The Adventuress: A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Sarah released my hand to rush forward and shake Irene’s. “My adorable Maurice could have done no better. You must tell me your secret.”

  Irene pushed the errant lock of hair off her forehead and smiled. “Let me introduce Signor Genturini, sword-master for the La Scala Opera House in Milan. He is my secret weapon, and my once and present tutor. I telegraphed him, and he came instantly to refresh my languishing fencing skills.”

  Genturini bowed far more fluidly than his age would have suggested.

  “I must study with you!” Sarah insisted, gazing intently into his eyes.

  “My honor,” said he, bowing as he took his leave.

  “Yes,” Irene said, “you could never play Hamlet convincingly without mastering a few intricacies of swordplay.”

  “I should make a most dashing Hamlet,” Sarah responded, assuming a pose. “I see that, now that I have witnessed you in Hamlet guise, my dear Irene.”

  Irene turned to gather her hat and jacket, which lay on the pebbles, then noticed me. Little shocked my friend, but the sight of me did that morning.

  “Nell? How on earth—?”

  “I suspected some deviltry, so I followed you.”

  “Before dawn? From the hotel? Perhaps I underestimate your resourcefulness. Yet I cannot commend your actions, however well-meaning. The viscount could have recognized you. That would have ruined all... as your impetuosity did before.”

  “My impetuosity! Now that is the kettle—and a very large kettle—calling the little pot black! Besides, the viscount has never noticed my existence in any situation, nor did he here.”

  “My friends—” Sarah took each of our arms, thus inserting her slender person between us. “You debate suppositions. It is true that the mediocre man did not recognize my so amusing Miss Uxleigh. His loss. Nor did he recognize you or your true sex, Irene, so you have no reason to belabor poor little Nell.”

  I outdid Sarah Bernhardt by at least three inches. How had I acquired that inaccurate sobriquet?

  “And,” I went on to Irene, “before I am taken to task, I must inquire how you expected a dab of stage swordsmanship to see you through a duel.”

  “After I saw the viscount pummel his miserable equerry, I knew I could duel the cowardly bully with a knitting needle and prevail!”

  “Ladies, ladies,” Sarah remonstrated sweetly, as if her temper were never displayed. “All this is past and done.

  We have had a most piquant escapade. What else is there to do but go to the Ritz and indulge in a most lavish breakfast?”

  And so we all three did. But first Irene and I returned to the Hotel de Paris. No one glanced at us twice in the lobby, a sign, perhaps, that Irene was most effective as nature intended her: in the female form.

  While she dressed, I fetched Oscar’s basket from its place by the parlor windows. Irene did not notice my new burden until we were ready to depart for the Ritz.

  “Why, Nell, what are you doing with Oscar?”

  “I am conveying him to Madame Sarah, as a gift.”

  And so I did. The actress was most gratifyingly thrilled with my presentation, and for once, Irene was a silent witness to my exploits.

  “My dear Miss Uxleigh! How delightful! You know, many of my so-called friends are absolutely silly about my pets. They regard the lovely serpent as a low and vile creature. Some even express a horror at the sight of one, at sharing the same chamber with one!”

  “No!” I murmured in a tone of shock that passed muster with Madame Sarah.

  “Sooo, I am pleased that you are brave enough to offer me this little gift. Let us see the scamp better... oh! the darling.” She had pulled the snake from the basket as easily I would withdraw a ribbon—an incredibly thin length of scaled green. Despite the creature’s fragile appearance, it speedily settled several times around its new mistress’s neck like a jade choker. “Has it a name?” Sarah inquired fondly, her voice vibrant despite the living necklace at her throat. I thought the serpent a great improvement over garlands of human eyes.

  “I have chosen Oscar.”

  “Oscar!?” The Divine One looked startled, then laughed. “Why not? It goes well with ‘Otto,’ and I shall have a wicked glee when I introduce it to our mutual friend, Mr. Oscar Wilde!”

