He rose, forced at last into reaction.
“I wouldn’t,” he suggested in a silkily husky voice.
“I most certainly will.” I recognized a veiled threat when I heard it, and retreated into the passage, wishing that I had withdrawn as soon as I had perceived our rooms to be invaded.
“Please don’t go, Miss Huxleigh,” he cajoled, perhaps alarmed by my likely escape. “My close friend, Irene Adler, has spoken most highly of you, and you certainly would not be one to panic.”
“I am not panicked!” I paused in my flight to answer the charge of cowardice. Too late I realized my mistake.
The man laughed softly, having already crossed most of the distance between us with the long, easy swagger of a lion. In the dim light of the single gasolier I realized that I should be hard put to describe him beyond the rusty sideburns and mustache, nondescript plaid suit and oddly innocent features.
“The least you can do, sir, is remove your hat, as is proper in a lady’s presence,” I said with some asperity, attempting to restore the illusion of ordinary social intercourse.
Secretly, I feared that his next act would be to lift the ebony cane at his side and strike me down, though why anyone should want to rob Irene and myself I could not imagine.
I envisaged myself tumbling down the four flights of twisting stairs, my poor aching head bobbing from riser to dusty riser... a discreet mention in the papers headed “A Saffron Hill Mishap: Mysterious Man Vanishes in Wake of Tragedy to Parson’s Daughter”... Irene pacing and wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth at my untimely end and vowing to track the intruder to the ends of the earth....
“Oh, very well, Miss,” the young man conceded a trifle rudely, taking the swarthy little cigarette from his mouth and the hat from his head at the same moment.
Masses of cinnamon-colored curls tumbled to his manly shoulders.
“Irene! You monster; what a fright you gave me!” Now that we stood toe to toe, the cigarette smoke swirled around my face like fog. “What is the meaning of this mummery? Surely you have not got a part in male guise?”
“Indeed no,” she assured me in a normal tone, turning to display her costume. “But I did deceive you?”
“You nearly were the end of me! How did you—do you manage to look so masculine?”
She paced before me. “Long strides, to begin with. Amazing how much more efficiently one gets on without pantaloons and petticoats and pounds of flounces.” She paused to tap her shoulders. “Shoulder pads and gloves, as you can see. Hands are the tricky part. A bit of spirit gum and some ginger crepe hair—do you fancy me with a redder tint? No? The bowler rides right over the ears and the muffler almost meets it, implying a thicker neck.
“And”—she expertly flourished the slim cigarette clamped between her fore and middle fingers—”the little cigar is the pièce de résistance. Only men smoke in public.”
“Only men smoke at all!” I retorted.
“Do you think so?” Irene smiled and inhaled delicately on the vile weed between her fingers. After my long afternoon among the chemist shop’s mingled odors it nearly made me ill.
“But why?” I asked, edging back over the threshold as she returned to her chair.
“I have business in town tonight. My interview with Mrs. Stoker was most productive; the next stage of my investigation awaits.”
“You actually discussed the Wilde matter with her, and she did not toss you out for impertinence?”
“Why should she? I was not impertinent.”
“Well, since my head aches and my nerves are aflutter, you had better tell me what happened. Nothing could put me more out of sorts than what has happened today.”
“Sit then and hear an amazingly simple tale.” Irene rolled her eyes toward the gasolier above. “Mr. Oscar Wilde would not like it, but there is no mysterious or melodramatic reason for Florence Stoker clinging to his silly cross.”
“What then? Why would she possibly refuse to return it?”
“Because she does not have it to return! It was mislaid—or, as I think, stolen. She is too embarrassed to admit that the treasured keepsake of the Divine Oscar was cavalierly let go. Imagine his chagrin to find a gesture of his so ephemeral! It would quite slay the man. He might not speak in aphorisms for an entire week or two.”
“Why do you think the cross was stolen?”
“Florence Stoker keeps a rigorously ordered household. It is her husband who leads the unmannerly theatrical life. I doubt she would mislay a fallen hair, much less an object of value. And this little cross is the kind of thing a servant might take, expecting no one to miss it.”
