Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 36

I trotted obediently after her as she hastened to the side of the very tall, very red-bearded man in a hat and suit who stood gazing over the heads of the crowd looking for someone.

I was free to study him as I had not been in the confines of our hotel room. He was a man of substantial and robust middle age, not portly like the Prince of Wales, yet ma.s.sive in both height and breadth. Quite handsome in a quiet way, his beard neatly trimmed and his gray eyes lightening with pleasure as he recognized Irene.

Yet there was nothing untoward in his expression or manner, only the easy congeniality so often found in large, secure men who manage to avoid becoming self-satisfied.

He took her hand and brushed his lips against it. "My dear Irene," he murmured happily, then turned politely to me.

And froze in horror.

Instantly I realized that he, too, had taken new stock of me, and that he must have glimpsed me at the maison de rendezvous, for there is nothing about me that should strike horror into any man, unless he suspected what I am capable of, and none ever do. I am often called "little," although I stand five-foot-five, but I am slender and pretty enough. Men have always been gallant with me, and I do not mind it, for it is useful.

"You remember meeting this young lady at my hotel, although I neglected to introduce her," Irene said quickly. "Miss Elizabeth Cochrane of Pennsylvania."

"Indeed." Bram Stoker stared hard at me. "I have visited that state during Irving's tours, a fine place."

"And Henry Irving is a very fine actor," I said, "so they are well matched." I extended a hand, which he shook gently. "Are you not his manager?"

He nodded, conveying an air of both pride and modesty that I found charming, as I sensed that all his pride was in Irving and all the modesty was for himself. I could see that the proper introduction that Irene had engineered had dispelled his fear of familiarity. He turned to her, affable again.

"You wish to meet Buffalo Bill, I understand."

"Heavens no, dear Bram! I wish to meet"-Irene visibly consulted her memory, one of her few performances that I found forced-"Red s.h.i.+rt, is it? Or Mr. Flat Iron?"

Bram Stoker roared with a redhead's unfettered laughter. The blessed race, Irene had called the Irish, and perhaps laughter is our one and only blessing.

I found my lips turned up in company with his, and hers.

"Buffalo Bill is a down-to-earth sort," he went on, "but I imagine that he will be disappointed that two such lovely ladies are more eager to meet a pair of Red Indians than the famous Western scout himself."

Irene put her arm through Bram Stoker's. "If you can find this American marvel, I have no doubt that he will be happy to show us all the exotic elements of his world-famous spectacle."

Mr. Stoker offered me his other arm. He was completely at ease now. I had to wonder how he had seen me during my short time at the maison de rendezvous. I certainly had not spied him, which either meant that his presence there was utterly innocent, or appallingly guilty, depending on if he had been behind closed doors the whole time, or not. Few men wander into such a place innocently, but I am always willing to consider an exception to the rule.

"You will indeed meet this 'American marvel,' " Mr. Stoker went on jovially. I could tell he enjoyed having two handsome women on his arm. I am not in Irene's league, but am not to be sniffed at in that line, either. "First I will escort you to the Rothschild box. The show is ending, and you may wish to greet the Baroness and her guests."

I could hear the rapid explosions of firearms and the thunder of hooves followed by applause and hoa.r.s.e cheers, but by the time Mr. Stoker had escorted us around the grandstands surrounding the vast outdoor performance arena, only a s.h.i.+mmering curtain of dust and a huge expanse of ground churned up by the wheels and hooves of two daily frantic reenactments of war parties and raids was evident.

The baronial box was draped with the flags of America and France as well as velvet swags in both countries' colors: red, white, and blue.

Imagine my surprise when I was introduced to the Baron and Baroness de Rothschild, who then turned to a rather portly gentleman with sleepy spaniel eyes the Baroness introduced as "Edward Albert, Prince of Wales."

Irene apparently knew everyone except the Baroness, whom she had given a deep bow of the head, the gesture of unacquainted equals, which I found interesting. Like me, there was not a servile bone in her body. I could not say as much for Nell.

Yet, for the first time in my life, I simply did not know what to do! At mention of the Prince's name, I found my hand thrusting out, then retracting, then advancing again, not sure if I expected the Prince to kiss it (if a prince could even kiss the hand of a "commoner") or shake it.

