Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “I, and those I represent, do not deal with blackmailers.”

  “We have a free press in this country, Quentin. So free it’s sometimes a free-for-all. All I’m asking for is one little global sensation. Surely in your bag of espionage tricks you can come up with a maharajah who beheads his wives . . . a modern Bluebeard. That would be a start.”

  “You Americans are a bloodthirsty lot.”

  “We just don’t pretend to be ‘civilized’ when we’re not. So. Will you find me another Jack the Ripper sensation?”

  “My dear Pink,” he said softly.

  I imagine that Nell Huxleigh would have swooned if Quentin Stanhope had whispered her name with such exact articulation in her ear. I met his challenging glance with my own. He took my elbow a bit more firmly than needed and steered me along the street, away from the fascinating hole in the ground that would soon become my new professional home, the only home that truly mattered to me.

  “My dear Pink,” he repeated, “I will do my humble best to find you something to outdo catching Jack the Ripper. Only give me a little time.”

  “Of course. The new building will not be ready for some months. I want to be on the front page when it becomes a reality. Meanwhile, you can hobnob with your friends Irene and Nell. I imagine they won’t much object to that.”

  His hand tightened on my elbow warningly.

  “What I do has been called The Great Game in the eastern corner of the world, but I assure you, Pink, it is not a game and it is not safe to toy with me, merely because my hands are tied. They won’t always be.”

  “This is not a game with me, either. I’ve never backed down from anybody, including my drunken brute of a step-father, which is why the name of Nellie Bly is a force in this city. I wish her to become a force in the whole wide world, that is all. Is that so bad?”

  “No worse than what Attila the Hun wanted,” he said, amusement masking the iron in his voice. “Let me think about it. Meanwhile, you may excuse me from future strolls down the avenue. I shall be far too busy hunting up a sensation extravagant enough for Nellie Bly.”

  I pulled away from his male custody and dusted the palms of my gloves together.

  “Go, then. I’m sure others would cherish your presence more than I.”

  He bit back a reply, tipped his boater, and called a hansom over to the curb.

  He paid the driver in advance, handed me in like Prince Charming, and bowed as I drove off.

  His eyes were as narrow as stilettos, and I knew he wished me in the lowest circle of hell.

  I didn’t mind, not as long as he found me the story I needed.

  15

  THE PURLOINED PAPER

  Beautiful she was, with those wonderful eyes, blazing forth now

  and then from under heavy, long drooping lashes, the masked

  batteries of passion; her dark soft abundant hair, gathered back

  from her low forehead in lovely shining ripples, and lit by some

  gorgeous tropical flower. Yet to me there was something sad

  in her passionate, defiant, utterly unpeaceful face.

  —GRACE GREENWOOD, 1853

  So we left the tearoom and hailed a cab to take us downtown, Irene eyeing my docile accommodation to her wishes like a cat expecting a pug to bite at any moment.

  I paid no attention to where we were going, although I peered at the passing street and pedestrians. No dashing dark blue hat surmounted by crimson roses was in view, and certainly no dashing Englishman of my acquaintance.

  Slowly the passersby changed in age and appearance. People were either older or younger than the fine figures strolling the avenue farther north. Gangs of shabby children threaded the crowds. Peddlers carts jammed the verge between street and walkway. Old women not unlike the head-scarved “babushkas” of Prague moved slowly among the busy throngs. And most of the men were either old and feeble or young, sullen, and ill-kempt.

  All the able-bodied, or law-abiding, women and men in these districts were either toiling in the tenement shops and in the shipyards and slaughterhouses or ill in the cheap boardinghouses that extended for blocks in every direction, some becoming tenements farther afield.

  The growing unsavory look of the street life roused me from my fit of pique. I did not like to feel so divided in myself, but longed for former days, when I was serenely indifferent to what people of my acquaintance might choose to do . . . unless it was quite wrong. And there was nothing wrong in Quentin Stanhope escorting Miss Nellie Bly down Fifth Avenue, was there?

