by Marvin Kaye
“Which was?”
He gave a forlorn shake of his head. “I’m not certain, since she didn’t confide any details in me,” Farrington said. “I do know that one of the people she planned to call on the next day was Dr. Donne.”
“The guy who disappeared the day after she did.”
“I’ve encountered Donne often since resettling in Dimchester,” said the editor. “I consider the chap nothing more than a harmless loon. Jennie, obviously, thought otherwise.”
Taking a thin cigar out of his case, Harry lit it. “Do you know who the Wonder is?”
“I’ve never actually seen him and thus far none of the witnesses to his good deeds has been armed with a camera.”
“But that is what the guy’s up to, doing good deeds and helping people out of trouble?”
The other man nodded. “I don’t doubt the chap’s motives,” he said. “He is, or rather I assume he somehow became, what Bernard Shaw borrowing from the German philosophers, would call a superman.”
After exhaling smoke, Harry asked, “Do you know who Lily Hope is?”
“Oh, yes. She’s earned quite a sizeable reputation with the espionage activities. Her Majesty’s Secret Service has accumulated quite a dossier on the lady, although they have thus far been unable to prove a case against her.”
“It’s quite possible that Lily’s here searching for the secret of the Somerset Wonder,” suggested Harry, “and that she may be involved in what’s happened to Jennie.”
“That hadn’t occurred to me, Challenge.”
“Okay, you’re fond of Jennie and you’ve been on the scene since the day she disappeared,” Harry said. “Where do you think she might be?”
“That’s what’s so annoying,” said the editor. “I’ve gotten nowhere. I’ve always considered myself a capable reporter, yet I’ve been unable to turn up a single clue.”
Harry rose up. “I intend to find her,” he said. “So if you learn anything, I’d appreciate—”
“The fact that you’re searching for Jennie has already prompted someone, possible Lily Hope, to try to kill you,” reminded Farrington. “You’d best be deucedly careful from here on out, old man.”
“I almost always am,” Harry told him.
* * * *
Harry took a second sip of his glass of dark ale and decided it was as foul-tasting as the first. Setting the glass on the rutted wooden table, he leaned forward again and, cautiously, looked out the narrow stained window of the smoky pub.
Across the way a closed carriage was pulling up at the rear entrance of Town Hall. A moment later, the dark-haired Lily Hope emerged from the building and walked toward the waiting carriage. Her scarlet cloak was not completely closed and the bodice portion of her low-cut off-white gown briefly showed.
“Yep, Lily has definitely gained a few pounds since last we met,” he decided, leaving his table and crossing to the exit.
He stood just inside the doorway until her carriage went rolling away, heading uphill. Then he unobtrusively stepped out into the waning afternoon.
Parked in front of the public house was the bicycle Harry’d rented earlier in the day. He had successfully tailed the international lady spy from her hotel to her rehearsal. Now he was interested in learning where she headed next.
The dark conveyance, driven by her associate, the elongated Tortuga, turned onto a cobblestone street that led out of Dimchester. Harry followed at a distance and, when he saw Lily head along the narrow road leading to Barksdale’s mansion, he parked the bicycle in among the stately oaks and continued on foot shielded by trees.
By the time he reached the vicinity of the sprawling mansion, the carriage was parked to the rear of the place. Lily, arms folded beneath her breasts, was standing on the flagstones nearby and seemingly arguing with Tortuga. He was scowling down at her, tapping his blunt forefinger against his glass eye.
“Finish him…take care of him now!’ Harry heard her say before she turned on her heel to go striding toward the house. She didn’t, however, head for the front of the venerable place. She instead walked around to the back.
Harry, keeping hidden among the trees, followed her.
He heard the carriage depart, then, watching through the brush, he saw Lily pulling open an unpainted wooden door and start down a stone stairway.
Harry waited for close to five minutes before he left the protection of the woods to go sprinting across the twilight grounds to the door.
It wasn’t a difficult lock to pick and Harry was in the dim-lit stone corridor quite soon and making his careful way downward.
