by Braven
"Yes, well . . . take care you don't set the upholstery afire the way you did that night in Ashby-de-la-Zouche," I cautioned him.
I knew full well that he did not hear me; nor did I much care. To see Holmes himself again, and bringing the diamond-sharp point of that great intellect to bear on the problem before us, was worth any amount of scorch marks on the Algonquin's furniture.
Pausing at the bedroom door, I looked back at Holmes, already wreathed in a nimbus of blue smoke. He bore a not undignified resemblance to the Caterpillar, perched on his mushroom and puffing away at his hookah, portrayed in the illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
"Good night, Holmes."
There was no reply, so I provided one.
"'Night, Watson. Sleep well," said I to myself.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
Apparently I took this injunction literally, for I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, and awoke, feeling refreshed—although with a slight soreness in my feet as a result of our long trek the night before, and the twinge in the leg with which my legacy from the Battle of Maiwand reminded me of its accuracy as a herald of damp weather. The well-rested feeling was tainted with a slight sensation of alarm, as though some danger portended, such as fire. I glanced at the open transom over the bedroom door. Of course!
Wrapping my dressing-gown about me, and noting that the cord that held it at the waist seemed to be shrinking slowly (probably a characteristic of the cheap Egyptian cotton now flooding the English market), I entered the sitting-room. Except that the prevailing tone was blue-gray rather than yellow, I might almost have been walking into a London pea-souper. The stale smoke that filled the room stung my eyes and throat, and, until I became accustomed to it, made Holmes' seated form—unchanged, as far as I could tell, from the position in which I had last seen it—difficult to discern. No wonder I had awakened to a feeling that something was burning!
"Phew!" I exclaimed. "I'm surprised nobody's called the fire brigade."
I went to the window and opened it, savoring the damp morning air, and at the same time observing, though careful to appear to be looking in another direction, the post where last night's watcher had stood.
"Hello! Chap's been replaced, Holmes. This one's wearing stripes, not checks." With the air a little clearer, I turned back to the room, and noticed that the heap of tobacco on the table had been reduced to a few scattered crumbs. "Well, Holmes, what have you come up with?"
Though he had clearly not slept at all, and looked quite drawn about the cheekbones, he was as alert as I have ever known him, and said briskly, "Two points of interest, Watson, about which I shall be delighted to enlighten you while you're dressing."
It was actually while I was shaving that Holmes expounded his first "point of interest," and, had I not been steeled to surprises from my friend, I might well have given myself a veritable Heidelberg dueling scar with the keen blade.
"Scott Adler's abductor was a woman."
I hastily withdrew the razor from my throat and looked at it. There were only shaving soap and whisker-ends on the cutting edge; no tinge of red.
"But that's impossible!" I said.
"The conclusion is inescapable."
I returned to my task, and Holmes to his expounding.
"How did Frau Reichenbach's assailant begin the assault?" he asked.
"Grabbed her by the hair," said I.
"The instinctive target of a woman when she finds herself in combat with another of her own gender. And what did the good lady's assailant do then?"
"Kicked her," answered I, as clearly as I could, considering that I was engaged in that tricky part of the shave where one has to stretch the upper lip very tightly in order to get at the corners of the mouth.
In the event, Holmes appeared to understand me well enough. "In the shins," he said. "Another instinctive form of female attack!"
I washed the shaving soap from my face and went into the bedroom in search of the shirt and tie I had laid out.
"I must say, Holmes, none of the ladies I've had anything to do with—"
"I never mentioned ladies, Watson, I merely said a woman. And one of sufficient strength to fling Frau Reichenbach to the ground, seize young Scott Adler—"
Part of my mind was aware that the brown-and-gray tie I was putting on seemed rather drab in this vivid city, and I was speculating about whether I might have time to visit one or two New York shops. The main portion was objecting to Holmes' proposition.
"Holmes, now you're assuming too much! It's all very well to say a woman struck that governess and pummeled her in the manner you describe, but that's a far cry from seizing a nine-year-old boy who's struggling and crying out!"
Holmes' reply to this trenchant objection was an unrepentant "Aha!"
A knocking at the hallway door now summoned him to the sitting-room. As he went, he turned and said, "Admirable, my dear Watson!—Come in, then, waiter!—You've hit upon the second point."
As I entered the sitting-room, a hotel waiter was pushing in a rolling cart covered with a profusion of covered dishes. "Eh? I have?" said I. "What is it, then?"
Holmes lifted the metal covers from some of the dishes and sniffed at them appreciatively. From one there arose a tempting aroma of egg, though what was visible was a strange yellow mass, all scrambled together.
"No mention," Holmes went on, making an emphatic gesture with a cover he held, "was made by Frau Reichenbach of any struggling or outcry. Thank you."
This last was to the waiter, and accompanied by a passed coin which drew a pleased response.
Holmes began laying out the dishes on the low table in front of the sofa, while I restored the piled cushions in its center to their rightful places.
"By George, you're right," I said.
"So it must be assumed none was made."
