First, buying off the male companion. For this, I already hold a cash draught of some size against Your Lordship’s account in the Brussels Bourse, and although it would pain me to expend it, I would if this fellow is employed merely as an adventurer for pay, I know that you, Sir, are prepared to lay out for such contingency.
Secondly, subterfuge. Say by gaining the trust of one or another of the two servants—most likely the chambermaid—and by utilising that wedge to drive them all three apart, I could extract Her L-ship from beneath the many eyes of her Cerberus.
Thirdly, force. For obvious reasons, the least amenable choice. Still, it must be fallen back upon should nothing else work. I carry with me appropriate weapons, including a poignard, and one of the new models of American repeating pistol.
How I came so close to them is surely Providential; the Gods do shine down continuously upon Your Lordship’s affairs. Gaining the paid trust of certain locals I followed the path of the Three from Dunkerque to…
✥ ✥ ✥
Lille, a fine and grey stone city, Addison had been told, was the cynosure of Flanders, known worldwide for its wonderful cloth manufacturies and pottery works and for great annual fairs at which those wares were displayed and sold to all of Europe and even beyond.
Upon his arrival, it was clear the town had one foot in the past and one in the future. For, hard on the left, within a few yards of the terminus of the stage coach from Armentieres he’d been told to look for, lay the excellent new train station, only a few years old and already quite hectic with use.
He had arrived here through what must, he had to admit, be accounted a fluke. Like his lord, Addison was not as easily admissible to such as accidents or flukes as he preferred careful planning and sheer indomitableness. Even so…
Returned to the French harbour and being forced to consider what road next to take, Addison had placed himself at one of the trestle tables of the inn, where he considered whether or not to post a new letter, knowing he had little new information but that His Lordship wished to know hour by hour what progress he might be making.
He was poised over such a missive, unwritten save for its greeting and date, when he couldn’t help but espy a boy of perhaps nine years and of especial dirtiness paused at the nearest other trestle table, staring at him.
“If it is food you want, you are out of luck,” Addison said. “The kitchen, such as it is, is shut.”
“No, sir, I have ate,” he answered. “But I live next door to ’em, and o’erhear you afore wit’ the Critterins.”
“The Critterdens, mean you? The purser and his wife? Well, what of it?”
“The three you seek!” the boy began. “I knows more of ’em.”
“Indeed. How?”
“I unlade the omnibus for tips.”
“Do you now? And did you unload their many bags and cases yesterday?”
“Aye! Ten in all by my accounting. And well paid by ’em, as well, with a hunk o’ sweet bread from the dark little lady. I waited, didn’t I, at her askin’ till their new coach came, and then didn’t I help lade them baggage up again.”
Before the boy could say another word, Addison had leapt up from the table and grasped him by one dirty ear, dragging him over to the omnibus station, where the owner admitted that the boy helped out.
“Now, for another tip, my lad, enough for much more sweet bread, tell me what more you know. And it had better be worth my dirtying my fingers.”
“To Armentieres, then. To town’s centre plasse ’otel. The genl’man said.”
“To whom did he say that? To the new coach driver?”
“Aye. Etienne, his name, the genl’man. The driver did ask first.”
“Etienne? You swear that?”
“So was he called by coach driver.” The boy put a dirty hand upon his filthy shirtfront in the general direction of his heart in avowal.
“Etienne, then. And headed to the central place d’Armentiéres?”
“Aye. So do I swear it as I ’eard it!”
“Is there nearby a boulangerie?” And when the boy nodded, Addison followed him to the bread shop where he bought the boy the largest loaf for sale, as well as two egg tarts, which the happy boy gobbled up on the spot. “This pain gros is for your mother, yes?” He handed him a handful of centimes which he wrapped in a twist of paper that had begun the unwritten letter, and the boy stuffed this deep in a pocket.
Not long after, Addison was mounted and on the road northeast.