"You must be American." His laugh brought a brief spark of life to those heavy-lidded eyes. "All the American sharpshooting ladies when Buffalo Bill's show came to London last year shook hands with Mama, a frightful breach of court etiquette that the Queen and my wife Alex took in gracious spirits. I never thought I should see that, Mama dispensing with ceremony, for which I much thank the refres.h.i.+ng American ladies!"

He took and shook my gloved hand rather limply, but his touch was lingering while he consulted Irene behind me. "This is-?"

"Not my usual companion, Miss Huxleigh. This is Miss Elizabeth Cochrane of Pennsylvania."

"Another charming American place name, with as lovely an amba.s.sadoress as New Jersey boasts," he replied with a nod at Irene.

By now my hand was anxious to emigrate from the rule of Britannia, but there was no graceful retreat. So I produced a good old American schoolgirlish curtsy and incidentally retrieved my hand on the pretext of needing it to lift my skirt hem during my exercise.

"It is always a pleasure to see you again, Your Highness," Irene noted during my maneuver.

The Prince nodded complacently. He seemed a man of amiable nature. "Especially with my current visit to Paris proceeding so . . . quietly, thank you, which I can't say about the entertainment we have all enjoyed here today, though there will never be a Wild West Show as thrilling for me as June before last in London. That is when I joined the Kings of Denmark, Belgium, Greece, and Saxony for a thundering ride in the Deadwood Coach during the howling, shooting attack by Red Indians. Quite enthralling.

"Afterward I told Buffalo Bill, 'Colonel, you never held four kings like these, did you?"

" 'I've held four kings,' he replied, 'but four Kings and the Prince of Wales make a royal flush, and that is unprecedented."

The Prince chuckled at the showman's swift and flattering response. I confess myself impressed by our American legend's quick wit as well as his ease among the foreign aristocracy.

Irene also exercised that wit and savoir faire. I looked around and saw she had ebbed away for a quick conferral with the Baron, a slight man wearing the white side whiskers of his generation.

By now the Baroness had come to rescue me from the Prince, or perhaps the Prince from me. I exchanged a polite glance with her only to encounter the cool, a.s.sessing eyes of a woman who regards other women as rivals, at least on first acquaintance.

It occurred to me that Edward Albert might be a special friend of hers, so I gave him a darling, dimpled smile of farewell just to irritate her before flouncing off to join Irene.

"Your theories are most intriguing," the Baron was saying. "Anything further I can do is yours to command."

Irene murmured thanks as she took me by the elbow and we left the formalities of the box and its occupants.

"What do you think of Bram Stoker now that you have seen him again?" she asked me, as we walked away.

"The nicest Englishman I have ever met, even barring the Prince, who's all right for an heir to the throne."

"You haven't met G.o.dfrey yet," she said with the contented smile of a relatively new wife. I was dubious, having seen my mother's travails in the inst.i.tution of marriage. "But I was asking if you thought Bram might be a habituee, as the French put it, of brothels?"

I considered my answer for a long time. "If he is, he would be a welcome one."

Irene was still laughing at my response when the gentleman in question, truly as innocent as a lamb on this occasion, rejoined us to lead us behind the arena to the vast area that housed the show.

An entire tent city thrust its homely peaks into the pungent air. People and beasts bustled back and forth in thick array, every one of them out of the ordinary as far as metropolitan life goes, except for the horses.

Outside a ma.s.sive tent that Mr. Stoker identified as the dining chamber for the company he paused, while Red Indians with faces painted white, black, green, and red pa.s.sed us, feathers and braids upon their heads. Mr. Stoker excused himself to go in to find the famous Indian fighter and showman.

Now I would have to be truly on my toes! It isn't as if I hadn't seen a Buffalo Bill production a few times. Yet Irene Adler Norton was clearly new to the whole venture. She eyed the ma.s.sive tent from a distance at first, almost childlike in her amazement and curiosity.

"I was forced to miss attending this spectacle when I lived in London," she said finally.

"Forced? I cannot imagine you being forced into, or away from, anything."

"Oh, my dear Pink! We are all forced one way or another all of our lives. We simply do not notice who is doing the forcing, especially if they are in the four estates."