  Sarah threw the willow basket to the floor, unwound her new pet and lifted the snake high above her head. It flicked a long tongue at her. Then she wrapped it around her forehead like a turban and there it happily stayed, its lithe green body forming an exotic diadem in her fountaining hair.

  Even I could see some beauty in the small serpent at that moment, and I felt assured that the late Mr. Singh certainly would rest easy to know that his former pet had a congenial home. I was also sure that Mr. Oscar Wilde could not fail to admire his new namesake.

  Irene and I returned, sans snake, to the Hotel de Paris before noon. She retired for a nap and I adjourned to the maps and tracings in the parlor. Oddly, I was aware of the absence of the snake’s little basket by the window. Despite my certainty that Sarah would provide the serpent with a freedom, a suitable diet, and an appreciation that I never could offer, I realized that its presence had exerted a subtle influence upon me to which I had been totally blind. The thought turned my mind to the absent Casanova and then to the quieter, yet equally dominant, presence of Lucifer.

  I recalled the parrot’s scabrous but somehow cheerful yellow beak, its scaled yet agile legs, its round eyes so like a snake’s staring expression. I conjured the cat’s pointed ears, black and furred on the exterior and deep pink within, its emerald eyes and jet-black nose and whiskers...

  And then, while engaged in such idle remembrance of these dumb (in Casanova’s case, not sufficiently dumb) beasts, I made such a stunning discovery that when I leaped to my feet, I knocked my chair over.

  My weary eyes regarded a certain portion of the map of the Cretan coast, then the configuration of the conjoined compass letters. I wrenched off my pince-nez, as if doing so would allow me to see the incredible truth more plainly.

  I blinked. I pinched the bridge of my nose, which ached from the press of the spectacles. I clapped my hands over my mouth and danced around the table. In short, I behaved as if possessed by a monkey god. It remains one of my sincerest thanksgivings to this day that not even an Indian snake was present to observe me.

  Then I gathered my papers and slipped back to my rooms, awaiting the proper moment for revelation and glory.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  A NOVEL CLIENT FOR HOLMES

  “I do not wish, Nell,” Irene said, “to contemplate Viscount D’Enrique’s chest over dinner.”

  “It is not my desire to contemplate the subject at any time, but surely the absence of a tattoo must alter your theories.”

  “Trial and error, Nell, trial and error. To that process all theories must be subjected. I admit that the fact that the viscount is apparently as innocent of tattoos as Mary’s little lamb forces my speculations in another direction. Although—” she balanced a dainty furl of the Hotel de Paris’s famed mandarin ice on her dessert spoon “—speaking of other directions, I suppose it is possible that Viscount D’Enrique’s tattoo is in an un traditional place.”

  “Next you will be invading the man’s bath! Surely the point of the scheme was that the tattoos be located in the same spot on each conspirator.”

  Irene let the ice melt on her tongue while she considered. “Quite true,” she said at last. “I must discover another thread to lead us through this labyrinth.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Yes, Nell? You have a suggestion?”

  “I may have found a new... filament. But where is Godfrey? You seem remarkably resigned to his absence.”

  “I am not resigned to his absence, but satisfied of his need to be absent. There is a difference. As for his return, I expect him hourly.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you can finish that extremely dilatory dessert and we can return to your rooms, where I will show you a most intriguing t
hing.”

  Irene never displayed curiosity when one wished her to; it was one of her more annoying traits. Still, eventually we repaired to her rooms, where I was compelled to reveal my grand discovery to an audience of one.

  “You will notice that I have meshed the four letters of the compass sufficiently that their lavish scrollwork intertwines.”

  She studied my arrangement like the most docile of pupils.

  “You will notice also that I have marked off on this map a portion of the Cretan coast.”

  Irene went so far as to extend a hand for my pince-nez. Then she leaned over the table and examined the indicated elements with satisfying intensity and a number of noncommittal murmurs.

  “You may have noticed, too, the small, decorative lozenges that appear near the O and the N.”

  “No doubt some eccentricity of Singh’s, whose letters are otherwise admirably Western, if a bit rococo.”