  “Where are we?” I asked Irene.

  “South of your favorite neighborhood,” she told me brightly. “The theatrical district.” That phrase she endowed with melodramatic emphasis.

  She was not to get a rise out of me this time. I had resolved to remain calm and let nothing nor anyone else disturb me.

  “Why?” was all I asked.

  “When stymied in an investigation, and being forbidden on grounds of pride from simply asking Sherlock Holmes about it, I’ve decided to take his ‘hint.’ We call on Professor Marvel.”

  “Oh.” I warmed. I liked the old fellow, despite his strange profession. He reminded me of the harmless village elders in Shropshire, more ready to indulge in a pint and a gossip than the mischief those of a younger generation might get up to. “Why do you think he can help us?”

  “He knows everything, doesn’t he? His performing placard advertises the fact.”

  “That encyclopedic knowledge owes itself to the thousands of cards and memorabilia in that enormous frock coat of his, not to real, daily life.”

  “Ah, but we are not investigating ‘real, daily life.’ We are exploring the past.”

  Irene paid the driver his fifty cents and caught my elbow to steer me into the grim brownstone before us.

  She was in fine spirits that day (having seen nothing to disquiet her) and eager to be on the hunt.

  I oft wondered if the tension and excitement of stage performance was not a sort of drug, a drug quite the opposite of the dream-inducing cocaine in which Mr. Holmes repeatedly indulged. How odd that the man of intellect chose dreams as an escape, and the woman of emotion and theatrical fantasies sought the unpredictable dangers of crime-solving for challenge.

  Here, though, the only crime was one abandoned orphan child. Herself. And, gazing at Irene’s face as she studied the brownstone’s facade, anticipating what might be discovered within, I thought that she, born a beauty and thus indifferent to that fairy gift, had never looked lovelier, and livelier.

  She had not missed my downcast state, for her hand tightened on my elbow and she leaned close to whisper, “Courage, Nell. We will find out at least what Mr. Holmes suspected, and perhaps solve the mystery of the Woman in Black. Then I can pen a companion novel to Mr. Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and become a famous lady novelist. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re always writing your own plays to appear in, anyway. And I doubt that Professor Marvel can point us to the proper streetcar stop, much less your family origins. But if the children are playing quietly in the nursery, one might as well let them have their fun.”

  “Thank you, Madam Governess.”

  We went up the stairs together, rather faster than I would have liked, and soon were knocking on the self-styled “professor’s” door.

  “He’s not likely to be in since we have called without notice,” I pointed out.

  “Nonsense. It is just noon. Theatrical performers never vacate their nests before noon.”

  “You still retain the habit, and let poor Godfrey leave for Paris in the morning quite uncatered to, except by our cook, Sophie.”

  “Ah, but I am in splendid fettle to greet him effusively in the evening when he returns, and if you were to ask him, he would much prefer that state and consider himself far more catered to, as you put it, Nell.”

  Of course I would ask Godfrey no such thing. But I took heart. A morning stroll on Fifth Avenue, then, was not the pathway t
o a man’s heart.

  “Perhaps we should ask Quentin to dine with us,” I said.

  Irene turned to me, startled. “That is not a bad idea, Nell, but why do you speak of it now?”

  “It just came to me. He is a stranger in this city, as are we. It would be only polite. Thoughtful.”

  “Very politic, I think. I’ll write to his hotel as soon as we return to ours this afternoon. You can debut the new Battenberg lace jacket I bought you at B. Atlaian’s on Ladies’ Mile. It elevates everything and is so appropriate to the summer heat.”

  “It’s only a ready-made piece, Irene.”

  “But sure to be charming on you. You really must let me dress you. It salves my disconsolate loss of my theatrical ways.”