At Armentiéres, he stopped at the hotel in the centre of the town, where he was told the coach he sought had indeed stopped. But he was dismayed to learn the travellers had not taken rooms there, but merely refreshed themselves an hour or so before heading out again to Lille. So Addison also changed mounts, drank some wine, ate some bread, and was soon enough on his way to Lille, which he reached by early afternoon.
This time he also went to the central plaza. But there were several hotels and a new train station, too. His natural assumption would be that the three would abandon the outmoded method of overland horse-drawn transport for the newer, faster, and more luxurious mechanical one. But, Addison reminded himself, if the Lady had not been coerced, then she had left of her own accord. Why, he could not guess. They must now be runaways instead of kidnappers and victim, and, in many regards, no better than a Negro slave would have been in the Carolinas before the great American Civil conflict.
So, while he did discover the train went to Brussels and other cities directly, he turned his attention to the stagecoach, which, the helpful concierge at one hotel had told him, at certain times of the week provided as commodious grounds for travel as the locomotive, and was preferred by many travellers.
He found the coach’s owner, plump and filling his messily moustachioed mouth with hunks of a very ripe and aromatic cheese, ensuring a distance between the two. Since Addison was well and tastefully clothed, carrying a small if not inexpensive portmanteau, the owner, a florid Flanders fellow with oddly accented French, was eager to talk. No sooner had he finished off the dairy than he lit into a half peck basket of elderly strawberries, occasionally spewing red juices about his person.
He began by decrying the rival railroad. “’Tis but a passing fad, M’sieur. Accept my word on it. With its great stench and its noise, with its contamination of the very air that we breathe, M’sieur, it cannot last more than a few months longer. Not one of my regular customes have taken it more than one time. And they have returned with great tales of mischief and disdain.”
“While your own accommodations…?” Addison prodded.
“Ah, M’sieur, Columbert’s Stagecoach Deluxe we supply twice weekly, and more often upon request. By itself the carry-age has triple times the support for the car itself, making a ride smooth like that of the flying carpet of Persia! Then, Columbert’s Stagecoach Deluxe provides six—not four only but six!—fine, fat, and fast cheval and in addee-seeon, a methodically spaced-out change of steeds, at several extremely re-pu-table inns and auberges, all of quality prem-ee-air and so well worth the cost.”
When Addison heard that, he whistled in dismay. “Surely that must only be for the affluent.”
“But no, M’sieur. I’ve had them to run three times a week of late. And not one day past, a trio of distinguished foreign travellers have one Columbert’s Stagecoach Deluxe stagecoach hired entirely for themselves.”
“Truly?”
“Among the finest of gentry. They have their own basket-meals prepared for them beforehand. That is how useful our service is. That is how eager those not completely mad for steam locomotives are to make use of them.”
Even before the garrulous coachman described them, Addison had little doubt who they were. As for their path, that too became clear: Tournai in half a day; across the River Leuze and into the county of Hainault. The town of Mons by nightfall; then Charleroi, Namur, and Liège the second night. Across the great Rhine River by morning, and by three of the afternoon, the third day, arrival at that one
-time centre of the Holy Roman Empire, the German town of Aachen.
Addison’s small repast was by this time ready, and he excused himself vowing to return and experience for himself this marvel of the age, Columbert’s Stagecoach Deluxe. Not long after he had dined, Addison was penning both a note to be telegraphed to his Lord, as well as a longer missive. In the longer one, Addison detailed his conversation, adding, “Shall Your Lordship think me very naughty, or instead very much Your Own Student, if I now reveal that having obtained this detailed information from the meritorious Columbert, I stole away into the steam train terminus, where I have discovered connections to take me to Aachen in half the time required by the Stage? So, without a care for the poor man’s decaying trade nor his self-betrayed information, I am about to entrain. This letter will leave the train at a small mail drop. I know that you wish me, Sir, naught but the greatest fortune.”
