That had been the beginning of my long and happy association with the foremost consulting detective of our time—perhaps of any time. A confirmed bachelor, my associate had treated persons of the female persuasion with unstinting chivalry and kindness through all the time I had known him, yet on only one occasion had he permitted himself to entertain romantic notions concerning a member of the more gentle sex, and had, in all the years that followed the incident, refrained from ever speaking the name of the person involved.
On the occasion of each of my own marriages he had congratulated myself and my bride effusively, assisted in supervising the packers and drayers in the removal of my personal belongings from our bachelor digs, and maintained a friendly if somewhat aloof interest in my well-being until such time as the exigencies of fate dictated the termination of my marital state and my return to our lodgings in Baker Street.
That was all ended now. The great detective had disappeared from mortal ken, plunging from the parapet above the Reichenbach Falls to his presumed death—a price he seemed willing to pay in order to rid the world of the most dangerous man alive. My own latest assay upon the sea of matrimony having been brought up upon the sharp rocks of disaster, I had returned to 221B to find my old home occupied by a stranger. Upon application to the ever-faithful Mrs. Hudson I had been told, amidst the most pitiable wringing of hands and shedding of tears, that even the belongings of my associate—I I should say my former associate—had been removed, lock, stock, and Persian slipper. Gone, the good woman told me tremblingly, were the famous dagger, the files of news cuttings, the phonograph and bust, the gasogene and the ill-famed needle. Donated to the Black Museum of Scotland Yard, where our old friends Gregson and Lestrade could examine them at their leisure.
Even the patriotic initials V.R. marked in bullet holes knocked in Mrs. Hudson’s treasured mahogany wainscoting had been patched and varnished over so that every trace of the former occupancy was excised, and only a false and sterile pseudohominess marked the chambers my friend and I had so long occupied.
So distraught was I upon learning of this turn of affairs that I was barely able to accept Mrs. Hudson’s offer of kippers and scones washed down with a tumbler of Chateau Frontenac ’89 before stumbling back into the chill night.
I was disconsolate.
In a state of financial as well as emotional impoverishment, I wandered the streets of the greatest of cities, rebounding from the well-padded bodies of late shoppers and early revelers, making my way under the guidance of some ill-understood instinct through quarters imperceptibly but steadily more shabby, disreputable, and dangerous. At last I found myself standing before the facade of the building that was shortly to become my abode.
A gas lamp flickered fitfully behind me, casting weird and eerie shadows. The clop-clopping of horses’ iron shoes upon cobblestones mingled with the creak of harness and the occasional distant scream that in Limehouse is best left uninvestigated, lest the self-designated Samaritan find himself sharing the misfortune of the one whom he had sought to assuage.
A yellowed pasteboard notice in a ground-floor window announced that a flat was available in the building—the condition of the pasteboard indicating that the flat had been unoccupied for some time—and by virtue of this ingenious deduction I was able shortly to bargain the ill-kempt and uncivil landlord to a price in keeping with my dangerously slim pocketbook.
Well had I learned the lessons of observation and deduction taught by my longtime associate—and now those lessons would pay me back for innumerable humiliations by the saving of considerable sterling to my endangered exchequer.
Hardly had I settled myself into my new domain when I heard the tread of a lightly placed foot upon the landing outside my chambers, then the knock of a small but determined hand upon the heavy and long-unattended door.
For an instant I permitted my fancy to imagine that the door would open to reveal smartly uniformed buttons—a street arab of the sort sometimes employed by my associate—mayhap even the homey figure of my associate himself. But I had no more than begun to rise from the cushions of a shabby but comfortable armchair when reality smote down upon my consciousness, and I realized that none of these knew the location of my new quarters. Far more likely would my caller prove to be some dark denizen of Limehouse here to test the mettle of a new tenant.