"The four estates. That means the aristocracy, the clergy, the professions and are the . . . newspapers the fourth estate?"

"I think you deserve high marks for that answer." She eyed me sideways. "Here in Paris the four estates are a bit different, as everything is in Paree: the boulevards or cafe society; the press; the artists, and the morgue. There you have it: Society, Sensation, Imagination, and Death. You notice that the Paris press is the second estate. The Anglo-Saxon 'old order' of churchman, tradesman, journalist quite literally applies only to England and the United States."

"But we do not have an aristocracy in America," I objected.

Mr. Stoker had returned just in time to overhear my opinion.

"Of course you do, Miss Cochrane. They are called nabobs and captains of industry. They are elevated by virtue of black ink rather than blue blood. Some call it a plutocracy, but I say it's a Midasocracy."

"I like that word," I said.

"That is because there is not much blue blood among us three, or among this company of rough riders," Irene said.

I looked around at what resembled a camp of ragtag soldiers without uniforms. "This is an out-of-doors stage play but it commemorates the shedding of much red blood not too long past."

"How it fascinates me," Mr. Stoker confessed, turning to examine the huge a.s.semblage of tents, with ma.s.sive animals being led to and fro and numerous handlers rus.h.i.+ng between the tents. "I believed the Lyceum had mounted some stupendous spectacles. Act Four of Faust alone employed 250 warlocks, demons, imps, and goblins. But this . . . importing a hundred animal actors as well as hundreds of human performers and stagehands across oceans. Amazing! I'm delighted, Irene, that you have given me the opportunity to further my acquaintance with Colonel Cody," he added with a deep bow to her. "Henry Irving and Ellen Terry were among the welcoming committee when his Wild West Show played in London last year, but I fear I was overlooked among the likes of the Oscar Wildes and other notables. So I relish the opportunity to see his operations. I can learn a thing or two from Buffalo Bill about herding actors, props, and supernumeraries at the Lyceum. And here he comes now."

"Stoker," cried a tall extravagant figure that was descending upon us like a poster come to startling life.

The long yellow fringe on his buckskin s.h.i.+rt and trousers fluttered from the energy of his advance. A pale felt hat, extravagantly brimmed, tilted jauntily on his head. And what a proud, maned head it was, almost larger than life, like the s.h.a.ggy heads of the buffalo he was famous for hunting nigh unto extinction. Though he sported a mustache and goatee, his long, curling hair rippled down his back like the loosened tresses of a woman.

But woe to any who would impugn the virility of the showman known the world over as Buffalo Bill. I'd been hearing and reading about him my entire life, thanks to Ned Buntline's inexhaustible dime novels: wagon train errand boy at twelve, Pony Express rider at fifteen, U.S. Cavalry scout and buffalo hunter at twenty, Winner of the Medal of Honor, hunting guide for Grand Dukes, star of his own stage adventures since the seventies.

This world-renowned Wild West Show merely memorialized a life that had personally reshaped the future of a continent once black with moving clouds of buffalo. In sixteen years the s.h.a.ggy beasts and their Indian hunters were virtually gone; cattle and the white men have flooded onto the prairie that once knew more wood than steel. The long, bitter, and brutal Indian battles seemed over now, too. It had been almost fifteen years since William F. Cody had killed Chief Yellow Hand and taken his scalp to avenge Custer and the Seventh Cavalry only weeks after that most famous rout of the Indian Wars. Now Indians were tame entertainers in a traveling show. I had seen Buffalo Bill quoted as saying the Sioux had not ma.s.sacred Custer, that they were combating skilled fighters for the sakes of their families and their land. The hero had become a healer.

I admit that a thrill went up my spine at the famous scout's approach, akin to the chill that had shaken me when Irene and I had visited the undiscovered catacombs under Notre Dame two nights ago.

But this was a chill of national pride, not of horror. Unlike Irene, I had lived in the States until very recently. Although I had seen his Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden and knew him for a consummate performer and the commanding general of a mighty cast of men, beasts, and a few good women, I had never personally confronted the sheer magnetism of the man. It was considerable. Even Irene stood silent and contemplative in the face of such an apparition.

This was a Prince of the Prairie in the flesh, and more commanding than the fleshly Prince of Wales.

