by Miss Roylott
"I apologise," he said blandly. "Only your genuine panic would convince him."
I remained unhappy and mortified.
Holmes caressed my hand lightly, as much as he would dare, and assured softly, "He would not reveal us, no more than we would him."
Cooper nodded quickly to this and gazed at us with a kind of reverence, comforted by the sight of our touch. "I'm sorry, too, Doctor," he added.
I sighed and peevishly pushed away Holmes's hand, but was resigned to the situation.
Holmes focused his attention on Cooper. "You met Hope on the streets, then? He was driving his cab?"
"Y-yes," Cooper stammered. Then he cleared his throat and began more boldly, "I was not dressed this way. I was not—you gentlemen saw me the other night as old Mrs. Sawyer; that was a disguise, a precaution against any trap you set, but on this night I was dressed in… what I usually wear." He swallowed and explained quickly, blushing, "I tell my bosses at the paper that I cultivate the art of disguise because I have an ambition to be an undercover investigative reporter, but they little know just how many nights I am out there, for my own… recreation."
"You are accustomed to female costume?" Holmes filled in.
Cooper nodded.
I glanced at that boyish face again and realised that the delicacy of his features and the petite proportions of his body might serve him well in such a disguise.
Cooper shrugged and tried to be casually dismissive. "I have wigs and makeup and such. You can imagine it."
Indeed we could. In our own experience of the molly houses in town, we had seen countless men dressed as women, sometimes in an exaggerated, outlandish way, and their behaviour often matched their dress.
Cooper continued his remarkable statement. "I was dressed, then, in the way that I prefer. It was late in the evening, and I was just walking by on the pavement, not hailing any cab, not noticing at all. Jefferson must have glimpsed me in the lamplight, and he was stunned, for my hair, my face, and my figure were all familiar to him. After gaping awhile, he suddenly jumped down from his cab and ran after me, shouting 'Lucy' like a madman.
"He startled me; I did not know if I ought to be afraid or not. When I turned to face him, he slowed down and looked at me more carefully. He realised his mistake and shook his head, apologising breathlessly, 'No, you can't be her. I'm an idiot. No, Lucy's dead. I saw her dead twenty years ago, when I got her ring from her finger. You just, you look so much like her, back then, when we courted. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I scared you, miss.'
"I shivered at bit. He was so much taller than me, with a red face and grizzled beard; he looked wild and rough, despite his courteous speech, and he talked so strangely that I did not know just what to make of him. I said, 'That's all right, sir,' and tried to smile.
"He kept staring at me, and I said, 'Your wife looked like me?'
"But he grimaced suddenly and shook his head. 'My wife, no,' he choked. 'No, she never got to be my wife.'
"'Oh, you meant her engagement ring? I'm sorry, did she pass away before your wedding?'
"Every word I said seemed to upset him more. He struggled for his voice. 'No, I never had no chance to give her a ring. I was away in the silver mines, trying to make some money for it. I was trying—' His hands started to shake and his eyes filled with tears. 'Oh, I never should have left her!'
"I couldn't leave him like that, on the street, so I took him by the arm and brought him into a pub, to sit him down awhile and calm him. We had drinks and started talking. He never seemed to notice where we were, to see the other patrons around us; he only had eyes for me. He didn't even realise that he'd left his cab out on the street, with no one in charge of the horse."
Cooper paused and swallowed. "I admit that I found his attention flattering. He was a dark, handsome stranger, and no one had ever looked at me the way that he did." He frowned, and spoke as if in anguish, "I suppose I should have guessed then that he was lost, that he did not know me for what I was. But other men have surprised me, and I've stopped questioning it whenever they fix their eyes upon me."
The youth took another gulp of brandy. "He told me his name, and I answered that I was Rose—that's what I call myself when I'm dressed like that. He started telling me about Lucy, and about his old life in the States. His people came from St. Louis, and he roamed all over the West, looking for adventure and taking all sorts of jobs. I said it must be hard surviving out there, away from civilisation. He said I'd be surprised how uncivilised it could be, and he got very quiet, staring into his glass.
