“He’s in surgery, dear,” Hetty Gilbert soothed, brushing back Margo’s hair with one hand. “Doing fine, they said. Hold that ice on the bruise, child.”
Margo noticed Skeeter and bit her lips, startling him when tears welled up. “I’m sorry, Skeeter. Kaederman got away.”
“Thank God you got away,” Skeeter said fervently, collapsing into the nearest chair and upending the brandy Gilbert poured for him. “Shalig, what a night! How in the world did you escape?”
She told them succinctly, glossing quickly over any details that might have betrayed her own terror during the experience. Margo was one tough cookie, all right, for all that she was barely seventeen. Malcolm was luckier than he knew, to have a girl like Margo. She sighed, at length, nursing her own brandy and shifting the icepack on her cheek. “When that constable shouted, Kaederman ran off and disappeared down a side street. I sent the constable up to check on the poor cabbie, pinned under the wreckage, then got out of there as fast as possible and came back here.”
“Quick thinking,” Marshall Gilbert nodded approvingly. “Very quick thinking. You not only saved your life, you kept the authorities from asking uncomfortable questions that might have led them here. And God knows, we’ve been under enough official scrutiny as it is, thanks to Benny Catlin’s shooting spree at the Picadilly Hotel.”
Margo nodded and leaned her head back against the chair, drained and pale, but her hand on the icepack was rock steady. “They’ll assume it was the Ripper, I suppose. That’s what the bobby thought, anyway, and I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. Look, we’ve got to find Kaederman. And we have to get Ianira and the others to safety—”