“You have a suspect.”
“Indeed. Your predecessor.”
“My predecessor!? What on earth do you mean?”
“The previous pourer at Florence Stoker’s Sunday afternoons at home—I suspect her of splashing Jimmie Whistler with hot tea as a ploy to get herself hastily dismissed. Numerous other small household objects are missing also. Bram Stoker lays it to pixies.”
“Of course he would; he’s Irish.”
“So am I,” Irene returned. “Half.”
“I didn’t mean to slander your origins, Irene. The Irish are actually quite, quite—”
“Misunderstood,” Irene finished for me. “I know how fond you are of the breed, especially with Mr. Wilde among it.”
Irene, whatever her antecedents, was American-born and on that basis alone did not share my British dislike of those spawned across the Irish sea. I could have called the Irish many things, but “misunderstood” would have been the kindest. There the matter lay, although I tucked away this rare fact about Irene’s background as I would a fresh handkerchief—for use when needed.
“Surely you didn’t visit Mrs. Stoker in your present guise,” I said.
“Naturally not. I approached her woman-to-woman, doing a service for a mutual friend too tongue-tied to speak for himself.” Irene gave a little shudder. “Mr. Wilde is well off to have lost her. A chill woman, Nell—quite lovely, but chill. I would think living with her could predispose one to despair.”
“Perhaps she is misunderstood, and you mistake English reserve for something worse. We do not all share your joie de vivre.”
“Joie de nécessité,” Irene shot back, rising with a flourish of the cigarette. “As is my disguise now. I go to track down the clumsy Sarah Jane in her new lair.”
“Which is?”
“A position in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Stoker seemed much surprised, but I am not. There are better pickings there than in Chelsea, no matter how fashionable. No doubt Sarah Jane made connections with the Stokers’ wealthier guests at the Sunday affairs.”
“But why do you go at night, and Friday night at that?”
“Because the master will be out and I can deal with Miss Sarah privately. I will tell her I’m a Pinkerton, I think. You inspire me as usual, Nell.” Irene twisted her hair and pinned it up, then settled the bowler hat at a rakish angle. “Don’t worry; I’ve never yet been accosted in such garb.”
“You’ve done this before?” I said faintly.
“Frequently,” Irene confessed from the threshold, leaning back with a conspiratorial wink like a music hall songster about to exit the stage. “I heartily recommend it.”
Her advice not to worry fell on deaf ears. It was hard to stare into the black mirrors of our nighttime windows and see only the faint reflection of myself. I pictured Irene jostled on the street below with the crowds of men, given no more courtesy than a hod-carrier. I wondered if the wicked little revolver weighed down her pocket. I even imagined the devious Sarah Jane with a burly henchman who would attack Irene as if she were the man she pretended to be.
Thus my evening passed, with tincture of belladonna in my eyes to ease redness and a medicinal rag around my throat to ward off la grippe after my hard day at the apothecary shop. The cloth had been pressed on me by the grateful chemist, along with sundry other remedies, all of an evil-smelling nature.
&n
bsp; The gaslight seemed to dim as the hours passed, though perhaps it was my sleep-hungry eyes that faded. At last I heard light steps running up our stairs and rushed to the door to admit Irene.
“Well!?”
She tore off the bowler. “No wonder men are so often rude on the street; these headache-giving hats must sour their dispositions.” She threw the cane on the sofa and wrenched open the wing collar that must have aided in making her voice husky by sheer compression.
“Well? What happened?”
“I found Miss Sarah Jane ‘to home,’ as we say in the States, in the kitchen of a most elegant house. She has elevated herself to ladies maid, the better to purloin, but came down from her attic retreat soon enough when she heard ‘a gentleman’ was inquiring for her.
“We two closeted ourselves in the pantry, where I put the fear of the Pinkertons in her, with the result that...”
Here Irene reached into the various pockets about her person and began extracting trinkets—a gold watch-chain, a silver brooch, amber earrings and garnet rings.
