Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Homeless urchins are, unfortunately for them, to be found in every major metropolis. Fortunately for me, New York was enough of a great metropolis to sprout a particularly large and enterprising population of these threadbare entrepreneurs. A good many of them hawk newspapers, so they are well informed of the day’s most lurid events and in addition have become quick studies of the ways and means of passing humanity.

  Arriving early on the corner of Fifth Avenue with my rented cart, I established my place of business and identity in one fell swoop. Jimmy Crackcorn, dealer in tools and tinware. A peddler had rented me cart and contents for a ten-dollar gold piece and immediately hied himself to the nearest saloon.

  I spent the morning engaging the small merchants of the city street in palaver and dispensing American dimes to them. By noon the Vanderbilt house was under the eagle eyes of a company of utterly ignored rapscallions whose loyalty was ensured by promises of quarters and even a dollar to the lad who described the most interesting visitor to the Vanderbilt château, fore and aft and from port to starboard.

  Of course I had no time to create a company as loyal and well instructed as the Baker Street Irregulars, but I used the same quasi-military cant that enchants boys everywhere, and coin of the realm, or the republic, speaks the same language everywhere.

  I am not well-known in New York, yet my guise as an old peddler came easily. I exchanged my English accent for the brogue of Ireland and immediately was as worth overlooking as any of my barefooted boys.

  There is a far greater tolerance in America of people of different classes mingling in the streets. I soon made the acquaintance of other confreres, and sisters, loitering about with the intention of perpetrating no good on the honest citizens bustling to and fro.

  These alone recognized me as a new face, and came toddling round to eye me and warn me to beware of treading on their turf.

  First came a stout, matronly lady of sixty and middling height, all in widow’s black from her now old-fashioned bonnet to her long black cape. Gray eyes, gray hair, almost-gray complexion, and an Irish lilt to give mine the test of truth.

  “Good day, Sir. I see yer new to commerce on this corner.”

  “Aye, mum, jest off the ship, with me feet fresh on American soil.”

  “You’ve got a lot of nose for a son of the auld sod, m’boy.”

  “Ah, there was likely a German in the peat bog, back when every man jack was invadin’ the isle, don’t you know?”

  “German’s all right, long as it’s no Englishman.”

  “Heaven forbid,” I said piously.

  “And what game you got goin’, lad?”

  I nodded at the grandiose Vanderbilt mansion, inspired, as I often am when creating a fictitious persona. “I’m not sayin’ there’s not a game or three I got playin’, but all I do here and now is not for gamin’ but for subjects closer to a man’s heart. There’s a maid in yon mansion, a very fair maid, and ’tis hard for a man to find a way to her inside one of these blasted castles.”

  “Like a fairy tale.” The old lady cackled. “Well, good luck to you, lad. They call me Old Mother Hubbard, but me given name’s Margaret, with a few last names to go wi’ it.”

  “Aye. I’m Liam, but whether ’tis Kelly or Casey depends on the day and time and the person.”

  “And what is this fair lass like?”

  “Hair as red as any burnin’ bush under her white cap, and a quick bright eye, and sings like the thrush in springtime.”

  “I can see yer enamored, lad, best watch yer step. Those who work for the great houses get turned-up noses quick.”

  Now that Mother Hubbard had stayed to chat, we were joined by two of her kindred: street pickpockets and satchel robbers, and banco artists and swindlers.

  “Why, ’tis Lord Courtenay,” Mother Hubbard hailed one. The appellation didn’t surprise me. He stood over six feet, like myself, an exception on the metropolitan street, but he was bronzed of skin, slim, with dark hair and a light mustache. I am sorry to say that his chin, unlike mine, was weak, and that immediately conveyed an air that underlined his masquerade: an English Lord.

  “M’lord,” said I, with a facile bow.

  “One of the brethren,” Mother Hubbard said quickly.

  “A pretty good bow, for a street fellow,” the false lord said in upper-crust tones.

  “Who are ye this time?” Mother Hubbard inquired.

  “Sir Harry Vane of Her Majesty’s Lights. The ladies rip the gold buttons off my British Royal Navy uniform when I present myself at balls. American ladies are bold and easily bowled over.”

  “Indeed,” said I. “I hope that applies to an Irish maid in America.”

  “Ye seem presentable enough, my boy,” Mother Hubbard said. “Why won’t yer little maid walk out wi’ ye?”

  “Alas, I have but seen her from afar. And I fear that some ither fellow with better access to the Great House is beatin’ me to the punch.”

  “Ah.” The old lady nodded. “That’s why ye’ve stationed these gutter rats all about the place. D’ye know his name or his trade?”

  “That’s jest it, I do not. I’ve asked the lads to report anyone who seems to linger or not have real business there.”

  “That’s the newest Vanderbilt mansion, my poor man,” Sir Harry explained. “I could waltz in the front, of course, but I’m no good for telling you about tradesmen who come and go.” He eyed the place like a connoisseur studying a Burmese ruby. “Ah, what marks abound within there. But strike a pose as English nobleman and you will pick them clean. I am known under many titles, from Montreal to the Indies, sir, but as Sir Hugh Leslie Courtenay of the British Royal Navy I lived on credit in Baltimore for almost a year and had any man’s money and many a woman’s at my beck and call.”

