, a businesswoman, and a government secret agent. She was a girl who knew how to crack a safe and pick a lock and throw a punch; a girl who had been taught to shoot a pistol by legendary New York detective Ada Pickering. She had found a missing diamond, had recovered two priceless paintings by the famous artist Benedetto Casselli, and had even helped to foil a plot to assassinate the King. She had outwitted the notorious villain who called himself ‘the Baron’ and, in doing so, had saved London from disaster. Not too shabby for someone who had only just turned seventeen.
It was strange now, to look back on the person she had been when Papa had died and she’d first been alone in London. Then the city had seemed like such a vast and lonely and frightening place. Now it felt familiar and friendly, full of places and people she knew. Most of all, of course, there were her friends – Joe and Billy, and all the other members of the Loyal Order of Lions, the organisation to which her parents had once belonged. The Order were sworn to work against the Baron’s sinister secret society, the Fraternitas Draconum, who had been responsible for the murder of both Sophie’s parents. Even though they were gone, keeping the society alive made her feel closer to them. Not that the society had needed to do very much lately – after all, they’d heard nothing of the Fraternitas since the Baron’s death, over a year ago. But just the same, Sophie was glad it was there. Being part of the Order felt almost like being part of a family. She was very grateful to have a circle of friends she knew she could count on, no matter what.
But as she hopped down from the cab outside the Inns of Court, she acknowledged to herself that even with the support of her friends, life wasn’t always entirely straightforward. Despite the success of Taylor & Rose, there were still plenty of people who did not care for the idea of young ladies being detectives. And running the agency was jolly hard work, especially without her best friend and business partner at her side.
Nothing seemed quite right without Lil. Certainly nothing was anywhere near as much fun.
Almost as though he had read her thoughts, Joe leaned out of the cab window and asked: ‘Reckon you can find out how she’s getting on?’
Sophie smiled up at him. She knew that he missed Lil too. ‘I’ll ask,’ she promised. ‘I might be a while – shall I meet you back at the office later?’ He nodded and she gave him a quick wave goodbye, before she turned and went under the archway and inside.
In the cool, echoing hallway, the sleepy concierge was sitting exactly as usual behind his desk. ‘Mr Clarke, is it, miss?’ he asked.
‘Yes please.’
‘Second floor and to the right,’ he instructed, exactly as if he hadn’t seen