I pulled a small but powerful revolver from its place among my belongings and slipped it into the pocket of my dressing gown, then advanced cautiously toward the portal of the room and drew back the locking bar. Protesting loudly this imposition upon its seldom-exercised hinges, the door swung back and still farther back until there stood revealed in the opening to the landing the one person upon the face of the earth whom I would least have supposed to trace down my new whereabouts or to have reason of any nature ever to call upon me here.
Hardly could I credit the evidence of my own eyes. We must have stood for fully fifteen seconds in silent tableau—I with my eyes widened and my very jaw, I am certain, hanging open in astonishment. I was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the reduced surroundings in which my caller had found me, and of the shabbiness which I fear I had permitted to come upon my personal demesne. My hair, once a rich brown in hue, had grown increasingly gray and unkempt with the passing years. My mustache was yellowed with nicotine and stained with wines and porters. My dressing gown was threadbare and marked with the souvenirs of many a solitary meal.
While my visitor was as breathtaking a figure as ever I had beheld: handsome rather than beautiful, she had borne the years since cur last encounter with the grace and imperturbability that had marked her at one phase of her career as the most famous beauty of the operatic stage, and at another as the woman for whom a throne had been risked—and saved.
“May I enter?” asked The Woman.
Coloring to the very roots of my hair I stepped back and indicated that she might not merely enter, but would be the most welcome and most honored of guests. “I must apologize,” I murmured, “for my boorish performance. Can you forgive me, Miss—I should say Madame—Your Highness—” I halted, uncertain of how even to address my distinguished visitor.
Yet even as I stammered and reddened, I could not keep myself from observing the appearance of The Woman.
She was as tall as I remembered her to be, a hand more so than myself and nearly of a height with my longtime associate. Her hair, piled high upon her magnificent head in the European vogue of the period, was of a raven glossiness that seemed to throw back the light of my flickering paraffin lamp with every movement of the flame. Her facial features were perfect, as perfect as I had remembered them to be on the occasion of our first meeting many years earlier, and her figure, as revealed by the closely fitted fashion of the era, which she carried with the aplomb of one long accustomed to the attentions of the finest fitters and couturiers of the Continent, was as graceful and appealing as that of a schoolgirl.
She had entered my humble chambers by then, and as I checked the landing behind her to ascertain that no footpad stood lurking in the musty darkness, The Woman ensconced herself unassisted upon the plain-backed wooden chair I was wont to utilize while wielding my pen in the pursuit of those modest exercises of literary embellishment about which my associate had so often chided me.
I turned and gazed down at my visitor, seating myself as near to her magnetic form as decorum might permit. At this closer range it was visible to me that her air of confident poise was not unstrained by some element of nervousness or even distress. I attempted to smile encouragingly at The Woman, and she responded as I hoped she would, her voice so cultured as largely to conceal the difficulty with which she maintained her equilibrium.
“May I come directly to the point, Doctor?” she inquired.
“Of course, of course, Miss-ah—”
“In private circumstances you may address me simply as Irene,” she graciously responded.
I bowed my head in humble gratitude.
“You may feel some surpris
e in my tracking you down,” the Woman said. “But I have come upon a matter of the greatest urgency. Once before I called upon you and your associate in an hour of grave crisis, and now that a problem of like proportion has arisen, I call upon you again.”
“You have not heard, then—” I began.
“On the contrary,” she interrupted, “the tragic news raced across the Continent like a new plague, kept to the circles of those high in rank by the most strenuous of efforts. You have my condolences, Doctor, however belatedly. It was unforgivable of me not to contact you at once when the news came to me, and indeed I tried to do so but was unable to locate you. It was only with difficulty that I was able to find you now.”
I accepted her apologies with a nod. Then I inquired, “I trust that your own career has been a happier one than mine, Madame.”
“Alas, such is not the case.” She bent that well-formed head with the grace of a woman half her age. “The personage for whom I risked all, and whose very throne your associate saved, proved unworthy of those who risked so much in his behalf.”
