Irene laughed, sounding relieved for the first time that evening. “That is the last thing on earth—and in Prague— that I do worry about, Nell. In fact, I should be glad if he were in the vicinity.”
“Oh?” Godfrey approached her, cosseting his brandy. She looked up, her smile limpid. “Sherlock Holmes is an old hand at such intrigues. He is English. If he has been engaged by one party or another to investigate this carnival of intrigue, his interests will not lie far from our own. I—we—could use an able ally.”
“What of us?” Allegra inquired indignantly, sounding much like Irene during her more high-handed moments. “Are we worth nothing?”
“My dears, you are all worth everything; that is the entire difficulty!” Irene rose, took Godfrey’s glass, and drained it “Nell told me that Dr. Watson prescribed only a tot. You poured at least two and a half ‘tots’. Duelists must keep their hands steady and their heads clear. I will see you to your room.”
“That sounds like a threat.” His objection was so lightly stated that it was evident that he did not dispute her plans in this instance at all.
“As in all threats, the promise is implicit,” Irene said, putting her arm through his. “Good night, sweet friends,” she declaimed to Allegra and me in the manner of an exiting Shakespearian heroine. “May angels guide you to your rest. Sleep! And do not worry. We have more friends than you know, perhaps even Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
They left the suite, a handsome couple who seemed designed to occupy the top of a wedding cake in perfect, unblemished harmony for eternity.
The minute the door had closed behind them, Allegra turned to me. “Oh, Miss Huxleigh, you do not think that anything could happen to Mr. Norton?”
“He is to fight a duel. Usually such individuals are at risk of injury, if not death.”
“Oh, but not Mr. Norton... he is so kind, so clever, so much fun, so handsome—”
“Those are not necessary qualifications for fighting duels, my dear.”
“Oh. He said he was not unprepared.”
I found myself rolling my eyes, a vulgar habit that Irene employed on occasion to better effect than I could, I am sure.
“A recent gift of dueling pistols has introduced him to the gentlemanly sports of fencing and shooting, I suspect. The King has spent a lifetime in such so-called disciplines.”
“You are worried.”
“I am... frantic, dear Allegra. Irene is uncharacteristically distracted—that she should ever welcome the interference of this Holmes person is most unlike her! I have seen poor Godfrey in the toils of a wanton woman—” I glanced at Allegra’s wide and shining eyes. “—a most forward person, who recognizes none of the ordinary claims or loyalties. I am beside myself, Allegra, and there is nothing I can do! If there were... I would go to any length, risk any fate, face any danger to ensure my friends’ safety. But I can do nothing, save wait and watch.”
I sighed and let my hands loosen on my cherry-velvet skirt, which now bore a set of my fingerprints.
“I am sorry to have lost control of myself, Allegra. The situation is most trying to one of my temperament, who imagines that a well-ordered world is the goal of most sensible people. I am sorry that I ever met Baron de Rothschild, that we ever returned to Prague. When we... return to Paris,” I added with a lump in my throat, for it occurred to me that we might not all return, “I will give the Bible back!”
“Indeed, Miss Huxleigh, this is a serious matter. What can I do?”
“Only what I can do. Cause no trouble; be steadfast. Hope and pray for the best.”
“Oh, I will, Miss Huxleigh!” The dear girl was about to melt into tears. “If only Uncle Quentin were alive and were here! He would help us.”
Now I was on the verge of a rather moist indiscretion of my own. How I would like to consult Quentin about these events! A man of the wider world, as he had been, perhaps would have reassured me, at least, of Godfrey’s chances of survival. Yet... Quentin might still live. To that hope I would hold, as I would to the hope that Godfrey, too, would survive the test that awaited him on the morrow.
Allegra and I wordlessly broke with our rather formal tradition and kissed each other good night, politely ignoring the other’s tears.
As I returned to my solitary room, for the first time in my life I wished I possessed something like Irene’s wicked black pistol. I might shoot someone with it without waiting for the formality of a duel, and her name began with the letter “T.”