To: The Earl of R——
11 Hanover Square
London, England
27 September 188—
My Lord,
I am an ass, I am a jackanapes; a lower fellow never existed. My damn pride continually gets in my way, and alas, that of Your Lordship.
They were in Aachen. Were in Aachen. Of that little bit of information, I am now, three days later than my last letter to you, certain. But they left after only one other evening and they have gone to—the Devil knows where!
Let me spell it out in order, for I have been disorderly in my pride, thinking I was so close to them, and that was my undoing.
I arrived here by train as I mentioned in my last letter. There are only a half dozen hotels nearby the hotel, and only two of those are manned by those speaking languages other than German.
This was my first mistake. I thought Her Ladyship’s Cerberus little but a muscular dolt, certainly not an educated person. In this was I wrong because not one of those two hotels I checked into, one each of my first two nights in this infernally dull town, knew what I was talking about when I asked if my elder British cousin, travelling in veils with a man and chambermaid, had preceded me since we were to meet up here.
No such woman had shown up. All their custom for the past week had been young people, officers of the Emperor’s forces on leave from duty, and a few commercial travellers. At first, I racked my mind. Had they broken up the trio? Had the girl gone off in disguise? Had both women gone in disguise as soldiers? No, it was too mad to contemplate!
I must confess to Your Lordship, I fell into an hour or two of despair, and took myself out to one of the numerous biergartens that litter the vicinity of the terminus, frequented by students and tradesmen. It was at one of those, on my second and gloomiest night in Aachen, that I traded despair for insobriety and insobriety for dissoluteness. They shut their doors early, these biergartens, and although inebriated, I was cast out upon the streets with the other local drinkers.
These all staggered off, I guessed, to their beds, but I would have none of it. Recalling one of your Lordship’s own anecdotes, I asked for G— Strasse, and was pointed toward it, not far from where I leant against a wall to make water. When I found the street, it was as wondrously and unseemly populated as Your Lordship had described it. Nor did I need even to step into one of the establishments of questionable repute Your Lordship had mentioned, but found my female entertainment easily enough in the very first doorway.
It was the following morning as I attempted to secrete this young person out of my hotel room that I discovered my guest’s bilingualism, for the words of passion are as deep and meaningless as Babel. Thus, my new friend became my cicerone, and for the price of a bread, sausage, and egg breakfast, I suddenly had the fluent German I required.
Thus it was I discovered my elusive trio had lodged at one of the most authentically German of the hostels, the fourth one I visited in her company. The rather stern woman behind the desk who gave my local charmer the information assured us the Lady who’d stopped there was a German Baroness from somewhere in the East—“Prussia or the Sudetenland, given the accent”—while her chambermaid was an Italian contralto fallen on hard times, and her gentleman a “Herr of the highest German education and scruples.” This she knew because he gave as a reference a well-known Professor of Philology at Heidelberg University. They indeed stayed but one night and were aimed toward Munchen, but instead received some news or telegram—not through her office, however—which sent them back again westward. The porter heard the man direct the cab driver to the railroad terminus street side for trains to Brussels, Ghent, Paris, and Rotterdam. Having heard their earlier plans east, he sought to correct him, and received only half a tip for his trouble.
And so, Your Lordship will, I am certain, come to the identical, horrid, conclusion I did. They and myself must have been walking in Aachen the very same day. The same hour. Who knows, we may have passed each other on the same street. My blood runs cold thinking of it. Of course, following this new blow, I no longer had any direction to go in pursuing them. But I have taken your always apt advice. When you have no set direction, stop and think. Something will come to you.
Your most humble and obedient servant
Addison Grimmins
✥ ✥ ✥
Addison was about to savour yet another enormous supper of spiced sausage and potato with gravy and hunks of brown bread to dip it in, when his charmer of the previous night appeared and, easily finding him by the lamplight, sat down at his table.
He’d already made it clear to Nelly he’d not require her services again, and was about to repeat that when she surprised him by asking, “You must very much this elder relation locate?” When he’d nodded, she told him, “To find in this or any city will be difficult.” Which he already thought was a foregone conclusion. “I have cousin,” she said. “Woman who knows these matters and can help.”
