It was dark, it was late, and Marie had just gotten the last of the children to bed when the knock came at the door. She didn't dare call out to whoever was on the other side for fear of waking the children, but she did scurry down the stairs as fast as she could without making any noise. Over the last two years she had become highly adept at it.
She peeked through the small sliding window into the second floor laboratory, but Henry wasn't there. Neither was Edward. They... he was probably in the library then, and since it seemed as though he hadn't heard the knock he had probably fallen asleep over one of his books. She smiled a little as she bounded down the stairs, thinking affectionately of his tendency to fall asleep curled in the library, and how she would have to cover him with a blanket or rouse him to go to his bed upstairs. It was a good night when she could walk into the library and discover him draped over a chair in front of the fire, book fallen to the floor from limp fingers.
The bad nights, for the most part, didn't bear thinking about. There was of course always the chance that he wasn't in the house at all, that he was outdoors engaging in other, less savory pursuits. But then, he rarely knocked when he returned from the bad nights, and a policeman would have been neither so quiet nor so patient.
She pulled open the heavy inner door with a bit of effort, not seeing who was on the other side till she had pulled the latch to unlock the outer door and called quietly "It's open."
The door opened. A tall, long-bearded man dressed in an elaborate uniform stood on the other side, sheltered from the light rain beneath an umbrella. She smiled.
"Captain!" she said, happily but still quietly. She darted forward and opened the barred door that closed off the foyer to the outside, leading him through the second and third doorways and closing them all diligently behind her. He left his umbrella to drip in the hallway and hugged her with paternal relief when they were safely inside.
"It is good to see you again, and in such good health and spirits," he murmured, well aware of the number of children who slept upstairs. "Is Henry at home, or Edward?"
"Henry," she smiled shyly, and hoped it was true. "He's in the library..."
She led the way into the small but well-stocked ground-floor library, holding her breath at the threshold and the sudden thought that perhaps she had assumed wrong. Nevertheless, there was indeed a slender (almost wraithlike, she thought with a worried sigh) form stretched out in one of the chairs, book on the floor by his side.
Marie knelt down and picked up the book, touching the man's arm. "Henry..." she whispered. "Henry?"
He came awake with a start and a small cry; he always did. "No... no!" Then he looked around and realized where he was. Calmly, as though this sort of thing happened to all of his friends, the bearded gentleman sat in the chair opposite and waited patiently. The slender man looked at him, looked at Marie.
"Captain's here..." she said, smiling, then stood and replaced the book. The man sat up in his chair, blinking a little bit as he came more rapidly to wakefulness.
"Captain..." he nodded, smiling a little.
"Henry." The bearded Captain did not smile, but still somehow managed to convey the impression that he was very pleased to see his friend. "It is good to see you and Marie doing so well."
"We've had some recent successes in placing children," he murmured, watching with a little worry, a little reluctance as Marie dragged a footstool over and knelt down on it beside his chair. The Captain also glanced briefly over with a similar look of worry, but neither made comment. "Word of our enterprise is starting to reach the ears of couples who not only have a willingness but also have a means to take one or more of our children. It is beginning to come to light that this is a rather... extraordinary... sort of place."
A small chuckle wended its way through the room at the emphasis on the adjective. "And meanwhile you continue to do well by funds and other necessities...?" the Captain asked. It was a delicate way of asking if they needed money.
Henry nodded. 'We are managing. It helps that we have at the moment less mouths to feed than we might otherwise. We are in that delicate point between obscurity and notoriety where we are able to use our good name to place the children, but are not yet a household word to attract the presence of new orphans."
The Captain nodded, looking pleased. "Percy is well," he added, more to Marie than to Henry, and she looked delighted by the news. "The career of a sailor... perhaps less honest of a sailor than some might hope, but still an honorable career... seems to be agreeing with him, and he has earned the respect of many of the crew. He may well come away from the association with his own ship, or a commission in the navy." He didn't, of course, specify which country's navy.
"Where is Percy?" the young woman asked in her soft, hesitant voice. She was sitting up a little straighter, anxious to see the boy who had been claimed as her younger brother.
"With Tom, and Mr. Skinner. They are coming here by automobile, having had to stop at the Consulate and the Special Branch offices on the way. There is news from Paris..."
Marie held her breath, and Henry narrowed his eyes and paled just slightly. There was something in the Captain's tone that made them both flinch. "News?" Henry said, and his voice was still even and steady.
"I think it would be best if we were all here for the news," the Captain said, sighing and regretting that he had let the word slip. "It is both better and worse than we could have hoped, and no one is sure what to do. Unless orders come down from either Special Branch, or through the American Consulate, there is nothing to be done. I..."
There was a loud knock at the door, startling everyone in the room. The Captain and Henry exchanged a look, and Henry moved out to the heavy oak door. Even they could hear Tom calling from outside. "The storm's gotten worse... Skinner and Percy are on their way, but they'll probably get held up until it stops raining." They didn't hear Henry's reply, but the doors began to open and close, and after a few minutes he escorted a dripping Tom Sawyer into the library, followed closely by an equally drenched young man of about the same age. Marie looked inquisitively from Henry to the new young man.
"Nemo, are you sure your automobile will be all right?" Sawyer and his friend immediately made for the fire.
"It is built to withstand the rain, and I have covered it with a canvas nonetheless," the Captain said as Henry reseated himself by Marie. "It will be all right."
Tom nodded, leaned over to gingerly give Marie a hug. "Sorry about this, it's really pouring outside." She giggled, and didn't seem to mind that he got her soaked from throat to thighs. He let her go and moved back towards the fire. "It's worse than we thought, Nemo. Special Branch has information on two cities that you don't know about, and..."
Henry coughed a little, to get the American's attention, and shook his head.
"... Skinner's bringing the rest of the information," Tom hastily temporized. "Meantime, we've got Huck to help us out." He clapped the other man on the shoulder, who rolled his eyes with the look of someone who was long familiar with Tom Sawyer's madcap plans.
"Huck Finn, at your service, sirs..." he shook hands gravely with Nemo and Henry. "Lady," smiled winsomely at Marie, who smiled back. "The State Department gave me special dispensation to come over and help out in any way I could."
There was an awkward silence as the three old friends and the newcomer looked at each other, trying find something to talk about that didn't involve the urgent business that had so clearly brought them together. Marie watched them all with eyes that were intelligent yet still childlike, as though she knew they wanted her out of the room but wanted to wait. After a few minutes Tom finally moved over to her, taking her hands in his and pulling her to her feet.
