Free Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper by David Barnett Page B

hands. It seemed more of a prison than a hospital. She looked either way down the dirt track, the scent of the river from nearby Southwark washing down the deserted road. Not what you might call a desirable area, but at least there was no one around for now. She grasped the gate and put her boot into the ironwork, hauling herself swiftly and silently up and over the dulled spikes and dropping to the snow on the other side. She slid to the tall wall that bounded the sanatorium and hid behind the bony branches of a row of spindly birch trees. Rowena reached into her leather jacket and withdrew the piece of paper that had cost her an eye-watering amount of money to obtain. People often thought that she, as the much-vaunted Belle of the Airways from World Marvels & Wonders, must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. She smirked in the dying light of the cold afternoon. If only. That was why she spent her days between distant adventures with Gideon Smith (and before him, Lucian Trigger and John Reed) on more prosaic concerns. Cargo runs between London and the Continent, the occasional trans-Atlantic journey to British-American territories, more often domestic journeys. She had just returned from collecting a cargo of cheese from Amsterdam. Oh yes, life was one long adventure, and she whiled away her time counting her money … then shivering through this bloody winter under four blankets in the back room of the offices of Fanshawe Aeronautical Endeavors at Highgate Aerodrome. It annoyed her, suddenly, that Gideon had never asked where she lived. At least she had her Conspicuous Gallantry medal from Queen Victoria to keep her warm. That and the four blankets, and the oil heater that she fired up when finances allowed.
    There would be no oil for the heater until the next batch of invoices was paid, that was for sure. She unfolded the paper that bore the address of the Midgrave Sanatorium and, most crucially, a room number on the third floor. The room was—according to the deliveryman she had accosted before dawn that morning, and whom she had paid handsomely for the information—at the rear of the dark building. The light was falling rapidly, and dim gas lamps were flaring in the dirty windows. Rowena stuffed the paper back into her jacket and edged around the boundary wall to the back of Midgrave.
    The window was barred, as she had expected, but there was a solid growth of ivy up the back of the building, and a small window in the center of the third floor without a grate. Rowena expertly pulled herself up the ivy, and by the time she reached the window, despite the cold and flurries of snow that spun around her, she was sweating beneath her thick leather jacket and jodhpurs. She took a moment to pull off her leather flying helmet, tucking it into her jacket and running a glove through her short auburn hair. Then she peered through the small window, into a deserted corridor dimly lit by candles in the sconces set into the wood paneling. Quickly, before she changed her mind, she pressed against the glass until it cracked, then broke, and reached in to unlatch the window and pull it open, sliding headfirst through the gap and pulling herself to the threadbare carpet.
    Rowena crouched on the floor, but no one came to investigate the sound. She picked up the pieces of glass and threw them through the broken pane, then pulled the tattered lace curtain across the window. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long, not the way the icy wind sent it billowing into the corridor, but she had the feeling that no one would be up here before the evening meal was served in any case. And that would not be for another hour, if the staff stuck to the routines she had observed from her surreptitious scrutiny of Midgrave over the past two days.
    The room she wanted was the last one down the corridor to her left, a simple wooden door. She rattled the handle: latched, but only with the simplest of locks. A matter of a few seconds’ work with her lockpicks,