by Gary Lovisi
“Damn, lost the lout.” Harry slid the gun back onto its holster.
On his left, standing demurely beside a lamp post and holding a petite, blue umbrella over her auburn-haired head, was a slim young woman. She wore a checkered travel suit. “Only in town a few hours, Harry, and people are already trying to murder you,” she said as she approached him. “As I’ve told you many a time before, you have a real knock for rubbing people the wrong way.”
Suit dripping, he arose. “Another damn coincidence,” Harry muttered. “Thanks for the warning, Jennie.”
“I hate to see someone knock off a friend of mine,” she told him, smiling. “What are you doing in town?”
“First, what the hell are you doing? Does it have anything to do with Burlington Bertie?”
The pretty young woman stopped close to him, umbrella held high. “Who’s he?”
“She.”
“Oh, so?” Puzzled, Jennie shook her head. “No, The New York Enquirer sent me over to cover the Floating Ghost story,” she informed him. “If you’re up to changing into a dry suit, you might take me to dinner, Harry, and we can have a chat.”
Putting his hands on her slim shoulders, he grinned. Leaning down, he kissed her on the cheek. “It’s the least I can do,” he said.
* * * *
“It’s not all that strange that we’re both staying at the same darn inn, Harry.” Jennie was now wearing a fawn-colored, puff-sleeved blouse, a floor-length mauve skirt. There was a white Spanish shawl over her shoulders. “This is one of the few fairly decent ones in Darkington.”
“I must admit it has a catchy name,” said Harry from across their round dining-room table. “The Golden Violin. Why would anybody christen a place the Golden Violin?”
“You’ll find out.” Jennie smiled, a slight bit smugly.
“Meaning?”
“I dare not spoil the surprise,” she told him. “Now explain to me, in greater detail, why you’re hunting for this young lady who calls herself Burlington Bertie.”
Resting both elbows on the checkered table-cloth, he replied, “Her plain, everyday name is Emily Trelawney. She’s been appearing at the Empire Theatre, from whence she disappeared a few days ago. The young lady apparently earns her living at the moment by donning men’s clothes and singing suggestive ditties.”
“Sure, male impersonators are quite a fad just now. At least three of them are at the music halls in London the last time I was there. Who’s your client, Harry?”
“Her suitor. Well, actually, just one of her suitors. The romance sounds sort of one-sided.”
“It sure must be love on his part if the poor simp is willing to pay the outrageous fees the Challenge International Detective Agency charges.”
Harry frowned at the pretty reporter. “Hey, my father is the one who sets the fees,” he said. “Anyway, this fellow is the Assistant Manager at the Empire. Love is part of it, but he obviously wants Burlington Bertie back to do her act. She’s apparently quite a draw.”
“What about these wild dogs you say tried to eat you alive?” She took a small sip of her red wine.
“We talked to their trainer, who says he was bopped on the sconce and his dogs borrowed. The fellow who assaulted him wore a mask very much like the guy who tried to knife me,” he said. “Professor Bascom, whose act features five mean-minded Dobermans, insists that the masked man must also be a dog trainer, since he got the hounds to go for me. Though, it’s possible to hypnotize most animals. Which is what I did to avert the attack.”
“I bet Lorenzo taught you how to do that.”
“He did, yeah.”
Nodding, Jennie asked, “And does Lily Hope fit in with any of this business?”
“You knew she was in town.”
Jennie smiled again. “I’d have to be a real nitwit not to have noticed those gaudy posters plastered all over town.” She said. “She seems to have put on another ten or twenty pounds since last we encountered her.”
“I thought she looked quit svelte.”
“Since when is svelte a synonym for fat?”
“Does our singing spy tie in with your Floating Ghost?”
“That’s quite possible, since I suspect that—” Several of the other diners suddenly groaned in unison. “Oh, good. Here’s the surprise I promised you, Harry.”
The innkeeper, a jovial heavyset man of about fifty, had entered the dining room. He was carrying a violin and dressed in a Gypsy costume. He strode, chuckling, nodding pleasantly at the various diners, right toward Harry and Jennie’s corner table. “Ah, good evening, young lovers.” He beamed at them. “You’re looking even more petite and sweet than you did last evening, Miss Barr. And your gentleman friend is a fine specimen of—”
“We’re merely business associates,” she corrected.
“Ah, now I doubt that, miss, I do indeed, judging by the way you look at each other,” he countered. “I surely know love in bloom when I witness it or my name isn’t Nigel Farquar. Now then, I’ll serenade the happy couple with a choice medley of Romany airs, learned at the knee of my wonderful nanny back in the days—”
“How much?” inquired Harry.
The slightly battered violin halted halfway to Farquar’s double chin. “Oh, goodness, sir, there’s no charge, not a penny. The violin serenade is absolutely free and has become, I must admit, famous across all of England and even some parts of France.”
Jennie said, “Harry means how much do we have to pay to have you not play your fiddle?”
The innkeeper was nonplussed. He stared down at Harry. “Can this be true, Mr. Challenge, sir?”