* * * *
As the Great Lorenzo, wearing his most impressive scarlet-lined cape, pushed open the weathered wooden door of the photography shop, the overhead bell produced a somewhat rusty tinkle.
The proprietor was seated on a not-quite-sturdy stool behind the counter. A gaunt grey-bearded man, he was bent forward and hand-tinting a photograph.
“I sincerely hope, sir, that you’re daubing my photos with your paint box water colors,” said the magician as he approached. “Your hand seems none too steady and, judging from the rainbow splotches on your old grey beard, you miss the target more than you hit it.”
Looking up, the photographer set aside his brush and touched at his beard. “Absentmindedness is the cause of the condition of my whiskers, Mr. Lorenzo,” he explained. “When I’m deeply involved in my work, I tend to wipe my brushes on my beard rather than pick up the piece of scrap muslin that my dear wife so—”
“A most touching account of a doting wife’s devotion to art,” cut in the portly magician. “However, I am here to pick up the two dozen six-by-nine copies of the photograph you took of me in my impressive magical attire. The very same outfit that prompted the usually taciturn Queen Victoria to cry out at a recent Command Performance, ‘Hey, lordy momma, what a fine rig.’”
“Ah,” said the gaunt proprietor with a sigh indicating moderate concern, “I’m a bit late, Mr. Lorenzo, because I promised young Roger Barksdale that I would have the hand-tinted photographic portraits him in his full Khyber Rifles uniform ready late this afternoon.”
“I am presenting my justly renowned and totally mystifying magical extravaganza at the Barksdale Mansion on the morrow, which fact I made, I thought, overly clear to you,” the Great Lorenzo, frowning deeply, reminded. “It is my custom to bestow suitably inscribed portraits of myself to the initial wave of the ladies who flock to the stage at the end of my performance.”
“I’ll definitely have the pictures ready tomorrow morning,” the photographer promised. “Tell you what, Mr. Lorenzo, for no extra cost I’ll hand-tint the entire batch for you.”
“I don’t wish to be tinted.”
“My color method will definitely enhance the portraits,” the shopkeeper assured him. “Here, just take a look at the splendid job I’m doing on this portrait of Roger Barksdale.” He held up the eight by ten photographs he’d been working on.
Lorenzo glanced at the picture of the dark-haired, brightly uniformed young man. “The poor lad looks like someone a mortician has had his way with,” he observed. “The coloring is gaudy and untrue to—Well, I’ll be blessed. It’s the Somerset Wonder.”
“No, no, you’re quite mistaken,” the photographer told him. “I had the privilege of being a fascinated and enthusiastic observer when the Wonder saved the Wollter lad from drowning at the mill. He’s much larger than Roger and has blond hair worn long in the manner of some artists and poets.” He shook his head. “No, take the word of a longtime town resident, Mr. Lorenzo. No one who really knows Roger Barksdale would mistake that mild-mannered and polite young man for a dynamic outgoing chap like the Wonder.” He produced an amused chuckling sound.
Lorenzo extracted the photo from the man’s fingers, studied it more closely. “Why, to be sure, I now see my correction,” he lied. “You’re absolutely right about a long-time resident being the one qualified to know what’s what.” He took two steps back. “I’ll call
for my photographs tomorrow. I’ve just remembered a previous engagement.”
He left the shop very rapidly.
* * * *
For a dungeon, it was quite comfortable. Some time recently the large stone-walled room far below the ground had been renovated and, from the looks of the place, an expensive London-based decorator had gone to work.
There were too many armchairs, too many large historical paintings hanging on the walls, too many Persian rugs covering the flagstone floor. And the large black safe in the far corner was far too big for the room.
The food wasn’t bad, either, although Jennie Barr thought there was too much mutton on the menu and the Cabernet they always sent with dinner was an inferior French import.
She had been, by her calculations, a prisoner down here for going on four days. This refurbished dungeon, Jennie was fairly certain, was beneath the mansion of Sir Danvers Barksdale. Her first day here, while she was slowly awakening from being waylaid and drugged on her way to interview Dr. Spartacus Donne, she had heard Sir Danvers’s gruff, raspy voice cursing whoever it was who kidnapped her.