"Come on, Marie. You'd better get to bed, too. We'll tell you when Skinner and Percy get here."
"All right," she sighed, standing and going around the room to hug everyone in turn. They gave her their goodnights with affection and a smile, and Nemo kissed her forehead and murmured a fatherly blessing. She smiled, and allowed Tom to escort her up to bed.
"She is not recovering as well as you hoped," Nemo said. It was almost a question but not quite; they could all see her subservient behavior, her timidity and her lingering fear.
Henry sighed. "She is speaking, interacting with the children, the men and women who come to adopt, or to finance our little organization. But she is terrified of leaving the grounds without an escort, someone whom she sees as a protector. She will literally stand trembling on the doorstep and not move."
"Well that makes it rather hard to get out then, don't it?"
Everyone jumped, but only Huck looked around with any degree of frantic concern. The reactions of the rest were somewhere between mild amusement and wry annoyance. As they all watched patiently a form began to pull itself together out of thin air... or rather, to pull on clothing and shape itself into a humanoid form. A jar opened, cream seemed to spread itself on fingers and a surface above the coat, which resolved eventually into a face. Huck gaped openly.
"There, now, I imagine that's much better for the new tag-along." The latest arrival leaned himself against a wall and folded his arms over his chest, white makeup covering lips that were stretched into a smirk. Behind him Percy could briefly be seen, dashing upstairs as though he knew exactly where Marie had gone.
"You're late," Henry said calmly to the painted man. "Marie wanted to see you before she went to bed."
The smirk fell, replaced by a look of resigned disappointment. "Sorry."
"Well. I know that each of us has different information pertaining to the troubles at hand. I suggest that we take it in turns to describe what we have uncovered in our investigations." Captain Nemo brushed along overtop of the invisible man's chagrin. "In answer to your earlier questions, Henry... this is about the same phenomenon that we experienced in France seven years ago. The rumors have in fact been substantiated. Children have been disappearing, on certain occasions turning up in the ditches and drains of the city so traumatized that they cannot or will not speak. In some cases they have been found dead." Although the word was spoken bluntly enough, each member of the League winced noticeably. "So far the phenomenon has been observed in Paris, in Berlin, London and two other locales in Great Britain... most notably, thus far, in Venice."
"It's been showing up in the States, too." Tom said, pushing off of the wall where he had been standing and starting to pace. "Our two biggest cities, New York and Chicago... both are starting to see the same kind of thing, only it's harder to tell. Especially in New York, where there are always immigrants coming in on Ellis Island, it's hard to tell if a kid's just moved on with his folks or disappeared. Because of that, we've been digging more into the places where the few kids that we pick up have been found."
Huck tossed a couple of glass slides onto the table. "Miss Harker's been working on the samples we've found, but so far she's never seen anything like it. Even with all your... differences." He looked around the room, and spoke delicately.
"You mean even with all of us being self-inflicted freaks of nature," said the white face.
"Rodney..." Nemo warned, and the man subsided again.
"The situation is more grave than we had imagined," the Captain continued. "There are two likely possibilities at the moment. One, that it was as widespread in the beginning as it seems to be today, and we were only informed about Paris. Two, that after our foray into the catacombs the parties carrying out this malfeasance extended their operation, for reasons we do not yet understand."
"Or three, there are two groups of nuts abducting children and carrying them down into the sewers." This time no one contradicted the invisible man, and Nemo grimaced.
"Yes. That is a third possibility, although less likely."
'Bloody hell."
"Yes."
They were all silent for a little while, digesting the news of their new charge. It was disheartening to realize that they had not ended the threat years ago, to say the very least. Worse, they were all very much aware of the resources they had now, the new sources of information of which they had not been possessed in the past.
Marie Harker would be twenty one next spring, although it was largely an arbitrary birthday. She didn't know her real birthday, her real name, having been abducted from her cradle and raised in filth and terror for many years. Next spring her birthday would be the anniversary, really, of her rebirth into the aboveground and more normal world, the anniversary of her rescue. Marie had been her own choice of name, and she had been adopted by one of her rescuers. They had all had a hand in the remainder of her upbringing, and if one or another League member particularly took an interest in her, no one made mention of it.
Percy, the second oldest of the children and the only other to remain in custody of the League, was crewing aboard the Nautilus. Somehow he had come out of the ordeal less scarred, less terrified than Marie, but like his adoptive sister he refused to talk to anyone about what had happened in the catacombs. Whenever the Nautilus returned he would visit Marie, but everyone was under the impression that they didn't speak of the night terrors even amongst themselves. Percy was ordinarily a cheerful, healthy-seeming young man, but the merest mention of what had happened seven years ago caused his eyes to darken and his lips to tighten into a thin line of silence.
The rest of the children were scattered to the four winds, safely ensconced in their adoptive homes. No one wanted to press the two League youngers into speaking, and everyone knew they would have to.
"Even if we can reassure or persuade them to tell us what happened, who these mysterious underground dwellers are... how can we take on multiple cities at once?" Henry spoke up finally. "We are a league, not an army. And if the samples taken are as unusual as you indicate, Tom, does anyone really thing the local constabulary could deal with the situation by themselves?"
"Well, that's where we come in," Huck stepped away from the wall, speaking up finally. "The State Department's been talking to your Special Branch ever since this whole thing started up again. When Tom told me about you... gentlemen."
The invisible man smothered a laugh.
"... he mentioned," Huck continued with a nervous glance to Skinner's corner. "He mentioned each of you, your... individual talents. One thing led to another... we..."
"Hey, it was my idea, but you did all the talking."
"We persuaded the State Department to go looking for our own set of ... talents. The short end of it is, we're going to have help." Huck shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched over, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The rest of the League stared at the two Americans with varying degrees of consternation and amusement. Eventually it was Nemo who spoke up. "And how many of these others have you recruited?"
"Well... none, yet. There hasn't been anything that would force our government to recruit. But this qualifies, and we've been given the rank and resources to get the help we need. We have gathered a lot of information on some possibilities..."
"And what are some of these possibilities?" The invisible man's voice was growing a little less hostile, but his shoulders were hunched and his hands were jammed into his pockets. He hadn't liked the news from the beginning, and he was liking the reasonable course of action even less.
"Well... there's a scientist who's been carrying out some experiments that everyone says are bogus, but we had some people take a look at some of his research independently and it looks sound..." Henry shuddered. "There are rumors of a man in Paris..."