“Miss Sarah Jane’s entire collection. She rushed back to her room and showered me with her ill-gotten gains. I made her swear to replace the items she had lifted from her current employers. As for the rest, she could not remember where she had taken it all, so... I confiscated it.”
“But what of Mr. Wilde’s cross?”
Irene’s smile broadened as she lifted one last item from her vest pocket. The chain was eyelash-fine and the slender Celtic cross that anchored it was beautifully engraved, although thin enough to be of no immense value.
“He shall have it as soon as I can get it to him.”
“And the rest?” I studied the array glittering on the faded Oriental turkey carpet atop our dining table.
Irene eyed me hopefully. “A... lucky commission? Since the owners can’t be found and Mr. Wilde is paying me in nothing but flowery terms?”
“Stolen goods, Irene? There’s no doubt about that.”
“I did fancy the garnets,” she said, her fingers reaching toward the gleam of tumbled jewelry.
“Stolen,” I intoned.
“Oh, very well. We will donate them to St. Sepulchre Without Newgate. It is known as ‘The Musicians’ Church’ and will likely use the proceeds to succor some poor, starving, unknown singer living only on her wits and the mercy of such moral guardians as she may find.”
“I am not in the least sorry for you, though I am glad that Mr. Wilde shall have his cross back and never darken our door again.”
“Charity, my dear Nell. Charity is the greatest of virtues. I have extended it to the unknown poor; now you must offer it to the known but unappreciated Mr. Wilde. Who knows, he may even make something of that Irish wit someday.”
Irene paused to regard me sharply, and indeed, I must have made a sight with my makeshift medicinal muffler.
“Where do you labor tomorrow, good Nell?” she asked. “The chemist’s again?”
“Yes. More verbena and foxglove, all transcribed in the crabbed hand of a medieval alchemist.”
“You really should seek more congenial work now that your expertise is established. Have you considered advertising your services in some professional arena where the work is likely to be steadier and the pay more rewarding?”
“Where is there such a working girl’s paradise?”
“I was thinking of the Temple.”
“The Temple? That’s just a lot of barristers’ chambers. They all have clerks.”
“Do clerks type-write?”
“The whole point is that legal clerks hand-write, and quite uppity about it they are, too. Most of the barristers’ offices would not even have type-writing machines, I imagine.”
“You could bring your own in a case, like a violin.”
“Bring my own?” I took the cup of hot chocolate Irene lifted to me from the fender. It was thick and foamy. “I suppose I could.”
“Why don’t you put a notice up on the grounds— surely they must have some central message board—and see what comes of it?”
“That is an excellent idea, Irene, very businesslike.”
She smiled with her lips still pursed on her cup rim. Then I realized who resided at the Temple.
“What makes you think I can worm my way into Mr. Norton’s chambers, Irene?”
“Talent, Nell. Cream rises, like foam on chocolate. I have no doubt that if you put yourself in the way of work at the Temple, you shall soon be in high demand.”
Chapter Ten
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NORTON UNMASKED
Irene had never been more wrong.
I duly pinned a neat notice—typed, of course—to the crowded Middle Temple message board. “Have typewriter, will work at your convenience.”
The board commanded one of many narrow passages within the warren of buildings. This sequestered area of London comprised two of the Medieval Four Inns of Court, the Middle and Inner Temples.
Mr. Norton, I ascertained easily enough, kept chambers in the Inner Temple, an area deeply removed from the hurly-burly of nearby Fleet Street.
Irene’s blind spot—optimism—had never glared forth with greater dazzle. My notice produced nothing for more than a fortnight. My visits in hopes of finding a reply found only my humble self-advertisement lost in a blizzard of other communications.
Irene had miscalculated. Though barristers generated a great quantity of foolscap and would seem in need of mechanization, the Temple was a rigorously masculine environment, save for its charwomen. The new breed of type-writer girls, of which I had now become one, would not be routinely welcome on these hallowed grounds for many decades, I perceived, if even then.
