The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [111]
A pencil. I looked at the light-switch on the wall beside me, and stooped for the drawing implement, sliding the knife almost absently into its scabbard.
The switch was one of those with double push-plugs, currently in the ON position. I shifted around to face it (thankfully, the floor made no remark) and put my right thumb on the OFF button. Resting the pencil-point in the space between the button and its casing, I took a breath, and in one quick motion pushed the switch and snapped the lead point off in the space, effectively locking it down. The light from the hallway streamed through the door onto the window opposite.
The clamour of pounding feet—up the stairs, not down—covered my own swift steps into the lee of the chest of drawers. The doorway darkened, filled with angry man, who cursed as he fumbled and failed to work the switch. I wrapped my hand around the hair-brush I had grabbed from the chest-top, then tossed it underhand against the meeting-place of the curtains.
He heard the sound and half-saw the motion of the fabric, and leapt across the room to rip away the curtains and thrust his head and shoulders out of the window, gun aimed at the ground below.
I was already in motion, knife in one hand, snatching up Damian's cravat with the other. He heard me coming and nearly managed to extricate himself from the window before I slammed into him, knocking him half out of the room, then jerking the upper window down hard across his spine. He bellowed and shoved back hard. Glass and wood crackled, then went abruptly silent as he became aware of the tip of my knife, pressing into an exquisitely sensitive, and currently exquisitely vulnerable, part of his anatomy.
“Drop the gun,” I said loudly. When he failed to respond, I twitched the knife, and his squeak was followed by a thud from the flower bed below. “Now show me your right hand.”
His body tensed to brace himself against falling, and his right hand waved briefly on the other side of the cracked pane. Good enough. I wound the cravat around his ankles and snugged it into a messy but effective one-handed knot.
It took some doing to get the weight of him out from the window without permitting him freedom of motion, and he nearly had me twice, but finally, with his belt, three neck-ties, and the rope-tie from a dressing gown, I had him trussed. Bleeding, enraged, and trussed.
I walked on uncertain feet over to the light-switch, and managed to unscrew the face-plate and prise out the sliver of lead. I could hear him all the while, struggling against the various bonds.
By the time I got the lights on, the worst of my reaction had sub sided, and I was faced with a conundrum—not, What to do with him? because I knew what I was going to do with him, but—How do I get him to talk?
I'd seen enough of this type of man to know that he would absorb a lot of damage before opening his mouth. If I were Holmes, or Lestrade, this man would spit on my questions. I could threaten him further with the knife, but it would take a lot to convince him that a mere girl would carry out the threats.
He'd be right, too: I might be willing to damage a thug to save Holmes, but for Damian and his daughter?
The man on the floor lay still now; I could feel his eyes on my back. I circled the room slowly, letting him think about his situation. That he was neither cursing nor demanding to know who I was told me that he had more brains than his overdeveloped muscles suggested.
I looked down at the trestle table and its litter of paint and drawings, and became aware that I was looking at myself.
Not myself, as in a mirror, but a simple, flowing continuous line of ink on paper, elegant as a Japanese master. It was not a sketch, it was a finished piece, done on a sheet of dense and expensive paper. At the lower left was its title: My Father's Wife. It was signed