Harry gave him a thin grin. “Most evenings, Farquar, nothing would please us more than a violin serenade, even one played on a tatty instrument like that one,” he explained, pausing to sip his wine. “However, tonight we happen to be in mourning for a recently departed life-long chum of both of us. He, too, by strange coincidence, was also a violinist. Though his fiddle was in a somewhat better state than that one you’re carrying around. We would, therefore, prefer to enjoy our sorrow in silence.”
He innkeeper lowered his violin, letting it dangle by his side. “Ah, forgive me, Miss Barr, Mr. Challenge,” he apologized. “I shan’t intrude on you at such a moment. In fact, in memory of your departed friend, I won’t play at all this evening. Farewell.” Shoulders slumped, he made his way across the inn’s dining room and out the door.
Several of the other patrons sighed in relief, others nodded cordially at them, a few applauded quietly.
Voice lowered, Harry said, “You were saying, Jennie?”
“Thank you, Harry dear, for saving us from a fate worse than death,” she said to him. “What I was going to tell you, before we were threatened by the violin, was that I don’t believe, after spending two days nosing around town and questioning the handful of people who claim to have seen this Floating Ghost, that there’s a ghost at all.”
“So what is it, then?”
She answered, “Seems to me it’s a flying man.”
* * * *
Jennie, nearly naked, sat up in Harry’s four-poster bed and pulled the lace-trimmed sheet up to her shoulders. “Well, what do you think about my theory?”
“Your theory about why we shouldn’t become seriously involved?”
She poked her bare elbow into his unclothed side. “No, nitwit, about this darn case.”
“Yeah, it sounds plausible.”
“It definitely ties things together.”
Leaning on his right elbow, he turned to face the auburn-haired reporter. “Okay, in quite a few situations like this, what the locals think is a ghost turns out not to be. So, sure, this floating ghost could be a flying man. In my own experience, I’ve never yet encountered a flying man, but . . .”
“F
rom all the descriptions I’ve collected—from a half dozen people who’ve actually caught a glimpse of this floating ghost—I’m certain this is really a fellow wearing some sort of portable engine.”
“You think this guy has some sort of flying device strapped to his back? Any of your witnesses see anything like that?”
“All of them were scared and took off soon as they spotted this thing come floating over the woods,” she answered. “But some of them told me they heard the ghost making a loud sputtering noise as it flew over Nightwood Forest.”
“Could be some kind of engine making a sound like that,” he admitted,
“Exactly, Harry.”
He frowned, glancing up at the purplish canopy over the bed. “Thing is, Jen, inventors have been trying to find ways to fly for quite a while and none of them have quite done it,” he said. “In order for there to be a flying man hereabouts, there has to be somebody who—”
“That’s where Dr. Augustus Overman comes in,” Jennie cut in, letting the sheet slip as she pointed at the reclining detective. “He’s obviously succeeded.”
“Why Dr. Overman?”
She pulled the sheet back up. “He’s been experimenting for years, trying to develop some kind of portable flying gear,” she explained. “I bet he’s finally done it.”
“Ensconced in Copperstone Manor and not in a big factory or a government laboratory or—”
“He’s been tossed out of several manufacturing facilities and at least two British government projects,” Jennie said. “He’s considerably eccentric. He’s quarrelsome, bullying, and his treatment of women leaves something to be desired. He was tossed out of Oxford three years ago because he assaulted a barmaid at a pub called Ye Saracen’s Ear.”
Sitting up, Harry leaned against the backboard. He was wearing only the lower half of a union suit. “You know quite a bit about the good doctor, Jennie.”
“The New York Inquirer sent me over to interview him in the autumn of 1897,” she said. “He’d just, at his own expense, published a monograph entitled Icarus Revisted: The Steps Necessary To Creating A Flying Man. He was experiencing a lot of heckling and catcalls at most of his lectures. That almost always prompted him to leap off the stage and start brawling. A bright, but not a likeable man.”
“You figure Dr. Overman moved out here, set up a laboratory in Copplestone Manor and . . . what? Finally succeeded in cooking up a flying man and he’s been testing his invention some nights out by his place?”
“I do, yes.” She gave him a more tender poke in his side. ”That would certainly explain why Lily Hope’s in town. She’s obviously gotten wind of his tests and is going to try to get hold of his secret.”
“Yep, that could well be. It also explains what that secret agent I mention, Byron Beggarstaff is nosing about.”
“What we have to do next, that is if you don’t mind our—”
There was all at once a loud shattering crash. The window next to Jennie’s side of the bed exploded inward. Shards of dry old wood and a multitude of clattering, tinkling glass fragments came showering into the dim-lit bedroom. They slammed onto the carpet, bounced on the canopy overhead. Cold night rain invaded the room.
All this was followed by two men who, one by one, climbed in through the dark rectangle where the window had just been. Both wore black hoods. The larger of the two also wore a lopsided black derby. It popped off his head as he landed on the shadowy floor, crunching glass and wood fragments underfoot.
Harry went leaping off his side of the bed, grabbing for his .38 revolver that was resting in its holster on the bedside table.
