Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Now that I had recovered from the shock of unwelcome recognition, Godfrey suggested that I near the poor man’s bed. We would get better testimony if the man saw someone . . . anyone . . . he knew, however slightly. Who can argue with a barrister on such a matter?

  As he awoke, however, Father Edmonds appeared to know me far more than slightly.

  “Oh, dear God,” he murmured devoutly. “I’ve died in your service and now meet you and your angel in heaven. You sent her to pave the way, as so often you did in the Old Testament. I tried to keep her face before me during the most arduous of my trials, and to keep the name of your sister angel from my lips, no matter what the emissaries of Satan demanded, or did.”

  I was struck dumb with pity, guilt, and humility.

  The man’s bandaged hands twitched on the plain coverlet. I remembered Holmes’s terse description of how he’d found him: pinned by the hands to a table, daggers through the palms.

  Had any modern man suffered so?

  “You are not dead, man,” Holmes said, “but I plucked you away from the hounds of hell. They now seek this . . . angel’s companion. You mentioned her name when I found you. Irene.”

  Godfrey twitched beside me, but managed to keep silent.

  Father Edmonds, perhaps prone to sermons from his calling, answered in another rush of words. His captors must have been most annoyed with him. “In pagan times,” he said,“to the Greeks, Irene was the goddess of peace. I remember her appearing before me, as beautiful as God’s shining sword, but her handmaiden shone softer before my eyes, a modest violet amidst a bouquet of tiger lilies.”

  “I did say he raved,” Sherlock Holmes murmured to no one in particular.

  I recognized my role when it was named: modest violet.

  “My dear Father Edmonds,” I said, stepping to the bedside, and taking one of his mangled, gauze-wrapped hands in my own. “We had no idea the Evil One was so swift behind our steps. You are not the only man of God to have suffered at His”—ah, “hands” did not seem to be a useful figure of speech in this instance—“behest. You have withstood the worst admirably. But you must tell us everything, so we may end this villainy.”

  “They wanted to know . . . it was Father Hawks this, and Father Hawks that. And the Magdalen. The Magdalen Society, and a woman named Lola. And a woman named Irene, who I of course recognized as God’s messenger.”

  I doubt that Irene would ever be granted a more celestial role in her life, excepting the part of “heavenly Aida,” as the aria from Verdi’s opera put it.

  Mr. Holmes would tolerate the patient’s delusions only so far as they would feed his inquiries. “What did they want with ‘Irene?’”

  “Merely to know where she came from and had gone. I said ‘Heaven,’ of course, and they became most vicious.”

  “And Lola?”

  “They wanted to know what Father Hawks knew of her. I was unable to satisfy them on either issue. And then God’s archangel came screaming down from above and scattered them.”

  I lifted my eyebrows at Sherlock Holmes, who shrugged modestly.

  “How will his hands do?” I whispered to Holmes, for the poor man would not let go of mine.

  Godfrey leaned in to hear the verdict.

  “The doctor here says they’ll heal well,” Holmes said softly, “though with some loss of dexterity. The physician is most interested to study a very uncommon case, and will no doubt be diligent in the extreme.”

  Godfrey leaned in to present the patient with a question. “Could you recognize any of them?”

  “They were hooded. Cloaked. Like monks, I suppose. I thought I was having a nightmare of the Inquisition. Dark men, and I could see no eyes, but I knew there would be no pity in them. They seemed . . . devoted . . . to their fiendish quest. I pity any woman or angel who would fall into their hands.”

  We all winced at that assessment, even though Father Edmonds seemed to equate women and angels.

  “Miss Violet,” he said, his pale, haunted eyes finding mine. “Say you are all right. Say your friend is all right.”

  “We are all right,” I said, patting his bandages. “You must concentrate on your own healing. We . . . angels will attend to those evildoers.”

  He nodded, gazing up at us. “I see halos about all your heads.”

  On that note we left him, although Mr. Holmes could not help noting that the electric lights above the beds had produced the effects of holiness, not our natures.

  “Irene,” Godfrey noted glumly as we stood in the warm summer air and inhaled the smell of manure instead of cleansing chemicals. “And Father Hawks. And Lola Montez. Two are dead, one missing.”

