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Trinity marched over to the desk, its surface cluttered by the usual collection of paperwork, several telephones and what looked like a powerful personal computer. She flung herself into a large executive chair positioned on the far side of the desk, then pressed some hidden button or lever which caused the chair to rise in the air and give her a clear view over the untidy polished wood surface. "Take a seat," she said casually. She waved at the high-tech office chairs that littered the office. Chairs in two distinct sizes, I noticed: three built to a human scale and a single one more suited to a human child, or a Goblin; all designed to the same pattern in sleek polished metal and all capable of being raised up to a level so that humans and Goblins could face each other eye-to-eye. Again, very clever, I thought. Humans and Goblins working together as equals or, more precisely, giving reassurrance to the humans that they weren't giving offence by looking down on the elder race. Gumshoe sat, as he had been directed, in the furthest of the human sized chairs. He too had been carefully checking out the industrial operation that was going on all around us. Rosie followed him and sat daintily, and Nether took the Goblin-sized model. He rummaged around for a few seconds then, having discovered the elevation control, rose smoothly upwards. I jumped up into the remaining oversized - well, human-sized - chair, which was already at its highest setting, bouncing and twisting to make sure I landed facing Trinity across the desk. "Nice little operation you've got here," I drawled. Trinity treated that remark with the contempt it probably deserved. She swivelled in her executive chair glaring at me and Gumshoe alternatively. I caught Gumshoe's eye and nodded. He took the hint. With an economical choice of words, he explained to Trinity about Rosie o'Chill's apparently motiveless abduction and equally mysterious re-appearance, and how Nether had been resident at Chill's Bar for a great many decades. Nether chipped in to say a little more about his sojourn at the Bar, although he carefully advanced no clear reason why he had chosen to reside there for so long. The one topic on which Gumshoe and Nether made absolutely no progress was the appearance of Rosie in the alleyway next to Trinity’s warehouse. My sister swore that nobody in her employ would transport an unwilling human to or from the Lower Realms and, in any case, she herself would have noticed if something untoward was going on. She asked questions, many questions, questions with the overlapping and demanding nature of a court cross-examination, fired off at double-quick pace as if to catch one unawares. I had been distracted for a while now, hardly listening to the words that Nether and Gumshoe had been using. An idea had been circling in my head like a fly around a particularly tasty piece of dirt. "Let me guess," I interjected, bruskly cutting across Trinity's next question, "This place, this is the business that you were doing with Urquhart Garrick on the side - the business you wouldn't discuss with me." Trinity fumed silently for a moment, then nodded once. The look on my face could probably have been mistaken for a smirk, although I'd swear on solemn oath in any court in the caverns it shouldn't have been. Honest. "So you agreed to run this business," I went on, sitting back in the chair and looking around, checking to see if Gumshoe was following the direction of the conversation, "You even put some of your own money into it. Then Garrick disappeared, without trace, and you're still running it, waiting for him to turn up." "Yeah," Trinity replied sourly, "Sucks, doesn't it. And I've had a very close look at the books, and this business is nothing like as profitable as he led me to believe." "Well I can see why you're keen to track down Professor Garrick," I acknowledged, shrugging off Trinity's misfortune, "I guess you must have been pretty desperate to come to me at all. But it's worse than that." I jabbed a finger repeatedly at her for emphasis as I spoke. "You've been set up for a fall." I'd like to think it was poetic justice, or perhaps professional intuition at its finest, but it was most likely a lucky coincidence. It was just at that moment that the first faint sounds of approaching police sirens reached my ears. Nether and Trinity heard it too, an unusual sound in this quiet neighbourhood, even in New York city. The sirens were getting closer very rapidly.
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Part 34