He pulled a sheaf of papers out of a satchel at his side, and with Tom's help they spread it over the table in the center of the library. Nemo and Henry leaned over the table with them, studying the documents and making comments here and there as to the helpfulness of the new potentials. Skinner leaned against his wall with his hands shoved into his pockets, silent but fortunately somewhat visible. In the end they had the list pared down to seven names, scattered across the globe. The symmetry of it all was not lost on the company.
"Well... if we can place two League members at each site..." Henry speculated finally, pinching the top of his nose with his fingers and squinting as though it would make the letters on the pages any less blurry. "We should be able to affect the outcome favorably..."
"We're going to need more people than that," Skinner muttered. "We're going to need at least six or seven more."
"Perhaps if the local constabulary..." Nemo frowned, moving across the table to the list, and they were off again.
"Are you sure we can trust policemen to this sort of work?" was Henry's first objection.
"Thanks," Tom said wryly, and the doctor winced
"I meant... er..." Henry subsided, and Huck elbowed his friend.
"Ordinary policemen, no, but these will be hand-picked by those who know about your abilities. I've already got a list of some people who might be helpful..."
"... you and your lists." Tom rolled his eyes.
"... in the States." Huck continued, unperturbed. "You might want to consult Special Branch as well. I'm sure they have some recommendations."
Nemo nodded, perhaps a second longer than he might have had he been more alert. They were all exhausted, physically and mentally. "We have a little time before Mina returns with the results of her..." he searched for the word that briefly eluded him. "Research."
"Perhaps we can use the time to ask the children what happened..." Henry sighed heavily. "And I haven't the faintest notion of how to go about it..."
"Carefully," Skinner said in acerbic tones that betrayed his worry. "She's had her whole world turned upside down on her, twice now. She went from the most hideous kind of life we can imagine to one that probably seems like heaven to her in comparison. She's not going to want to go back to her old life, even just to talk about it."
"We know, Skinner," Nemo said with the impatience of the very tired. "We realize..."
"No, mate, I don't think you do realize. That girl grew up in filth, starving, cold, and beaten. She's got scars on her from tortures you would never dream of. She's had pieces of her stripped away, so has Percy. The things they've been through even both of you would shudder at." He looked at Henry when he said it and the doctor shuddered, knowing exactly what Skinner meant by both of him.
"What in blazes are you talking about..." Nemo snapped with less grace than usual. Huck and Tom backed away from him almost in unison.
Skinner sighed. Of everyone in the League, he was probably the closest to knowing the kind of life Marie and Percy had had, and even he was a far cry from it. The problem was, no one else in the League realized... no one had wanted to ask until now. "She's got the kind of hands that have been broken, repeatedly, in places where you can't splint it, you just have to let it heal on its own. That's why her fingers don't bend quite right. She flinches when you brush her hair because she's used to being pulled by it, and now her head's all sensitive. The bottoms of her feet are calloused from being burned... scalded, more like. She's got burn marks on her back and shoulders, too... I don't know what from..."
"Acid..." Henry murmured, looking horrified. "I never guessed..."
Skinner shrugged. "She creeps past doorways like she thinks she'll be beaten if she makes too much noise. She's gotten very good at staying quiet... sneaking around. She's probably got a stash of food upstairs, despite the fact that there's a perfectly good kitchen. Percy's probably done the same thing..."
The Captain nodded ever so slightly, looking disturbed, worried. Suddenly a number of behaviors in his protégé were starting to become clear and explained, and he didn't like what Skinner was implying. He was also just a little disconcerted by the fact that it was Skinner who had noticed all this and, further, who had deciphered what it meant.
"There's more," the invisible man finished, looking down at the floor and shoving his hands back into his pockets, knowing the other men wouldn't want to hear it. "But you probably don't want to hear it. I don't think you have to worry about Percy... But Marie..." There was no delicate way to say it. "The way she acts around the children, the really little ones.... She's had a child before. Before we knew her..."
All four gentleman stared at him, horrified. "She was fourteen!" Tom choked out.
"That don't make any difference, mate," Skinner told him. "There are fourteen year old whores on the streets a mile from here, in Spitalfields. And I'd give you good odds that some of them have children... and the rest have diseases."
Huck looked as though he was going to be sick. "How.... Who..."
Skinner shrugged again. "I don't know. I just know what I've seen... what I've seen her do."
That pretty much ended the conversation there. The rest of the League stared at each other for several minutes, Huck and Tom sliding their gazes away when they thought Skinner might meet their eyes, Henry pausing after a few minutes and looking away from everyone with a shudder. Nemo stood with his hands on the table, leaning slightly forward, lost in his own dark wondering. Skinner stood at the center of it all hunched in on himself in a position eerily reminiscent of Marie's usual posture. The Americans were the first two to leave, slipping back into the darkness and the rain with their heads bowed.
"You'll send Percy over, I hope?" Henry asked the Captain at last. His voice was hoarse and ragged.
"Of course." Nemo replied, but his thoughts weren't in the present, his attention elsewhere. "Marie would never forgive me if I whisked him through without allowing her to see him again." He left quietly, without further word.
"I'll stay the night here, if you don't mind," Skinner said at last. "Probably talk to Marie when she wakes up in the morning. The more friendly faces around ... not that it matters in my case, but... the easier it'll be."
Henry nodded, staring into the fire with a faraway look of horror. "Of course..."
Skinner walked over and put a hand on Henry's shoulder, sighing. "It's not your fault, mate. You did the best you could. We all did."
"I should have guessed," he said, still in the same broken tones. "I should have known. What other use can there possibly be for having a monster within oneself, if not to be aware of the horrors in the world..."
Skinner was quiet for a little while, gripping the other man's shoulder as though he could force out the nightmares Henry was surely going to have. "Maybe there are some things even Hyde doesn't want to think about," he murmured, and left.
Henry stared at the fire, at his alter ego's confirming nod within the flames.
-
-
-
-
-
Marie woke up from dreams of being hunted, being wet, being hungry to a sensation of sunlight and warm covers over her, a soft bed underneath her. No matter how many times she made the transition it was still a shock. She lay there for a couple of seconds to be sure she wasn't dreaming. Then, finally, she sat up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Percy had been by sometime in the night, she remembered that, but then he'd been gone again and the nightmares had returned. At least she'd had some rest.
