Sir Hogshead plowed forward. Even under the white powder makeup on his face, I could see he was flushed as a stewed tomato as he shoved past me. "Enough japery! We are in danger, each and every one of us!"
Asteroth-Phipps chuckled. "Is there a shortage of rouge at hand, good sir?"
Hogshead grabbed a bottle of whisky from the sideboard and spun, wielding the bottle like a weapon at Ravensthorpe. "The very fabric of our civilization is at stake!"
"And would that fabric happen to be crinoline?" said Mr. Asteroth-Phipps.
Hogshead uncapped the whisky, gulped an amount that could in no way be considered womanly, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. "Laugh if you like," he snarled. "But I've come here to tell you that no less than our very manhood is in extraordinary peril."
"Do tell," Asteroth-Phipps said with a smirk, and then Hogshead began his tale.
*****
This whole awful business began innocently enough. I, Algernon Hogshead, arrived home early one afternoon to surprise my wife. I had just concluded a most propitious deal for my import/export company, one that would keep the British Isles well-stocked with exquisite foreign-made musical dentures for years to come, all at a tremendous profit to myself. I imagined I might celebrate the occasion with my beloved Bess.
Imagine my surprise when Bess was nowhere to be found. Our London home was empty as a beggar's bowl--children in school, Bess absent, even the servants gone from the premises. The female servants, that is.
Eternal optimist that I am, I expected not the worst, but the best. Surely, Bess had gone to the market. After all, she was known for joining the household staff in their shopping on occasion to get some fresh air and supervise purchases. It was her own little adventure, she liked to say. I might travel the world with my Wanderers' Club chums, but she could tell just as many cock and bull stories about her own trips down the market with the staff.
Disappointed at the lack of someone with whom to celebrate, I retired to my study and poured a snifter full of brandy. Undoing my tie and collar, I relaxed in my favorite high-backed chair by the fireplace and sipped the brandy, resolving to wait for my wife's return.
One hour passed. I watched its slow progress on the face of the antique clock on the mantle. My first brandy gave way to a second and then a third.
Just as the second hour gave way to a third with no sign of my wife. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, it was taking longer than a simple trip to the market.
Yet still I entertained no suspicious thoughts. Even when the third hour melted into the fourth, my only concerns were for Bess's well-being. I began to wonder if something terrible had happened to her, if she'd been injured or fallen ill in the course of her errands.
Just as I was preparing to leave the house in search of Bess, I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. Then, the sound of her shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. Immediately, I ran out of the study and down the hall, heart pounding with anticipation.
When I hurtled around the corner at the end of the hall and saw her standing in the entryway, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of intense relief. She was not dead, and she did not appear to be injured.
But she did appear to be surprised. Greatly.
Gasping when she saw me, Bess flung her left hand to the base of her throat and stumbled back two steps. "Al-Algie?" She sounded stunned. "What are you d-doing here so soon?"
"Came home to celebrate a deal, my dear." I took a step toward her, frowning with concern as I looked her over. "Are you all right? Have you hurt yourself or some such?"
Bess shook her head once, then nodded. Her perfectly creamy complexion shaded crimson as she blushed. "It's why I'm late getting home, actually. I was visiting Lorna Farnesworth, and I suddenly came down with the vapors." She fanned herself, making the auburn strands of hair around her face dance in the little breeze. "It took me ages to get my sea legs back, I'm afraid."
Such an emminently reasonable explanation. I believed her on the spot, no questions asked. "You're feeling better now, though?"
She patted her hair with one hand, keeping the left hand clasped at the base of her throat. "Still a bit shaky, truth be told. Best if I have a little lie-down, I should think."
"Very well." I nodded and backed away. "We can celebrate another time."
"Thank you ever so much for understanding." Bess smiled thinly and moved past me, heading for the stairs.
Before she could elude me completely, however, I shot out a hand and caught her left wrist in my grip. Tugging her hand free, I kissed it lovingly...all the while stealing a glance at the thing she'd been hiding.