  “As pretty a puzzle as Watson ever attempted to record. Ah. My pardon. Watson is a physician and my self-appointed biographer.”

  “We know who Dr. Watson is,” Godfrey said shortly. “What we don’t know is who this devil’s nest of torturers are. You forget, Holmes, that Nell and I have faced the Ripper without your assistance. If you can’t produce any clues to Irene’s whereabouts, we’ll find these monsters on our own.”

  Holmes regarded us with an eye as cold as a cobra’s. “I doubt it. If anything is clear, it’s that your wife’s quest and mine are one in the minds of these villains. Like it or not, we three are allies . . . or losers. Together. I will lose only a client. You and Miss Huxleigh will lose far more. Perhaps it’s time to meet these shadows face-to-face.”

  “How?” I demanded.

  “Offer them what they want.”

  “What?” Godfrey asked.

  Holmes studied his own long, narrow, violin-playing fingers. “I might do, in a pinch.”

  46

  RESCUE PARTY

  How long and terrifying was that dark and endless

  upward sweep . . . of this long and terrifying staircase . . .

  leaving below the light and its comforting rays.

  For in that penumbra there were spirits

  lurking to destroy me. . . .

  —CONSUELO VANDERBILT BALSAN,

  THE GLITTER AND THE GOLD, 1952

  “Quentin Stanhope,” Mr. Holmes said in the carriage as we progressed toward the main part of Manhattan. “Which hotel does he stay at?”

  “The Fifth Avenue,” I replied, then blushed as I felt Godfrey’s gaze linger upon me.

  Holmes still directed this interrogation, except that it had moved locations and victims. “Did you leave him a message on any of your various visits?”

  “No.” I avoided Godfrey’s ever more curious gaze.

  “Then we’ll call on him directly. Miss Huxleigh is right that we could use an ally of his talents in the forthcoming search. The man must return to his hotel sometime.”

  Not if he was welcome elsewhere, such as at Pink’s place uptown, as they called it.

  Once again I stood supplicant at the hotel’s registration desk, but this time Quentin was reported to be in.

  “Mr. Stanhope came in quite early this morning,” the clerk mentioned with a carefully blank expression. “He may not wish to be disturbed.”

  “Nonsense,” Holmes said. “He would be more aggravated should he miss our call.” He eyed me and I nodded.

  I knew the room number, even if the clerk refused to reveal it.

  We marched next to the elevator. I hoped that the warmth I felt in my face was purely imaginary as we wafted upward four floors.

  Godfrey nodded thanks to the elevator operator as we left it and moved down the dim hall, which was carpeted in a dark maroon pattern.

  When I paused by the right room number, Godfrey lifted his stick to knock, but Mr. Holmes nodded at me.

  “You must be our spokesman.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but after two more raps, Quentin’s annoyed voice came from beyond the heavy walnut door.

  “Yes? Who is it? I told the desk clerk I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  It suddenly dawned on me that he might not be alone behind that door, but Mr. Holmes prodded me with a sho
rt irritated nod, and I certainly didn’t want to seem timid in his eyes.

  So I answered.

  “It’s me. Nell. Quentin, something has—”

  The door jerked open wide.

  Quentin stood there, unshaven and uncombed, in a hastily tied garnet silk robe.

  My face seemed to be changing to that lurid color.

  “Nell! What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

  I was solely the object of his regard, which no doubt Mr. Holmes intended, for he took my arm.

  Quentin blinked with the bleary surprise of a child hauled from bed at an ungodly hour.

  “Holmes? Godfrey?” He turned to me again, as if for explanation. “Nell? Is this something to do with the strange young man who called for me at the hotel very early this morning? I can’t begin to imagine who that could have been. Certainly neither of you two,” he added, surveying the tall, grim figures of Mr. Holmes and Godfrey.

  “You would certainly never imagine, Stanhope,” Holmes said crisply. “That was Miss Huxleigh in a walking-out costume devised by Mrs. Norton.”

  “Nell!?”

  It was flattering how repetitively he turned to me for explanation, but I wouldn’t be allowed to play spokesman here.