By the time she was fully awake, the millionaire was not in the room. She’d interviewed him three years ago when he was opening a new munitions plant in an outlying section of London.
Since that first day only a frail, wispy, and uncommunicative maid had ever visited Jennie’s prison. There were two meals a day. The maid had untied Jennie and removed the gag before serving her first meal.
No one, not even the maid, had spoken to her since she’d been detained here.
“I’m pretty sure why I was abducted,” she’d said to herself. “It must have something to do with my looking into this darned Wonder’s career. Somebody doesn’t want me to learn who he is or how he got to be what he is.”
The trouble was, Jennie didn’t know a heck of a lot. She’d written an article about Dr. Donne last year when he was the object of not one but two satirical drawings in Punch and she was aware that he claimed to be working on an elixir that would after only a few doses, convert an average mild-mannered youth into a superior fighting man. She had hoped to get Donne, who’d settled in Dimchester some months earlier, to discuss his process and confirm her suspicion that the Somerset Wonder was his handiwork.
A key turned in the lock of the thick oaken door of her dungeon suite.
Tossing her notebook on the bedside table, the slim auburn-haired reported moved a few steps nearer to the door.
Into the room stepped an attractive, slightly overweight woman in her late thirties. “Good afternoon, Jennie dear,” she said, smiling from the threshold.
“Darned if it is isn’t Lily Hope,” Jennie said. “So you’re the one behind my kidnapping.”
“Think of it more as a temporary detention,” said the singing spy. “Soon as my work in this backwater is completed, you’ll be set free unharmed.”
“And why am I being detained at all?”
“Your own fault,” Lily told her. “You’re much too much the Nosy Parker and we don’t want you getting in our way.”
“I have a hunch,” said the reporter, “that Harry Challenge is going to come looking for me, Lil. He’s always been able to throw a spanner into your schemes. I bet he’ll do it again.”
“Don’t count on Harry,” advised Lily. “If all goes well, he’ll be out of the way before this day is over.”
The oil in the bracket lamp on the grey stone wall gave off a sharp, sooty odor and a chill draft caused the weak flame to flicker. Harry, now ten minutes underground, paused to stand listening.
From a dozen yards further along the shadowy corridor came, faintly, the sound of two voices. Female voices.
Slowly and quietly, Harry eased forward. On his right as he descended, he passed the entrance, a dark, damp-smelling opening to another underground passway.
Up ahead a woman cried out, “Damn you, you impudent vixen!”
“That’s Lily Hope,” Harry realized and sprinted forward.
Next came the sound of an interrupted scream and a groan of pain. Then something heavy and wooden hit a floor. A short-lived sigh followed, and a muffled thud.
By the time of the thud, he was beside a thick wooden door on the left-hand side of the damp stone corridor. Cautiously, Harry tried the handle. The door was locked.
“Another test of my cracksman skills.” He crouched to work on the lock.
All at once the heavy oaken door swung open outward.
He bounced upright, backpedaled, reaching for his shoulder holster.
“Harry, what a pleasant surprise,” said Jennie Barr, smiling as she stepped into the corridor. “I imagine you’re here to rescue me, but, see, I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“Oh, so?” He let his gun slide back into its holster. “Then how come it’s taken you four days to escape. Seems to me that if—”
“Didn’t mean to damage your self esteem.” Still smiling, she moved close to Harry, rose on tip toe to kiss him on the cheek. “Really, honestly, I do appreciate your taking the time to track me down. It shows that our friendship—”
“Your damned newspaper hired us to rescue you, Jen.”
“Even so.”
He asked, “What exactly happened to you?”
“Your dear friend, Lily Hope, the singing spy, had me abducted.” She explained, pointing a thumb over her shoulder into the room where she’d been imprisoned. “While Lily was gloating over me just now, I managed to kick her in the shins, conk her with a chair, and lay her out on a very handsome Persian carpet. She’s lying unconscious even as we speak, Harry dear.”
“Might I escort you the hell out of here? Be a good idea to do that while she’s still out cold.”
“Yes, but let’s truss her up and gag her,” the pretty reporter suggested. “We can send somebody back to collect her later.”