  “Oh.” I did know how deeply Irene missed the life of the theater, which alternated dull routine with feverishly frantic moments and a constant emphasis on costume. Since I did not have Pink’s flair for millinery, I would have to rely on Irene’s frustrated urges as a dresser. I resolved to accept whatever frippery she launched at me. That blue-and-crimson hat on Fifth Avenue was a declaration of war, as far as I was concerned. And soldiers did require handsome and awe-inspiring uniforms to impress the enemy.

  “I can’t wait to see what you have brought me,” I commented with more fervor than ususal.

  Irene eyed me again with that confused but suspicious glance.

  At that moment, the well-worn door opened and Professor Marvel stood there in all his portly glory.

  “Irene, my child! Always a joy to see the blooming woman you have become. And the delightful Miss Huxleigh. Do come in. I have just arisen and performed my ablutions, so am ready for company, as it happens.”

  Irene threw a knowing look at me over her fashionably puffed shoulder as she preceded me into the professor’s humble but fascinatingly cluttered front room.

  We had barely seated ourselves on his threadbare sofa when a soft knock came at the door.

  He opened it to Edith, the Pig Lady’s pansy of a daughter, just six.

  How hard to believe this neatly attired child was the waif we had found at the top of a tenement only a week before! Her mother had survived doing sewing piecework from dawn to sunset beside a filthy window after time had made her services as a “pig-faced woman” on the variety circuit unwanted. I had never seen far into the deep shadow cast by the poke bonnet the Pig Lady invariably wore, but now, thanks to Irene’s ability to draw on the Rothschild credit while abroad, she and Edith had moved to the professor’s boardinghouse.

  “Come in, my dear,” the professor caroled in the voice useful for shy children. “Look who’s come to visit us. Miss Irene Adler, the internationally famed diva, and Miss Nell Huxleigh, one of the world’s first type-writer girls, I am given to understand.”

  Edith stood hanging off the doorjamb in the shy manner of her age. This shabby yet genteel rooming house was a far cry from the cramped garret in which we had first met her.

  “Edith!” I welcomed her, holding out my hand. “How wonderful to see you again. That frock is most becoming. Did your mother sew it for you? Come over and let me see it.”

  My combination of cajoling and order brought her to me in shy steps. Edith today indeed eclipsed the drawn, timorous child we had met, and her shiny dark curls were caught up in a charming gingham bow.

  “Anna Scofield is sewing for all us board-treaders now,” the professor said, smiling benignly on the child. “No more shirts by the dozen for pennies a day. She has airy quarters a floor up, which allows me daily visits from the pretty Miss Edith, but soon she will be going to school and I shall see that she gets there and back each day. It’s good for a man of my years to provide escort duties for a charming young lady.”

  Edith blushed at this courtly patter, but I sensed the idea of “school” frightened her.

  “School will be most instructive,” I said, taking her hand. “I used to teach school, as a matter of fact.” Of course I had been a governess, and my “school” had been a room and two or three pupils until the tutors arrived for the boys, and the lady elocutionist, sketch artist, and comportment coach for the girls.

  “Is that true, Miss Huxleigh? Will they speak and look like you?”

  Irene intervened. “They will not have an English accent, but they will teach you. And that is a very grand thing.”

  Edith nodded, then offered to “get the tea things” for the professor.

  “She loves her ‘teas,’” he confided as the girl disappeared behind the curtain that hid a tiny pantry, no doubt. “We have berry jams and marmalade. And only cold tea, I’m afraid, Miss Huxleigh, but not cold enough to qualify as iced. I can’t let the child handle the stove.”

  “Of course not. Cold tea is very . . . bracing.”

  “I’m glad you found her mother rooms upstairs,” Irene said in an undertone. “Thank God you moved her out of that garret.”

  “Thank God you found her after all these years. We had no idea she lived in such straits, or about Edith.”

  “Yes, there are many overlooked children in any great city,” Irene said, “and I am the older self of one.”

  “I imagine being reared by a moth-eaten collection of Vaudeville has-beens was no romp at the Rialto.”

