by Gary Lovisi
“I know.” Wobbling some, the reporter stood. The effort made her stomach seem to spin around inside her.
“How do you come to know that?”
“A detective friend of mine has been hired to find you, Emily,” she told her as she lowered herself into one of the two wooden chairs the dim-lit, cell-like room contained. “A fellow named Foxhall hired him.”
The actress sighed. “Him,” she said forlornly. “I don’t know how you feel about your detective friend, but I’m afraid I only attract chaps I end up not much caring for.”
“Oh, I’m very fond of Harry Challenge.”
Emily brightened. “I’ve heard of him. He’s quite famous,” she said. “His exploits are often chronicled by an American journalist named Jennie Barr.”
“That’s me, actually. I’m Jennie Barr.”
“I’m certain that a man of Harry Challenge’s capabilities will soon find us and get us out of here.”
“Quite probably, yes,” agreed Jennie. “Now tell me where here is.”
“We’re down below Copplestone Manor. In times past, this was a dungeon and we’re locked up in one of the cells.”
“And why exactly were you tossed down here?”
Sighing, Emily replied, “Well, the initial cause was another of my unwise infatuations.” She sat, uneasily, in the wooden chair opposite the reporter. “Why, I am no longer certain, but for a time I was infatuated with a handsome young gentleman named Grant Overman. He—”
“Augustus Overman is his pappy,” cut in Jennie, pointing at the low grey stone ceiling. “He’s using this place to work on some kind of flying machine, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I found that out, much to my sorrow,” replied Emily. “Four nights ago—I think it was four nights, but I’ve somewhat lost track of time during my stay below ground—Grant sent me a note at the theatre, saying he wouldn’t be able to take me to dinner. I had been suspecting that he was involved with another woman. So, not even bothering to change out of my Burlington Bertie costume, I came rushing over to Copplestone Manor. A jealous fool, I intended to confront Grant. I was in the act of crossing the courtyard, when I chanced to look up at the tower. I saw Grant throw himself from the window. Struck with horror, I screamed, quite loudly.”
“But he didn’t fall,” said Jeannie. “Instead he started flying, aimed at the nearby woodlands.”
Emily, rubbing at her bowtie, gave Jennie a puzzled look. “However did you know that?”
“Reporter’s instinct.”
“Grant heard me. He turned back and came flying down to me,” continued the actress. “I saw then that he had some kind of engine strapped to his back. I blurted out, ‘Why, you’re the Floating Ghost!’ He, in turn, said, and it’s such a theatrical cliché, ‘And you know too much.’ ”
“How come Grant Overman and his dad dumped you in a cell?”
“It’s because of the schedule they’re on. The senior Overman has arranged to sell his invention to a foreign power,” she said. “The agents of this country will arrive in a few days to buy the model and the plans of the invention. These foreigners intend to create an army of flying soldiers.”
“So rather than kill you to keep you quiet, they’re locking you up until the deal is over?”
“That’s it, yes. I assume, since you also seem to know quite a bit about what’s going on, that they’re keeping you here for the same reason.”
“What’s to stop us from contacting the Secret Service once we’re loose?”
“They don’t care. The payment for the secret is substantial. Grant and his wretched father intend to take the money and flee England, settling in some obscure little European country like Ruritania or Graustark.”
“We’re going to have to make sure they don’t get the chance to—”
The oaken door of their cell made a rattling, groaning noise, then creaked open. “Well, what a pleasant surprise to see you once again, Miss Barr.” Lily Hope, a handsome woman in her forties, wearing a floor-length, lowcut, ebony gown, entered the dim cell.
“Myself, I’m not surprised,” said Jennie. “Though I thought you’d be trying to steal Overman’s invention, rather that working with him.”
“If you don’t mind, dear, I have something to say to Miss Trelawney,” the singer/spy said, a trifle impatiently.
Not replying, Jennie made a slight bow in her direction.
Lily, who was sporting a fairly believable red wig, said, “There’s been a change in plans. My clients are arriving tonight instead.”
“Does that mean we’ll be freed earlier?”
“Most certainly,” Lily assured her. “If you coöperate.”
“What more must I—”
“We’re planning a dinner for our clients,” said the spy. “And a little entertainment afterwards, to put them in as receptive a mood as possible. My understudy will appear in my place at the theatre tonight, while I present a medley of Light Opera favourites. My accompanist, who is also a gifted zither player, will render some of the ‘Goldberg Variations’ as arranged for that instrument.” She paused. “To end on a lighter note, you’ll do your Burlington Bertie turn. You, I’ve learned, have quite a following all across Europe.”
“I don’t feel that I—”
“Oh, but you shall, dear. Otherwise some of my nastier minions will—”
“All right, very well.”
“I can do a nifty cakewalk,” offered Jennie.
“You will stay safely locked down here,” promised Lily. “Though I’ll have somebody bring you a dish of treacle pudding. If there’s any left over.”
* * * *
It was late in the afternoon when the stone floor of Jennie’s cell, which she was now inhabiting alone, commenced rumbling, grinding, grating sounds.
