First Blush: A Meegs Miscellany (A Harry Reese Mystery)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Just what do you have in mind?” she asked.

  “We sell him the deed to an underwater duchy.”

  “An underwater duchy?”

  “Yes. You see, there’s a fictional syndicate with plans to build a railway tunnel under the channel, Dover to Calais. And you are the heiress of a duchy that became submerged about the time of the Norman Conquest. The syndicate needs the deed to complete the tunnel.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Perfectly. I grant it’s a little baroque, but that’s what you need for a fellow like this. I’ll be posing as agent for the syndicate, following you across to get the deed. Archie convinces Dexter he can clean up by getting in front of me, then selling it to the syndicate for a healthy profit.”

  “What deed?”

  “Well, grant, more properly.”

  He produced an antiqued document written in monastic calligraphy on brittle parchment. Writ large across the top were the two words Ducatus Aquatiquus, and affixed at the bottom was the wax seal of Charlemagne—conveniently rendered in modern nomenclature. The text between began, “Osculetur me osculo oris sui,” which Mrs. Biddle recognized as the offering of a kiss that opens the Song of Solomon. On the reverse was a crude map demarcating the borders of the duchy—a geographic pustule rising from the epidermis of northern France.

  “You are Lady Eleanor Marsouin of Aquatique,” Dowling went on. “Traveling incognito, of course, posing as an American, Elsbeth Duncan. That way, if your accent fails you, there’s a ready excuse. Though I doubt Dexter would notice one way or the other.”

  Mrs. Biddle bristled at the suggestion any aspect of her being could fail her.

  “I’ll need two hundred francs and the same amount in dollars,” she told him. However dubious the scheme, if it got her to New York with even a modest amount of cash, she would be content.

  “What for? Your cabin’s paid for, with a bath. Do you have any idea what that costs?”

  Mrs. Biddle said nothing, simply sat stone-faced until the other took out his wallet and placed two hundred francs on the table.

  “That’s all I have with me,” he told her. In fact, he could easily have produced the two hundred dollars. But he had no intention of insulating her from failure. “One other thing, my dear. I’ve arranged to have a woman travel as your maid. There’s plenty of room in your cabin, and it will lend credibility to your story.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name’s Céleste. She’s top-notch, helped me through a difficult night in Trouville.”

  Mrs. Biddle smiled at his revelation. “I have my own maid,” she told him. “Your paramour can travel in your own cabin.”

  “Leave yours behind. Or send her steerage,” the old man told her. “I’m sorry, my dear, but on this I must insist.”

  Sensing Dowling’s resolve could more easily be circumvented than assaulted frontally, Mrs. Biddle silently gathered the banknotes from the table and placed them in her bag.

  “So I’ll see you at five o’clock?” the other asked. On Mrs. Biddle’s nod, he added, “Céleste will be on the tender but standing apart. She’ll approach you.”

  Outside, Mrs. Biddle for the first time connected the sergeant of police with the watch she’d taken from Mélisande’s jacket. She took it out and read the inscription carved on the case, À M. Bouc, de son cher ami M. Cocufieur, le maire de Cherbourg. Many were the ways of the French that irritated Mrs. Biddle, but she felt obliged to admire the frankness with which they approached matters of the heart. It was difficult to imagine an American cuckold accepting a commemorative gold watch from his wife’s lover.

  Eugenia! Mrs. Biddle, still unaccustomed to troubling herself over another being, picked up her pace. At the inn’s street door, a gendarme stood chatting with a working girl. Mrs. Biddle passed them and upstairs encountered the second gendarme with his ear to the door of her room. He made a feeble attempt to stop her, but she pushed him aside.

  The queer scene that greeted her prompted a strange sense of relief. Eugenia was flying about the room in the hands of a prancing police sergeant, naked from the waist down, while Mélisande watched bare-breasted from the bed, shrieking encouragement. At the sound of the door the sergeant instinctively covered his modesty with the only shield at hand. Mrs. Biddle took her child from him, and while he hurriedly dressed, spoke to him in French.

  “You came for the watch of Monsieur Bouc?”