  “You aim too high,” said the second man who had joined our group, heretofore silent. He was youthful and well presented, and introduced himself to me by his street name, Hungry Joe.

  “Now, when I run a banco,” he said, “I don’t pretend to be other than I am, which is a damn good talker.”

  He too was near forty, and well dressed, and he began to demonstrate his skills with a will.

  “I have run my game in every major city in the U.S. of A.,” he said, speaking rapidly and with a sort of singsong cant that shortly held us spellbound.

  “There isn’t an opening that I can’t squeeze into, whether it be in conversation or a bank vault.

  “I study the passenger list of arrivals on the great lines. That is how I picked up Oscar Wilde when he toured the States, and followed him to his hotel. Why, we were best friends at the Hotel Brunswick, and closed down the café with our palaver. I had five thousand American out of him, but the codger put it in a check and tumbled before I could cash it. I do better with old coots like this Manchester merchant I managed to ‘run into’ while he was strolling down Broadway. I called his name and bowed. He was much surprised and I explained I was the steamship captain’s nephew and had heard a good deal of him from my uncle at dinner the night before. Flattery is the key to turning folks loose of their money. So we linked up and soon I had him at a confederate’s office, where I engaged in a three-card monte, but ran out of cash and the old fool got so excited he staked me. Well, I got so excited I took the five hundred dollars and ran.”

  He patted his pocket. “What will you do when your charms with the ladies pale, ‘Sir Harry’?”

  The faux lord looked at me. “I shall be this fellow, then, I suppose, standing outside looking in. For now I can get inside and look out, and will do so as long as I can. I have studied all the pedigrees of England as well as its complicated legal system. There are a great many descendants of Old Blighty in the U.S. hoping to hear of an English inheritance, and I am Johnny-on-the-spot with that confidence game.”

  I recalled one American who had recently been hoping to hear of an American inheritance, and had to cough to conceal my chuckle.

  “Do ye smoke, Liam,” Mother Hubbard asked in a mater
nal tone.

  “I do, ma’am.”

  “It’ll be the death of ye,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, look. One of your lads is come running.”

  Indeed he was, to report the arrival and departure of the ice man.

  “And was he a young fellow?” I asked in view of my new acquaintances, to demonstrate that I was the love-struck swain indeed.

  “No, sir. He was fat and som’at past sixty.”

  “Very good, my lad. Here’s a dime. Now watch further.”

  Sir Harry shook his head. “Such effort for a parlormaid. You will never go far in America.”

  “The prince climbed the glass mountain and slipped back three times before he won fair lady,” Mother Hubbard said, pinching my cheek. “Now you lads be about your business and let poor Liam be about his.”

  We parted, but I was to see this trio cruising Fifth Avenue as long as I held to my humble stall.

  By nightfall I had reports of all the servicemen who visited the premises in a day, a staggering number of butchers and greengrocers, bakers and laundrymen.

  It was young Archie who won the dollar of the day, though, when he told me of the man who watched with him at the rear of the building.

  By now the gaslights and electric lights were brightening on whatever streets they served, and the passing coaches were driven by a pedigreed breed of horse as New York society dressed up and drove out.

  All the peddlers carts were gone save mine, and the newsboys had been replaced by match and flower girls.

  “He’s been standing there all day, in the shadow of the house opposite,” Archie said. “I noticed him about noon, for he never left to eat.”

  “Did he look a respectable gentleman?”

  My young informant frowned. “Not respectable, not unso, if you know what I mean?”

  “Nondescript?”

  His dingy face stared at me as I realized I was not speaking the same language.

  “Rich, poor?”

  “Not either. Very quiet. I didn’t notice him for ages. No one you’d look at twice.”

  “And when did he leave?”

  “He’s still there—”

  I pressed a dollar into his hand, ignored his startled look and blathered thanks. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Early. Same time, same place. Another dollar if you stow my cart someplace safe around here.”

  “I’ll have to stay with it the night.”

  “Another dollar.”

  By now his eye whites glimmered as large as dollar coins.

  “Yes, sir!”

  I’d have the Irregulars up to snuff in no time.

  But first I needed to find the nondescript man on watch.

  Dark had descended like a black theater curtain. I pulled my shabby peacoat collar over my ears and my dark cap down over my eyes.

  In two minutes I was at the rear of the Vanderbilt property, watching the man who watched the house. This action reminded me of my hours alone in Whitechapel, but here there was no fog, and no murders in the street. I’d have to be clever and quiet to follow anyone and I certainly intended to follow this man when he left.

  He didn’t leave until past three in the morning.

  By then the Vanderbilt coach with its bright side lamps had paused in the front to release its passengers and clattered to the back area to stable the horses.

  I wished for a London fog, but New York was a city of light, not murk. That made it harder on criminals, and detectives.

  My prey was as the boy had described him: bland, undistinguished. He wore a long dark coat and a soft hat pulled over his eyes.