“Okay, but swiftly.”
Jennie went back into the comfortably furnished cell. “In a while, Harry, I’ll explain to you what this is all about,” she promised as he followed her. “I’d appreciate it though, if you’d let me file my story before you go blurting out the details of—”
“C’mon, Jennie, you know I never blurt.” He stopped next to the sprawled body of the unconscious spy. “Besides, I already know about the disappearance of Dr. Donne and Lily’s attempts to learn the secret of the Somerset Wonder.”
Kneeling to tie Lily with the ropes that had earlier been used on her, Jennie made an exasperated sound. “I am, Harry, as you know, quite fond of you,” she said to him. “But, gosh, I do wish you weren’t so darn smug at times.”
Jennie took three more steps along the shadowy corridor, inhaled sharply, tightened her grip on Harry’s arm, and halted. “Damn,” she remarked.
“Exactly,” agreed the detective.
Sir Danvers Barksdale had emerged from the side corridor a few yards in front of them. “Come along, my dear. You, too, Challenge old boy.” The flickering lamplight reflected on the barrel of the shotgun he held pointed at them.
“Not only are you an accessory to kidnapping,” Harry pointed out to the heavyset, flush-faced owner of Barksdale Mansion, “you can also be charged with attempted murder—mine—and conspiring to steal an elephant.”
“Enough of your bloody nattering.” Barksdale gestured with the shotgun barrel. “Be so kind, the both of you, as to trot along that corridor yonder. Do, please, be deuced fast about it.”
“Any time that Harry Challenge appears on the scene,” explained Jennie, “it is usually a sign that the jig is nigh to being up, Sir Danvers. Why not quit now while—”
“Being a gentleman, Miss Barr, shooting a woman would seriously upset me,” the fat man told her. “However, I’ll be damned well to do it should the pair of you not move and now.”
They moved.
* * * *
The crypt was thick with the scents of damp earth and ancient dust. About the size of a large parlor, the upper third of its venerable stone walls was
above ground. Four stone coffins rested on low pedestals at the rear of the chamber. There was one small stained glass window on the wall opposite the three heavy wooden chairs occupied by Jennie, Harry, and Dr. Spartacus Donne. Rain was falling heavily in the fading day outside. The rising wind was slapping it against the multicolor chunks of ancient glass and the thick iron door at the head of the short flight of stone steps leading down into the dim lit room.
“No luck so far.” Jennie was struggling against the ropes that held her bound to her chair. “How about you?”
Harry, a half dozen feet to her right, replied, “Lorenzo taught me some of his best escape tricks. I ought to be able to—”
“Hopeless, hopeless,” lamented the lean rumpled scientist who was slumped in the chair next to the detective. “We’ll never free ourselves from these infernal ropes. Our plight, if I may be permitted to observe, is hopeless. I have been held prisoner by these scoundrels for lo, these many long days and I fear I shan’t be able to withhold my secret much longer.”
“Three or four days,” observed Jennie, pausing in her struggle with her ropes, “isn’t exactly lo, these many days, doctor. Thus far, I notice, they haven’t done you any physical harm.”
“That’s coming, miss. They’ve promised torture should I not confide,” the inventor informed her. “When that death merchant Barksdale returns with Lily Hope—a gifted singer, yet, alas, an evil-hearted woman—they’ll commence using physical persuasion to learn my method of creating an Ubermensch.”
“How many of them have you created thus far?” asked the reporter.
“Just one.”
“And who is he?”
Dr. Donne sighed. “I vowed not to reveal the true identity of the Somerset Wonder.” He shook his head. “The young man feels that he can better carry on his noble deeds if no one is aware of his true identity.” He sighed again. “Were I to reveal who he is, you would no doubt be struck by the irony of the situation. In fact, it is most unfortunate that—”
“My blooming patience has worn thin, Donne.” Sir Danvers Barksdale came up through the entrance in the crypt floor that he had ushered Jennie and Harry up through a few hours earlier. He carried his shotgun tucked under one arm. “No more coddling, old chap. It’ll be talk or torture hence forward.”