  “Yes, madame. But…,” he nodded toward Mélisande.

  “Yes, I see you’ve been paid. But it would be to your advantage to have the watch as well, n’est-ce pas?”

  “You have it, madame?”

  “Be at the Gare Maritime at five o’clock this afternoon, where the boat for the Lloyd line docks. You will see a woman approach me. Wait until I nod—she will have the watch. You may not be able to charge her, but hold her until the boat departs.”

  “As you say, madame.” He gave her a short bow and made his exit.

  Mélisande, shameless as always, sang a vulgar ditty while she dressed.

  “You took my watch, madame. It was a gift.”

  “Why must you always lie to me?” Mrs. Biddle asked. “You lie with a cuckold and steal his watch. Then you need to lie with the… flique. You need to give up the thieving and whoring if you want to come with me to New York.”

  “And the lying?”

  “Yes, and the lying.”

  “Which lying? There seems to be two. One is a sin. The other a… occase?”

  “Opportunity? What are you talking about?”

  “Well, if I go to confession and I tell the priest, ‘Father, I have sinned. I lied to my father,’ he will tell me I must say thirty Ave Marias. But if the next week I say, ‘Father, I have sinned. I lied with my uncle for a…’ franc?”

  “Two bits.”

  “‘I lied with my uncle for two bits,’ the holy father will tell me how I can make three bits without leaving the confessional.”

  “You wicked girl.” Try as she might, Mrs. Biddle was unable to suppress a smile. “But you lay with your uncle—and you can’t have three bits.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Bits only come in twos. So, two bits, or four bits, but not one bit, or three bits.”

  “That is very silly.”

  “Yes, best to stick with dollars and cents. Now we need to hurry and pack.”

  The coiled spring had sprung….

  2

  While Mrs. Biddle prepared her party for its evening departure aboard the S.S. Kronprinz Wilhelm, Tomasz Szczęsny—a distracted young man who spent a good part of his day trying to keep his tie straight, hair combed, and shirt tucked in—was leaving that ship’s telegraph office with a cable for his employer.

  It took very little to distract Tomasz. The weather alone—be it sunny or dreary, arid or damp—often led his thoughts astray. Place him on a bustling London thoroughfare, or even a moderately busy street in his native Łodz, and he would, within seconds, be lost in contemplation of the countless human dramas playing out before him. On one memorable autumn afternoon, the sight of a forlorn-looking rat traversing an alley sent him into an hours-long reverie that was broken only when a resident some floors above thought it an opportune moment for emptying her chamber pot.

  The sad truth was, Tomasz Szczęsny had the heart of a poet. Worse still, he had the mind of a poet. But, at least in the eyes of his friends, he did have one saving grace: he did not write poetry.

  Tomasz had no time for writing poetry. His domineering father had instilled in him a sense of familial duty that precluded such frivolous pursuits. For it would be up to this unassuming boy to regain some semblance of his family’s former prestige. The Szczęsnys, you see, had been of the minor nobility until dispossessed during one of the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland. Tomasz was never quite sure which of the several partitions it was, or whether the family estate was lost to the Prussians or the Austrians, only that it was up to him, and him alone, to remedy the situation as b
est he could.

  As the Polish kingdom had been dismembered into oblivion, and the doling out of aristocratic titles therefore in abeyance, it would be necessary to venture further afield. Tomasz’s father set his sights on Victoria’s England—seat of a sprawling empire of unimaginable wealth, and one which had demonstrated its good breeding by having never invaded Poland. He sent his son to the University of Krakow, where he could learn a passable English at modest expense, and, more recently, financed his trip to London. The goal: to marry the daughter of a duke, a marquess, or, if absolutely unavoidable, an earl. But nothing less would do, for she must bear the title of Lady. His father made it quite clear that if he returned home the son-in-law of a mere baronet, he could expect disinheritance. Rather an empty threat, as there was not much left worth inheriting. But so thoroughly had his father conditioned Tomasz that he went to England with the sincere intention of carrying out his sire’s desire.