"To break the silence, I told him how my family originally came from the States too. Some of them once tried to go west back in 1847, with one of those wagon trains, but it was lost somewhere in the desert. All twenty-one people died or went missing, so our remaining family stayed well away, and we eventually went east.
"When I told him that, he looked up and got this strange look in his eyes. '1847,' he repeated after me. 'Twenty-one people in a wagon train.' Then he started asking me all sorts of details about the wagon train, and where it was headed. I told him I didn't know. It was just a story I heard from my father sometimes about the old days, when he himself had been a boy, and he only knew as much as his grandparents told him once they learned of the disaster. My father had not gone on the wagon train because he was staying at home with them.
"Jefferson asked me urgently, 'What's your last name? Is it Ferrier?'
"I told him no, we were Coopers. That disappointed him greatly, but then he remembered more. 'Wait,' he said, 'Lucy wasn't born Ferrier. She was adopted. Her dad told me so, when I asked him whatever happened to her mother.' Jefferson racked his brain to recall other details and he kept questioning me. Had I ever had any relative named Lucy? Yes, but it was my father's younger sister, lost on the wagon train. How old had she been? Five. Was my father's name Bob? Yes. Had there been anyone on the wagon train named John Ferrier? I did not know. He asked if I could take him to meet my father and speak to him about it. I said no, forcefully. He saw that he had upset me and apologised.
"Then he took out an old locket from his coat, saying, 'Lucy gave me this when I went away to the silver mines.' He opened it and showed me the faded picture inside. She looked just like me, when I'm Rose. It was like looking into a miniature mirror. Jefferson stared at me and the picture together, and he saw that his memory had not deceived him. He took hold of my hand and pressed it tightly. 'You're Lucy's kin!' he said, smiling and crying. 'Your folk are Lucy's folk. No wonder you look like her. No wonder.' He kissed both my hands so tenderly."
Cooper was moved by the memory and shut his eyes. I saw Holmes's look of fascination, closely analysing that effeminate face.
Then the lad continued in an even softer voice. "Trusting him already, I asked him to come back with me to my rooms. He almost said yes, but then he became charmingly gallant and worried about my reputation. I laughed and said he must tell me what happened to my lost aunt Lucy, out there in the Wild West. Jefferson said I laughed just like Lucy. I said I might have some newspaper clippings at my home about the lost wagon train, so he agreed to come. We left the pub arm in arm, and he took me to his cab, which had wandered further down the street with the horse. He lifted me up onto the driver's seat and then got up beside me, holding the reins. I directed him as he drove us to my rooms, and he let me lean close against him."
He paused, and I refreshed Cooper's drink. I also poured for myself and Holmes.
I do not know how to describe what happened as we sat listening to this tale; the change occurred so subtly, so slowly. Somehow, while I watched Cooper's face, he began to look less and less boyish to me and more and more delicate. More feminine. A trick of the light perhaps? A certain posture and lighter voice? A blurring of vision from alcohol? Possibly Cooper was simply so adept at disguise and artifice that he did not need greasepaint and costume. For whatever reason, I found myself forgetting the masculine clothes and the short hair, and instead I increasingly regarded the young creature be
fore me as if, well as if she were a woman. I suppose this is what Hope saw in her at the time.
Young Cooper continued with a shrug. "I have just a small flat; there's only me and my clothes, principally. Why didn't Jefferson suspect anything when he saw that I lived alone? I was sure he must have known then. He said afterward that he thought my parents were gone now, and I was fending for myself. Anyway, we started talking again and drinking in my sitting-room. He didn't even care that I didn't have the newspaper clippings. He spent hours telling me the whole history and pouring out his heart.
"I suppose you gentlemen think I was irresponsible to believe him and help him hunt down Drebber and Stangerson? But I trusted Jefferson; I knew he was right. Those wicked men had killed an old man and kidnapped his daughter, and for what? His land and his money, which they could have seized anyway, if the Ferriers had escaped Utah and started a new life. Why, that monstrous Drebber was even trying to snatch another young girl the night that Jefferson offered him his box of pills; it was the just providence that did him in!"