At first, I could have sworn it was staring back at me. My first impression was of an eyeball planted in the high collar of her dress, flicking in its socket to look in my direction.
Another moment's inspection, however, revealed the truth. It was an eye, all right, but it was crafted of silver, not humors and muscles and blood vessels. It was just a piece of jewelry, a pendant on a silver chain--an elongated eyeball mounted inside what looked to me like an Egyptian symbol.
I'd never seen it before in my life...not in my house and certainly not on my wife.
But I did not speak of it at that moment. I lifted my lips away from her soft, pallid hand, allowing her to cover the pendant once more.
And then, with a sigh, she was gone up the stairs. I heard the door to her bedroom close, and I frowned.
For the first time, suspicion took shape within me. Why had she felt the need to conceal that strange pendant? What was the real reason for her absence that afternoon?
Perhaps, I thought, my mistress might shed some light on the subject.
*****
Lady Undine Crenshaw reclined on a fainting couch in the parlor of her rooms at the Savoy hotel. Her black-trimmed red silk dressing gown flowed over her voluptuous curves, leaving her pale ankles and feet scandalously bare. Sunlight streamed from the open windows through her luxurious blonde hair as it lay across her shoulders and breasts, forming a wispy halo. Her eyes, a brighter blue than any robin's egg could ever be, twinkled as she gazed at me.
"You're asking me about the likelihood that your wife indulged in an assignation?" Her voice was deep and husky. One corner of her mouth was cocked upward in a knowing smirk as it almost always seemed to be. "Darling, how should I know?"
I shook my head in frustration as I paced in front of her. "I'm simply asking your opinion. As a woman."
Lady Crenshaw sighed and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "She was surprised, you say? Alarmed?"
I stopped pacing and looked down at her, expecting insight. "Exactly."
"Perhaps she wondered if your company had collapsed, or you'd committed some unspeakable crime." Lady Crenshaw met my gaze. "Seeing you unexpectedly, and so out of context...of course it would worry her."
"This was different." I waved her off and resumed pacing. "Bess was not happy to see me."
"Believe it or not," said Lady Crenshaw, "wives are not always happy to see their husbands." Twisting around, she reached for the silver cigarette case and matches on the round marble table behind her. "Or so I've heard."
"But the pendant." I pressed my left hand at the base of my throat as I recalled it. "She was hiding it from me. And it looked so strange. So foreign."
Lady Crenshaw opened the case, drew out a slender brown cigarette, and slipped it between her lips. "Perhaps you've been spending too much time at that Wanderers' Club, darling." Her words were muffled as she spoke around the cigarette. "You're starting to see exotic secrets and dangers simply everywhere." Raising the lighter in its little metal box, she pressed the switch with her thumb. A flame popped out of the nozzle on top of the device, and she directed it at the tip of the cigarette while inhaling.
"I have learned to be alert to hidden dangers." I paused at one end of my pacing track and rubbed my silver goatee. "I've learned the hard way. Relaxing your guard can lead to sudden death."
Lady Crenshaw sighed l
oudly. As I turned to continue pacing, I saw her blow a huge cloud of smoke in my direction. "Is this the only reason you've come over, then? To talk about your wife ad nauseum?"
"Of course not." I brushed aside her question with a swipe of my arm. "When have I ever let her come between us?"
"Perhaps I should bring one of my boyfriends into the conversation." Lady Crenshaw laughed, puffing out three rings of smoke. "But which one shall it be?"
Ignoring her baiting, I spun and pointed a finger at her. "I must investigate. Treat this as one of my cases...my puzzleventures."
"Leave off it, Algie." Lady Crenshaw took a drag on her cigarette, then blew out more smoke. "This is bloody London, home of the illustrious Wanderers' Club. Can't imagine a worse place to try to hide a naughty little secret, thanks to you lot."