  “May we come in and sit down?” Holmes demanded more than asked. “We’ve had a long night of it ourselves.”

  I held my breath, not eager to cross the threshold.

  May we come in indeed? Not if a lady in deshabille also occupied the room. I knew Quentin was too much the gentleman to permit that. What I didn’t know, and most certainly did not want to know, was if this was indeed the case, and if that lady might possibly be someone I knew.

  Quentin stepped back from the door like a polite host. “Come in, certainly, though I am in no state to receive a lady. I apologize.”

  I breezed past him on winged feet. The chamber, a bed-sitting room suite, was deliriously empty. “That doesn’t matter, Quentin. Our business is far too urgent for anyone to stand on ceremony.”

  A round table by the window was hemmed in by three light chairs. Quentin lifted an armchair over to it, and ushered me onto its heavy upholstery, and then there were four.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, alert all at once as the men took their seats. “Godfrey, a pleasure to see you here, but weren’t you on Rothschild business in Europe? And Holmes—”

  “Irene’s missing,” I said, keeping my voice steady and still sounding as if I were hiccoughing walnuts.

  “Missing? When? Where?”

  “Last night” Holmes was surgically precise. “Around midnight. From a boardinghouse at Seventeenth near Broadway. Miss Huxleigh was awaiting her across the street, but Mrs. Norton never came back.”

  “Awaiting her in the garb of a young man?” Quentin asked me.

  Holmes answered before I could, impatiently. “Miss Huxleigh had been got up by Mrs. Norton to pass as such in the dark. When Mrs. Norton failed to return to their watching post, Miss Huxleigh investigated and found Mrs. Norton, and the three dark-clothed men who had followed her, gone.”

  “Nell!” Quentin viewed me with sympathy and alarm.

  Holmes was summing up, and he did not stop. “Miss Huxleigh came first to your hotel, but you were out. She then came to my hotel, where I was able to put an end to her rather feeble impersonation. We returned to the boardinghouse to examine the area, and then I sent her back to the Hotel Astor, while I trailed whatever signs I could find. When I returned at dawn to report to Miss Huxleigh, Mr. Norton had arrived from Europe and was awaiting me.”

  “What did you find?” Quentin asked Holmes, finally ignoring me, and Godfrey.

  “Three men followed Mrs. Norton into the boardinghouse, and one particular room. Four sets of footsteps left the building. Mrs. Norton doesn’t seem to have been a prisoner. One would wish to assume that she had evolved from hunted to hunter.”

  “She left Nell standing across the street, not knowing what to think?” Quentin sounded unconvinced.

  “And wouldn’t you have done the same, if opportunity to track an enemy spy had so suddenly offered itself?”

  “Yes, but—” He glanced at me, and I thrilled to see that he was not so sure in my case.

  Godfrey spoke. Gravely. “It’s a better thing to suppose than some other outcome.”

  “What do you want of me?” Quentin asked. “I’ll do anything. Now. Whenever.”

  At this Mr. Holmes managed to summarize the events of both his and Irene’s separate investigations into threats and extortion against the Vanderbilt fortune and the amazing history of Lola Montez and the even more amazing possibility that this notorious figure might have some intimate connection to Irene.

  “So,” said Quentin after Holmes had delivered himself of two paragraphs of rapid summation. Godfrey was regarding him with some fresh respect. “Two Episcopal priests have been abducted and tortured, one to death, one for an interest in the late Lola Montez, the other for having assisted Irene in looking into the life of Lola Montez. And this Episcopal Club is where?”

  “Near Broadway and Eighteenth,” Holmes said, “where I’m shortly going to create quite a stir in visibly inquiring about, er, Miss Montez and Mrs. Norton. I’ll also revisit the boardinghouse, but with much more visible effects.”

  Quentin nodded. “You need me to follow you, unseen, and be on hand, hopefully, when the villains of the piece abduct you.”

  “You and Mr. Norton,” Holmes said. “I trust you to be invisible, Stanhope, as it is your profession. I expect Mr. Norton to be implacable, as it is his wife.”

  “And me?” I demanded.

  The men regarded me as if they had forgotten my presence, as indeed they had.

