William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

fair!”
    “It’s perfectly fair,” he replied. “And since I cannot place your family before what is right, then perhaps I did not love you, either. That seems to be your conclusion, and by your way of measuring love, you are right. I am sorry. I truly believed otherwise.” He stood still for a moment, but she did not say anything. He turned to leave. He had reached the door when finally she spoke.
    “Oliver …”
    He stopped, then looked back at her. “Yes?”
    She made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I thought I had something to say, but I don’t.” It was an admission of failure, a closing of the door.
    The pain overwhelmed him, not for something lost so much as for the fading of a dream that had once seemed completely real. He walked out of the room.
    The parlor maid was waiting in the hall, as if she had known he would not be staying. She handed him his coat, and then his hat. Mrs. Ballinger was not in sight, and it seemed faintly ridiculous to go looking for her to tell her he was leaving. It would only embarrass them both. There was nothing to say. Better simply to go.
    He thanked the parlor maid and went out into the darkness. The air was cold now, but he barely noticed. He walked briskly until he came to the nearest cross street where he could find a hansom to take him home.
    R ATHBONE WALKED INTO HIS own wide, gracious hall to be told by Ardmore that there was someone waiting for him in his withdrawing room.
    “Who is it?” he asked with some irritation. Whatever it was, he was in no mood to deal with it tonight. Even if some client had been arrested and was in jail, there was nothing he could do about it at this hour.
    “Mr. Brundish, sir,” Ardmore replied. “He says he has something of great importance to give you, and he is unable to return in the morning because of other commitments. I explained to him that you were out, and that I did not know at what time you might return, but he was adamant, sir.”
    “Yes, you did the right thing,” Rathbone said wearily. “I suppose I had better go and take delivery of whatever it is. What is it, do you know? A letter of some sort, I suppose.”
    “No, Sir Oliver, it is quite a large parcel, and from the way he carried it, it seems to be of considerable weight.”
    Rathbone was surprised.
    “A parcel?”
    “Yes, sir. Would you like me to bring whisky, sir? Or brandy? I offered him both earlier, but he only accepted coffee.”
    “No, thank you. It will only incline him to stay.” He was aware it sounded ungracious, but all he wanted was to accept the package and see the man leave. And very possibly, Brundish was as keen to get to home as Rathbone was to be left in peace.
    He walked into the withdrawing room and Brundish rose from the chair he had been sitting in. He was a stocky man dressed in a striped suit. He looked tired and a little anxious.
    “Sorry to call at this time of the night,” he apologized before Rathbone had a chance to speak at all. “Can’t come tomorrow, and I needed to … deal with this.” His glance slid to the box on the floor beside his chair. It was approximately a foot in height and breadth, fifteen inches long. It appeared to be some kind of case.
    “Deal with it?” Rathbone asked, puzzled. “What is it?”
    “Your legacy,” Brundish replied. “From the late Arthur Ballinger. I’ve been holding it in trust for him. At least, I held the key and the instructions. I only retrieved this today.”
    Rathbone froze. Memory came flooding back. Ballinger’s messageto him: that he had bequeathed him the blackmail photographs in a final irony as bitter as gall. Rathbone had assumed it was a dying joke, a threat empty of meaning.
    He looked now at the case sitting on the beautiful carpet (another choice of Margaret’s), and wondered if that was really what was in the box: pictures of men, important men, powerful men with money and position, indulging in the terrible vice that Ballinger had photographed and with which he had then blackmailed them. At least his blackmailing had usually been for good; Rathbone thought of the judge who had been disinclined to close down a factory polluting the land and causing terrible disease. The threat to make public his taste for the violent sexual abuse of small boys had changed his mind.
    Each member of that hideous club had had to pose in a picture so lewd, so compromising, that the publication of it would ruin him. After this initiation, exercise of the vice