The Adventuress (v5)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  For now my objectivity submerged itself in the small excitement of traveling through foreign countryside. In fact, I secretly hoped that Monte Carlo would prove so removed from such lurid phenomena as tattooed girls, drowned sailors and mysterious capital letters that it would forever cure Irene of interfering in matters more fit for the police, with whom she imagined herself to be engaged in some game of wits. Not that Fate had ever much respected my hopes.

  We left Paris in the morning. The train’s lavatory facilities were primitive, so Irene and I gratefully availed ourselves of the accommodation at the simple country restaurant when we lunched in Lyon, halfway to our goal. The journey from there to Avignon was horrific, including a long stretch when we hurtled ahead at more than thirty miles an hour, over rough tracks through bleak terrain. But Avignon was very near Marseilles; the Mediterranean coast lay but an hour or two away over gentler landscape.

  While Irene puzzled over sketches of tattoos and Godfrey read a volume on French estate law, I watched the cows and the countryside roll by until the monotony and the railway car’s rocking rhythm lulled me to sleep.

  I awoke to civilization, or the imitation of it, a steep, thronging town raked down like an amphitheater to the stage of a vast blue rippling sea and bracketed by fierce- looking fortresses. Masts made a barbed forest in the harbor, against a cobalt sky already paling before the final bloodbath of sunset. For our arrival, Marseilles pelted our compartment windows with bouquets of strong sea smell, while waves of white gulls fluttered against the sunset-drenched sky like streamers of white ribbon.

  Marseilles’ wet cobblestone streets sparkled with fish scales as bright as cut steel. The men’s faces had a robust, sun-charred cast; I spied more than one parrot perched on a seaman’s jersey-clad shoulder.

  We found rooms at a hotel overlooking the Vieux-Port, since a train to Monte Carlo would not depart until the next morning. I remained there that evening, while Godfrey and Irene ventured into the raucous city streets to dine, they claimed, on bouillabaisse, oysters and champagne. My stomach was too uneasy after the rough trip and the commotions of Marseilles. I supped on the French bread and cheese Godfrey had found at a local market, which were quite tasty, save that the cheese had a musty flavor and the bread crust was prone to crumble. So much for the fabled French cuisine!

  Still, by morning I was my cheery, uncomplaining self again and ready to resume our impetuous progress. I even welcomed the sight of our steel steed gleaming deep green in the sunlight as its pistons kicked up clods of steam and a docile herd of railway cars panted in line at the Gare Saint Charles. Ahead of us lay the spectacular mountainous seacoast to Cannes, with the perfume- bearing hills of Grasse, the great French scent district, beyond it, and then on to Monte Carlo.

  “Oh, but wait!” Irene cried as we prepared to board. Even the attendant stowing our luggage on the inside rack paused at her clarion call. “I saw some wonderfully amusing postcards in the station last night. I must buy some.”

  I stared at her openmouthed. “You are presumed dead, Irene; you cannot send postcards. And to whom?”

  She shrugged gaily. “At least I can keep them as mementos. I saw a most macabre one of a suicide victim hanging outside the casino in Monte Carlo.”

  Now I understood. I made the sound with which the parsonage housekeeper in Shropshire used to call the chickens. Novelists represent it as “tsk-tsk,” which hardly does justice to its implications and effect.

  “Ah, postcards of Monte Carlo,” said I. “No doubt that is how Mr. Sherlock Holmes begins to investigate a new region. Who knows what hidden depths may be concealed within a simple postcard?”

  “Exactly!” Irene ignored my sarcasm, an oversight I found most unsatisfying. “Godfrey will see you aboard, Nell.”

  “Don’t miss the train!” I elevated my voice to an unladylike level, to no avail; Irene had turned and moved swiftly against the current of the boarding crowd.

  Godfrey took my elbow reassuringly. “Rest easy, Nell; Irene is not so careless as to miss this train, though the last train we missed—the St. Gothard-line excursion over the Alps—spared us a fiery death in thin air.”

  “No one could claim that the air of Marseilles is the least bit thin,” I retorted. “It’s as thick and steamy with corruption and clatter as bouillabaisse, perhaps even more populated by strange, whiskered denizens of the deep. It is my sincere hope that this chug-chug across France will lead to nothing but twiddling our thumbs.”