I grabbed the gold boar's-head handle of my ebony cane from the back of the red velvet chair on which it hung. "It has been my experience," I said as I gave the cane a twirl, "that the quieter the savannah, the closer the lions."
"Oh, dear." Lady Crenshaw crushed her cigarette in the bowl of a crystal ashtray on the marble table. "You've got the scent, haven't you?"
I grinned and reached for the doorknob. "What does your female intuition tell you, darling?"
"Something about people in glass houses throwing stones," said Lady Crenshaw just before she rolled over and turned her back on me.
*****
When it came to cold trails, this one was positively frozen.
After leaving Lady Crenshaw's apartments, I set out to retrace Bess's footsteps from earlier that day...all for naught. Everything appeared to line up properly with the tale she'd told me.
Surreptitiously interviewing our household staff, I found that each and every one of them backed up her story. Yes, she'd gone with them to the market. On the way home, she'd stopped off to visit Lorna Farnesworth, and they'd continued on without her.
Unsatisfied, I probed further. Setting out after supper for an evening constitutional, I swung by the Farnesworths' residence three blocks away. A knock of the boar's head handle of my cane brought a butler to answer the door.
"I come in search of a glove, my good man." I held up one of Bess's pale blue satin gloves, which I'd pocketed before leaving home. "This one is terribly lonely. Did my wife happen to leave behind its mate when she was here earlier today?"
The butler sniffed distastefully and shook his head once. "You have come to the wrong place, sir."
For a moment, I thought the trail was heating up. "My wife was here, wasn't she? Bess Hogshead?"
The butler cleared his throat and lifted one eyebrow. "Do you take me for an imbecile, sir?"
My heart pounded in my chest. I felt it, the thrill of the hunt, blazing through my veins like liquid fire. "Do you mean to say my wife wasn't here?"
The butler stared for an instant...then shook his head. My breath caught in my throat as I stood on the verge of confirming this vital intelligence. As I stood ready to catch my wife in a lie.
And then the butler deflated me. "Yes, she was here, and no, she left nothing behind. I saw to her wrap and gloves myself."
I couldn't help feeling disappointed. "Ah. I see then. Jolly good."
"Thank you and good day, sir," said the butler as he withdrew into the house.
And then he shut the door in my face, just as he had shut the door on this avenue of my latest puzzleventure.
*****
My next step was clear to me. If the beast's tracks would not lead me to the truth, I would have to shadow the beast itself. I would have to follow it, as I would an antelope to its watering hole, and watch it interact with its natural habitat.
This, of course, would require camouflage, but I was up to the task. For someone who'd followed the giant spider-gators of Bandu Shoga for hundreds of miles to the hidden treasure of Voxinian the Indignant, this would be child's play.
That night, I made certain preparations for the hunt. This involved drawing various items from the well-stocked disguise kit in the secret closet of my study and tucking them away in a valise. I added a few items of clothing and stowed the valise under the bed, ready for my mission.
Next morning, I followed my routine as if this were any other day. I woke, got dressed, and ate breakfast with Bess and the children...our girls, Ellie and Annie, both nine years old. After breakfast, I retrieved the valise from the bedroom, hid it under the overcoat draped over my arm, and tapped my way out of the house with the boar's-head cane. Just before I pulled the door shut behind me, I shouted to Bess that I would be working late at the office.
And so began the hunt.
*****
It felt good to be back in action. I'd been six months without travel or combat, and it had seemed like six years. For one such as I, nothing comes close to the thrill of the chase.
I hailed a cab, and it raced me uptown to my first destination: the Wanderers' Club. In one of the guest apartments upstairs, I changed clothes and applied the elements of my disguise.
I emerged a changed man...changed so much, in fact, that I passed the ultimate test. When Rogers, the keen-eyed major domo, saw me in the hallway, he ejected me from the premises, believing I was a stranger.
Out on the street, I stopped in front of a clothiers shop and examined my reflection in the plate glass front window. What a change I saw there!