  Regrettably, Tomasz arrived in England just as the vogue for marrying aristocratic issue to American millionaires was hitting its stride. What the average duke was looking for in a son-in-law was a man who could shore up the family finances with ample sums of a sound currency. Fanciful Poles residing in third-rate Chelsea boarding houses were not high on his list.

  It was just after breakfast one morning at his third-rate boarding house that Tomasz was presented with what seemed a simple solution: become an American millionaire. He was speaking with another inmate of the house, a man named Archie Cobb, who some days earlier had been told of Tomasz’s predicament. Archie informed him that he had recently taken the position of gentleman’s gentleman to a wealthy American and that he had been tasked with finding a secretary to serve the same master.

  “Just think of it, Tommy,” Archie enthused. “You’ll be privy to all the secrets of the trade. See it as an apprenticeship. In a year or two you go off on your own, make your own fortune, and quicker ’an you can say Jack Robinson, you’ll have to beat back those blue bloods with a club. Why, every evening your mail will be flooded with invitations to house parties, theatre outings, fancy-dress balls. All the best hunts will be badgering you to sign on. This is an opportunity you can’t afford to pass up, my boy. You know what they say—when fortune smiles, embrace her. Then take her off to a quiet corner, that’s what I say.”

  While it did seem odd that a man who made his living performing tricks for the theatre crowds of Covent Garden was in a position to mete out appointments to the entourage of an American millionaire, Tomasz suppressed his skepticism and allowed his inner poet to lay out a convincing case that led to his acceptance of the adventuresome plan. And so it was that only a few hours before our meeting him, Tomasz had boarded the Kronprinz Wilhelm as secretary to Timothy Dexter.

  You will, dear reader, find it illustrative of how easily Tomasz could be distracted when I reveal that during my long explication of his circumstances, he’d gotten no further than the promenade deck, just one deck below that of the telegraph office. While descending the stairs, he had caught sight of a charming young woman looking back over her shoulder. Not at him, but in his general direction. That was all it took.

  Tomasz wandered after her, soon losing her in the crowd. Then, a moment later, she emerged, now walking toward him. She was herself distracted, reading a letter as she hastened along. He could see at once that she was a woman of passion, the way her lips quivered as she read, the way her eyes seemed to feed on the words, the way she blushed at one particular passage. A man called her from behind, and as she turned to look, she collided with Tomasz.

  “Take this for me and destroy it,” she said, pushing the letter into Tomasz’s hand. She was German, scented with lavender. “Go. Quickly!”

  Never one to fail a lady in distress, Tomasz took her offering and hurried below. When he reached the upper cabin deck, he paused to peruse the letter. It was a billet-doux. And a particularly piquant one, at that. He was glad now that he had spent so much time at university learning the idiomatic vocabulary of the female anatomy in each of the languages he was assigned to master, as the vibrant argot used in the penultimate paragraph bore a striking resemblance to that of a pornographic novella his German roommate had shared with him. It would be a crime to destroy so artistic a missive. Someday, Tomasz felt sure, he would need to come up with just this sort of communiqué. He put it in his pocket, pushed his unruly black hair out of his eyes, and knocked on the door of his employer’s cabin.

  “You may come forth,” Timothy Dexter called from within.

  “I have the cable, sir,” Tomasz informed him, tucking in his shirt tail as he did so.

  “Read it, boy. Read it.”

  “Sir, we have received what we believe a very generous offer of six hundred pounds for the S.S. Oblinibat from a reputable scrap dealer, buyer to bear all costs. Please send instructions. Signed, Nye, Clare & Co.”

  “Six hundred pounds, sterling! That’s three thousand dollars, boy. A comely, buxom profit.” As he so often was, Timothy Dexter was excited. And when Timothy Dexter became excited, his snow-white eyebrows hopped about his forehead like a pair of rabbits performing a synchronized ballet.

  “Is this the steamship that is broken in the Thames?”

  “One and the same. I had a feeling it would be worth something as scrap. Price of iron was due for a rise.”

  “How could you be sure?” Tomasz asked, hoping to glean his first piece of financial acumen.