“Yikes,” the auburn-haired reporter remarked, jumping up from her chair, as a three foot by three foot section of the floor swung open downward to reveal a dark, earth-smelling black square.
A moment later, Harry, partially festooned with spider webs and crumbs of long-dry leaves, rose up into the narrow room.
After taking a frowning glance at the watch pinned to her checkered jacket, Jennie said, “You sure as heck took your sweet time coming to my rescue, Harry. You weren’t swift.”
Pushing against the grey floor with both palms, he pushed himself up into the room. He moved away from the trap door opening, brushing grey webs off his trousers. “I was, Jen, unavoidably delayed,” he explained. “The town historian had gone fishing, or so he told his wife.”
“You felt you needed to bone up on Darkington history before rushing to save me?” She took a few steps in the detective’s direction.
“What I actually felt was the need to take a look at the architectural plans of Copplestone Manor.”
“Did the historian have them?” She suddenly pointed at his head. “You have a little black spider sitting on your left ear.”
Swiping the spider away with the side of his hand, he said, “He well might. But by the time I tracked him to the vine-covered cottage where the off duty barmaid he’s seeing on the sly resides, he’d left.”
“And so?”
“She proved to be an intelligent, though overly plump, young woman and suggested I see her Uncle Maxwell, the proprietor of the only antiquarian book shop in town,” Harry said. “He had a nice set of plans, all tied up with a scarlet ribbon. Showed the dungeon and its hidden entrances. Quite helpful.”
“And you figured I’d be here?”
“Seemed like a place that Lily Hope would store you, Jennie.”
The young woman left her chair, carefully avoiding the hole in the cell floor. She walked close to him, hugged him. “Figuring out Lily had grabbed me, that’s a nice piece of detective work.”
“Ac
tually that wasn’t too hard,” he admitted. “Lily sent me a note telling me she’d snatched you and suggesting strongly that I get out of town for the next few days.”
After kissing him on the cheek, she returned to her chair. “I can tell you about that,” she said.
Which she did.
* * * *
Herr Wolfe Knoepflmacher, who headed up the delegation to buy the flying-man invention, shot to his feet from his brocaded chair at the outdoor dining table in the manor courtyard. “Bravo!” he shouted, clapping his beefy hands, the two bejeweled rings flashing brightly in the light from the many surrounding torches. “Encore! Again!”
Dr. Overman, who was seated on Knoepflmacher’s right, tugged his gold watch out of the pocket of his waistcoat. “It’s past time for the demonstration of my invention, Herr Knoepflmacher,” he reminded. “My son is even now waiting up in yonder tower, all strapped in to my amazing flying device and—”
“Nonsense! Flapdoodle!” he countered. “Plenty of time, loads of it. But this lovely young lady—” He pointed a fat finger at the nearby temporary stage where Emily, in her Burlington Bertie outfit, and holding the borrowed top hat in her gloved right hand, was taking a bow and smiling, rather uneasily, at the dozen and a half outdoor diners who were politely applauding.
“Encore!” demanded Knoepflmacher in his loud, growly voice. “I absolutely insist!”
Emily looked down questioningly at Lily, who was seated on the customer’s other side.
The singer/spy gave a small positive nod, and made a small one-more-song sign.
Nodding, the young women in the tailcoat and white tie walked across the stage to Lily’s pianist, a handsome blond man of about thirty, and said something to him.
He apparently didn’t think much of the song she was going to sing. But he said, “All right, dearie, if you must.”
Popping her top hat back on at a jaunty angle, Emily walked up close to the footlights.
“Ever’ time I sees me girl
“Hit gets me dander up,” she sang in a Cockney accent.
“Marvelous!” shouted Herr Knoepflmacher. “Brilliant! A nightingale for a fact!”
The piano player stopped, gave an exasperated shrug, began playing again.
“An’ when I gets me dander up,” continued Emily, strutting across the boards.
That idiot!” said Dr. Overman all at once.
“Quiet,” urged Lily in a whisper,” leaning across the ample front of their customer. “It’s all right if he—”
The inventor said, “Not him. Him!” Half rising from his chair, he pointed upward at the tower that rose up about the brightly lit night courtyard.
Drifting down from the high, wide window of the tower was a dark-clothed man with a stuttering motor strapped to his back and a silvery wing attached to each arm.
“It’s that fool Grant, starting the blooming demonstration before that gawky young woman is through with—”
“That’s not your balmy son.” She was rising up, bending to reach under the flowing skirt of her dark green evening gown. There was a holster strapped to her left leg just above the knee. She started to tug free the .32 pistol nestled in the holster.
Harry Challenge came swooping down. He went sailing over the stage to catch up Emily under her arms. As her top hat fell away, the two of them rose into the air.
The blond piano player played an angry chord, shut the lid of the piano. “This is deucedly annoying.”
Lily, gun now in hand, aimed at, fired at the flying Harry.
The bullet missed but hit one of his wings.
His flight pattern changed, and he and his burden dropped nearer to the cobblestones.
Jennie, who’d been watching from the dark doorway of of a ground-level store room, rushed out onto the courtyard. “Pull up, Harry!”
“Sound advice,” he admitted quietly to himself. “However—”
He went smacking into a section of one of the surrounding high stone walls.
