“And I'm going to kill you,” James returned. “Both of you.” He stepped past them and made a beeline for the desk. “Blake, you inspect the shelves. Caroline, you—well, I don't know what you should do, but try not to yell at Blake.”
Blake smirked.
“He yelled at me first,” Caroline muttered, well aware that she was acting juvenile.
James shook his head and went to work on the locked desk drawers. He carefully picked each lock, then examined the contents of each drawer, rearranging them afterward so that Oliver wouldn't notice they'd been tampered with.
After about a minute, however, Caroline took pity on him and said, “You might want to concentrate on the bottom left.”
He looked back up at her with interest.
She shrugged, her head tilting to the side with the movement. “It's the one Oliver was always the most insane about. He once nearly took Farnsworth's head off just for polishing the lock.”
“Couldn't you have told him this before he went through all of the other drawers?” Blake asked angrily.
“I tried,” she retorted, “and you threatened to kill me.”
James ignored their sniping and jimmied the lower left lock. The drawer slid open, revealing stacks of files, all of which were labeled with dates.
“What is it?” Blake asked.
James let out a low whistle. “Prewitt's ticket to the gallows.”
Blake and Caroline crowded around, both eager for a look. There were perhaps three dozen files, each neatly labeled with a date. James had one of them open on the desk and was scanning the contents with great interest.
“What does it say?” Caroline asked.
“It documents Prewitt's illegal activities,” Blake answered. “Damned stupid of him to have put it in writing.”
“Oliver is terribly organized,” she said. “Whenever he devises any sort of a plan he always puts it down on paper and then follows it without exception.”
James pointed to a sentence beginning with the initials CDL. “That must be Carlotta,” he whispered. “But who is this?”
Caroline's eyes followed his finger to MCD. “Miles Dudley,” she said.
The two men turned to face her. “Who?” they both asked.
“Miles Dudley, I should think. I don't know his middle initial, but he is the only MD of whom I can think. He is one of Oliver's closest cronies. They've known each other for years.”
Blake and James shared a glance.
“I find him detestable,” Caroline continued. “He is always slobbering all over the housemaids. And me. I contrive to be absent when he comes to call.”
Blake turned to the marquis. “Is there enough in that file to arrest Dudley?”
“There would be,” James answered, “if we could be sure MCD truly is Miles Dudley. One can't go about imprisoning people on the basis of their initials.”
“If you arrested Oliver,” Caroline said, “I'm sure he would incriminate Mr. Dudley. They are rather good friends, but I doubt Oliver's loyalty would hold fast under such circumstances. When it comes right down to it, Oliver holds no true loyalty to anyone except himself.”
“It's not a risk I'm prepared to take,” Blake said grimly. “I will not rest until I see both of these traitors imprisoned or hanged. We need to catch both of them in action.”
“Is there any way you can determine when Oliver plans his next smuggling run?” Caroline asked.
“Not,” James replied, thumbing through the stack of file, “unless he's been really stupid.”
Caroline leaned forward. “What about this one?” she asked, holding up a nearly empty file marked 31-7-14.
Blake grabbed it from her, leafed through the contents. “What an idiot!”
“I certainly shan't argue with you on the subject of Oliver's idiocy,” Caroline put in, “but I must say I'm sure he wasn't expecting his office to be searched.”
“One should never put this kind of information into writing,” Blake said.
“Why, Ravenscroft,” James said with a mischievous arch of his eyebrows, “with a thought process like that, you should make an excellent criminal.”
Blake was so engrossed in the file he didn't even bother to glare at his friend. “Prewitt is planning something big. From the looks of it, bigger than anything he's done before. He mentions CDL and MCD and ‘the rest.’ He also names a rather large sum of money.”
Caroline peered over his arm at the number written in the file. “Oh my good Lord,” she breathed. “With money like that, what did he want with my inheritance?”
“There are some who feel they can never get enough,” Blake replied caustically.
James cleared his throat. “I think we should wait, then, until the last of the month, and strike when we can nab them all. Eliminate the entire ring in one clean sweep.”
“It sounds like a good plan,” Caroline agreed. “Even if we do have to wait three weeks.”
Blake turned on her with a furious expression. “You are not participating.”
“The devil you say,” she retorted, hands on her hips. “If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even know that he is planning something for that Wednesday.” She blinked in thought. “I say, do you suppose he hasn't been spending all of those Wednesdays playing cards? I wonder if he's been smuggling on a regular basis. Every Wednesday and such.”
She flipped through the files, checking the dates and mentally adding and subtracting sevens to each of them. “Look! All are for the same day of the week.”