My visits to the Temple became infrequent: I went in only if employed in the neighborhood, as I was occasionally. One such day I paused before the message board, stunned to see that another’s billet-doux had usurped mine to the point of being pinned directly over it.
I was about to remove the intruding scrap of paper in proprietary indignation when I saw that it was a card. The name on it transfixed me as if I were one of the Temple Church’s knightly stone effigies. I fixed on only that significant surname—Norton. The message scrawled across the card’s face was even more paralyzing: “Miss Huxleigh, please see me about your services. No. 17, Inner Temple.”
I looked about the deserted byways, needing Irene at my side, wanting to shout my amazement to whoever would listen. That he, of all persons, should be the first— the only—to rise to my bait! I couldn’t credit my good fortune.
But suppose this were not mere coincidence? Suppose that, somehow, Mr. Norton knew of Irene’s and my association, of my meddling in his affairs also? I remembered the angry voice that had thundered beyond my drawn curtains so many weeks ago, the furious heavy-footed retreat down the stairs and into the hansom cab.
I remembered also my intense curiosity to view this fire-breather in the flesh. Surely the miserable old Norton would be an ugly specimen of humanity himself. Certainly he had offended Irene beyond forgiveness, a rare reaction in her to any human being.
Pulling the card from the board, I marched smartly through the narrow passages, past the stately Temple Church (muttering a hasty prayer for my safety) and to the door facing the quadrangle that bore the number 17.
My knock brought a baritone “Come in.”
The chamber beyond was as small as a scullery and crammed with papers. A raven-haired man hunched behind the book-laden desk. Behind him a coat rack held a chesterfield and—I recognized it with a thrill of remembrance—a velvet plush top hat. Many men wore such headgear, but only one such man had stormed Irene’s Saffron Hill eyrie so forcefully.
“Yes?” The gentleman did not glance up from the desk.
“I—I understand you have need of a type-writer girl.”
He looked at me then and I was struck quite mute. “Old Norton” was no more than five-and-twenty, young for a barrister, young even for a child of the senile monster I pictured the scoundrel to be. N
umbly, I glanced at the card, finally seeing the “Godfrey” that preceded the surname. So it had been Godfrey, not John, all along. This then, must be a son of the villain in question! Why had Irene not told me? After all, I had never seen the man, as she had. In addition, Godfrey Norton was the most strikingly handsome man I had ever encountered, save upon the stage, when I went to see Irene perform.
I am normally resistant to male beauty—many a skin-perfect apple has a rotten core. Indeed, the smoother the skin the fouler the rot, in my experience—Jasper Higgenbottom’s selfless soul lay hidden beneath a bushel of freckles and ears of regrettably elephantine prominence—but this man Norton was as exceptionally handsome as Irene was beautiful. I was astounded that she had also forgotten to mention that inescapable fact.
“Please sit,” he urged pleasantly, jumping up to sweep a pile of documents from the single oaken sidechair.
“You have not room for a typewriter girl or even her machine,” I blurted, appalled by the mounded papers.
“I will have if you transcribe all this foolscap into type,” said he with a winning smile. “A table lurks somewhere under the deeds there, and a spare chair as well.”
The piled deeds that he had mentioned seized the opportunity of my attention being directed upon them to sigh, crackle and slowly ... inevitably, slide toward the floor.
Mr. Norton leaped up again, as did I. We hurled ourselves at the glacial tide and stemmed it, then laughed in mutual embarrassment and self-congratulation.
“You see, Miss Huxleigh, I need help desperately!”
“Why are you so inundated with papers?”
“Because I am inundated with work. I am new to the law and must undertake the petty paperwork suits that my senior barristers have outgrown. A clever typewriter girl would perfectly answer my needs.”
“How could you pay me if your practice is so fresh?”
He cleared his throat and looked away, revealing an aquiline profile a Caesar would have coveted for his coins.
“I have certain... obligations that I suspect will soon end. I have never been in a better position to pay anyone. But”—he eyed the cluttered room—”let us take a turn in the gardens to discuss the work. It is more pleasant there.”
Good Night, Mr. Holmes (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 11