  “Never sure, boy. Never sure. Just felt it. Then I meet a fellow without leaving my hotel willing to sell the title to five thousand tons of iron, and I know the gods want me to buy.” The right eyebrow did a solo pirouette.

  “For how much did you buy it?”

  “A mere ten thousand.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, ten thousand of the genuine article.”

  This confused Tomasz a good deal. He freely admitted the market economy was a closed book to him. Still, how could selling for three thousand dollars what you bought for ten thousand be profitable? It would, he feared, be a long apprenticeship….

  “Shall I take a letter in reply?” Tomasz asked. “I should be able to mail it when we reach Cherbourg.”

  “Good thinking, boy. Yes, take a letter.” Dexter rummaged through one of the several stacks of paper lying on the floor until he found one with the address of the firm. “To Nye, Clare & Co., 88, Bishops Gate Within,” he read, then stopped. “Within what?” he asked.

  “Perhaps it means they have offices at that address, but no sign outside,” Tomasz suggested.

  “Very shrewd, boy, very shrewd. Well, let’s get back to it. Sirs, have received your cable and answer it with esteemed affirmation.”

  “Does that mean they should sell it?” Tomasz asked.

  “Yes, sell the damn thing, and send payment to my solicitors.” There was another pause while Dexter again searched his piles of papers.

  “Perhaps it would be helpful if I were to organize your correspondence?”

  “Let you have my papers? Never, boy. Never. Ah, here it is. Send payment to my solicitors, Crowders, Vizard, Oldham & Co., 51, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Yours benevolently, Timothy Dexter.”

  “I will type this immediately, sir, and bring it back for your signature.”

  “Sound plan, boy. And send Archie around.”

  Tomasz made a slight bow and went off to the cabin he shared with Archie Cobb, thus interrupting what had been a very thorough—and thoroughly fruitless—search of his belongings.

  “How’s the old man?” Cobb asked.

  “Oh, very happy. Though I don’t understand it. You know that steamship he bought?”

  “The one stuck in the mud?” Cobb smiled.

  “Yes. He’s sold it for three thousand dollars and says it is a nice profit. How can that be when he paid ten thousand of the genuine article for it?”

  “Did he use the term ‘genuine article’?” Archie Cobb swallowed hard.

  “Yes. Is that better than ban
knotes?”

  “It depends which side of the transaction you’re on.” A note of despondency colored Archie’s voice. In his circles, the term “genuine article” was used only ironically, to refer to currency of private manufacture. Had his old friend Len Bailey sold his steamship for a pile of counterfeit bills? Seemed impossible. No, more likely Dexter had used the term not knowing its meaning to the cognoscenti.

  “There can’t have been a profit,” Archie insisted. “He’s mad. Knew it from the moment I laid eyes on him. From what I’ve heard, all these American millionaires are as mad as hatters. We just have to humor him. If he says he made a profit, there’s nothing for it but to congratulate him.”

  “I see,” Tomasz said. But something new troubled him. “Do you think it will be necessary for me to go mad if I’m to be a millionaire?”

  “As sure as eggs is eggs, but what will it matter? You’ll always have people about telling you what a genius you are, at least as long as the money holds out.”

  “And the blue bloods? They won’t mind me marrying one of their daughters?”

  “Them? They’re even battier—all that inbreeding.”

  “Ah,” Tomasz said, relieved. He took out his Blickenderfer Model 7, the odd-looking typewriter his new employer had provided, and placed it on the tiny table. “Oh, by the way. The old man wants to see you.”

  “All right. I don’t suppose he’s given you a key to his cabin?”

  “Key? No, he won’t even trust me with his papers. How can I be his secretary if I can’t see his papers?”

  “Just remember, he’s rich, and we’re not.”

  II

  Archie Cobb was a man of vague middle age, forty-five at least, but not yet sixty, by no means svelte, but not particularly fat, with a bald, round pate that led directly to an equally round forehead. The latter of which was currently covered in a thin layer of moisture born of concern. Moments earlier he had quelled his anxiety over the authenticity of Dexter’s store of cash, but dark doubts now clouded his conviction.