My silver goatee was dyed black, as were my eyebrows. A false nose, bulbous and scarlet, covered my true, aristocratically aquiline one. Two enormous warts bulged from my face--one on the left cheekbone, the other on the point of my chin. A bushy black wig concealed the close-cropped silver stubble of my natural hair.
Instead of a black business coat and trousers, I wore a ragged gray jacket with holes in the elbows and threadbare gray pants. Topping it off, I wore a battered brown cap with a mangled visor.
I nodded with satisfaction and adjusted my posture, slouching and jutting my chin forward. My camouflage was perfect, ready for the hunt. If I, on another day, had seen me coming, looking like this, I would have thought it was a factory laborer approaching, or a beggar.
Or a street sweeper. In other words, the master of disguise had created the perfect appearance for the role he had chosen to play.
Slipping around to the rear entrance of the Wanderers' Club, I retrieved the push broom that Rogers always kept by the door. Grinning, I ran off down the alley, making my escape before Rogers could find me out.
*****
This time, as I dared not hail a cab, the trip across town took considerably longer. I knew no cabbie would stop to pick up someone who looked so unlikely to be able to pay his fare.
Fortunately, as I am always in peak physical condition, the exercise in no way left me winded. I returned to the street outside my home as composed and energetic as I'd been upon setting out that day.
And so I began my charade. My concealment, as they say, in plain sight.
Taking care to remain stooped over, I pushed the broom up the street and back down again, sweeping layers of soot into piles at either end. Always, I kept one eye on the front door of my home, waiting for Bess to emerge.
I felt certain she hadn't come forth yet, as her morning chores and toilette typically occupied several hours. But I presumed she would soon poke her head out of her burrow to sniff the air.
I waited at least an hour, all the while clearing more soot from the street. Fortunately, no one seemed to take an interest in me. No one seemed to notice this dawdling sweeper taking far too long to clear one solitary block of sooty cobblestones.
Finally, as I reached one end of my track and turned for another pass, the front door of my house opened, and Bess emerged in the late morning sunlight. She wore a burgundy dress, black gloves, and an exotic black hat adorned with deep green and blue peacock feathers.
Closing the door behind her, she walked down the front steps to the street and started toward me. Another woman, Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan from three doors up, called out a greeting from her ow
n front stoop and bustled down to join her.
Smiling and chattering, the two of them set out together, looking well-festooned and resplendent. They walked right past without giving me a first look, much less a second.
As I turned to follow, beginning the hunt in earnest, I wondered where these two were headed side by side. For one fact stood out in high relief in my mind as their blithe conversation drifted back on the mid-Spring breeze.
Bess despised Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. I had never known the two of them to go anywhere together, let alone spare a civil word for each other.
*****
Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan led me on a winding course through London. Always, I took great care to remain discreet, to maintain a sizeable distance between us and not attract undue attention.
After a walk of nearly an hour, they reached their first destination--a tall, brick building with pale green shutters--and strolled inside. I had made preparations for just such an eventuality, constructing my disguise in such a way that it could be converted to a new configuration. All I would have to do is slip into a secluded alley, discard the jacket and wig, turn the cap inside out, and I could pass for a common repairman who looked only a little like the street sweeper who'd just gone by. In other words, I could become someone respectable enough to follow Bess into her haunts without being turned away at the door.
At least, that was the plan. I intended to blend in, and in so doing, gain access to vital surveillance.
Unfortunately, blending in would not be easy. As I was about to thread an alley and revise my disguise, I got a look at the brass plaque mounted to the right of the brick building's front door.
FEMALE PROTECTION SOCIETY. That was the name of the place. I'd heard of it but had not visited it before.
And with good reason. NO MALES PERMITTED ON PREMISES. Those words were engraved on a second brass plaque mounted on the other side of the door.
Though a lesser man might have been discouraged, I remained determined to forge ahead. Surely, repairmen would have to be admitted on occasion to do the kind of work beyond the grasp of women.
6 Fantasy Stories Page 3