Holmes turned some of the strangely treated eggs on to a plate, surrounded the heap with several slices of bacon, a nicely browned piece of ham, and some sausages. As I lifted some of the covers, looking in vain for a grilled tomato or a hearty piece of smoked herring—even a devilled kidney, though these were not my favorites—I made the next leap in logic.
"A lad being seized suddenly must inevitably cry out, Holmes. Therefore, the report itself is false, and Frau Reichenbach is implicated!"
"Pretty, very pretty, Watson, but I fancy it won't hold water. I am convinced that our governess' account is correct, and that the strange business of the boy who raised no outcry is akin to the affair of the dog that did nothing in the night-time, which you have been good enough to preserve in your writings."
"The dog did not bark . . ." I recalled.
"Because it knew the intruder."
"And the boy . . ."
"Was party to the arrangement! I'm convinced, Watson, that the lad knew of all this in advance."
I started upright in my chair and laid down my fork. "What! Scott Adler cooperate with Moriarty in his own kidnapping? Now, Holmes!"
"Suppose," said Sherlock Holmes, "that it were put to him as a joke of sorts?"
This seemed to me the sort of explanation which clears up one point only at the cost of bringing up another as difficult.
"A joke on whom? Surely not on his mother?"
"Perhaps on Frau Reichenbach."
I considered this, taking a sip of the hotel's excellent coffee (I had regretted the absence of tea, but then decided that, in this country, tea would probably be a travesty in any case), and finally nodded. I could see that a spirited boy, condemned to be escorted through New York's exciting streets by that starched Teuton, might well come to regard her as a suitable butt for a prank. That part of it was all very well, then, but . . .
"Yes, but for what reason?" I asked Holmes. "And why a woman kidnapper in the first place?"
"Because the boy must be kept somewhere," said Holmes, "quietly and inconspicuously, and what better place could there be than a respectable lodging-house, and
what better guardian than someone who might be taken for his cousin, his aunt, even his mother? There's our salvation, Watson! Had he been spirited away to some criminal den in this teeming city about which we know so little we should have been at a standstill. In time, neighborhood gossip—for eyes are as sharp in New York's slums as in London's, I'll be bound—might have brought the matter to police attention, but far too late to do us any good."
"But take those two curious points about the abduction, and all else falls into place! Given the woman kidnapper and the consenting victim, we know the circumstances in which he must be being held. It only remains to discover the actual address. And we know one more thing: where to set about finding that!"
"Where?"
Holmes had finished what he cared to of the breakfast provided us—though there were one or two things I still fancied—and rose from the table.
"At number four, Gramercy Park West. I have some questions I must put to Irene at once, Watson. Will that sedative you gave her have worn off by now?"
My watch showed it to be just short of eight—well past noon in London, I realized with a sudden surprise, for the first time aware of the immensity of the distance that separated us from our homeland.
I said, "I believe so."
"Excellent."
Holmes rummaged in the wardrobe and flung on a chair my waterproof coat and a sturdy hat, and his own Inverness and deerstalker cap. I left the table and joined him, eyeing with a certain regret an untasted heap of thin rounds of cooked dough, not unlike the chupatties of India, evidently meant to be garnished from a nearby pitcher of sweet brown liquid.
I eyed Holmes' fore-and-aft cap dubiously.
"Ought you not to wear something less distinctive, Holmes? With you in that rig, anyone keeping us under observation could do so from half a mile away."
Holmes settled the cap firmly on his head, saying, "If Professor Moriarty wishes to keep an eye on us, Watson, I see no need to be disobliging about it. You recall my little lecture to you on the Pavonia about disguising oneself impromptu?"
"Oh, yes. Altering one or two characteristic things so as to throw off a watcher's expectations."
"Precisely. It also works the other way."
He said no more on the point, and, trying to work out what he might mean, I followed him from the room.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
The sedative powders had evidently done their work, for Irene Adler looked well-rested and far more composed than the night before, as she faced us on the sofa in her drawing-room. The window-curtains were looped back, and watery March sunshine flooded the room, making it seem altogether a more cheerful place—a room in which it might be possible to plan hopefully rather than, as had been the case less then twelve hours ago, endure scene after scene of shock and despair. The actress was clad in a pale-green negligee which, though perfectly modest, made me even more aware of the distance between London and New York than had the time difference.
"Irene," said Sherlock Holmes, "I want to know what you and Scott did the day before yesterday—everything you did."
She considered.
"Well, with Mrs. Tanqueray opening last night—I saw in the papers this morning that May Robson got good notices, by the way, and I'm glad for her—I've had a fairly constant rehearsal schedule for the last several days, and so wasn't able to spend as much time with Scott as I wished. So, when the tickets came, it was a good chance for an unexpected treat—"
"What tickets?"
"The Metropolitan Opera. The management sent round a complimentary pair of them. Scott's fond of Aïda, and has a tremendous crush on little Nicole Romaine—"
"And who is little Nicole Romaine?"
"Why, a member of the corps de ballet at the opera house," said Miss Adler.
Holmes snapped his fingers.