  Irene took the old man’s hands. “On the contrary! It was the making of me,” she insisted. “I dance, I act, I sing. I’ve been a professional mermaid and an amateur hypnotist. And I shoot almost as straight as Annie Oakley.”

  “And you did most of that at an age younger than Edith,” he agreed. “I’m glad you’ve found your bag of parlor tricks useful in later life, but singing was always your greatest gift.”

  We all fell silent, for singing was the one thing Irene had been forced to give up by circumstances. Once forced into hiding by the King of Bohemia more than two years ago, the arc of her career had vanished like one-half of a rainbow into a cloud.

  “But there is more to the past than performance,” she said with the air of moving firmly beyond any melancholy. “There is still the Woman in Black who visited me backstage during my youngest years before vanishing forever. It seems I am doomed to investigate my own mystery for a change. And I’m hoping you can point me in a direction that will identify my lost mother.”

  “I? What makes you think that?”

  “You know everything,” I said.

  His genial face, mostly nose, ears, and multiple chins, shone with self-deprecation.

  “So my advertising placards boast, Miss Huxleigh, but you know that theater is nine-tenths fraud and one-tenth luck.”

  “And six-tenths talent,” Irene said. “Your area of expertise may be abstruse, Professor, but I believe it can’t be underestimated.”

  He shrugged, pleased despite himself. “How can I help you?” he asked Irene.

  “You have an encyclopedic memory. I suspect that a woman named Eliza Gilbert, who was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in mid-January of 1861 may have something to do with my birth. Yet her obituary is not in the Herald for that date.”

  “I hate to point this out, but New York City is rife with newspapers. Perhaps you should consult them all.”

  I couldn’t help groaning aloud. “No more ‘dragons’ and no more ‘dungeons,’” I entreated Irene.

  The professor frowned his understandable confusion at my comment, but Irene grasped it entirely.

  “A person buried in Green-Wood would be prominent enough to merit attention in every paper,” she said, “and the Herald is no fly-by-night journal, but has been established since the early years of this century.”

  Professor Marvel reached flying fingers into the innumerable pockets of an invisible coat, miming his own stage act, producing facts from the air.

  “Eliza. The desperate mother fleeing over the ice floes in a river from an evil slave-owner in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. W. S. Gilbert, a British composer of light opera. Humphrey Gilbert, discovered Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth the First.

  “But no Eliza Gilber
t, Irene. I’m sorry. I’d love to produce a magic card, some tangible map that would reunite you with your mother, but the name means nothing to me.”

  Irene produced the purloined copy of the Herald. “Her tombstone exists. Nell and I and . . . someone else saw it. It reads January seventeenth. I checked the papers on either side of this most likely date. Eliza Gilbert is nowhere to be found.”

  He took the paper and scanned the page to which it was turned, moving his spectacles over the actual type like a magnifying glass. “You are as observant as ever, my dear Irene. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I only pretend to know everything.”

  “You come close,” she said with a smile, disappointment still peering through it.

  Irene had made a career of a world of make-believe, and there was still in her that childlike sense that something wonderful could possibly happen at any moment.

  For young Edith, rescued from an isolated, obscure penury, that had been true, partly through Irene and my efforts, which made me very proud. For Irene, though, my great grown-up charge and dear friend, the magic was thinner and more infrequent, and my heart ached for her doomed quest.

  Perhaps it was best this kind old man, who had known her as child, should be the end of the obsession. She had at least reclaimed the people from her past, even if they were not blood relations.

  “My, look at this headline.” He chuckled at a story on a page opposite the obituary listings. “I remember that, but had forgotten it, if that makes sense. How things have changed, and not changed. Look at this story of the arrest of Kid Glove Rosey, the shoplifter. Saints and sinners have always been with us, and they often make the newspapers, the sinners more often than the saints.

  “I wonder if there is any mention of a theatrical sort? Those were the days. I was doing a mind-reading act then.”

  Irene’s rueful eyes met mine. Our “clue,” obtained by ridiculous lengths, had become a path down memory lane for our aged friend.