Chapter Thirty-two
SUBTERRANEAN SCHEMES
I cannot speak for anyone else, from the King of Bohemia to Allegra, but I was unable to sleep for even half a wink that night
I lay in my darkened room, staring at the faint illumination from the street lights leaking through the drawn draperies. The light fell in slivers here and there, like scattered pins. I judged the night’s progression by how these luminous barbs darkened and shortened as the moon made its bright journey across the sky.
Even when we had known Quentin to be in peril from Colonel Moran, the danger had not been so immediate, and definite. Dawn would bring not relief from this tension, but the ultimate exercise of it. Irene had not said that she would attend the duel, but I could not imagine her missing it, any more than I could imagine myself watching it.
So silent was the chamber, except for the ticks of the mantel clock, that when I heard a sound at the door, I thought I was dreaming, after all.
Again it came, that faint scratching. So Lucifer would demand admittance to my bedchamber in Neuilly. Could the hotel cat be so bold as to presume upon guests? Or mice... could the Europa have mice? Or even—rats!
I sat up in bed and listened.
When the scratching continued at regular intervals, and rather impatient ones at that I rose, found my slippers, donned my robe, and went to the door.
Turning the lock silenced the scratching. I eased the door open and bent my gaze at the passage carpeting. Nothing there, not even a small rat or a large mouse.
The door pushed open in one fell swoop, nearly knocking me off my feet.
“Nell, for goodness sakes!” hissed a familiar contralto. “I thought you would never answer.”
“I thought you were a rat—or a mouse.”
Irene turned to shut and lock the door behind her. “I assure you that I am neither. If anything, I am a White Rabbit, and I am late.”
I stared at her in the dimness. Nothing about her was white but her teeth, for she was clad all in black, clad in the very slinking-about men’s clothing she had donned on previous nocturnal forays. She had added another and unwelcome adornment: the crepe hair mustache and Vandyke she used on occasion when in male dress.
She thrust something equally impenetrable but soft as a pillow at me. “Here. Wear these, and be quick about it!”
“What are these—?”
“Your walking-out clothes.”
“They are not mine, and I am not walking out.”
“Yes, you are, unless you wish to save wearing black for Godfrey’s funeral.”
“Oh! Irene.”
“Just dress.”
“I must have light.”
“We can’t risk a light here. Let me help.”
“Oh! Ow!! Irene, that was my eye!”
“Then keep your head up where it should be. There, the bloomers are buttoned. It is chill out, but we dare not risk wearing cloaks. Our progress will be less questioned if we look like men in trousers, not women in opera capes.”
By now I had been infected with her urgency. “What progress?”
She sighed and fastened my black sailor blouse up the back. I could tell by the drawing of the fabric that it was buttoned awry, but would hardly dare mention that to Irene. “Godfrey is in great danger, Nell.”
I know that!”
“There is only one way to save him.”
“And we will accomplish that?”
“I... hope that we will accomplish that, if my theory is correct”
; “And testing that theory requires—?”
“—you and me to venture again to the rabbi’s tomb and into the catacombs beneath. Only one person can save Godfrey now, and that is the Golem of Prague.”
“The Golem! It does not exist, and even if it did, how could it save Godfrey?”
“By attending the duel.”
“Surely that would be a shocking sight, but I cannot see how the Golem would aid Godfrey in his affair of honor; he already has two seconds—”
“Believe me, the Golem is Godfrey’s only hope—and Bohemia’s as well, for a clever and nefarious plot is afoot to deliver the entire country and its people into the control of a sinister foreign power.”
“Russia,” I breathed.
“This is no time to be politically astute, Nell. We must hurry!”
Despite this imperative, at the door she drew me to a sudden stop. “You must carry this.” She thrust something long and hard into my hands.
“What is this?”
“Godfrey’s knife.”