I offered her a handkerchief, but that noble creature bit her lip, drew a deep breath, and even managed a small, forlorn smile.
“The fates are strange,” she resumed at length. “There was a time when I felt that I could never again place in any man my trust, much less my heart. But I was happily mistaken. I am now the spouse of—”
She cast her gaze carefully about the room, then leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner and whispered in my ear the name of a small but ancient and vitally important kingdom.
“I would think that I should have heard—a match such significance, Your Highness—why is it not known to one and all?”
“There are reasons of royal etiquette, Doctor, and considerations of rivalries and ambitions. My husband is regarded as the bachelor king, but in due course you may rest assured that my role and my identity will be revealed. In the meanwhile I live in comfort and in privacy, and take my greatest joy in the raising of my son: he who will someday ascend the throne of my adopted homeland when his father no longer reigns.”
I shook my head in bewilderment. Never in my wildest imaginings had I envisioned such a turn of affairs. “You have my most heartfelt best wishes, Madame,” I managed to intone. “But I imagine—”
At this point I rose and poured a glass of strong spirits for myself. Then I resumed, “—that you have come here on a mission that is not purely social.”
She conceded that this was indeed the case. “Were your associate with us yet, I should have turned to him now as I did once before. But since that is impossible, you must assist me. Please, Doctor, I should not have come here or disturbed your solitude in any way were it not for the extreme nature of the present situation.”
So saying, she leaned forward and placed her cool and ungloved fingertips softly upon the back of my wrist. As if a galvanic current had passed for her organism to my own at the very touch of her fingers, I felt myself energized and inspired. The Woman was in trouble. And The Woman had come to me in her hour of need. I could never be so mean a bounder as to turn her away—surely not now when the very mantle of my mentor seemed about to fall upon my own uncertain shoulders.
“But of course, Your High—Irene.” I felt myself reddening to the very roots of my hair at the pronunciation of her given name. “Please be so kind as to wait a moment while I fetch notepaper and writing instrument so as to record the salient details of your narrative.”
I rose and brought foolscap and nib, then quickly returned to my place opposite my charming visitor. For a moment I thought to offer her tea and biscuits with marmalade, but refrained at the recollection of the present condition of my larder and my pocketbook.
“Pray proceed,” I said.
“Thank you. I trust that you need make no mention of the location or manner of my current domicile, Doctor,” The Woman began. Upon seeing my nodded response, she said simply, “The God of the Naked Unicorn has been stolen.”
“The God of the Naked Unicorn,” I exclaimed.
“The God of the Naked Unicorn.”
“No,” I blurted incredulously.
“Yes,” she replied coolly. “The God of the Naked Unicorn.”
“But—how can that be? The greatest national art treasure of the nation of—”
“Shh.” She silenced me with a sound and a look and a renewed pressure of fingertips to wrist. “Please. Even in more familiar and secure quarters than these it would be unwise to mention the name of my adoptive motherland.”
“Of course, of course,” I murmured, recovering myself rapidly. “But I do not see how The God of the Naked Unicorn could be stolen. Is it not—but I have here a book of artistic reproductions, let us examine a print of the statue and see.”
“It is burned into my memory, Doctor. I see it before my eyes day and night. For me, there is no need to examine an artist’s poor rendering, but you may search your volume to find a representation of the great sculptor Mendez-Rubirosa’s masterpiece.”
I crossed the room and returned with a heavy volume bound in olive linen-covered boards and opened it carefully, turning its cream-vellum leaves until I came to a steel engraving of the sculptor Mendez-Rubirosa’s supreme achievement, The God of the Naked Unicorn. As I had recalled, the work had been cast in platinum and decorated with precious gems. The eyes of the god were rubies and those of the unicorns clustered worshipfully about the deity’s feet were of sapphires and emeralds. The horns of the unicorns were of finest ivory inlaid with filigreed gold. The very base of the sculpture was a solid block of polished onyx inlaid with Peking jade.
