You, Mac, and Ollie exchange looks. All this time, the traitorous Constantina was hidden in plain sight.
“We must go.” Mac lays a gentle and comforting hand on Ollie’s shoulder. Ollie looks up, his animosity having melted away into warm gratitude.
“Yes. Yes, you are right.” Though his voice remains calm, it sounds strangely hollow. Despite everything, you cannot help but empathize. “We should leave now, in case she slips from our clutches for good!”
“Timmy,” Mac says gently, “how good is Dodger as a sniffer dog?”
Timmy gulps. “Oh, he is the very best of the best!” He nods so vehemently you fear his head may fall off.
“Go to your bed now,” says Mac. “Wake your friends and barricade the doors to the Great Hall. It is rough work we have to do tonight, lad, and we need you to hold the fort.” Timmy responds with a shaky salute and then rushes off to raise the other orphans from their slumber.
With Dodger and a lantern, you and the men venture onto the moonlit Highlands to look for Constantina. Dodger seems instinctively to understand the gravity of the situation and practically pulls Mac’s arm out of its socket as you race at full speed toward a long-deserved reckoning. You only hope you are not too late.
As you approach the loch, eerie in darkness, you find Constantina waiting for you. She has removed her false nose, heavy maquillage, and strawberry-blonde wig, revealing a mass of dark curls and a strangely foxlike beauty. You gasp. Truly a master of disguise, she looks like an entirely different person.
She also has a pistol aimed at your group.
“Constantina!” Ollie’s voice is laced with pain. She raises one eyebrow.
“Ollie. How nice of you to come, and to bring your friends.”
“I don’t understand!” Ollie’s voice cracks. “Why did you do it, Connie? How could you do it? After all the sacrifices you made! For your country…” He can barely choke out the last part: “For us?”
“Oh, my darling.” Her tone remains eerily calm. “Don’t you see? I had to. I had to pretend so that I would be trusted with information I could then pass on to the great Emperor Napoleon!”
“No!” Ollie cries. “You are not—you couldn’t!”
“Oh, I could, and I did. But my feelings for you…well, they were not false. Not at all. You must believe that.”
Incapable of speech, Ollie simply shakes his head. You realize you need to take over, to stall for time and distract her if you can.
“So you are a Bonapartist?” you ask. Constantina turns to you with a mocking smile.
“Of course, you foolish chit!” she spits. “I am dedicated and loyal, even to this day. Even when the great man is dead and my cause is lost!”
You lean closer to Mac, and he puts a protective arm around you. Constantina barely notices.
“Do you understand how hard it has been? After betraying Britain, faking my death with the help of dear Captain MacTaggart, and then the fall of Napoleon in France? There was nowhere safe for me to go.”
“So what did you do?” you ask, unable to keep your voice from shaking. Constantina tosses back those dark curls and fixes a gimlet eye on you.
“I went into hiding. Took a job at the Rose & the Smoke to stay near to the only person who could betray me to the British. The only one who knew I was still alive.”
“Abercrombie!” you gasp. Constantina smirks.
“Not quite as stupid as you seem. Yes, I needed to keep an eye on him. The old fool was consumed with guilt and was going to blab—I could tell. He did it for the money, you see, and not his beliefs. His resolve was weak. He just wanted to repair that old ruin he laughingly called a castle. Then, when the payment for his betrayal wasn’t what he expected, it finally hit him that he had sold out his country.”
“But why did you reveal yourself now?” you ask. “What happened?”
Constantina again throws back her head and laughs coldly. “What happened? What happened is you arrived.”
Mac squeezes your shoulder, and you see him tighten his grip on his dirk. Ollie, meanwhile, stares at Constantina in silent horror, his eyes like those of a man who knows he is about to drown. If she notices, Constantina doesn’t show it.
“I realized that when clearing out the orphanage. Anyone might come across Abercrombie’s papers. I always suspected the old fool had kept something as a safeguard, in case he needed to name names in order to save his neck.”
“And you couldn’t allow that to happen,” you say. Constantina’s eyes light up with righteous fury.
“Of course not! I had to keep myself safe. I needed the evidence destroyed, and you out of the way, so I set the place on fire!”
Mac gasps and starts forward, but you place a hand on his chest. He looks at you, quizzical, and you shake your head.
“I thought that I was finally free,” Constantina continues. “So I decided to use the opportunity to get out of London. But then I saw that you had that wretched paper incriminating me. And Abercrombie, that fool, had managed to save the chest with the rest in it. So, you see, I had to follow you and make sure you never found out…” She turns to you, her face blazing with hate. “Or make sure you were silenced if you did.”
“I loved you!” Ollie cries, finally finding his voice.
“I loved you, too…in my way,” Constantina says. “We can still be together, as one. Let us kill these two and escape!”
“Never!” Ollie hisses. Constantina starts for a second, nothing more. Then her eyes flash eerily cold, and a deadly smile twitches at the corner of her mouth.
“Then you shall die.”
Seriously, cripes.
Do you try to defeat the evil spy lady? If so, turn to .
Or do you hold back? Ollie, unlike you, is a trained spy, and he can probably handle himself. If so, turn to .