Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 58

Suddenly his features sharpened with interest, perhaps even suspicion. He placed his fingers on the envelope, watching Irene as he would a snake he feared might strike.

When she didn't move, he delicately slid the envelope from the loose custody of her hands and held it up before his face.

"German paper," he announced to whoever would care to hear. "Handmade. Very fine. Dusseldorf. It has been carried in a velvet-lined pocket or case. Red velvet. Some tiny threads have snagged on the deckle edge of the flap. The ink is . . . problematical without a.n.a.lysis. And-"

He opened the envelope, peered inside. His gazed hardened as he looked at me again.

"And it appears that we are dealing with someone bold but reckless. A formidable opponent, but not omnipotent. They never are. My own casual inquiries indicated that Mr. Norton was traveling beyond Vienna. My brother is of some influence in the Foreign Office. In fact, in many respects, he is the Foreign Office. I shall wire him immediately. If I may dare suggest, the Rothschild family should be notified of this second . . . mystery at once. Their network of agents in all the capitals of Europe is unsurpa.s.sed."

Irene said nothing, did nothing.

He slapped the envelope back down on the table. I jumped, but Irene did not.

"Madam," he commanded.

He moved behind her, then pulled the chair out, with her on it, a feat of amazing strength. His hand on her elbow brought her upright. He turned her to face him, but her eyes never lifted from staring straight ahead, through him as if he were a featureless wall.

I had never seen him more remote, more the stern lecturer devoted to science and stoicism.

"Madam," he said, "fives times you eluded the King of Bohemia's best agents during your flight from Bohemia."

She roused enough to stare sideways. "He is a minor king, and his agents are not very good."

"I am very good," Sherlock Holmes said, "yet you saw through my clergyman's guise in short order in the Serpentine Mews when I started the house fire to force you to reveal where you had hidden the photograph the King so feared."

Her head shook slightly, like some dumb beast's reacting to gnats buzzing about its ears.

"You had stolen the idea from Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin in 'The Purloined Letter,' she said listlessly. "Those stories have been popular in America, England, and France for decades. It was no great feat to see through the stratagem."

"You further had the audacity, the unparalleled audacity, to don men's dress and shortly after accost me on the steps to 221B Baker Street, wis.h.i.+ng me good night by name."

"No feat for an actress, and you were not aware of my suspicions."

"Further, you arranged to marry Norton and escape England within hours, before the King and I returned the following day to collect the now-missing photo."

She shrugged.

"You are the only woman ever to outwit me."

"You have not had many dealings with women."

"You fought a duel with a French viscount, and won."

"I was trained to duel for trouser roles in the opera."

"You saved the King of Bohemia's throne-twice!"

"An insignificant little throne, not worth ruling from and not worth saving."

Mr. Holmes appeared to have exhausted his repertoire of bracing reminders of past triumphs.

While he paused, defeated, she slowly raised her eyes to his. "That woman, last night-"

"She is in good care. A Frenchwoman, of all things. A 'reformed' prost.i.tute, she calls herself. She had some demented notion that she was sacrificing the source of her sin and that of the many men who used her to the Master."

Irene's eyes dropped again, look aslant, saw scenes that we could not.

After a long pause, Mr. Holmes moved as silently as a performing mime to collect his hat and stick and go to the door. I followed, but Irene never seemed to notice our defection.

"If it had been Watson . . ." he whispered to me on the threshold, then shook his head. "I can do nothing more here."

"Why is the past in London more key than the present here in Paris?" I asked quickly.

For this I received a glance of irritation mixed with surprise.

"Because I perceive for the first time a keen and twisted intelligence behind the brutal murders in both these great cities, despite the crude and perplexing nature of the atrocities." His gaze fastened on me with reluctant curiosity. "I trust that I am not so opinionated a man that I cannot admire the courage of a woman as well as that of another man. I grant that in the past few days you three women have found and faced such dark crimes as would drive the majority of your s.e.x mad."

At this he glanced to Irene, who again sat slumped at the table, lost in her torment like some absinthe drinker enslaved by "the Green Fairy" of delusion. The crude artists who sell their wares in Montmartre often depict these abandoned souls. I had not seen her react to anything around her since Sherlock Holmes had left her side.

He lowered his voice. "You see the results of meddling in matters of such a debased nature." Dark brows lowered over piercing eyes. "I have no time to waste speculating on your purpose here, but do not doubt that you have one. That matters nothing now. You must attend to her, as no one else is able to do so. While I can sympathize with the loss of a trusted companion, I have no closer ties, although my friend Dr. Watson, the married man, could no doubt tell me of the deeper agonies of an endangered spouse. I suspect that the disappearance of an only brother is not quite the same thing, and frankly, my brother is better equipped to defend himself in dire circ.u.mstances than I myself." He regarded me as sternly as a parent. "I have no doubt that a young American adventuress like yourself may be convinced that you can weather any corruption, as she was once convinced. Now you see what her actions have brought upon her: the attention of forces far beyond the normal."

"You believe there is a supernatural-"

He m.u.f.fled a snort of dissent and resumed his low tone. It was as if we conferred in a sickroom about a patient beyond all reaching.

"Please, Miss Cochrane! If there is any dimension to the case that smacks of the unearthly, it is a variety of spiritual, rather than occult ill. Yes, I have ascertained your surname. I am far more aware of the movements of you all, and of those around you, than you suspect, which is as it should be."

His smile at my surprise was wan. "I cannot claim to see the extent of the connections as yet. Yet be of good courage. I am convinced that there are connections. I would almost suspect that Napoleon of crime, who is the one man who may have more influence in London than Whitehall or Windsor, save that he is too rational for the elements loosened on us in this case. I sense the same evil spiderwebtrembling beneath our feet, with a hidden source at an unsuspected center. Have you studied the habits of spiders, Miss Cochrane?"