The windows were open and the air was clear, the sun out. Which meant that sometime in the night the storm had passed on. There was that clear scent in the air of leaves soaked in rain, as though the entire world had been thoroughly washed and made clean again. She could even hear a bird singing, no doubt rebuilding its nest from the damages it had sustained the night before. The sunlight through her window was still pale, telling her that it was still early in the morning. The curtains whispered in the breeze, moving lazily around the shape of a human hand that had no shadow on the floor.
"Rodney!"
Her delighted cry and subsequent leap out of bed caused the invisible man to turn and chuckle. He stopped playing with her curtains and caught her in a hug and a whirl. "Hey there, darling. Sleep well?"
She nodded, touching his face in a gesture that had been repeated so often it was casual, habit, not thought on by either of them. Having ascertained just where he was, feeling him out rather like a blind person might have, she kissed his cheek. "Everyone here?"
He nodded, and she felt the movement in the hand she kept pressed to the side of his face. "Including the new kid Tom brought in. It's getting so that anyone can join the club these days." She felt him scowl, felt him chuckle almost before she heard it, and grinned back.
"'s what you get," she told him, and they finished together. "Bloody Americans!"
He laughed and set her down. "Mrs. Spencer is fixing breakfast... although... hey!" She was poking her hands into his coat pockets.
"No chocolate?"
"Not before breakfast!"
She pouted.
"Oh, stop that, Marie, you look like one of your children." Skinner chuckled, and pulled a piece of candy out of a more hidden pocket. "The rest will have to wait until after you've sent them to lessons. Wouldn't do to set a bad example." He tapped a finger to the point of her nose in admonishment, and she giggled.
"Of course..." She moved over to her wardrobe, and Skinner turned his back out of politeness, although the oriental screen (a gift from Nemo, no doubt) made it rather unnecessary.
"You probably won't be seeing much of Nemo and the Americans till noon, or later," he told her as she dressed. "Everyone was up fairly late last night, talking about the latest League business. Not that we really came up with a plan, but at least everyone knows what's going on now."
"What's that?"
There was a brief silence. "Someone's trying to stir something up in a number of countries again. We're not sure who, or why yet. Tom thinks we need more people, and Henry and the Captain seem to agree, so they've put together a list. Mina's on her way in, too, as soon as she's done experimenting on whatever it is she's been experimenting on."
"Good." There was a definite note of satisfaction in her voice. She saw all too little of her adopted mother lately. "Lace me up?"
For a man who, at best, had been a respectable bachelor all his life (although Marie knew him better than to assume any sort of respectability) he laced her corset up as deftly as any other woman might have. She'd always wondered about that but had never really found an appropriate time to ask. Instead she settled for reaching up, finding and kissing his cheek again, and disappeared back behind the screen.
"Where's Percy?"
Skinner turned his back again. "The storm last night upset everyone's plans a little... he had to return Nemo's spare automobile to the ship. He'll be by sometime today, don't worry."
She came out from behind the screen, immaculately dressed and beaming. "Perfect," she said, although it wasn't entirely sure whether she was referring to her morning ablutions or Percy's arrival. Either way. Skinner chuckled and extended his arm like a true gentleman, and they made their way downstairs.
"Captain," Marie bobbed a curtsey to the man as she greeted him in the tiny kitchen that served mainly herself and Henry. He smiled and made her a little bow.
"Marie. I trust you slept well? This scoundrel did not abuse your sensibilities in any way?" The twinkle in his eye as he winked at Skinner turned the words from rebuke (which once, long ago, they might have been) into jest.
"Oh, scoundrel, eh? Abuse? I see how this is," Skinner pretended to be offended and went over to the cupboard to rummage through it for something to eat. "Grumble grumble. A man gets no respect around here..." Marie giggled as he actually said, grumble grumble.
"Percy?" Marie asked again, her 'brother' never being far from her mind.
"Right behind you."
She turned at the sound of his voice, and the Captain had to be quick to back out of her way as she leaped at Percy with the same enthusiasm she'd displayed earlier in the morning. Her younger 'brother,' now grown taller than she was, caught her with a delighted laugh and spun her around in the kitchen, though there was barely room for them. They giggled, burbling to each other in their own secret language the League members hadn't been able to decipher or understand.
"This is probably going to go on for some time," Nemo murmured to Skinner.
"About five minutes for every month they've been apart."
"Shall we adjourn to the library?"
"My thoughts exactly."
They made their way past the giggling youngers, each seeming to try and out-do the other for speed and rapidity of gestures as they talked. "It's amazing they manage to communicate anything at all," Skinner commented wryly as they entered the comparative quiet of the library. Henry looked up from the maps as they entered.
"Percy?"
Nemo nodded. If Skinner nodded too, no one saw it. "They were most pleased to be reunited."
"Mate, you've a gift for understatement. If Marie had had any more distance she'd've bowled the poor boy over."
Henry chuckled. "It seems unfair to them somehow that we have to keep them apart for so much of the time. Nemo, are you sure you couldn't contrive to leave him here?"
"It would be unfair to both of them if we were to keep them from the lives they wish to lead," the Captain reminded Henry gently. "And besides, neither of them seems to be overly suffering from the length of each other's absence. The most important thing is that they are together, here, now, when we will have to ask questions of them that will be very difficult to answer. Given the gravity of the situation I would suggest that we attempt to do so tonight..."
Skinner turned around from where he had been perusing some volumes of fiction that were most probably Marie's, since he didn't think Henry was inclined towards Austen or the Bronte sisters. "You can't be serious..."
"This is a most serious business, Mr. Skinner. I am indeed..." Nemo frowned, not entirely sure why Skinner was objecting.
"He's just gotten off the bloody boat, Nemo! Give them some time together, to catch up or get settled or ... whatever, all right? Give them some time before you start bringing back all the old ghosts."
Henry and Nemo both stared at the invisible man, who seemed more agitated than he normally let on. "Skinner, you are a fraud," the doctor said after a few minutes. "You pretend to be an inveterate rake, but in truth you have a softer heart than you would like to admit."
The invisible man shrugged. "Never denied it... well, not after the first ten times anyway. I mean it, Nemo. No questions at least until Mina gets here. Those poor kids are going to need all the help they can get."
Nemo sighed, giving in. He hadn't been particularly eager to question the two anyway, having within him some remaining shred of innocence that still wished to believe the world was not so cruel. "All right. Until Mina arrives, but no later. We cannot afford to let other children suffer because of our sentiment for these particular two."
"Agreed."