  At that moment a rough fellow in a striped jersey jostled past, ramming me into the side of the compartment.

  “Be careful, man!” Godfrey exclaimed in French.

  The uncouth creature turned and grinned, revealing a checkerboard of yellowed and blackened teeth. “So sorry, your Highness,” the man said with a sneer, “but a first-class ticket makes this my compartment as well as yours.”

  “Bridle your tongue before a lady!” Godfrey advised.

  “Why don’t we discuss the state of my tongue inside this compartment, your Grace? And the lady, too. Step in, now.”

  Godfrey was about to do nothing of the sort; then his face tightened. I turned to see that the lout blocking our way had caused a queue to form behind us... if one shriveled Indian man may be considered the start of a queue. I was struck by the notion that our fellow first-class passengers looked as if they had been lifted directly from the deck of a river scow.

  Before I could communicate this interesting observation to Godfrey, he gripped my arm and impelled me into the empty compartment, where our baggage already lay in the overhead racks. The rude man pushed me into a seat near the center.

  Of a sudden I understood the reason for Godfrey’s compliance. As the Indian followed him inside, I saw the thick, curved knife blade the ruffian pressed into Godfrey’s side.

  “Godfrey!” I half rose, but the man in the jersey pushed me back down.

  “Stay put, Madame,” he said, “and close your mouth. Your husband and I have a matter to settle. If you happen to be present, it is your misfortune.”

  Godfrey and I stared at each other in confusion. He glanced to the window, then quickly away. Beyond his shoulder I glimpsed the flow of people on the platform outside. Among them I spied Irene emerging from the station building, her eyes lowered as she examined the tiny fan of postcards in her hand.

  Jerseyman jerked his head at his swarthy accomplice, then at the window. The Indian oozed over in a thrice and began drawing the curtains on their brass rods. (Only the French would be frivolous enough to install velvet curtains in a railway car!)

  Irene glanced up from her purchase to look for us, seeking the compartment window framing our waiting faces. Alas, we were not there. Puzzlement—as well as a new alertness—crossed her face.

  Then that familiar face was shuttered from our view as the Indian pulled the fabric shut. It was like watching opera curtains close on Irene at the end of an act: first the relentless advance of heavy cloth narrowing her figure to a mere sliver, then nothing.

  Godfrey’s face showed relief just as the curtains closed, plunging the compartment into a rather ominous dusk. Although I applauded his manly intent to spare his wife danger, I was not sure I was pleased to be taken for that wife in such a situation.

  The Indian slipped to the door to perform the same service with the drapes there. I noticed only then that he was barefooted—and black-footed, so grimy were his toes!

  “The gaslight?” Godfrey suggested quickly, before the last daylight had been banished.

  Jerseyman nodded permission. Godfrey scratched a lucifer on his boot bottom and reached up to light the gasolier that depended from the ceiling. In the artificial light, the compartment’s brass trimmings—ceiling scrolls, baggage racks and curtain rods—glittered as if for an audience. The burgundy velvet upholstery and curtains radiated a deep, gemlike sheen.

  Given our unseemly companions, the civilized scene was ludicrous. Mingled odors of sulfur and gaslights reminded me of an opera box during a pe
rformance of “Faust.”

  “Might I smoke?” Godfrey still held his burning lucifer.

  “I always grant a man a last wish,” Jerseyman said. I realized that his French bore a cockney twist. “And give me one, Guv.” Godfrey complied. “I’ve had naught but bottom ends for the past few weeks.” Jerseyman lit up, then blew out a putrid stream of smoke.

  With the curtains drawn, Godfrey and I were gestured toward the window seats. Jerseyman barred the door, sitting at Godfrey’s side. My seat partner was the silent Indian, who promptly lifted his filthy feet to the velvet cushion and crossed his ankles, knees akimbo. He set between us a woven basket of a peculiarly flat shape. I appreciated any barrier, however homely, that would separate myself and my strange captor.

  For we were prisoners, that was clear. The Indian rested the dreadful knife across his draped thigh; he wore no trousers, only some foreign cloth, similar to a dresser scarf, wrapped around his nether regions.