  Holmes had an answer at the ready. “You’ll remain at the Astor House, in case any one of us needs to leave information for the others.”

  “No! I know both sites well, the Episcopal Club and the boardinghouse. I won’t be left at the hotel to worry and stew.”

  Godfrey eyed Holmes. “She accompanied Irene to the Episcopal Club twice,” he said, “and knew Father Edmonds. If you appear there with Nell in tow, you’ll seem to be following up on Irene’s disappearance, and two will attract more attention than one. In fact, you mean nothing to these villains, but Nell has already been seen in Irene’s company.”

  “Exactly,” Quentin said heatedly, “why she should not be risked further.”

  Holmes, though, was nodding sagaciously.

  Did the man ever nod in any other mode?

  “Mr. Norton is right. It must look as if Miss Huxleigh has engaged a Pinkerton to assist in a search for her friend.”

  “You will never pass as Pinkerton,” Quentin said hotly.

  “I will by the time Miss Huxleigh and I venture forth this afternoon. I will then,” he said, eyeing Quentin,“return Miss Huxleigh to her hotel and make myself annoying visible at both the Episcopal Club and the boardinghouse as dark descends. That’s when you and Mr. Norton will pick up my trail, in guises of your own. As I recall from certain Monte Carlo adventures, Mr. Norton has the usual dramatic tendencies of a barrister.”

  Godfrey nodded. “I’ll manage a disguise, though no one in this affair has reason to know me. If you are accosted, Holmes, you’ll let them overpower you and take you—”

  “Wherever they took or intended to take Mrs. Norton. Or where she followed them.”

  “And,” Quentin said, “we shall follow you.”

  “And so shall I,” I added.

  Three sets of eyes gave my brave assertion the lie.

  “It’s bad enough,” Holmes said, “that you are exposed by accompanying me by daylight. That is sufficient risk. We can’t have our roles compromised by looking out for you.”

  “Then don’t look out for me! If you work by dark, I can don the walking-out clothes Irene gave me. No one will notice me.”

  “You are not,” Holmes said, “Mrs. Norton. Your male costume would never fool me for a minute, as hers did once, and only once, I mi
ght add.”

  “I don’t need to fool the great Mr. Holmes, only a few shadowy men who were stupid enough to kidnap an innocent priest who knew nothing that would serve them.”

  “Holmes is right, Nell,” Quentin said. “We’ve all been up and awake and agitated for hours now, and by sunset it’ll be twenty-four hours. We can’t afford to dilute our effectiveness by worrying about you.”

  “Then don’t,” said a voice that wasn’t mine. “She can accompany me,” Godfrey went on, “as she so often has. We are the amateurs. Perhaps we need reinforcements.” He smiled at me, which was reinforcement enough.

  “You’ll carry a pistol?” Holmes asked him.

  “If you’ll provide one.”

  Quentin nodded. “Yes, but I don’t like it, Nell being out and at risk.”

  I sniffed. “Irene never objected to my company on many a dangerous jaunt. I won’t be left behind to be told what happens. I want to know. I want to be there.”

  Quentin rubbed a hand over his weary face. “So do we, Nell, so do we. I only hope we lure the villains into the open.”

  “I work alone,” Holmes said. “Except for Dr. Watson on occasion. One couldn’t ask for a more stout-hearted fellow. However, he isn’t here.”

  “But you are,” I said, suddenly inspired. “You all are. Irene couldn’t ask for finer champions. You are the three musketeers.”

  They did not seem impressed by my literary allusion.

  “And who are you, dear Nell?” Godfrey asked with a glint of fond humor amidst the anxiety.

  I thought. “D’Artagnan,” I said boldly, invoking the young swordsman from the provinces. After all, I had something that they didn’t have, firearms or not.

  I had a foot-long steel hatpin. En garde!

  While Godfrey, Quentin, and I exchanged notes at the Astor House, Sherlock Holmes returned to his hotel to costume himself as the character in which he would make the best target for the mysterious men who were dogging Lola Montez’s long-dead footsteps.

  But Mr. Holmes did not return to the Astor House as agreed.

  About two hours later, just as we were getting restive at his overlong absence, a knock on the door had us all rushing to answer.