Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

said Farley with quiet dignity. “But damn it all, a chap’s private life should remain just that. The whole point of secrets is that they should stay secret.”
    “Two may keep a secret, if one of them is dead,” Ellen said wisely.
    The Painted Ghoul sniggered loudly as he forced his way into our group.
    “I have no secrets, because I wear my heart on my sleeve. Look! There it is!”
    We all looked, despite ourselves, and sure enough there was a human heart stitched to his billowing silk sleeve. It was still beating, slowly. The Painted Ghoul took a firm grip and wrenched the heart away. We all winced just a bit, as we heard the stitches tear. The Painted Ghoul offered the heart to each of us in turn, but we all declined. Even Ellen. Perhaps she was full, after Budapest. The clown shrugged and bit deeply into the heart. Blood dripped thickly from his chin, as he chewed happily.
    He didn’t care; but he loved it that we did.
    “Your loss,” he said indistinctly.
    “I wouldn’t touch anything you’d touched, clown,” said Ellen. “I have scruples.”
    “Really?” leered the Painted Ghoul.
    “Yes,” said Ellen. “Bags full of them.”
    The clown actually stopped chewing for a moment.
    “I think it’s the Droods,” Monkton Farley said abruptly. “They’re the ones behind all this.”
    “Why?” I said.
    “Because it always is the Droods!” Farley answered.
    “Well, yes,” said Ellen. “Very nearly always. But I don’t think they’d go to all the trouble of listening in on our secrets just to give them away for free. The Droods use the secrets they acquire for leverage. Or blackmail. Or store them away for some future time, when they might come in handy.”
    “Nothing sells for a better price than a secret,” said the Painted Ghoul.
    “You should know,” said Farley.
    “You wound me, sir!” said the clown, throwing what was left of the heart to the floor and wiping his bloody fingers on the front of his outfit. “I tell everyone everything, just to see the look on their faces.”
    “Whoever it is that’s listening in,” said Ellen, “they’re becoming a real nuisance. I come here to relax, far away from a judgemental world. Can’t you figure out what’s going on here, Monkton? Please? Pretty please?”
    She actually went so far as to flutter her eyelashes at him. Monkton Farley smiled, despite himself. He never could resist a pretty face.
    “I am a detective, and the current situation does . . . intrigue me. I know for a fact that the Wulfshead Security people have turned the whole bar inside out, and failed to discover even a hint of a scientific or supernatural eavesdropping device. There’s nothing here that isn’t supposed to be here. Which suggests to me that this has to be some kind of inside job. And whoever is behind all this . . . would have to be pretty damned powerful in their own right, not to be scared of what the Wulfshead management might do, if they ever find out.”
    We all looked at each other. We were all thinking of the Roaring Boys, but none of us wanted to say their name out loud, in case that was enough to make them appear. The last time the club management unleashed them, after that unfortunate business at last year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, the police were fishing bodies and bits of bodies out of the Thames for more than three weeks. And the media never said a word. Funny, that . . .
    “Who do you think it is, Shaman?” said Ellen. “You’ve usually got your ear closer to the ground than anyone else.”
    “Yes,” I said, “but I’ve been away. It does seem to me, though, that we’re all missing the obvious question. Who profits? Who stands to make the most, out of all our secrets being made public? Or . . . if they’re not doing it for the money, what are they getting out of it? I mean, just setting up an operation like this can’t have been cheap . . .”
    “Good point, Shaman,” said Farley, frowning heavily. “If it’s not about the