Free The Mysterious Lady Law by Robert Appleton Page A

heard shook the entire room. A man’s scream and the rolling growl of thunder gathered momentum behind, from where the fight had…
    Jupiter? Startled, Julia hurled herself out of the Jovian giant’s path as it sped across the floor toward the sun. Steam hissed out of its side, scalding the bearded man whose arm appeared trapped in the twisted, broken piping. He yelled for help, but she would give him none.
    She watched, horrified, as another globe hit the rolling reddish leviathan and accelerated it further still. A clatter of breaking glass curtailed the bearded man’s final scream. He fell, Jupiter and all, through the blacked-out window. A distant splash heralded his watery grave in the canal below.
    The lights of the solar system flicked out. The planets ground to a halt. And Al, against the wall by the dashboard, having turned the orrery off, appeared no more than a phantom in the hissing gloom.
    Julia crept toward him, felt her way along warm pipes and moonlit black marble. Lost in the cosmos, with only his form to guide her.
    “Thank God you’re all right,” he grabbed her and held her tight.
    She flung her arms round him and swore she’d never let go.

Chapter Seven
    Insistent tram bells drew Julia’s attention to the street outside the fish and chip café. Not many people out walking for late morning on a weekday, and those she could see were muffled tight. An old butcher ambled by her window, his apron flapping in the Arctic gusts, his cold breaths inches from the glass.
    She shivered.
    The red double-decker tram rocked through its sharp turn onto Piccadilly. On an advert covering its side, the familiar red, white and blue lettering meant to signify the Union Jack, read, Ambition Soars. The World Is Yours. Fly British Airships. Julia felt like resigning then and there. No one had come to her aid on the Pegasus. Indeed, no one had stayed around long enough to hear her cries for help. So much for security. Bloody tin-pot outfit.
    Thank goodness Al had come through in a pinch, despite being locked in the bathroom like that. She took a bite of her French toast and chewed slowly, trying to connect the dots of his rescue. He’d explained it to her once, at the station, but her dazed state had blurred all but the affection in his unblinking, adorable eyes.
    “How was it you found me again?” She slurped a mouthful of hot—too hot—chocolate. It dribbled down her chin but she caught it with a napkin.
    “Hmm, it was luck,” he replied. “I guessed something might be amiss when I heard a raised voice, though that didn’t unduly alarm me. The locked door on its own would not have, either. But the two together—I kicked the door a dozen times before its hinges buckled.”
    He paused, sipped his coffee. “By that time you’d vanished. All I had to go off was the broken heel of a shoe. I ran outside and that’s where I found the dead crewman. His throat had been cut right in front of the elevator shaft. I hoped that you’d gotten away and that the murderer was an elevator descent behind you. Little did I know you were a trapeze artist, Julia.” He winked. “But the cage clearly wasn’t coming back up, so I had to climb down the tower’s exterior frame—”
    “Wait, that gets scalding hot with all the steam.” Julia cut in. “Your descent was as harebrained as mine!”
    He chuckled. “Gentleman’s gloves, two pairs for five shillings and nine pence. Good for rolling snowballs and sliding down hot brass in pursuit of murderers. Actually, the trickiest part was figuring out where the deuce you’d fled to. That darned mist! I’ll never forget how hopeless it felt…I was ready to tear the bastard apart—pardon me—if only I had a clue which way to go. The only light I could see through the smog seemed as good a gamble as any. The wet footprints clinched it. I remembered you’d broken a heel and figured you wouldn’t want to run with a limp, so that was how I knew they were your