Holmes steered the conversation away from ethics, and back to the events at hand. "What happened at your flat?"
A sigh. "Jefferson kept staring at me, so warmly. I let him kiss me and hold me in his strong arms. I didn't care if he called me Lucy; no one had ever made me feel so wanted. I asked him to take me to my bed. He picked me up, like a bride over the threshold, and he carried me in. He lay me down and we kissed and we touched. Then when he undressed me, he looked at me, and—" Cooper swallowed, wincing with the memory. "So I took off my wig, and let him stare. I told him I was sorry, I thought he knew. Everyone on that street knows, always knows. No one ever expects any different.
"I cried and turned away, humiliated and scared that he hated me now. Jefferson sat there in silence for several moments, but he never hurt me, never got angry. He tried to clear his head, and I heard him finally speak. 'What was I doing anyway?' he blamed himself. 'Taking a young girl? Lucy's niece? What am I doing here? Even if you were walking the streets—'
"I kept sobbing, ruining my makeup and my sheets, and he offered me his handkerchief, wiping away the stains and gazing into my face. 'You still… you still look so much like her.' He caressed me, and was so gentle and kind. 'Don't cry,' he soothed me. 'Don't cry. Don't let me make Lucy's—Lucy's kin cry.'
"I told him, 'I don't have any sister; there's no more girls—' He hushed me and stayed near, saying that any part of Lucy was a great comfort after all these years. He didn't make love to me anymore, but he held my hands, saying how much like hers they were. He asked me my real name, and if I always dressed like this. I told him about me and my work. Then he asked me if I would do him a favour and tell him how to go about finding Drebber and Stangerson; he was having a hard enough time trying to learn the streets in London so that he could drive his cab, and all he knew was that the villains had arrived in London from the Continent a few days ago. I said I could make inquiries for him, and he actually smiled at me again.
"Jefferson started to leave me, saying that he had neglected his job too long and he would come meet me tomorrow night. I begged him to stay, offering to pay him for the work I had caused him to lose. He refused, but I insisted that he would do no good working drunk and tired, getting lost in the dark; he could sleep on my sofa for the night. So Jefferson finally consented to stay, but he felt guilty. I got up and put on my dressing-gown, noticing the way that he looked at me. I started to make up the sofa for him, but then I realised my manners and said he could have my bed instead. He was a guest, and older; the bed would be more comfortable for him. He argued with me, and I said I wasn't a damsel, after all. That hushed him."
She looked down at her slender hands. "So we slept separately. In the morning, I awoke and found him kneeling before me and watching me. I suppose it bothered him, how I looked in my night-gown and wig, even without my corset and petticoats. He asked me if I always slept that way. Was I always so convincing? I told him yes, that I live my nights completely apart from my daytime hours. It was a struggle to keep everyone at the paper from suspecting my double life.
"Jefferson said nothing for a long time, then he got up to go to work. He was half ashamed when I gave him the money I had promised him, and he said he would make it up to me. I told him it was a gift, and reminded him to come see me again, so that I could report to him about Drebber and Stangerson."
"And so you began to help him?" Holmes mused. "You found out where they were staying, so that he could stalk them during the day. You wrote the Mormon manuscript as a defence, should he ever be caught."
She nodded gravely. "I did not want him to be treated like a common cutthroat. I loved him."
"Evidently." Holmes remained uncomfortable with the emotional display, and cleared his throat. "And you helped him find a doctor to check upon his heart?"
"Yes, I—that was after, when he started to live with me. You see, he followed Drebber and Stangerson so much that he could hardly earn any money for his employer, let alone for himself. Jefferson couldn't afford his lodgings anymore, and I asked him to come live with me. It hurt his pride. 'It should be the other way around,' he said.
"When he moved in, he saw me getting dressed for work one morning, and since then he avoided being home anytime during the day. Still we would meet at night and talk. I noticed that he was hiding an illness, and found him a doctor despite his protests. When I heard how bad it was, I said that he should give up pursuit of Drebber and Stangerson, but he refused to fail at his quest after all these years. I asked how he could possibly succeed if he perished too soon, and I begged him to let me take his place.