Nelly’s cousin—if that’s who this Wilfriede actually was—seemed at first more poorly clad and twice her age. She had been waiting outside and came in at her cousin’s beckoning.
“How can she know anything?” Addison asked.
“She is with her mind at times able to go far away and see as in pictures.”
Nelly then repeated that in German to Wilfriede, who asked something Nelly translated as, “Have you some belonging of the ladies?”
Addison had two: one, a lace-edged handkerchief, believed to have belonged to the chambermaid; but more crucially, he had a thick ring of yellow gold left behind by her Ladyship, a gift from his Lord, and which her servants agreed she had worn daily until her disappearance.
Wilfriede took up both items in one gaunt hand with its sticklike fingers and nodded yes. But Nelly said she must have food before she helped and that when she did help, it must be done in some place of quietness, not here in this noisy restaurant.
Addison fed both women, which was inexpensive enough, after which all three stepped out together, toward Wilfriede’s home.
Addison almost asked to stop off at his hotel for his pistol. But he had a penknife with him, in case any trouble was afoot. They walked a good fifteen minutes, and he was about to flag down an omnibus when Nelly said they were nearly arrived. Three or four shops fronted a cavernous, doorless foyer which he peered into to see it was a front building, with a paved courtyard and another somewhat larger edifice behind.
“Please, here. She cannot take money, but it is not very often she may have a sweet.” Nelly took him aside to one of the shops, a bakery where she had him purchase what she called apfel strudel. This was a flat sheet of long fruit pie some two feet in length which was wrapped in a waxy parchment paper for them to carry.
Once inside the back building, they ascended a dark, wide, open metalwork stairway to a fifth or sixth level, yet another place to be cautious, and he was. A battered door led to a narrow chain of rooms, most of them windowless, all with some kind of bedding, but otherwise vacant. Wilfriede, the mystic, could not wait but must take the strudel to yet another room where Addison was certain she nibbled at it i
mmediately.
He looked about and saw that the room, although poorly furnished with a deal table and a few spindly, dowel-legged chairs, was scrupulously clean. Even the few scraps of some worn, patterned carpet protecting their feet from the about to be caved-in wooden floor looked spotless.
In minutes, Wilfriede reappeared and sat herself opposite Addison, and the reading ensued. Once again, she took the handkerchief and held it in one hand and lifted it quite high in the air. “Fahr die madchen!” The chambermaid was far away. Then she held the ring tightly in her hand, and shut her eyes, saying, “Unglucke die Weib,” which Nell translated as “a very unhappy wife.” Addison didn’t doubt it by this time, and so let her continue.
He was handed a set of cards, each more than twice the size of his hand, of which Addison could make out only the backs decorated with various symbols. He was told to sit and “clear the mind” as though that were at all possible, and then to manipulate the cards. He was to lift those to his left side until ten cards were removed. Then he was told to remove another seven cards and to place them, again face down, to the right side.
Addison did so, feeling rather foolish, for he felt no affinity for any of the cards and had chosen them more or less haphazardly.
Despite this, when Wilfriede, still wiping off strudel sugar from her lower lip, picked up the first packet of cards, turned them face up, and looked through them, she began murmuring. She cleared the table of all but the second, smaller packet, which she shunted aside.
Upon the tattered linen table covering with its crudely sewn pattern of children’s boats, she began to place Addison’s chosen cards, face up, speaking all the while. He asked her cousin to translate, and he began to take dictation, so he might later reproduce accurately what Wilfriede told him. If he was not utterly edified, then at least he would have been diverted for the price of their dinner and dessert.
“This card represents you, Seeker,” Wilfriede began. “Darkness descended upon your life early, and has risen only occasionally. You are the Knight of Swords. Vengeful and ruthless and unceasing in his quest.”
Pursuit Page 3