Skinner shrugged, and they stood around in silence for a little while. Finally Henry poured them all a scotch, and for once no one objected (not that Skinner ever turned down a good scotch). They drank in silence, each of them lost in the speculations of a horror they had thought long over.
She peeked through the small sliding window into the second floor laboratory, but Henry wasn't there. Neither was Edward. They... he was probably in the library then, and since it seemed as though he hadn't heard the knock he had probably fallen asleep over one of his books. She smiled a little as she bounded down the stairs, thinking affectionately of his tendency to fall asleep curled in the library, and how she would have to cover him with a blanket or rouse him to go to his bed upstairs. It was a good night when she could walk into the library and discover him draped over a chair in front of the fire, book fallen to the floor from limp fingers.
The bad nights, for the most part, didn't bear thinking about. There was of course always the chance that he wasn't in the house at all, that he was outdoors engaging in other, less savory pursuits. But then, he rarely knocked when he returned from the bad nights, and a policeman would have been neither so quiet nor so patient.
She pulled open the heavy inner door with a bit of effort, not seeing who was on the other side till she had pulled the latch to unlock the outer door and called quietly "It's open."
The door opened. A tall, long-bearded man dressed in an elaborate uniform stood on the other side, sheltered from the light rain beneath an umbrella. She smiled.
"Captain!" she said, happily but still quietly. She darted forward and opened the barred door that closed off the foyer to the outside, leading him through the second and third doorways and closing them all diligently behind her. He left his umbrella to drip in the hallway and hugged her with paternal relief when they were safely inside.
"It is good to see you again, and in such good health and spirits," he murmured, well aware of the number of children who slept upstairs. "Is Henry at home, or Edward?"
"Henry," she smiled shyly, and hoped it was true. "He's in the library..."
She led the way into the small but well-stocked ground-floor library, holding her breath at the threshold and the sudden thought that perhaps she had assumed wrong. Nevertheless, there was indeed a slender (almost wraithlike, she thought with a worried sigh) form stretched out in one of the chairs, book on the floor by his side.
Marie knelt down and picked up the book, touching the man's arm. "Henry..." she whispered. "Henry?"
He came awake with a start and a small cry; he always did. "No... no!" Then he looked around and realized where he was. Calmly, as though this sort of thing happened to all of his friends, the bearded gentleman sat in the chair opposite and waited patiently. The slender man looked at him, looked at Marie.
"Captain's here..." she said, smiling, then stood and replaced the book. The man sat up in his chair, blinking a little bit as he came more rapidly to wakefulness.
"Captain..." he nodded, smiling a little.
"Henry." The bearded Captain did not smile, but still somehow managed to convey the impression that he was very pleased to see his friend. "It is good to see you and Marie doing so well."
"We've had some recent successes in placing children," he murmured, watching with a little worry, a little reluctance as Marie dragged a footstool over and knelt down on it beside his chair. The Captain also glanced briefly over with a similar look of worry, but neither made comment. "Word of our enterprise is starting to reach the ears of couples who not only have a willingness but also have a means to take one or more of our children. It is beginning to come to light that this is a rather... extraordinary... sort of place."
A small chuckle wended its way through the room at the emphasis on the adjective. "And meanwhile you continue to do well by funds and other necessities...?" the Captain asked. It was a delicate way of asking if they needed money.
Henry nodded. 'We are managing. It helps that we have at the moment less mouths to feed than we might otherwise. We are in that delicate point between obscurity and notoriety where we are able to use our good name to place the children, but are not yet a household word to attract the presence of new orphans."
The Captain nodded, looking pleased. "Percy is well," he added, more to Marie than to Henry, and she looked delighted by the news. "The career of a sailor... perhaps less honest of a sailor than some might hope, but still an honorable career... seems to be agreeing with him, and he has earned the respect of many of the crew. He may well come away from the association with his own ship, or a commission in the navy." He didn't, of course, specify which country's navy.
"Where is Percy?" the young woman asked in her soft, hesitant voice. She was sitting up a little straighter, anxious to see the boy who had been claimed as her younger brother.
"With Tom, and Mr. Skinner. They are coming here by automobile, having had to stop at the Consulate and the Special Branch offices on the way. There is news from Paris..."
Marie held her breath, and Henry narrowed his eyes and paled just slightly. There was something in the Captain's tone that made them both flinch. "News?" Henry said, and his voice was still even and steady.
"I think it would be best if we were all here for the news," the Captain said, sighing and regretting that he had let the word slip. "It is both better and worse than we could have hoped, and no one is sure what to do. Unless orders come down from either Special Branch, or through the American Consulate, there is nothing to be done. I..."
There was a loud knock at the door, startling everyone in the room. The Captain and Henry exchanged a look, and Henry moved out to the heavy oak door. Even they could hear Tom calling from outside. "The storm's gotten worse... Skinner and Percy are on their way, but they'll probably get held up until it stops raining." They didn't hear Henry's reply, but the doors began to open and close, and after a few minutes he escorted a dripping Tom Sawyer into the library, followed closely by an equally drenched young man of about the same age. Marie looked inquisitively from Henry to the new young man.
"Nemo, are you sure your automobile will be all right?" Sawyer and his friend immediately made for the fire.
"It is built to withstand the rain, and I have covered it with a canvas nonetheless," the Captain said as Henry reseated himself by Marie. "It will be all right."
Tom nodded, leaned over to gingerly give Marie a hug. "Sorry about this, it's really pouring outside." She giggled, and didn't seem to mind that he got her soaked from throat to thighs. He let her go and moved back towards the fire. "It's worse than we thought, Nemo. Special Branch has information on two cities that you don't know about, and..."
Henry coughed a little, to get the American's attention, and shook his head.
"... Skinner's bringing the rest of the information," Tom hastily temporized. "Meantime, we've got Huck to help us out." He clapped the other man on the shoulder, who rolled his eyes with the look of someone who was long familiar with Tom Sawyer's madcap plans.
"Huck Finn, at your service, sirs..." he shook hands gravely with Nemo and Henry. "Lady," smiled winsomely at Marie, who smiled back. "The State Department gave me special dispensation to come over and help out in any way I could."
There was an awkward silence as the three old friends and the newcomer looked at each other, trying find something to talk about that didn't involve the urgent business that had so clearly brought them together. Marie watched them all with eyes that were intelligent yet still childlike, as though she knew they wanted her out of the room but wanted to wait. After a few minutes Tom finally moved over to her, taking her hands in his and pulling her to her feet.
"Come on, Marie. You'd better get to bed, too. We'll tell you when Skinner and Percy get here."