  He never lit up and smoked while I watched, though my own fingers itched for the comfortable companionship of my pipe. In Whitechapel, my pipe was a stage prop that suited the atmosphere. Here it would be a distraction, a betraying blot of light in an emptying night.

  The sound of traffic on Fifth Avenue had almost died away until the early morning dray wagons began arriving with goods for the waking city.

  My man moved. A blot of darkness pulled away from the surrounding inkiness and began walking away from Fifth Avenue.

  So did I, on my gummed soles. My pulse quickened. Whoever had delivered threatening notes and the dead body to Vanderbilt had to have been watching him then. That anyone was watching his house now indicated the game was far from over, and possibly the dead bodies.

  I slipped past streetlight after streetlight, ducking into doorways, a shadow that was more a figment of the flitting moonlight than of anyone’s notice.

  I saw other shadows on my way, huddled black and shapeless in niches. The homeless, some of them my newsboys, no doubt.

  These did not stir, lost in the exhausted sleep of those too worn to care for their own safety.

  My man’s footsteps were as soft as fog. He had been at this game for a long time.

  His path was erratic, and he paused often to stop and listen.

  He heard nothing but the distant creak of wheels, the bay of a stray dog.

  Finally we reached a street as somnolent as any in New York City.

  He vanished into a five-story brownstone building. I subsided into a doorway, out of sight down the street, and finally relit my pipe.

  In two or three hours, when the poor folk who keep the great city running began arriving by foot and by horse cart, I asked them until I found one who knew what that building was.

  It was not one of the innumerable brownstone boarding-houses that make up most of New York residences.

  It was, my grizzled informant stated in a broad American drawl, “The Episcopal Club of New York, sir, full of high churchmen and bishops and all.”

  Bishops and all. Kings and queens. And perhaps knights, and pawns, and rooks.

  18

  SPIDERWEBS

  The spiders accumulate and the danseuse stamps.

  They appear in myriads—hairy monsters with five clawed

  feelers and nimble shakes—they ‘crawl and sprattle’ about

  the stage, invading the fringe of Milady’s pettycoats . . .

  It is Lola versus the spiders.

  —SAN FRANCISCO WHIG, 1853

  At first I slept that night. Then I woke even before the streetlights had dimmed for the night. Fragments of my dreams still floated at the edges of the darkened room like ghosts at a seance. I saw the Woman in Black at the center of a huge sticky web, but her face was veiled. . . .

  I saw, as if from the window of my room, masses of spiders scurrying through the streets of New York below. In the corner of my room, I glimpsed Quentin caught in silvery strands like pearls, or dew-jeweled webs. The spider-woman from the fringes was edging nearer in her black gown and showing the face of Nellie Bly! . . .

  After such a parade of half-seen horrors, I could not sleep again to save my soul.

  I quietly lit the paraffin lamp, then listened to judge if Irene had heard my stirrings in the next room. Apparently not. My clumsy attempt at stealth had been successful.

  I was not so selfish that I wished another’s sleep to be disturbed because I had lost the knack. And . . . I wanted to consider what kept me awake and what I could best do about it. I had long ago learned that the finest cure for any malady is useful occupation.

  Unfortunately, most of my cords and crochet hooks were back in the cottage at Neuilly that we had all abandoned for a time to our caretaking French couple.

  So I sat up against my pillows, twiddled my thumbs instead, and thought.

  First, I could do nothing about Quentin’s insistence on associating with our acquaintance Pink. He had told Irene and myself that his work for the British Foreign Office required him to come to this country and keep an eye on her. I had to agree that her promise to keep quiet on the recent Jack the Ripper matter, made to the governments of three nations, was a touchy thing. Still, as a foreign agent, Quentin’s forte had been going “native” in the exotic eastern climes of India and Afghanistan. Playing nanny to a rash American daredevil reporter in a semicivilized modern city like Ne
w York must be quite a comedown for the poor man. As time passed, Pink’s instinct to pursue a sensational story would overcome any sensible course to let the matter rest. Only one thing would distract her from the recent hunt through Europe: a new sensation on her own shores, something that fell into her own lap.

  If I could provide such a divertissement, as the French say so prettily, Quentin would no longer be obliged to escort her about New York City.

  Whether he would then choose to squire me about, I couldn’t predict, but my greatest wish, and worry, was that he be free to leave Pink to her own devices.

  It was, however, highly unlikely that I could produce a sensation sufficiently distracting for a girl who had committed herself to an insane asylum and a bordello before she was five-and-twenty, merely for the sake of a “story.” True, shocking conditions needed exposing, but these modern “New Women” delighted in making themselves the centerpiece of their “crusades,” and their social consciences came topped with a healthy serving of self-aggrandizement.

  I know my limitations, and the sensational is the last thing I would have any skill at invoking, or provoking.

  As I twisted in the fine bed linens, twiddling and plotting like a dreaded web-weaver myself, a truly ignoble thought sprang to mind like a pouncing spider.

  It was so terribly ignoble that I cried a sharp “Oh!” aloud to myself, then clapped my hands over my traitorous mouth, hoping Irene hadn’t heard. For Irene could never, never hear of this.