His other wing snapped.
Emily, who he found himself letting go of, fell about four feet to the ground and stayed there in an unconscious sprawl.
The strap-on engine was giving off sooty swirls of smoke, loud metallic clucks, erratic ticking.
Managing to stand, Harry was in the process of detaching himself form the damaged engine when the sound of gun shots from several guns sounded nearby.
* * * *
Limping slightly, Harry walked along the early afternoon train platform. Up on the slanting red shingle roof of the station house a half dozen crows sat watching the passengers hurrying to board the waiting train. In his left hand he carried his single small suitcase. Locating his compartment, he set the suitcase down and opened the door.
Jennie was sitting there, eating an apple and reading the latest issue of The Strand. Looking up she smiled. “Vanity, vanity.”
“I bring you flowers, you give me criticism.” From behind his back he produced, with a flourish that rivaled that of his magician friend, a bouquet of a dozen yellow roses.
She took the flowers, set them atop the open picnic basket resting next to her on her seat. “If you hadn’t been vain enough to think you could master that flying machine in a few minutes, you wouldn’t have crashed and you wouldn’t be hobbling around like a—”
“I was shot down,” he reminded, sitting opposite her and lifting a small bunch of red grapes out of the wicker basket. “Up until then, I was flying in an exemplary fashion. Fact is, Jen, I noticed several night birds eyeing me with envy.”
“Probably vultures, sure you were going to kill yourself.”
After eating a few more grapes, he asked, “What did your crass editors on The New York Enquirer say about your story?”
“Brilliant, as always,” she told him. “Though they suspect I tend to exaggerate your abilities.”
“Hard to do.”
“And what did your client think of your final report?”
Harry said, “He was, I couldn’t help noticing, a bit disappointed. I did find Emily Trelawney, which he was paying us for. And, for good measure, I broke up her romance with Grant Overman. Problem is, she doesn’t want to be Burlington Bertie any more and she broke her contract with him.”
“From what I saw of her act, I’d say that was wise of her.”
Harry finished his grapes. “Myself, I’m sort of disappointed about the way the case ended up,” he admitted.
Jennie set the magazine down steepled. “If Beggarstaff of Her Majesty’s Secret Service hadn’t showed up at Copplestone with a bunch of his men, Lily Hope might have succeeded in shooting you, Harry. Now she’s in custody.”
“I don’t like the idea that he figured out things almost as fast as I did.”
“As we did. More vanity.”
“Hey, keep in mind, that I’m the one who sprang you from that dungeon.”
“True.”
He grinned. “Can we switch to some new topics?”
“Such as?”
“Well, the question of the state of our romance. For myself, I—”
There was a polite tapping on the corridor-side door of their compartment.
Harry slid the door open. Standing there was Emily Trelawney in a brand new pale blue traveling suit. “I brought you a basket of fruit, Harry.” She was carrying a basket twice as large as the one in their compartment.
“Good, I’m collecting them. Are you traveling on this train?”
The actress nodded. “I’m going to catch the boat train. I’ve signed up for a tour of Europe.”
“I thought,” said Jennie, “you’d quit being Burlington Bertie.”
She sighed “They’re very fond of me overseas,” she said. “Wolfe has arranged a—”
> “That would be Wolfe Knoepflmacher?” asked the reporter.
Emily nodded. “Besides being vitally involved in politics, Wolfe has a great many connections in the entertainment world.”
“He’s on the train, too?” said Harry.
She said, “Frankly the way I see it, he’s an improvement over both Hugh Foxhall and Grant Overman. “
True,” agreed Harry.
The actress handed him the basket, kissed him on the cheek and departed.
Jennie smiled across at him, saying nothing.
A STUDY IN EVIL, by Gary Lovisi
THE FIRST DAY
It was after the advent of my marriage, at a time when I lived away from my former room at Baker Street, and my friend, Sherlock Holmes. I had not seen Holmes for months as I was busy in my medical practice. Mary, my wife, was away caring for an elderly aunt, which left me alone for the evening. I was quite prepared to enjoy the pleasures of a tolerable brandy and the latest issue of the Strand Magazine when there came a loud knocking to the downstairs door.
“Mrs Hudson?” I was quite astonished to find my old and steadfast landlady from 221B framed in the doorway.
She said not a word.
“What is it?” I asked concerned as I lead her into the foyer.
“Its Mr Holmes.”
“Sherlock?”
“Aye, doctor.”
“Is he well?”
She looked at me frightfully sad and nervous. The troubled look on her face told me all I needed to know.
“Give me a moment to get my bag and I will be right with you.”
The old lady’s hand suddenly grasped my own with a strength Id never imaged she possessed.
“Its not a medical situation.”
“Well then, what is it?”
“Mr Holmes has been arrested.”
“Arrested?” I blurted. “Whatever for?”
“Its . . . complicated.”
Well, after dashing off a quick note to Mary I grabbed my coat and followed Mrs Hudson to a waiting cab. The cabby took Mrs Hudson back home, then myself on to Scotland Yard where it appeared Lestrade was expecting me. The dour puss of the police inspector showed his gloom and bad temper.