  “These are not lozenges, Irene! These are not slips of the needle. These. . . flyspecks, these mere flecks in the larger design of the letters, are equally recognizable, if we will but see it.”

  “Excellent, Nell! And... they are?”

  I leaned back. “Islands. Or, I should say, islets. I believe them to be very small, not worth recording on most maps, in fact. They may even vanish and reappear with the tides. We are lucky that one of Godfrey’s maps indicated their presence. Yet these islets are the key to the entire cipher.”

  “Wonderful! And how is that?”

  Her air of enthusiasm did not deceive me; I must prove my case or it would hold no water.

  “I now ask you to examine the compass letters as I have arranged them.”

  “You have drawn them so close together that they almost resemble a tangle of ribbons.”

  “Exactly, and most people would see only the tangle. But what does the tangle enclose? More, of what shape does the enclosed space remind you?”

  Irene pursed her lips and tilted her head. She twisted the drawing sideways, then angled her head again.

  “The lower stroke of the N dips between the O and the E, and the S nests near the E. It makes a rather pleasing design, but—”

  “I will give you a clue.”

  “Can’t you simply tell me?”

  “Do you ever simply tell me?”

  Irene smiled. “You obviously wish me to see a shape. Is it animal, vegetable or mineral water?”

  I ignored her teasing. “Animal.”

  “Animal. Then I would say a snake; certainly the letters are somewhat serpentine. Too obvious? Well, then, what animals would cross your mind? Ah—a parrot! Or a cat!” I must have blinked, for she suddenly returned her gaze to the paper. “The N’s dip is the forehead and ears line. And if you connect the dots, the lozenges could be eyes and nose! Or the islets are eyes, rather. Yes, I see it. But it looks more like a fox than a cat, Nell.”

  I spun a map tracing to her side of the table. “To the stranded party, it looked like a fox from the overlook above. And see on this map, the French cartographer has written Bai de Oeil-de-Reynard. Eye-of-Fox Bay! If you turn the map—so—the topography matches the inner area of the conjoined letters. I even think that here, where the line of the fox’s nose nestles into the top of the S, is where the treasure cave lay before its collapse.”

  “You astound me, Nell! What clever work. Now we know as well as any survivor of the wreck where the treasure is to be found. All we lack to a solution is the identity of the Quarter members and their director, the knowledge of who pursued the sailors in Jerseyman’s Quarter to their deaths, and how—and who was responsible for filching the palace sealing wax all those years ago.”

  Her list quite deflated me. “But now we know—”

  “Exactly where the blackmailer will direct the prince’s expedition, which we had only to discover by joining it. Oh, those deciphered tattoos will make recovery of the treasure surer, but as for identifying the villain . . .”

  “You still believe that one controlling hand has directed all these events?”

  “One person has at least set many of them in motion, yes. This was such an untidy scheme at the outset—a happenstance alliance of high- and low-born, a treasure lost beyond any one member’s ability to claim it, and the wait of years for the means to raise it; the folderol of the tattoos, clearly devised by a subtle intellect to pacify the party and send its members off thinking the plan safeguarded by their very own skins; the special sealing wax; the drama of the severed fingers, the sailors’ special method of identity.

  “None of this was necessary, Nell, save to disperse the party with a false sense of security amid the trappings of a melodrama. The problem has not been Quarters and tattoos, but method and opportunity. Until the prince’s oceanic expeditions developed methods of deep-sea exploration to rival the fictional exploits of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, our mastermind has had to forestall the others and plan his own extraction of the treasure.”

  “But the viscount has no tattoo! Surely he would not be exempt.”

  “No, he would not be exempt. For the plan to work, its author would have to subscribe to all particulars—and publicly. Our man bears the mark of Singh upon his flesh, and also the burden of Singh’s death upon his head; for why was the Indian killed except to ensure that no more Quarter members’ relatives, such as Louise, could be brought into the equation? The loyal Jerseyman’s crude approach alerted Louise’s uncle to the treasure, stirred our interest, possibly drew the inestimable Sherlock Holmes into the Montpensier affair, and has nearly overturned the entire conspiracy.”