Only my long years of iron discipline learned as a governess kept me from dropping the weapon I so well remembered. “That crude, vicious blade he carried in Monaco in the guise of Black Otto?”
“The same.”
“Why can’t you carry it?”
“I will have my hands full with the lantern and the pistol.”
“Oh. Then why do we need a knife?”
“Because we will! And be silent when we leave the hotel; above all, don’t drop it!”
“Do Godfrey and Allegra know of our mission?”
“No.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I told Godfrey that I must not distract him on the eve of his duel and would spend the night with Allegra, and I told Allegra that a wife’s place is at her husband’s side at such a crucial time. They both sleep like lambs, thinking me safe in the other’s room.”
“I doubt they sleep.”
“So do I; that was a figure of speech, Nell. Now may we be quiet and make our way out of this hotel with some discretion?”
"I am the soul of discretion,” I managed to retort just as she opened the door and we went into the deserted hall.
Who can say what the hour was? Well past midnight, certainly. At such an hour in a hotel, not a creature was likely to be stirring, not even my imagined rats. Yet we went cautiously down the servants’ stairs at the rear, and only breathed freely when we passed through a nondescript door and found ourselves on the hotel’s unprepossessing back stoop.
The scent of stale cabbage wafted from certain waste containers nearby, and a marmalade cat streaked down the alleyway.
Irene sighed her relief, despite having to inhale a vast attar of cabbage to do so. “Now is the simple part.”
Some may regard moving surreptitiously through a convoluted foreign city late at night as mere child’s play. I am not one of them. The moon was three-quarters full, and shed enough light to lead us, and worry us. We glimpsed citizens abroad, but none was so large and looming as the Golem, and none paid us any mind.
Still, I was surprisingly relieved to spy the jagged silhouette of the cemetery when Irene’s expert guidance led us to it. Moonlight gilded the crooked headstones; they seemed to shine, their engraved characters shivering in the night chill.
The smoke-darkened bulk of the rabbi’s tomb was unaffected by this phenomenon. The pale notes attached to it gleamed like lichen or... maggots.
Irene went right to it, curiously confident that we would encounter no guards. She lit the lantern that directed its beam only forward and illuminated the dread structure. “You must find the mechanism that opens the crypt door, Nell.”
“I may not be able to do so again.”
“You must, for only you opened it before. Why do you think that I brought you along, instead of leaving you dreaming safely in your bed?”
"I was not dreaming! I was worrying like the rest of you.”
“I know that you were. Stop worrying now, and concentrate on finding the place you pressed before.”
My gloved fingers prodded the ungiving stone while I fretted about the theoretical guards Irene no longer regarded. Every irregularity seemed promising, but no touch produced any effect.
“Earlier, you anticipated guards, now you do not. Earlier, you had us abandon the search below, Irene,” I whispered. “Why are you so sure that you will find the Golem in those eerie tunnels now?”
“Because now I need him. Now I can use him.” Her icy tone chilled my blood and bode no good for the Golem. “I told you before, Nell, that timing was all in this matter. Our timetable has been forced by the King’s foolish challenge, and Godfrey’s even more foolish acceptance.”
“You could have begged him to refuse.”
“I do not beg, and Godfrey does not back down, in public or in private, or in any guise. Lady Sherlock doesn’t beg either.”
“Could the King... shoot him?”
“He will try his mightiest, Nell. His passion for this Tatyana is beyond reason; surely even you can see that.”
“And Tatyana cares nothing for him? Doesn’t she risk losing her royal road to influence?”
“Perhaps the road has grown rutted,” Irene said. “Certainly, she now has her eye on other, more attractive routes. Well—have you found anything? We do not have all night.”
“I know; I know! Only... I do not know how I hit upon the secret in the first place.”
“What you can do once with simple, idiot luck, you can do again. Try!”
Simple, idiot luck, indeed. Did she think me such a poor creature that I could not stumble onto the same secret twice? My hands pressed along the cold stone, stiffening with the contact. Finally a familiar swell was under my fingers. I noted the approximate distance from the ground, and pushed with all my might and main.