  Jerseyman flaunted his own knife, less exotic but equally visible. And very dirty fingernails.

  The scene reminded me of the occasion when the King of Bohemia’s henchman had trapped me in a train compartment during the escape from Prague, save that this time no Irene with cane in hand and pistol in pocket would come to rescue me.

  There was Godfrey, of course, but his use in a crisis of this type was unproven. Smoking serenely now as if we four made a congenial party of fellow travelers, he eyed Jerseyman with a lively interest.

  “I presume you have a reason for your most curious form of introduction,” Godfrey said.

  The Jerseyman’s evil grin was his answer, along with a deep inhalation upon the cigarette Godfrey had given him. I recalled demons who were said to breathe fire.

  Around us, the compartment throbbed with the train’s prelude to departure. Godfrey and I eyed each other, imagining Irene hunting us and failing.

  “Your reason, man!” Godfrey demanded more urgently.

  Jerseyman, almost genteel now that his lungs were sufficiently smoke-clogged, smiled and spoke in English. “Your friend on the platform will just have to do without your company.”

  “F-friend?” I inquired.

  The miserable oaf regarded me with cocked head, as the vile Casanova was wont to do at his most uncooperative. His eye whites were as unappetizingly yellowed as his teeth. “Your friend, too, Missus, I suppose. She’s better out of it,” he said gruffly. “ ‘The beauty,’ the concierge in the hotel here called her, and right the old harridan was. ‘The beauty’ will have to get on alone now.”

  I swallowed hard at the finality of that declaration even as the train gave a preliminary jolt. Would Irene decide not to board when she couldn’t find us? “What do you hold against us?” I demanded. “What can the likes of you possibly hold against us?”

  “Even the likes of me has friends, Missus... or business acquaintances.” As he leaned forward to pierce me with a look, a strange rustle came from beside me. The abominable basket was shaking with some interior disruption!

  “Oh!” I shrank against the window frame. “I don’t doubt that you have friends... such as this fine Indian gentleman.”

  He laughed until his eyes ran and his nose turned a decidedly unattractive cherry-red. “Singh’s a gentleman and I’m a lemming! And you two have much to answer for, or you’re a tragic railway accident. The track follows the coast from here to Toulon. An open window, a wee push... it’s a long bounce down the seaside cliffs to the water, milady.”

  “Look here!” Godfrey leaned forward, perhaps to distract the man. He was rewarded with a knife point in the chest. “If you’ve some quarrel with me, out with it. Let me answer, and leave the lady unharmed. I’ve done nothing to earn any man’s enmity.”

  “Then it’s a dull life you’ve lived!” Jerseyman wheezed with bitter laughter. “I’ve done naught but earn enemies, some undeserved, some not. It’s sweet to see a fellow speak up for his wife, but it’s a woman I too would avenge, a girl really.”

  “Girl?!” I echoed, judging our captor to be well past sixty.

  “A girl of good family. You done her in.” He turned on Godfrey with casual threat, jerking the knife tip to his throat.

  I gasped in comprehension. “Louise! You must refer to Louise Montpensier!”

  “At least the lady admits it. Likely you had little to do with it, Missus, though you may have aided his villainy.”

  “Godfrey villainous?” I couldn’t help sounding incredulous.

  “You’re his wife; you have to defend him.”

  “I beg your pardon, I’m not—”

  Godfrey’s glower would have frozen the Medusa to silence. It sufficed to persuade me to change my tune. “I’m... not obliged to support my, er, husband if he commits a wrong.”

  This statement adhered to my philosophy; furthermore, it did not actually claim Godfrey for my husband. The idea was ludicrous to me, as I’m sure it was to Godfrey. Evidently Jerseyman had presumed the English people in the party to be man and wife and the American the odd woman out.

  The train’s initial exertions soon turned to the bump, hiss and clatter of actual speed. I felt truly frightened.

  Jerseyman waved his blade in my direction. “If you’re not bound to help out your husband here, then why did you and your lady friend come running to the L’Oiseau Blanc in Paris? Didn’t you guess what kind of place it was? A maison de rendezvous, as they call it?”

  “No! Not until I arrived there.”