His eyes narrowed as Mr. Stoker introduced him to Irene. "You have a feisty look about you, ma'am. Do you shoot?"

"Only in self-defense." His brows lifted at her dead-serious tone. "But I fence," she added.

"Do you ride?"

"Not much or well or far, but I . . . walk a great deal."

He laughed at that.

"I fear I am a confirmed city dweller, Colonel Cody, but I have worked for the Pinkertons"-at that word the colonel straightened as if either shocked or about to give a salute-"and I come to you in search of information involving heinous crimes."

"You, a Pinkerton agent?"

"Not recently. Now that I live in Europe I handle private inquiries for my own profit and amus.e.m.e.nt." Irene came closer, touched his buckskin-clad arm. "And for persons of substance. Tiffany has been a client. And the"-for some reason she almost choked on the next name before she dropped it, but drop it she did, like a metal medieval gauntlet-"King of Bohemia. And . . . others whom I dare not name."

The narrowed eyes that had seen entire species and tribes vanish from the American West took her measure. She did not flinch, or worse, flutter.

"Well, ma'am." He doffed his hat with the same panache as he took his final bow at the end of four hours of Wild West Show. "If you are a friend of Bram, and say you need my help, I am at your disposal. For half an hour today, at any rate. I am the toast of Paree, you see, and kept running eighteen hours a day to this soiree and that, not to mention rounding up two daily shows."

"I am most grateful for your valuable time, and your help." She took his arm as if they were strolling into supper together at Kensington Palace. I could see that the veteran Indian scout was in the hands of a veteran herder of h.o.m.o sapiens.

"Excuse us, Bram," he said to our guide, who nodded and remained behind.

He had not exempted me.

So I slipped into step behind them, like a child content to be seen and not heard, as they moved into the trampled central arena. I noticed that although Irene was in deep conversation with the showman, she managed to avoid treading on the clumps of animal dung littering their path. Buffalo will be buffalo.

I struggled to walk in her pristine footsteps. "I walk a great deal" indeed! No wonder Buffalo Bill had taken a liking to her. She pretended to nothing, but apologized for nothing either.

I must remember that technique in future.

"You must forgive me. I have lived in Europe since I was eighteen," she began.

"Only a fortnight ago, surely, Madame."

"You have been overhearing too many Frenchmen, Colonel."

He laughed, but would not let it go. "I deal in herd animals, but I know each one. Each has a scar, a gait, a shape. A hallmark. Pardon me for putting it so plainly, but you have a hallmark like no other. I have seen you before. Not recently. In the East. Can you swear differently to this old scout?"

She was silent while they walked through the muck as if ambling in a chateau garden.

"The late 'seventies, do you think, Colonel?"

He nodded. "I was performing in my dime-novel plays on the Eastern seaboard then."

"Perhaps . . . perhaps you recall Merlinda the Mermaid and the Treasure of Blackbeard."

They stopped. Buffalo Bill stared at Irene Adler. Then he doffed his hat, made a deep Cavalier bow, and slapped his befringed leg with the brim so a small, astounded cough of dust rose in the air between them. His laugh was as loud as a thundering herd.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned! Held her breath for five minutes in that huge tank of water, hair longer than mine weaving like seaweed, that fancy spangled tail waving like prairie gra.s.s in a windstorm. Five minutes underwater, eyes open, in plain view. And hauling up those jeweled gewgaws all the while. I clocked you, Madame Mermaid. It was five minutes. How'd you manage it?"

"How'd you manage scalping Yellow Hand?"

"Battle bloodl.u.s.t." He sighed. "I don't deny it, but the West was wild then. Men are capable of more than they think."

"Good? Or bad?"

"Both, ma'am. And women, too, I guess."

She nodded, as if he had cleared a hurdle she had set up, and abruptly changed the subject back to the first matter. "I was training to become an opera singer. I needed money for lessons. In opera, breath control is paramount. Merlinda helped me to become one who sang instead of swam for her supper, and the critics have always noted since then that my breath control is peerless."

"Grand opera or Wild West roundup. It's all a show, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is, yet I am now involved in matters that are not a show but all too real. And the bloodl.u.s.t you mention is being exercised on helpless women."

He stopped again. "You've shot in self-defense?"

She nodded, once.