The dark stone before us darkened, then disappeared. Barely catching ourselves from falling, we followed the opening slab of stone into the same warm, earthy atmosphere that had greeted us before.
Irene brushed past me to hold the lantern high, illuminating the stone stairs that led below. The moonlight that still bathed my back slowly thinned to a single bar and vanished, leaving me as cold as someone who has lost a last shaft of sunlight.
Nothing in the ghostly atmosphere dissuaded Irene. She moved rapidly down the uneven steps and into the tunnels, retracing our earlier steps. I followed her, clutching Godfrey’s knife and suddenly glad of it.
She paused at the juncture of another tunnel. “We stopped here before,” she whispered. “You and Godfrey may have thought it whim on my part that I suggested we retreat, but I had a reason. Do you see this?” She held her lamp up to the side of the new tunnel.
In the raw limestone, a blue chalk mark had been laid as neatly as a direction on a dressmaker’s pattern.
Irene pulled off her glove tips with her teeth—I cannot excuse such hoydenish behavior, except that she was holding the lantern in her other hand—and brushed her bare fingertips over the mark. She held them under the light.
“Blue. The mark is fresh.”
“Why?” I asked. “We agreed that these tunnels were used long before the cemetery was closed in the seventeenth century. Who would be down here now?”
“Whoever would require the proper route to be marked.”
“The Golem, Irene? Would such a creature pause to scratch a notation of its rampage?”
“No, but the guardian of the Golem might.”
“Guardian? Do you mean to say that someone—something—accompanies this monster?”
“Why else would I have asked you to carry a knife, Nell?” she asked sardonically.
“If a knife will defend against it—and you have your pistol as well—you expect to meet... corporeal beings.”
“What else are there?”
“Spirits, perhaps even that of the rabbi himself.”
Her face, dramatically uplit by lantern, relaxed into a slight smile. “If I could produce spiri
ts at will, Nell, I would not need the Golem. Nothing prowls these elder byways but you and I and some pawns in a political plot. They may be dangerous enough to merit our bearing arms, but we need not fear for our souls.”
“You omit the Golem,” I added. “I have seen it, and I can attest that it is a far from bodiless spirit. That doesn’t mean that it is not supernatural.”
“Indeed it does not. We will proceed with the proper caution, physical and spiritual. I will rely upon you to supply the spiritual safeguards, but, I beg you, Nell—do not drop the knife!”
Irene led with the lantern and I followed. Our footfalls, however soft, seemed loud in the empty corridors. At another crossroads, Irene wordlessly pointed out another blue chalk mark. We followed the offshoot tunnel it marked, and came at last to a rough-hewn rock chamber. Distant subterranean water dripped. A scratching like rats’ feet echoed.
Irene put her bare hand on the rock—darkly gleaming and chronically damp—and indicated that we would follow the wall around. She placed my hand on her shoulder, then doused the light.
I cannot adequately describe the utter, awful dark in which we then stood, our light-accustomed eyes blinding us to everything but blackness incarnate.
Irene began moving along the wall, drawing me with her. I clutched the knife in my left hand in such a way that I could use it if necessary. Our footsteps shuffled slowly forward.
What were we doing here, with Godfrey in such mortal straits? Playing Blind Man’s Buff, as I had once before played it in Berkley Square with a man whose own life later was in deadly danger?
Perhaps the sight of the foul Tatyana taking liberties with Godfrey, the strain of his forthcoming duel, had totally unhinged my rather melodramatic friend. I began to fear for something I had never before questioned: Irene’s sanity.
Chapter Thirty-three
PRISONER OF PRAGUE
Ahead of us, as faint as fog, appeared a misty glow.
For once I dreaded that I had been right, and my friend tragically wrong. Ghosts did haunt these ancient tunnels, and we were about to encounter one of them.
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 36