Free Ghost Song by Sarah Rayne Page B

left the theatre. He thanked Rinaldi, looked in on Bob Shilling to see if there were any messages in his pigeon-hole, and then went out, walking briskly down Platt’s Alley.
    He was delighted with the response to the song; he thought the errand boys would undoubtedly be whistling it tomorrow morning. He might come down here early and walk along Southwark Street just to listen to them. Was that being vain? Who cared if it was, he would do it anyway.
    It was a little after eleven o’clock, and the storm had blown itself out. It had not cleared the air though: the night was still hot and close. Toby would have preferred to go straight home and take a cool bath and eat whatever Minnie Bean would have left out for him by way of supper, but there was the hansom at the end of Platt’s Alley as Alicia had promised, and Alicia herself would be tucked sinuously inside it. No escape, thought Toby. But I’m not sure I want to escape, because whatever this is, it sounds quite adventurous. Even a bit risky, maybe. Shall I bet my virtue (ha!) on it being a plot to topple the house of Saxe Coburg Gotha in favour of some bizarre claimant? After all this anticipation, it would be an anticlimax if it was just another outré drinking club.
    As the cab rattled through the streets, he said, ‘You still haven’t told me what this is all about or where we’re going.’
    â€˜It’s in Bloomsbury,’ said Alicia. ‘That’s where we’re going.’
    Then it was unlikely to involve Hellfire Clubs or Jacobite Pretenders. It would more likely be earnest writers and painters, which might be deeply interesting or stultifyingly dull.
    â€˜A group of like-minded people,’ Alicia was saying. ‘We meet to discuss the situation in the world.’
    â€˜A political meeting?’ said Toby sharply, suddenly seeing several different and slightly worrying possibilities.
    â€˜Well, I would not use quite such a dull term as political ,’ she said, and gave him the smile that one of her admirers had likened to a very patrician cat, but that at the moment reminded Toby more of a snake contemplating its prey.
    â€˜What name would you put to it?’ he said.
    â€˜It has a number of names,’ she said. ‘It was formed from a larger organization called Narodna Odbrana.’ She glanced at him, and then said, ‘That’s Serbian, and literally translated it means the People’s Defence.’ She paused, clearly waiting for a reaction, and when Toby did not speak, went on, ‘Tonight’s meeting is a splinter group from that. It is called Tranz.’
    Tranz. The name dropped into the dark stuffiness of the hansom like a heavy stone. After a moment, Toby said, ‘And its purpose?’
    â€˜It has several purposes. You will understand better when you meet the others and hear the discussion. They can explain it better than I.’
    The cab rumbled its way forward, and although she continued to talk, lightly and almost flippantly about the meeting ahead of them, Toby scarcely heard her.
    His mind was in turmoil. He had heard the names of Narodna Odbrana and Tranz because of his father’s position within the Foreign Office.
    â€˜Dangerous nest of rebels and trouble-makers, Narodna Odbrana,’ Sir Hal had said one night, when he had had a drop too much to drink and for once had opened up to Toby about his work. ‘At ground level it’s a cluster of grubby little secret societies—groups of a dozen or so people—but the higher you go the bigger it gets and the more important it seems to become. It has government officials and high-ranking army officers, and goodness knows who else in its ranks.’
    Toby had asked what this partly grubby, partly important society actually did.
    â€˜That’s open to question,’ said Hal. ‘They’d tell you they’re promoting a greater Serbia and breaking down barriers between countries. Hence