"Ah! Did you hear that, Watson? A dancer—and therefore by necessity strong, quick, agile, eh?" He turned once more to Irene Adler. "Is it usual for the management of the Metropolitan Opera to send you free tickets? Is it perhaps a customary courtesy to members of the theatrical profession?"
Her fair brow furrowed.
"Sometimes, if one has a friend in the company, it's possible to use a vacant seat, but . . . no, not sending tickets round to one's house. I don't recall that happening before."
"Could they then have been sent by someone else?"
Sherlock Holmes was evidently highly excited; Irene Adler, merely bewildered.
"Why, I simply never thought about it," she remarked.
"We must now think seriously about it! Tell me about Scott and this Nicole Romaine."
Irene Adler brightened.
"He's her pet. Whenever we go backstage after a performance—"
"Which you did on this occasion?"
"Yes."
"And they spoke together, these two, the little dancer and her pet?"
"Oh, my, yes. They were laughing and whispering in each other's ears for the longest time, like children in a schoolyard. She's scarcely more than a child herself."
Holmes rose from his chair and began pacing the room, as though the excitement rising in him demanded movement.
"Whispering in each other's ears. Did you hear that, Watson? And laughing! Hatching the plot right there, I've no doubt!"
"Plot? What plot? Do you tell me, Sherlock, that Scott—?"
"A plot, my dear Irene, in which you and your unfortunate son are leading players, working from a script you have not read but have yet followed to the very line! But now, though—now I shall assume a role in that plot, with some considerable departures from the script which I fancy our dramatist will not be pleased with!"
Holmes' pacing took him past the windows fronting the park, at which he abruptly stopped, directing a keen look out and downwards.
"Aha!" said he. "Our friend in the checkered suit is back."
I joined Holmes and saw the watcher of the night before, now lacking his advertising boards, leaning against the park railings opposite.
"Chap doesn't even have a change of clothes, it seems," I observed. "Your precious Professor doesn't look after his troops very well, eh, Holmes?"
He ignored my comment and said in a musing tone, "It is vital that I leave this house unobserved . . ."
"I dare say there's a back way out."
Irene Adler nodded in confirmation of my guess. "The same thought will have impressed itself upon Moriarty, and I have no doubt that he has provided for it. No. You and I, Watson, must appear to leave, thus drawing our friend out there away from here."
He crossed the room to where his Inverness and cap lay on a chair, picked them up, and returned to Irene Adler.
"I seem to recall," he said, "on a not-too-distant occasion, your remarkable impersonation of a young man." In spite of the gravity of the situation, the glance that passed between them held some amount of amusement, for it was that very impersonation that had signaled Holmes' defeat in their one encounter as antagonists. "Can you be equally deceptive in the guise of one . . . not so young as that?"
Irene Adler smiled up at him, then stood and reached for the cloak and cap.
"I'm not quite so young as that anymore, Sherlock," said she.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
In addition to her imposture, Miss Adler contributed a useful bit of stagecraft to our exit, suggesting that an air of confused urgency be created to excite and alarm our watcher, and blocking out the parts to be played by Holmes, myself, her butler, and herself.
Thus, the man in the checkered suit first saw Heller run outside and down the steps, bawling for a cab and waving his arms energetically; then saw the summoned vehicle, its driver infected with the butler's agitation, hasten to respond; then heard Sherlock Holmes, just inside the doorway, call impatiently, "Right along, Watson! Right along!" then saw the unmistakable Inverness-and-deerstalker-clad figure of Holmes, with myself panting beside him, dash down the steps a
nd into the cab, which immediately set off at a smart pace.
Peering through the back window of our carriage, I saw the watcher gesturing violently; and, just as we turned a corner and passed from his sight, a closed carriage drew up beside him, into which he bounded.
I relaxed and sat back next to Irene Adler. The plan was for us to go to the Algonquin, which she would enter, still in her character of Holmes, and leave a few moments later in her own. We would then, at intervals, make our separate ways back to her house and await the detective's report. I was not happy at being thus removed from the fray, yet I knew that this was one of those occasions on which my friend must be free to exercise his solitary genius in his own way. In any case, I was off duty for the moment, and might as well enjoy it.
I glanced at Irene Adler, recalling Dr. Johnson's comment about the bliss of riding in a post-chaise with a pretty woman. Well, Irene Adler was as pretty a woman as one could reasonably expect to encounter anywhere; and we were certainly riding, probably more comfortably than in a post-chaise of a century and more ago. Yet I wondered: how would Johnson have felt had his fair lady been wrapped from neck to ankle in an Inverness cape, half her face concealed by a deerstalker cap?
———«»——————«»——————«»———
Once more I am removed from the stage to play my necessary but undemanding part, and must rely on later knowledge, mainly from his own account, to set down the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes for the remainder of that eventful day.
Chapter Ten
A smile of satisfaction crossed Sherlock Holmes' hawk-like face as he watched the man in the checkered suit spring into the carriage and set off after the departing cab. Moriarty's hounds would follow the scent laid for them to the Algonquin Hotel.
"And I," he murmured, "will be free to set the cat among his pigeons. Dear me! There's a mixed metaphor Watson would scarcely countenance."