Page 75 of Garden of Lies

Cautiously, Ursula removed the stopper. The scent that wafted out held the familiar taint of a dark herb.

“Find something?” Slater asked from the doorway.

Ursula turned quickly and saw that he had a leather-bound volume in one hand.

“A perfume bottle,” she said. “Just like the one I found at Anne’s house. There are a few drops left and they smell like the dried herbs at Rosemont’s shop.”

“Both Mrs. Wyatt and Anne were using the drug.”

“Evidently.”

Slater moved, radiating impatience. “Come, we must leave.”

She glanced at the notebook he held. “What did you find?”

“Wyatt’s journal of accounts.”

“What can that tell you?”

“Possibly nothing. But I have found that money is rather like blood. It leaves a stain.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Brice Torrence descended the front steps of his club shortly before midnight. He was dressed in the black-and-white formal attire he had worn to a ball that evening. He raised a silver-handled walking stick to signal the first cab in the line of vehicles that waited in the street.

Slater moved out of the deep shadows cast by a nearby doorway vestibule.

“I’d like a word with you, Brice,” Slater said.

Brice tensed and turned halfway around. His initial start of surprise was transmuted into anger.

“Roxton,” he said. “What in blazes do you want?”

“Some brief conversation. You owe me that much, don’t you agree?”

“Do you want me to apologize for what happened on Fever Island? To tell you that I’m sorry I left you for dead in those damned temple caves? How was I to know that you were still alive? Hell and damnation, man,I thought you were dead.”

Slater was stunned by the way the words spilled out of Brice. It was not the response he had expected. For a moment he was not sure how to handle it.

“I know you thought that I had been killed by that fall of rock,” he said. “I don’t hold you responsible.”

“I left you to die while I sailed home with a priceless artifact. Some things are unforgivable in a friendship.”

“This is not the conversation I want to have,” Slater said.

“What do you want to discuss? Restitution? How am I supposed to make things right between us? How do I change the past?”

“This is not about the past, at least not those aspects of it. I want to talk about the Olympus Club.”

Brice stared at him. “What the devil?”

Slater heard the door of the club open again. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two very drunk men come down the steps. Their laughter was too loud as they debated where to spend the rest of the night.

There was another man on the street, as well. He came quickly along the walkway as though late for an appointment. When he moved through the glary light of the streetlamps, Slater caught a glimpse of him. He was small in stature but he cut a fashionable figure in an excellently tailored suit. He carried a walking stick in one hand.

Slater did not recognize him but he knew the sort—a clubman, making his nightly rounds of the most exclusive gentlemen’s haunts.

Slater turned back to Brice and lowered his voice.