  At that instant the door to the suite flew open. On the threshold paused a great bear of a man with a mottled face. My heart nearly leaped from my throat. It was the second man I had spied following Dr. Hoffman.

  “Quickly, Irene! The revolver!”

  The intruder was undismayed. He took a giant step toward us, then laughed. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me?” he demanded, looking directly at me.

  “Of course I do! You are the individual who followed Dr. Hoffman and myself the other day.”

  He laughed again. “For what purpose, do you think?” he asked with a leer.

  “Who knows? Irene, the revolver! This man may be dangerous. He did follow Dr. Hoffman, as he boasts.”

  She remained by the table. “Why on earth would you neglect to mention him to me, Nell?”

  “You neglected to mention a great deal more to me,” I countered.

  “My omissions did not come clattering into our rooms uninvited, like this ungainly fellow.”

  “For heaven’s sake, do not debate it, Irene! Get the revolver! This may be the sinister intelligence you sense at the heart of the web.”

  At that the visitor laughed again, and Irene joined him. I grasped the top rail of my chair, thinking to have it handy for defense.

  “What I have come to report”—the brute in the doorway stepped closer—“is that Sherlock Holmes has led me to the maker of the palace sealing wax.”

  “How wonderful!” Irene clasped her hands like the rescued soprano in an opera before rushing into the villain’s arms.

  “Godfrey!” I complained as the light dawned. “You quite terrified me. I thought you were peacefully poking about in moldy records in search of shipwrecks.”

  He released Irene long enough to turn his hideous face in my direction. “I’ve found the wreck as well, in between shuffling behind the one-armed limping man who is scuttling after Dr. Hoffman. Or rather”—he turned to Irene—“I’ve found an obituary for Claude Montpensier, which says that he survived the wreck of the yacht Solace in eighteen sixty-nine. So at least we know the ship’s name, if we are no wiser to the other passengers.”

  “What of Sherlock Holmes and the sealing wax?” Irene asked impatiently. “Are you sure it is Holmes?”

  “The follower’s a subtle prey to hunt, but of a size to be Holmes. I recognized a certain kinship in our common eccentricities. We smell of unlikeliness. Whoever he is, was, or w
ill be, he has led me to one...” Godfrey patted his well-padded person until he had extracted a grimy scrap of paper. “... one Hyppolyte Cremieux, proprietor of a tiny chemist and stationer’s shop near the base of the city.”

  To demonstrate his success, Godfrey reached into his tom pocket and extracted waxy shavings in the distinctive black-and-crimson swirling pattern.

  “How did you acquire these?” Irene asked admiringly. He lifted a worn and oversized boot to display its wax- impressed sole. “By accident. The floor was strewn with it. Once I realized this must be the source or a way station for the palace wax, I set M. Cremieux—a frail old fellow—on a hunt for a nonexistent English herb among his dusty shelves. In a workroom behind the shop, I found the wax we seek, cut into cakes, wrapped in paper like soap, and closed with the palace seal.”

  “We have neglected the pursuit of the sealing wax between marrying off our young lovers and the shock of poor Singh’s death. How on earth did Sherlock Holmes manage to find such an obscure place?” Irene studied the shoe, then frowned delicately. “Perhaps you could shed your disguise and tell us the rest in person.”

  Godfrey obliged by shutting the door to the hall at last and heading for the bedchamber in the rolling gait that I had observed on the street.

  “Irene, if what Godfrey implies—”

  “That Sherlock Holmes is the one-armed, limping man of whom Dr. Hoffman complained? If true, it is disturbing news. Most disturbing.”

  “I know you fear discovery—”

  She whirled to face me, her dark eyes afire with suspicion. “But does he not fear discovery? Why does he invite it? A one-armed man with a limp, indeed! I suspected that description the instant I heard it. You saw Mr. Holmes play the humble cleric in St. John’s Wood; it was the merest chance that his trick with the smoke bomb alerted me to his real identity. If Sherlock Holmes did not wish to be known when in disguise, I believe it would be so.”