  Jerseyman prodded Godfrey’s collar with his knife point. Luckily, it was well starched—the collar, not the knife point.

  “What kind of worm, Guv, would drag his own wife and another apparently respectable lady to such a place, as well as a young girl?”

  Godfrey had no opportunity to answer, for besides resenting the “apparently respectable,” I was struck by an insight I could not help expressing. “Then you, sir, consider yourself a friend to Louise Montpensier!”

  This gave the man pause. “I can’t say I ever met the young lady face-to-face.”

  “Then why avenge her upon those who did her no harm?” Godfrey inquired with a barrister’s reasonableness.

  “No harm!” The knife sawed the air near Godfrey’s Adam’s apple, which appeared about to become apple cobbler between the ruffian’s threats and the train’s abominable shaking. “First you force her into a low, vile place like that—I should know, I’ve slept under such roofs before—and you have the gall to call your own wife and another lady there. Then you take her away in a carriage. Within days, Mademoiselle Montpensier is gone, vanished! We put a lot of time into that girl; we don’t like losing her.”

  “You don’t like losing her?” Godfrey’s voice clapped with the thunder of righteous indignation, at which he excelled in court. It was a pity our questioners did not wear white horsehair wigs and abide by the English system of jurisprudence. “How do you think we feel? I pulled that child from the cold, wet grasp of death itself that afternoon. Of course I brought her to the nearest shelter! She was soaked, chilled and distraught, yet to involve the police would be to brand her as an attempted suicide. Naturally, I asked my... er, wife and her friend to help with Louise. For this you threaten me?”

  “You didn’t bring her to that place to misuse her?”

  “Of course not!” Godfrey’s eyes narrowed to steel-bright slits as he saw our captor dueling with doubt. He pressed his advantage: “And how do you know of that incident? Did you see Louise jump into the Seine? Were you following her? Why? Do you know why she was determined to destroy herself?”

  “To get away from you, I’d think.” Jerseyman had decided to rely upon first impressions. “Young girl like that, her uncle so careful that he had a man assigned to follow her. We’ve all been careful of her. Then you take her to that place and the next thing we know, she’s gone, sunk like a stone, and not even in a proper body of water. We got an investment in that girl an’ if it’s gone for good, I guess I’ll satisfy meself by takin’ it out of your
hide—”

  “Sir!” said I.

  Jerseyman and Godfrey stared at me as if I’d gone mad. In the ensuing silence, I heard a new rustling from the basket, which shook as if with an ague. The Indian was smiling, an expression that emphasized a shallow, sinuous scar meandering from one bottom eyelid to his chin like a single tear track—an elongated “S,” as in the tattoo! Were the scar bas-relief rather than engraved, it would have resembled... a snake.

  “Sir,” I repeated, thinking to distract Jerseyman from threatening Godfrey further, “am I to understand that you consider yourself a... a Dutch uncle?”

  “The Dutch have nothing to do with it, lady! That’s one breed we haven’t got in our company, the Dutch.”

  I cast frantically about for a more felicitous expression and, God forgive me, found it. “Is it possible, sir, that you and your”—the basket beside me was heaving closer—“companion are secret friends to dear Louise? Guardian angels, so to speak?”

  It was sheer blasphemy to attach such an elevated designation—and a Romanish one at that—to the debased examples of humanity before me, but I am told that the Deity welcomes the lost sheep. Perhaps He may extend mercy even to a heathen Indian holding captive something decidedly unlamblike in a basket.

  “Guardian angels?” The man laughed and nodded. “So you might say. We look after her interests, Singh and I. Have for years.”

  “How . . . nice.” The Jerseyman was so intrigued by my question that he had lowered the knife an inch or two from Godfrey’s throat. “I assure you that we meant her no harm, did her no harm, mean her no harm.”

  “Mean?” Jerseyman pounced on the present tense.

  I was speechless in the face of my misstep.

  “Louise is alive, we believe,” Godfrey said quietly, “though the Paris police think her dead.” He waited until the knife was withdrawn fully before speaking again. “I see the story now. You and your henchman here drugged and tattooed Louise. You left her to awaken alone and discover her fiendish alteration. Why was it not you who pulled her from the river into which she cast herself after your infamy? Why was it left to me?”