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“You’re welcome to try, my lord. But they’ll only waste your time with jibber-jabber. They won’t act. There’s so much corruption throughout the department and the entire police district, it’s impossible to know who to trust.” Ransom paused. “I’ve been pursuing the investigation on my own.”
“How can I help?” Gabriel asked.
“Actually, it’s Lady St. Vincent’s help that I need. Before I explain, you should know there’s a stinger at the end of it.”
Gabriel stared at him for a long, pensive moment. “Go on.”
Reaching into his coat pocket, Ransom pulled out a small notebook with a few loose pages tucked inside. He extracted a slip of paper and showed it to Pandora. “Do you recognize this, my lady? It was in the bag of materials you brought from the printer’s office.”
“Yes, it’s the little scrap I found at the printer’s works. It looks like a sample of typographic lettering. It was the reason I followed Mrs. O’Cairre out to the warehouse. She’d dropped it, and I thought she might have need of it.”
“These aren’t typographic samples,” Ransom said. “It’s a cipher key. A combination of alphabet letters that are used to decipher coded messages.”
Pandora’s eyes widened with interest. “How exciting!”
That drew a quick smile from him. “Actually, in my world it’s rather mundane. Everyone uses cipher messages—police and criminals. The department employs two full-time cryptographic experts to help unravel all the materials we acquire.” He turned serious again. “Yesterday I came into possession of a coded telegram that couldn’t be deciphered with the latest cipher key from our central office. But I tried this key”—he gestured with the slip of paper—“and it worked.”
“What does it say?” Pandora asked.
“It was sent to a known leader of Caipíní an Bháis, the group of radicals Mrs. O’Cairre was connected with. It concerns a reception that will be held at the Guildhall tomorrow evening for the Prince of Wales.” Pausing, he carefully tucked the cipher key back into the notebook. “The telegram was sent by someone in the Home Office.”
“Good God,” Gabriel said, his eyes widening. “How do you know that?”
“Usually, telegrams sent from the Home Office are written on blanks printed with a special number that allows them to be sent free of charge. It’s called a frank number. It makes the telegram more liable to scrutiny, as the clerks in the telegraph office are instructed to make certain the privilege isn’t being abused. A clerk saw a frank number on a coded message, which is against procedure, and passed it to me. It was a careless mistake for the sender not to have used an unidentified blank.”
“Why in God’s name would someone from the Home Office conspire with Irish anarchists?” Gabriel asked.
“There are ministers in Her Majesty’s government who are fiercely opposed to the idea of Irish Home Rule. They know that if Irish conspirators commit an act of public violence, such as an assassination of the Prince, it would end any chance of Home Rule. There would be mass reprisals for Ireland, and the deportation of thousands from England, which is exactly what anti-Home Rulers want.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Pandora asked.
Ransom frowned and leaned forward, tapping the fingertips of both hands together lightly. “My lady, I think the man you saw in the warehouse is going to be at the reception. I think he’s from the Home Office. And now that Mrs. O’Cairre is dead, you’re the only person we have who can identify him.”
Gabriel replied before Pandora had a chance to react. His quiet voice contained the intensity of a shout. “Go to hell, Ransom. If you think I’ll let you put my wife in danger, you’re insane.”
“All she would have to do is attend the reception for a few minutes to see if he’s there,” Ransom said. “Once she points him out, you could whisk her away to safety.”
“It is a limited outing, if you think about it,” Pandora said to Gabriel reasonably.
Her husband gave her an incredulous glare. “Helping to foil assassination attempts against the Prince of Wales is not a bloody limited outing!”
“My lord,” Ransom said, “if the conspiracy goes as far as I fear it might, Lady St. Vincent won’t be safe until this man is identified and arrested. You’ll have to guard her every minute, and keep her confined and out of public view indefinitely.”
“I’ll have no problem with that,” Gabriel snapped.
“But I would,” Pandora said softly. She met her husband’s gaze, reading his anguished fury and gave him a faintly apologetic smile. “You know I would.”
“You’re not going to have your way on this,” Gabriel informed her in a hard voice. “No matter what you say or do, it’s not going to happen.”
“Who would have thought my first outing would be to see the Prince of Wales?” Pandora commented lightly as she descended from the carriage in front of the Guildhall.
“Who indeed?” came Gabriel’s surly reply. He helped her down carefully, while Dragon made certain the skirts of her formal gown didn’t brush the sides of the doorway. She was dressed in gleaming pink satin, the skirts embroidered lavishly with gold thread. A layer of gold-spangled gauze veiled the bodice and helped to conceal the small bandage over her wound.
She glanced at Dragon, who didn’t look any happier about the situation than her husband.