"No," I said. "I am more interested in the human variety."

"You should not neglect the humble arachnid, a varied and ingenious tribe in the world of terrestrial invertebrates, often vilified but seldom credited. While a spider will spend a long, patient night weaving a web many thousandths its own size, it can in the blink of an eye disa.s.semble the lot and vanish. This is what I have seen in Paris."

"Like the Gypsies," I said, remembering the odd band from the exposition grounds.

"Better than Gypsies. They left tracks. A spider leaves no trace. Unless you search for such with a magnifying lens."

"What of those demented people in the cavern? They are 'traces.' "

He shook his head. "A sorry collection of lost souls. The barely human offal of Ja.n.u.s-faced superst.i.tion and self-gratification, dredged from the lowest streets. Some are religious zealots turned half-mad, like Kelly. A pity he escaped. So did far too many others. I should have been involved in the matter from the first." He glanced at Irene, as if torn between blaming and pitying her. Then he shook himself back into a brusque a.n.a.lysis of the situation.

"The Paris police are sorting through a tangle of languages . . . Polish, Russian, Portuguese, but are disgusted to number some of their fellow citizens among the congregation, as well as petty thieves and prost.i.tutes. Yet even in their dementia, these benighted beings prate of some G.o.d, some "master" who approves their debaucheries in the name of faith, mind you!"

"I have often seen wrongdoers justify their acts by imagining that they do good, Mr. Holmes, but . . . what could justify what we saw last night?"

"Madness, yet within it or behind it the same kernel of method that makes it doubly dangerous. The wellspring lies in London and the crimes attributed to that darling of the sensationalist presses, Jack the Ripper."

"Oh, but how I wish I could accompany you to London!" The words had burst out unbidden. "I-I . . . worked in the London houses, you know, before this, and not long after the Ripper crimes. I might have some insight-"

"Insight is not needed there. Detection is. And you are needed here. You would abandon the woman who has taken you under her wing? Now, at her darkest hour? Are you Americans all enterprise, and no heart?"

"Is it odd to hear a man of supreme rationality arguing the supremacy of the heart."

"Follow me to London, young Miss Cochrane," he said with such icy conviction that I was completely tongue-tied, "and I shall have you arrested for your sins. Prost.i.tution is not legal there, as it is here."

He glowered at me one last time, then clapped his hat upon his head. "Good day."

What an arrogant, priggish Englishman! I closed the door behind Sherlock Holmes with mixed feelings. Part of me longed to pursue him and the investigations that he would refine and renew in White-chapel. Yet beneath my impatience lay a heavy heart. Who could have antic.i.p.ated this tragedy? I realized with a chill that so easily I instead of Nell could have been missing. I wondered how that would have affected Irene's degree of shock, or Sherlock Holmes's promises of aid.

Irene wasn't looking at the door, either to watch Sherlock Holmes depart or my return to her side.

Instead, she was staring toward my sleeping alcove. "What is that?" she asked in a dead, dazed tone.

I looked to see what she meant. "Oh. My trunk."

In the silence Irene stared at my trunk as if trying to see through it, as if she thought it contained Nell.

"I forgot I'd asked the steward to get it ready," I recalled as much as explained. So much had happened since that moment, so terribly much.

"Ready?" Her tone still held a heart-wrenching note of vague confusion.

"I, I'm sailing tomorrow"-I glanced at my locket-watch, ashamed that mine was still pinned to my bosom while Nell's . . . it was better not to dwell on details. I could as easily take the boat train to London now if I wished to disobey Sherlock Holmes, and I obey no man. Time had already slipped away like a thief, turning midnight to dawn. "I'm sailing . . . today at 6:00 P.M. on the Persian Queen. For America. Going home. I'd bought the tickets weeks ago and forgot to mention it in all the-"

I could say no more, for Irene Adler had sprung at me like a panther, bridging the six feet between us in an instant, her hands hard on my wrists, her face and voice as sharp as edged steel.

"No, you are not," she said. "You are not sailing anywhere while Nell is missing, and G.o.dfrey. Not while I need you. We are going to find them."

"But Sherlock Holmes-"

"Sherlock Holmes has other matters to attend to, and I do not want him involved."

"You were a broken woman only moments ago-"

"Let him think so. I do not want him meddling in this. It is too important."

"I can't see how I can be of any help-"

"Don't worry about it. I can."

Her grip had never lessened. For the first time I feared her. "But I have obligations-"

"Yes, you do! You are obliged to Nell and me. You have ridden on me long enough. Now I will ride on you, Nellie Bly, daredevil reporter, and you will have by far the better story for it, believe me, if that is what it takes to get you to own up to who and what you are.

Stunned, I found myself on the brink of sobs, like a child who has been caught in a terrible misdeed and knows it. I had not allowed myself even near such a state since I was ten years old and Jack Ford had first torn our house apart and attacked my mother and called her b.i.t.c.h and wh.o.r.e. I felt racked by guilt. Shock. Fear. And a certain dull, dawning sense of . . . excitement.

"How did you know? No one else guessed. Not even Sherlock Holmes. Have you always known?"

"That doesn't matter now. Our next step does. The greater mystery lies not back in London, but here in Paris and . . . beyond."

I nodded. Once. Hard. And shook loose a few large, humiliating tears.

Irene Adler Norton at last eased her grip on my aching wrists. She seemed well satisfied.

Resolution

She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the

mind of the most resolute of men. . . there are no lengths to

which she would not go-none.

-THE KING OF BOHEMIA, "A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA"

She was resolute, set on doing "something that no other girl

had ever done."