"All right," she sighed, standing and going around the room to hug everyone in turn. They gave her their goodnights with affection and a smile, and Nemo kissed her forehead and murmured a fatherly blessing. She smiled, and allowed Tom to escort her up to bed.
"She is not recovering as well as you hoped," Nemo said. It was almost a question but not quite; they could all see her subservient behavior, her timidity and her lingering fear.
Henry sighed. "She is speaking, interacting with the children, the men and women who come to adopt, or to finance our little organization. But she is terrified of leaving the grounds without an escort, someone whom she sees as a protector. She will literally stand trembling on the doorstep and not move."
"Well that makes it rather hard to get out then, don't it?"
Everyone jumped, but only Huck looked around with any degree of frantic concern. The reactions of the rest were somewhere between mild amusement and wry annoyance. As they all watched patiently a form began to pull itself together out of thin air... or rather, to pull on clothing and shape itself into a humanoid form. A jar opened, cream seemed to spread itself on fingers and a surface above the coat, which resolved eventually into a face. Huck gaped openly.
"There, now, I imagine that's much better for the new tag-along." The latest arrival leaned himself against a wall and folded his arms over his chest, white makeup covering lips that were stretched into a smirk. Behind him Percy could briefly be seen, dashing upstairs as though he knew exactly where Marie had gone.
"You're late," Henry said calmly to the painted man. "Marie wanted to see you before she went to bed."
The smirk fell, replaced by a look of resigned disappointment. "Sorry."
"Well. I know that each of us has different information pertaining to the troubles at hand. I suggest that we take it in turns to describe what we have uncovered in our investigations." Captain Nemo brushed along overtop of the invisible man's chagrin. "In answer to your earlier questions, Henry... this is about the same phenomenon that we experienced in France seven years ago. The rumors have in fact been substantiated. Children have been disappearing, on certain occasions turning up in the ditches and drains of the city so traumatized that they cannot or will not speak. In some cases they have been found dead." Although the word was spoken bluntly enough, each member of the League winced noticeably. "So far the phenomenon has been observed in Paris, in Berlin, London and two other locales in Great Britain... most notably, thus far, in Venice."
"It's been showing up in the States, too." Tom said, pushing off of the wall where he had been standing and starting to pace. "Our two biggest cities, New York and Chicago... both are starting to see the same kind of thing, only it's harder to tell. Especially in New York, where there are always immigrants coming in on Ellis Island, it's hard to tell if a kid's just moved on with his folks or disappeared. Because of that, we've been digging more into the places where the few kids that we pick up have been found."
Huck tossed a couple of glass slides onto the table. "Miss Harker's been working on the samples we've found, but so far she's never seen anything like it. Even with all your... differences." He looked around the room, and spoke delicately.
"You mean even with all of us being self-inflicted freaks of nature," said the white face.
"Rodney..." Nemo warned, and the man subsided again.
"The situation is more grave than we had imagined," the Captain continued. "There are two likely possibilities at the moment. One, that it was as widespread in the beginning as it seems to be today, and we were only informed about Paris. Two, that after our foray into the catacombs the parties carrying out this malfeasance extended their operation, for reasons we do not yet understand."
"Or three, there are two groups of nuts abducting children and carrying them down into the sewers." This time no one contradicted the invisible man, and Nemo grimaced.
"Yes. That is a third possibility, although less likely."
'Bloody hell."
"Yes."
They were all silent for a little while, digesting the news of their new charge. It was disheartening to realize that they had not ended the threat years ago, to say the very least. Worse, they were all very much aware of the resources they had now, the new sources of information of which they had not been possessed in the past.
Marie Harker would be twenty one next spring, although it was largely an arbitrary birthday. She didn't know her real birthday, her real name, having been abducted from her cradle and raised in filth and terror for many years. Next spring her birthday would be the anniversary, really, of her rebirth into the aboveground and more normal world, the anniversary of her rescue. Marie had been her own choice of name, and she had been adopted by one of her rescuers. They had all had a hand in the remainder of her upbringing, and if one or another League member particularly took an interest in her, no one made mention of it.
Percy, the second oldest of the children and the only other to remain in custody of the League, was crewing aboard the Nautilus. Somehow he had come out of the ordeal less scarred, less terrified than Marie, but like his adoptive sister he refused to talk to anyone about what had happened in the catacombs. Whenever the Nautilus returned he would visit Marie, but everyone was under the impression that they didn't speak of the night terrors even amongst themselves. Percy was ordinarily a cheerful, healthy-seeming young man, but the merest mention of what had happened seven years ago caused his eyes to darken and his lips to tighten into a thin line of silence.
The rest of the children were scattered to the four winds, safely ensconced in their adoptive homes. No one wanted to press the two League youngers into speaking, and everyone knew they would have to.
"Even if we can reassure or persuade them to tell us what happened, who these mysterious underground dwellers are... how can we take on multiple cities at once?" Henry spoke up finally. "We are a league, not an army. And if the samples taken are as unusual as you indicate, Tom, does anyone really thing the local constabulary could deal with the situation by themselves?"
"Well, that's where we come in," Huck stepped away from the wall, speaking up finally. "The State Department's been talking to your Special Branch ever since this whole thing started up again. When Tom told me about you... gentlemen."
The invisible man smothered a laugh.
"... he mentioned," Huck continued with a nervous glance to Skinner's corner. "He mentioned each of you, your... individual talents. One thing led to another... we..."
"Hey, it was my idea, but you did all the talking."
"We persuaded the State Department to go looking for our own set of ... talents. The short end of it is, we're going to have help." Huck shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched over, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The rest of the League stared at the two Americans with varying degrees of consternation and amusement. Eventually it was Nemo who spoke up. "And how many of these others have you recruited?"
"Well... none, yet. There hasn't been anything that would force our government to recruit. But this qualifies, and we've been given the rank and resources to get the help we need. We have gathered a lot of information on some possibilities..."
"And what are some of these possibilities?" The invisible man's voice was growing a little less hostile, but his shoulders were hunched and his hands were jammed into his pockets. He hadn't liked the news from the beginning, and he was liking the reasonable course of action even less.
"Well... there's a scientist who's been carrying out some experiments that everyone says are bogus, but we had some people take a look at some of his research independently and it looks sound..." Henry shuddered. "There are rumors of a man in Paris..."