"He said no, how could he let me risk myself like that? I reminded him I wasn't a girl again, and he nodded. 'I know,' he said, 'but you are still delicate and gentle. I couldn't let you face those villains, Rose; they'd overmatch you, even separately.' He kissed my hands. 'And how could I let these hands be stained with murder?'"
Her eyes brimmed with tears. "I was so glad that he was touching me again. I begged him, 'Please let me help you.' He surrendered and said all right. The only obstacle that remained was that he could never get either Drebber or Stangerson alone. Even if they did not recognise him following them around, Stangerson at least had not forgotten the perpetual danger that they lived in. So I could help by serving as a distraction to separate them. Jefferson said that Drebber still lusted after girls and scarcely controlled himself. If he saw me, Drebber would abandon Stangerson to pursue me, and Jefferson would come to my rescue and trap him. He warned that I should leave immediately, and leave the rest to him. He could not bear the thought of my being endangered for long. I promised I would, and—"
She choked with emotion, her voice quavering. "That night he had mercy on me. He kissed me and made love to me. He carried me to my bed just like before, and I loved him so much. When I asked him why he would do this, how he could bear to touch me, he said he wished to thank me for my kindness. Besides, he thought of me as his Lucy reborn, come back somehow just for him." She swallowed, whispering, "Maybe I believe that now. Maybe it's true. Maybe I was always waiting for him to find me."
Holmes and I were truly shocked and hardly knew how to respond. I could see Holmes's severe discomfort with the irrational sentiment, so I intervened awkwardly. "So the night of Drebber's murder, you came along with Hope?"
She calmed and shook her head. "Jefferson was going to pick me up that night in his cab,[22] but he did not come. I waited for him for hours, terrified that something had happened to him. Or else, that he had come to regret what we had done and no longer wished to see me. I could not sleep at all, and finally I heard his key in the door, almost at dawn.
"He picked me up in his arms and cried, 'I've done it! I've done it!' Then he saw my distress and soothed me, 'I'm sorry, my darling, but I had an amazing bit of luck tonight, and could not come home sooner.' I clung to him and he kissed me, explaining that he had got one villain, and the other one was soon to come. Then he took me to be
d and made love to me so passionately, so thrillingly."
Holmes coughed. "So that was the night that Drebber did abandon Stangerson at the railway station, but for a different young girl."
"Yes. Jefferson feared at first that Drebber and Stangerson would take the first express out of England and disappear again, just as they had every time that he caught up with them before. But he was wrong—"
"Yes, yes," Holmes interrupted. "We already know how Hope trapped Drebber that night in the empty house and administered his vengeance. What about Stangerson? He left that for an entire day."
"Oh, after we made love, Jefferson explained what had happened and how he had almost been caught by a constable when he came back to the house for Lucy's ring. So he decided he better not risk going to the hotel to find Stangerson just yet. Stangerson was always careful and never went out at night alone, so he should still be waiting at the hotel by morning.
"We slept, and then Jefferson woke me the next day, saying he would go see about Stangerson. I told him to be careful and remember his heart. He smiled and finished dressing. Then he remembered about the lost ring, and said, 'I guess I could confront Stangerson without it, since he did not marry Lucy but killed her father.' But Jefferson still wished to have it back, for he was going to bury it when his vengeance was done. I asked if I could help, and he remembered that I was a reporter, which would be a perfect excuse for me to nose about the crime scene, pestering the police detectives. He cautioned me to be careful, and I hugged him, saying I would meet him for lunch at the hotel and tell him what I found.
"By noon I had no luck at being let onto the premises; my own colleagues said that it was none of my affair, and I should go write my baby columns. But I had seen your advertisement in the paper. It was broad daylight, but I risked dressing as Rose anyway and I found Jefferson's cab outside the hotel, where he was watching for Stangerson. He came down to have lunch with me, and I told him about the advertisement. 'You might have lost it in the road. Shall I go see?'