Free The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 by R.N. Morris

all. Dortmunder was massaging the crown of his head and speaking to him in a low, constant murmur.
    â€˜It is good, no? The steam from the towels, it opens up your pores and relaxes your skin. Close your eyes, please. You may go to sleep if you wish. You are in my safe hands.’
    The gentle teasing pressure on his scalp was an elusive, strangely ambiguous pleasure, at times not a pleasure at all, but never, quite, unpleasant. It made him think of birds alighting. As soon as he thought of this, the sensation ceased. He found that he instantly missed it.
    Let’s not get bleedin’ carried away , he said to himself.
    At least he was still conscious, which led him to conclude that the towels were not drugged as he had feared.
    But what was that smell, the scent of the darkness? If only he could identify it he would know what he was up against.
    The smell brought back bad memories. It wasn’t so long since Inchball had been drugged and trussed in a house in Camden, a house that stank of pomegranates, of all things, by a man even more repulsive than the German. Then, he had panicked and wet himself. Embarrassing, when Macadam and the guv’nor found him. Still they had been decent enough not to mention it.
    The stench of those pomegranates would never leave him. He smelled it in his sleep, as it infiltrated his dreams with its cloying perfume. One thing he could say for certain was that the smell he was inhaling now was not of pomegranates.
    It might just be that the fiend had used a milder drug than Inchball had imagined, one capable of inducing a feeling of well-being and wooziness, without knocking him out. One that would make him susceptible to suggestion, and might even cause him to lower his defences.
    Just let the bastard try something!
    He was determined not to allow himself to be tied up this time. And whatever happened, he would not wet himself.
    By the sound of it, the man was stropping a razor, somewhere to Inchball’s right. So, the moment was approaching. The moment when a German spy would place a razor against his throat.
    Inchball heard the shop door open, a reprieve.
    There were voices. Dortmunder’s and another man’s. Both speaking German.
    Inchball lifted his right hand and pulled a flap of towelling away from his eye. He swivelled slightly in the chair and looked out towards the door. Dortmunder had his back to him. Over his shoulder he could see, on the threshold of the shop, a large man with an absolutely bald head, his face clean-shaven apart from a well-groomed handlebar moustache. Dortmunder and the other man were engaged in a low, intense discussion. Suddenly, the man must have noticed Inchball’s eye peeping out at him. He nodded to Dortmunder, who turned to look at Inchball.
    â€˜I will be with you in a very short moment, good sir. Please, relax, enjoy the soothing vapours of the towels.’ Dortmunder stretched out a hand – the shop was so small he could reach Inchball from where he was standing – and replaced the damp cloth over his eye. In the last moment before darkness returned, Quinn noticed that Dortmunder was holding a large envelope in his other hand. He wasn’t able to make out the address, which looked foreign to his eye. One thing he did notice was that it was written in green ink.
    In his scented darkness, Inchball strained to pick up a word that he could understand or that might be useful to him. A name. The name of a coastal town, perhaps. Or something that sounded like an English battleship. All that he was able to make out was Dortmunder clicking his heels in apparent military subordination and hissing, ‘ Sehr gut , Herr Hartmann.’
    Inchball heard the door close. The sound of razor against strop resumed. The other man – Herr Hartmann, it seemed – was gone. And whoever Hartmann was, it was clear that he was Dortmunder’s superior.
    Dortmunder removed the towels, his face beaming with ersatz bonhomie. If he had