He pulled a sheaf of papers out of a satchel at his side, and with Tom's help they spread it over the table in the center of the library. Nemo and Henry leaned over the table with them, studying the documents and making comments here and there as to the helpfulness of the new potentials. Skinner leaned against his wall with his hands shoved into his pockets, silent but fortunately somewhat visible. In the end they had the list pared down to seven names, scattered across the globe. The symmetry of it all was not lost on the company.
"Well... if we can place two League members at each site..." Henry speculated finally, pinching the top of his nose with his fingers and squinting as though it would make the letters on the pages any less blurry. "We should be able to affect the outcome favorably..."
"We're going to need more people than that," Skinner muttered. "We're going to need at least six or seven more."
"Perhaps if the local constabulary..." Nemo frowned, moving across the table to the list, and they were off again.
"Are you sure we can trust policemen to this sort of work?" was Henry's first objection.
"Thanks," Tom said wryly, and the doctor winced
"I meant... er..." Henry subsided, and Huck elbowed his friend.
"Ordinary policemen, no, but these will be hand-picked by those who know about your abilities. I've already got a list of some people who might be helpful..."
"... you and your lists." Tom rolled his eyes.
"... in the States." Huck continued, unperturbed. "You might want to consult Special Branch as well. I'm sure they have some recommendations."
Nemo nodded, perhaps a second longer than he might have had he been more alert. They were all exhausted, physically and mentally. "We have a little time before Mina returns with the results of her..." he searched for the word that briefly eluded him. "Research."
"Perhaps we can use the time to ask the children what happened..." Henry sighed heavily. "And I haven't the faintest notion of how to go about it..."
"Carefully," Skinner said in acerbic tones that betrayed his worry. "She's had her whole world turned upside down on her, twice now. She went from the most hideous kind of life we can imagine to one that probably seems like heaven to her in comparison. She's not going to want to go back to her old life, even just to talk about it."
"We know, Skinner," Nemo said with the impatience of the very tired. "We realize..."
"No, mate, I don't think you do realize. That girl grew up in filth, starving, cold, and beaten. She's got scars on her from tortures you would never dream of. She's had pieces of her stripped away, so has Percy. The things they've been through even both of you would shudder at." He looked at Henry when he said it and the doctor shuddered, knowing exactly what Skinner meant by both of him.
"What in blazes are you talking about..." Nemo snapped with less grace than usual. Huck and Tom backed away from him almost in unison.
Skinner sighed. Of everyone in the League, he was probably the closest to knowing the kind of life Marie and Percy had had, and even he was a far cry from it. The problem was, no one else in the League realized... no one had wanted to ask until now. "She's got the kind of hands that have been broken, repeatedly, in places where you can't splint it, you just have to let it heal on its own. That's why her fingers don't bend quite right. She flinches when you brush her hair because she's used to being pulled by it, and now her head's all sensitive. The bottoms of her feet are calloused from being burned... scalded, more like. She's got burn marks on her back and shoulders, too... I don't know what from..."
"Acid..." Henry murmured, looking horrified. "I never guessed..."
Skinner shrugged. "She creeps past doorways like she thinks she'll be beaten if she makes too much noise. She's gotten very good at staying quiet... sneaking around. She's probably got a stash of food upstairs, despite the fact that there's a perfectly good kitchen. Percy's probably done the same thing..."
The Captain nodded ever so slightly, looking disturbed, worried. Suddenly a number of behaviors in his protégé were starting to become clear and explained, and he didn't like what Skinner was implying. He was also just a little disconcerted by the fact that it was Skinner who had noticed all this and, further, who had deciphered what it meant.
"There's more," the invisible man finished, looking down at the floor and shoving his hands back into his pockets, knowing the other men wouldn't want to hear it. "But you probably don't want to hear it. I don't think you have to worry about Percy... But Marie..." There was no delicate way to say it. "The way she acts around the children, the really little ones.... She's had a child before. Before we knew her..."
All four gentleman stared at him, horrified. "She was fourteen!" Tom choked out.
"That don't make any difference, mate," Skinner told him. "There are fourteen year old whores on the streets a mile from here, in Spitalfields. And I'd give you good odds that some of them have children... and the rest have diseases."
Huck looked as though he was going to be sick. "How.... Who..."
Skinner shrugged again. "I don't know. I just know what I've seen... what I've seen her do."
That pretty much ended the conversation there. The rest of the League stared at each other for several minutes, Huck and Tom sliding their gazes away when they thought Skinner might meet their eyes, Henry pausing after a few minutes and looking away from everyone with a shudder. Nemo stood with his hands on the table, leaning slightly forward, lost in his own dark wondering. Skinner stood at the center of it all hunched in on himself in a position eerily reminiscent of Marie's usual posture. The Americans were the first two to leave, slipping back into the darkness and the rain with their heads bowed.
"You'll send Percy over, I hope?" Henry asked the Captain at last. His voice was hoarse and ragged.
"Of course." Nemo replied, but his thoughts weren't in the present, his attention elsewhere. "Marie would never forgive me if I whisked him through without allowing her to see him again." He left quietly, without further word.
"I'll stay the night here, if you don't mind," Skinner said at last. "Probably talk to Marie when she wakes up in the morning. The more friendly faces around ... not that it matters in my case, but... the easier it'll be."
Henry nodded, staring into the fire with a faraway look of horror. "Of course..."
Skinner walked over and put a hand on Henry's shoulder, sighing. "It's not your fault, mate. You did the best you could. We all did."
"I should have guessed," he said, still in the same broken tones. "I should have known. What other use can there possibly be for having a monster within oneself, if not to be aware of the horrors in the world..."
Skinner was quiet for a little while, gripping the other man's shoulder as though he could force out the nightmares Henry was surely going to have. "Maybe there are some things even Hyde doesn't want to think about," he murmured, and left.
Henry stared at the fire, at his alter ego's confirming nod within the flames.
-
-
-
-
-
Marie woke up from dreams of being hunted, being wet, being hungry to a sensation of sunlight and warm covers over her, a soft bed underneath her. No matter how many times she made the transition it was still a shock. She lay there for a couple of seconds to be sure she wasn't dreaming. Then, finally, she sat up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Percy had been by sometime in the night, she remembered that, but then he'd been gone again and the nightmares had returned. At least she'd had some rest.
The windows were open and the air was clear, the sun out. Which meant that sometime in the night the storm had passed on. There was that clear scent in the air of leaves soaked in rain, as though the entire world had been thoroughly washed and made clean again. She could even hear a bird singing, no doubt rebuilding its nest from the damages it had sustained the night before. The sunlight through her window was still pale, telling her that it was still early in the morning. The curtains whispered in the breeze, moving lazily around the shape of a human hand that had no shadow on the floor.