“But The God of the Naked Unicorn is the national treasure of—” I caught myself barely in time. “If its theft is made public, the very crown itself would be imperiled.”
“Quite so,” the woman known as The Woman agreed. “And a message has been received threatening that the sculpture will be placed on public display in St. Wrycyxlwv’s Square if a ransom of 80 trillion grudniks is not paid for its return. And a deadline is given of forty-eight hours hence. You can see, Doctor, how desperate my husband and I are. That is why I came to you. You alone—your distinguished colleague being no longer among us—can help.”
A million thoughts swirled through my poor brain at this juncture.
“St. Wrycyxlwv’s Square,” I exclaimed.
“St. Wrycyxlwv’s Square,” she affirmed.
“But that is the national gathering place of your nation’s fiercest and most implacable enemy.”
“Precisely, Doctor.”
I stroked my chin thoughtfully, painfully aware of the unsightly stubble of unshaved whiskers that marred my appearance.
“And 80 trillion grudniks,” I repeated.
“Yes, 80 trillion grudniks,” she said.
“That would be—roughly—forty crowns, nine shillings, and thruppence,” I computed.
“That—or as close as to make no practical difference,” my charming visitor agreed.
“Forty-eight hours,” I said.
“Approximately two days,” The Woman equated.
“I see,” I temporized, stroking my chin once again. “And tell me, Your High—I mean, Irene—have you and your husband made response to the demand?”
“My husband has instructed his chief minister to play for time while I traveled, in the utmost secrecy you understand, of course, to seek your assistance. Yours and—” She paused briefly and cast her gaze through the mist-shrouded panes into the fog-swirled gaslight beyond “—for you see, my husband insists on holding to a forlorn hope that he might have survived his fall.”
“Anything is possible,” I replied. “No remains were recovered. One, perhaps even both, of the battling titans might still live. But if so—ah, if so, why have we heard of neither in the intervening years? And my associate’s distinguished brother—you of course recall his distinguished brother,” I averred.
“Of course.”
“Rusticated,” I whispered.
> “Rusticated?” she echoed, clearly aghast.
“Rusticated,” I repeated.
The Woman reached into her lace-trimmed sleeve with the thin, aristocratic digits of one hand and pulled from it a tiny, dainty handkerchief. She dabbed briefly at her eyes. This was the moment, some inner demon prompted me to recall, at which an unscrupulous person of the male persuasion might initiate an advance in the guise of simple sympathy. But even as I sat berating my secret weakness The Woman regained control of herself. She replaced her handkerchief and recovered her full composure.
“There is only one thing for it then, Doctor,” she said firmly. “None other can help. You must come with me. You must give us your assistance.”
I rose and without a word slipped into mackintosh, mackinaw, and cape, cap, and galoshes, and extended my arm to the grateful and trembling Irene.
The game, I mumbled grimly to myself at a level of vocalization well below the audible, is afoot.
Leaving my humble chambers, I paused to set up the deadfall, intruder trap, burglar interdictor, automatic daguerreotype machine, and the bucket of water on top of the door. Then I drew the latch string and, turning to my charming companion, said “I am at your service, Madame.”
We made our way down the stairs, checking at each landing for the presence of footpads or traitors, and emerged safely into the Limehouse night. A fine mist had begun to fall, wetting the soot-blackened remnants of a previous snowfall into a gray and slippery slush. My companion and I made our way through shadowy, echo-filled by-lanes until we emerged upon the West India Dock Road, site of so many infamous deeds and unexplained atrocities.
A shudder ran unrepressed through my form as we crossed a cobblestone-floored square. For a moment I imagined it St. Wrycyxlwv’s Square, and before my mind’s eye there arose the silvery gray and jewel-sparked shape of The God of the Naked Unicorn—the national art treasure of The Woman’s adoptive homeland and the potential cause of revolution and anarchy in that ancient landlocked kingdom.
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years Page 43