One of the hooded intruders, the one who’d lost his hat, hopped onto the four-poster, nearly trampling on the startled Jennie, and bounced off, tackling the partially-clad detective.
“No need for violence or firearms, old man,” he advised in a cultured, raspy voice as he knocked Harry off his feet and pinned him to the floral pattern carpet. “We’re merely here to invite you to a bit of a tête-à-tête.
“I happen to be otherwise occupied just now.” Harry managed to bring his knees up into the big man’s midsection.
“Ooof,” said the hooded intruder as his arms went flapping up.
From up in the vicinity of Jennie’s side of the bed came the sound of a bedside lamp smashing against a hooded head.
“’Ere now, mum. Bloodshed, specially my bloodshed, ain’t called for no how,” said a complaining Cockney voice. “As me mate’s been tryin’ ter explain, there’s really no need fer violence.”
Harry, twisting away from his groaning assailant, had tugged his shoulder holster off the table and was easing out his revolver. “You all right, Jennie?” he called out.
“This second lout almost stepped on me.”
Harry’s hooded lout, taking advantage of this slight distraction, struggled to his feet and, a shade wobbly, managed to kick the holster and gun out of Harry’s hand. “As I’ve been trying to explain, old chap, we—”
Forgetting about his gun, Harry lurched forward and delivered two sharp punches to the hooded man’s hidden chin.
“Ooof,” he mentioned again, before dropping to the carpet and passing out.
Grabbing him by the collar of his seaman’s sweater and his dark trousers, Harry dragged him over to the door of the room. He let go of him, opened the door, gripped him once again, and tossed him into the dim-lit hallway of the inn.
Slamming the heavy door shut, he turned toward Jennie. She now had the sheet pulled up to just under her chin. She was quite alone.
“Where’s our other lout?” he inquired as he crossed over to her.
She jerked a petite thumb in the direction of the vanished window. “Took his leave while you were evicting his mate,” she answered. “Shouldn’t you have saved at least one of them? You know, Harry, to learn who sent them.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m pretty sure I know who sent them,” he said.
* * * *
When Harry was awakened the next morning by a combination of wagons unloading and donkeys braying in the courtyard below, he noticed that Jennie was no longer present.
Resting on the fluffy pillow where her head should have been was a note. It read, written in the reporter’s precise, forceful handwriting:
Harry, Went to my own room to freshen up. Meet me for breakfast downstairs at 8. We can, if that won’t upset you too darn much, talk about teaming up on this business. By the way, the innkeeper doesn’t play the violin in the morning.
Love, Jennie.
Arising, Harry un-tacked part of the blanket and scrutinized the morning outside. The rain had ended, and a pale watery sunshine prevailed.
He arrived in the inn’s dining room at ten minutes after eight.
A half dozen guests were scattered at the tables. Jennie was not among them.
The plump innkeeper, without violin, came hurrying in. “Ah, Mr. Challenge,” he said, holding a folded sheet of foolscap in his right hand. “I was about to bring this missive up to your room.”
“Have you seen Miss Barr?” Harry asked, seating himself at an unoccupied table and accepting the letter.
“No, I regret that I have not. She’s a very attractive gel and, to my way of thinking, there’s no better way to commence the day than by—”
“Fall silent for a moment,” suggested Harry, who’d opened the note.
This one, written in a flowery hand with pale purple ink said:
Harry my dear, Here’s what you have to do so that no harm comes to sweet little Jennie Barr. Leave Darkington at once and do not return until Monday morning. She’ll be turned loose then. Otherwise . . . well, you can imagine all the terrible fates that might befall her.
Affectionately, Lily Hope. P.S. I am truly sorry you won’t be able to atten
d a performance of The Startled Princess.
Due to the rapidity with which he stood, his chair fell over.
“I say,” remarked a gouty old fellow at a nearby table, frowning up from his breakfast kipper.
Harry took hold of the innkeeper’s arm. “Who left this letter?”
“Exciting news, is it?”
“Who?” he repeated, tightening his grip
Wincing, the innkeeper shook his head. “I regret that it was left out on the desk whilst I was about my morning ablutions, Mr. Challenge,” he said. “And what would you like for your breakfast?”
“Not a damn thing,” Harry told him. “Where can I hire a horse?”
“Why, right here at our stables, sir. We have three very fine animals for—”
“Saddle one and have it in the courtyard soon as you can.” He let go of the innkeeper and returned to his room to fetch his revolver.
* * * *
Jennie, as she regained consciousness, muttered a few words that she rarely used. Then she said, “I know reporting is my chosen profession, but I do wish it didn’t involve getting hit on the head so frequently.”
“Are you all right, miss?”
Jennie had awakened on a straw mat that was spread out on a stone floor. Kneeling next to her, she now noticed, was a slender young woman clad in white tie and tail coat. “You must be,” she concluded as the girl helped her to sit up, “Burlington Bertie.”
“Sadly, I must admit that I am indeed,” said the young woman. “I’ve come to feel that this is not the branch of the show business that I wish to follow for much longer. My true name is Emily Trelawney.”