"Rodney!"
Her delighted cry and subsequent leap out of bed caused the invisible man to turn and chuckle. He stopped playing with her curtains and caught her in a hug and a whirl. "Hey there, darling. Sleep well?"
She nodded, touching his face in a gesture that had been repeated so often it was casual, habit, not thought on by either of them. Having ascertained just where he was, feeling him out rather like a blind person might have, she kissed his cheek. "Everyone here?"
He nodded, and she felt the movement in the hand she kept pressed to the side of his face. "Including the new kid Tom brought in. It's getting so that anyone can join the club these days." She felt him scowl, felt him chuckle almost before she heard it, and grinned back.
"'s what you get," she told him, and they finished together. "Bloody Americans!"
He laughed and set her down. "Mrs. Spencer is fixing breakfast... although... hey!" She was poking her hands into his coat pockets.
"No chocolate?"
"Not before breakfast!"
She pouted.
"Oh, stop that, Marie, you look like one of your children." Skinner chuckled, and pulled a piece of candy out of a more hidden pocket. "The rest will have to wait until after you've sent them to lessons. Wouldn't do to set a bad example." He tapped a finger to the point of her nose in admonishment, and she giggled.
"Of course..." She moved over to her wardrobe, and Skinner turned his back out of politeness, although the oriental screen (a gift from Nemo, no doubt) made it rather unnecessary.
"You probably won't be seeing much of Nemo and the Americans till noon, or later," he told her as she dressed. "Everyone was up fairly late last night, talking about the latest League business. Not that we really came up with a plan, but at least everyone knows what's going on now."
"What's that?"
There was a brief silence. "Someone's trying to stir something up in a number of countries again. We're not sure who, or why yet. Tom thinks we need more people, and Henry and the Captain seem to agree, so they've put together a list. Mina's on her way in, too, as soon as she's done experimenting on whatever it is she's been experimenting on."
"Good." There was a definite note of satisfaction in her voice. She saw all too little of her adopted mother lately. "Lace me up?"
For a man who, at best, had been a respectable bachelor all his life (although Marie knew him better than to assume any sort of respectability) he laced her corset up as deftly as any other woman might have. She'd always wondered about that but had never really found an appropriate time to ask. Instead she settled for reaching up, finding and kissing his cheek again, and disappeared back behind the screen.
"Where's Percy?"
Skinner turned his back again. "The storm last night upset everyone's plans a little... he had to return Nemo's spare automobile to the ship. He'll be by sometime today, don't worry."
She came out from behind the screen, immaculately dressed and beaming. "Perfect," she said, although it wasn't entirely sure whether she was referring to her morning ablutions or Percy's arrival. Either way. Skinner chuckled and extended his arm like a true gentleman, and they made their way downstairs.
"Captain," Marie bobbed a curtsey to the man as she greeted him in the tiny kitchen that served mainly herself and Henry. He smiled and made her a little bow.
"Marie. I trust you slept well? This scoundrel did not abuse your sensibilities in any way?" The twinkle in his eye as he winked at Skinner turned the words from rebuke (which once, long ago, they might have been) into jest.
"Oh, scoundrel, eh? Abuse? I see how this is," Skinner pretended to be offended and went over to the cupboard to rummage through it for something to eat. "Grumble grumble. A man gets no respect around here..." Marie giggled as he actually said, grumble grumble.
"Percy?" Marie asked again, her 'brother' never being far from her mind.
"Right behind you."
She turned at the sound of his voice, and the Captain had to be quick to back out of her way as she leaped at Percy with the same enthusiasm she'd displayed earlier in the morning. Her younger 'brother,' now grown taller than she was, caught her with a delighted laugh and spun her around in the kitchen, though there was barely room for them. They giggled, burbling to each other in their own secret language the League members hadn't been able to decipher or understand.
"This is probably going to go on for some time," Nemo murmured to Skinner.
"About five minutes for every month they've been apart."
"Shall we adjourn to the library?"
"My thoughts exactly."
They made their way past the giggling youngers, each seeming to try and out-do the other for speed and rapidity of gestures as they talked. "It's amazing they manage to communicate anything at all," Skinner commented wryly as they entered the comparative quiet of the library. Henry looked up from the maps as they entered.
"Percy?"
Nemo nodded. If Skinner nodded too, no one saw it. "They were most pleased to be reunited."
"Mate, you've a gift for understatement. If Marie had had any more distance she'd've bowled the poor boy over."
Henry chuckled. "It seems unfair to them somehow that we have to keep them apart for so much of the time. Nemo, are you sure you couldn't contrive to leave him here?"
"It would be unfair to both of them if we were to keep them from the lives they wish to lead," the Captain reminded Henry gently. "And besides, neither of them seems to be overly suffering from the length of each other's absence. The most important thing is that they are together, here, now, when we will have to ask questions of them that will be very difficult to answer. Given the gravity of the situation I would suggest that we attempt to do so tonight..."
Skinner turned around from where he had been perusing some volumes of fiction that were most probably Marie's, since he didn't think Henry was inclined towards Austen or the Bronte sisters. "You can't be serious..."
"This is a most serious business, Mr. Skinner. I am indeed..." Nemo frowned, not entirely sure why Skinner was objecting.
"He's just gotten off the bloody boat, Nemo! Give them some time together, to catch up or get settled or ... whatever, all right? Give them some time before you start bringing back all the old ghosts."
Henry and Nemo both stared at the invisible man, who seemed more agitated than he normally let on. "Skinner, you are a fraud," the doctor said after a few minutes. "You pretend to be an inveterate rake, but in truth you have a softer heart than you would like to admit."
The invisible man shrugged. "Never denied it... well, not after the first ten times anyway. I mean it, Nemo. No questions at least until Mina gets here. Those poor kids are going to need all the help they can get."
Nemo sighed, giving in. He hadn't been particularly eager to question the two anyway, having within him some remaining shred of innocence that still wished to believe the world was not so cruel. "All right. Until Mina arrives, but no later. We cannot afford to let other children suffer because of our sentiment for these particular two."
"Agreed."
Skinner shrugged, and they stood around in silence for a little while. Finally Henry poured them all a scotch, and for once no one objected (not that Skinner ever turned down a good scotch). They drank in silence, each of them lost in the speculations of a horror they had thought long over.