Russell rapped his knuckles twice against the smooth wooden panel.
Solid. Not hollow.
That in itself told him nothing — except that it made him more alert, and considerably more curious.
He straightened up, smoothed the carpet back into place, then let his gaze travel elsewhere.
From the neatly arranged wooden boxes, to the seemingly meaningless decorative woodcarvings on the walls.
At last, his eyes came to rest on the gas lamp mounted in the ceiling.
By rights, in one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in all of London, something as pedestrian as a gas lamp had no business being here. If you wanted to signal wealth and prestige, you used electric lighting.
Unless, of course, the gas lamp's purpose wasn't merely illumination.
Along the rim of the lampshade, a barely perceptible layer of fine black powder had settled.
Russell stepped to the doorframe and drew his fingertip lightly across the upper edge. The same result — a thin smear of residue lifted away.
Soot.
Not ordinary dust. The remnant left by some substance that had burned at high temperature.
He brought his fingertip to his nose and inhaled.
A faint, faint smell reached him — something like pine resin laced with sulphur.
"Ah. Of course." Russell murmured softly, a knowing curve touching the corner of his mouth.
He finally understood why the security here was so laughably crude.
Because the real lock had never been those flimsy brass clasps, nor whatever patrol guards might lurk outside.
The real lock was fire.
The entire fourth floor was one enormous powder keg — meticulously constructed from timber and accelerant.
The moment a thief broke in and triggered the right mechanism — perhaps a pressure-sensitive plate, perhaps a concealed fuse tucked inside one of the boxes — a single spark would be enough to reduce everything here to an unrecognisable heap of ash. The secrets. The thief. All of it.
"And there it is — the old 'fire dragon burns the granary' trick."
Russell muttered to himself, then turned toward the wooden boxes.
Now that he knew the rules of the game, the rest was simple enough.
All he had to do was get what he came for without setting anything off.
His mark tonight was the founder of this club — Sir Phineas Black.
According to the intelligence supplied by the System, he ran this establishment, and behind closed doors harboured certain secrets that could not bear the light of day.
The System hadn't specified what exactly — but it seemed serious. Worse, apparently, than financial corruption or murder.
"Don't tell me it's treason," Russell muttered.
He was talking to himself as his gaze locked precisely onto the wooden box bearing the initials "P.B."
He lifted the box down, turned it over in his hands to gauge its weight, then fished out his Precision Lockpicking Tool, selected the finest probe in the set, and eased it slowly into the keyhole.
His upgraded Sleight of Hand B+ and Listening C+ reached their full expression in that moment.
He closed his eyes. The sounds of the world seemed to fall away, filtered out one by one, until all that remained was the whisper-soft chime of the probe's tip grazing the tiny metal tumblers deep inside the lock cylinder.
"Click... tck... click..."
Each rotation. Each nudge. Each one building a vivid, dynamic map of the lock's inner architecture inside his mind.
Then, with a clean, almost inaudible snap, the small brass lock gave way.
A breath of aged paper drifted out from the box.
Russell exhaled, dabbed the sweat from his temple, and lifted the lid.
Inside, a sheaf of yellowed letter-paper lay in quiet repose. The handwriting and phrasing both carried a weight of suppressed formality.
He pulled one sheet out at random, held it up to the dim light, and raised an eyebrow.
Correspondence between Phineas Black and parties in a foreign country.
The contents were written in German — neat script, precise phrasing — but threaded through every line was something that sent a chill down the spine. The unmistakable feeling of a transaction.
Russell's German extended to "Guten Tag" and "Danke," which meant the finer points were entirely lost on him.
Not that it mattered.
Mycroft could read it just fine.
Legitimate correspondence didn't need to be hidden away in a place like this. Whatever this was, it couldn't possibly be clean.
"Treason," Russell said. "Now that's a considerably bigger hat to wear than mere embezzlement."
He gave a low whistle and tucked the letter into his pocket.
He hadn't expected it — that this seemingly unremarkable private club was also functioning as an intelligence dead-drop.
Sir Phineas Black. Founder of the Romandy Club. A peer of the British Empire. And, in the shadows, selling state secrets to Prussia.
If this got out, it wouldn't just cost him his title. His head would be on a spike on London Bridge.
He drew his steel pen and a blank card from his pocket. The nib scratched across the card stock in a flowing hand, and in moments the words were down.
[Sir Black — loyalty is a fine thing. Pity you seem to have pledged it to the wrong side. — Moriarty.]
He placed the card back in the box, closed the lid, and even took the trouble of re-locking the brass clasp he had picked, leaving it precisely as he had found it. As though nothing had happened at all.
Only then, unhurried, did he produce a smoke pellet from his pocket and let it drop to the floor.
"Pfft —"
Smoke billowed. The Phantom Thief's silhouette dissolved without a trace.
Russell dropped from the highest floor of the Romandy Club, swinging out over the city on his grappling hook gun.
The night wind carried Mayfair's perfume of excess and money, roaring past his ears.
Below, the gas lamps threaded the streets into rivers of gold, and along those rivers drifted the gilded carriages of high society, slow and stately.
Next stop: Pall Mall.
Hopefully our dear Mr. British Government hadn't nodded off yet.
The grappling hook gun's cable cut a cold arc through the air, catching cleanly on a distant cornice. He swung through the dark like a pendulum, his figure flickering in and out of the shadows between buildings — a night raven threading through a forest of steel and stone. Elegant. And lethal.
Pall Mall was not far from Mayfair. It was London's premier street of gentlemen's clubs — the Carlton, the Reform, the Travellers, and others of their ancient, exclusive ilk all gathered here.
This street was the social, culinary, and power-network hub of upper-class male London. Women were not permitted into the inner sanctums.
"No wonder Charlotte moved out," Russell remarked mildly.
Mycroft Holmes's apartment occupied the quietest corner of this street.
Russell moved in silence across the rooftops, using the light from the windows to confirm Mycroft's location.
Sure enough — still awake.
At this hour, inside the study of Mycroft's apartment.
A fire burned steadily in the hearth, washing the entire room in warm amber. Mycroft sat behind his broad desk, a cup of black tea at his elbow, a book held open in both hands, reading with complete absorption.
Then, from somewhere behind him, a voice rose out of the stillness — unhurried, and laden with provocation.
"Good evening, Mr. Mycroft Holmes."
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