by Robert Cole
***
Luckily, we were currently residing in London and not down at Bartleby, the rackety old manor house previously mentioned. Our city abode consisted of several rooms at the top of a house owned by a former inamorata of her grandpapa's, currently masquerading as quite a respectable lady called Mrs. York. So grateful was this lady to Abigail's grandpapa that she allowed us to use the rooms whether we could afford to pay her or not. This has proved lucky for us upon more than one occasion, as you might well imagine. Situated in a quiet square not too far from the Great London Aerodrome, it was convenient for anything, most particularly the daily airship to Calais. Sometimes a brief sojourn in France is called for in our line of business.
A little more than a week after I had read the article concerning the Wilkersons, I was in our sitting room, calmly having a much needed whiskey and soda after a distressing sojourn with a man and a parrot. While a most fascinating story, it does not concern us here.
"Simon, there you are, you old sluggard!" Abigail tore into the room as if the house was on fire and she was rescuing her most precious possessions.
"Sluggard?" I took a sip of whiskey. "If you even suspected the sort of day I've had, Abigail, you would not wrong me so."
"Ah, the parrot proved a problem, did he? I thought he might." Abigail was shedding her jacket, and I was sorry to see it was not the sort of jacket Lady Abigail Moran should adorn her beauty with, being too tight, too short and of a distressing shade of mustard yellow.
I waved any discussion of the parrot away with the disdain the matter deserved. "Abigail, your jacket!" I protested, going to important matters first—and, incidentally, sidestepping questions re parrot. "If you must wear such things, cannot you keep them at the other place? This is a respectable neighborhood, and Mrs. York will only stand so much, you know."
Mrs. York, as is the way of ladies who took their reputations lightly while young, had gone entirely in the other direction when burdened with some decades—how many, I had no idea, and it was difficult to tell under layers of white powder and a tasteful brown fringe of hair, quite artificial though it did serve to hide her corrugated forehead.
"Come, Simon, you know Mrs. York misses the old days with grandpapa, whatever she may say to the contrary." Abigail hung her disreputable jacket on the coat rack by the door. "But that is neither here nor there. My dear old thing, we are in!"
"In?" I asked, and if I sounded dispirited, blame the parrot. "In trouble? In disgrace? In the throes of penury?"
"No, you fleawit!" Abigail took a sip of my whiskey and splash. "We are dining with Miss Belle Wilkerson and her enormous papa this evening." She gave me back my glass, sadly depleted, and sat down opposite me. She held her hands out to the fire.
"Quick work, my dear old girl!" I said as I got up to mix us another drink. "However did you manage it?"
I always ask Abigail how she manages things. For, do not doubt it, she loves to explain same.
"As you know, Simon," she began, nodding thanks to me for her drink, "I have been studying the Wilkerson residence. Really, it is a most ostentatious thing at the edges of Mayfair, with huge brass numbers and a front door painted purple. Purple!"
I shook my head in astonishment.
"Well, I could tell from the article in the Daily Chronicle that Miss Belle had few friends in London. If you recall, her papa made all his millions off a series of mills in the north and only recently moved to the capital."
"Bootlaces, wasn't it?" I felt I should contribute to the conversation, and I wished to show Abigail I had not been idle—barring the parrot imbroglio, mind you.
"With a side in thimbles, I believe," Abigail nodded. "Millions off bootlaces and thimbles, and it's all we can do to keep body and soul together and you in new waistcoats. It's a cruel world, Simon, and unfair as well."
What could I do but agree?
"So, since Miss Belle has few friends in London," Abigail continued, "I thought it only my Christian duty to supply her with one."
"Your lovely self, I do not doubt?"
"My blushes, Simon." Abigail grinned. "I met Miss Belle in the park near her palatial residence—accidentally, of course—and made her acquaintance by pretending to have lost my glasses and, not to put too fine a point on it, running into her."
"Literally, I assume," I said. "And hence the pair of pince nez dangling from that rather tasty chain around your neck?"
Abigail raised the golden glasses. "They belong to Mrs. York. My only problem is remembering to squint when they're not on my nose," she admitted. "But one must suffer for one's art, after all."
"Of course," I agreed. "So you ran into Miss Wilkerson. How, precisely, does a physical assault become friendship? I ask in all innocence. After all, generally when you run into someone, you either knock him down so I can riffle his pockets, or you trip him to slow down pursuing peelers."
"The girl is lonely, as I suspected," Abigail said. "And, glory of glories, she was taking her walk with a copy of the latest penny dreadful in hand. I have never been so grateful to Varney the Vampire and his ilk as I am today. Remind me to buy up all the recent issues. You must read them so as to carry on an intelligent conversation when we dine with the Wilkersons tomorrow."
"I must read them?" I spluttered. "And surely you cannot expect me to be invited to dine, merely on the strength of your myopia?"
"Don't be silly, Simon." Abigail took her pince nez off and carefully laid them on the mantle. "Naturally, in the opinion of someone like Mr. Wilkerson, a single woman cannot live alone in London without protection. I am under the wing of my darling brother Simon. Wear that horrible suit you had made on our last job but one. We dine at eight..."
