Our plan was to return to Battersea after sunset. When we did, we found a handy bench at some distance from the Alberta but affording a perfect view of the action when we looked through the high-powered George Adams lorgnette and the Ignacio Porro prismatic pair of binoculars which Algernon had borrowed from his father’s cabinet. To judge by the bearing of the guests, the men were from the aristocratic classes and the women from the stables of establishments like Mrs Jeffries’.
Some of the latter seemed to be girls barely in their teens or young lads with slender frames, but we didn’t see babies or toddlers yet. At some point we saw a middle-aged woman who fitted the description of Mrs Jeffries arrive with a basket covered with a large napkin which could have concealed anything. She was received with effusive cordiality by the young sailor who helped her climb onto the yacht.
Our elaborate plans demanded that we booked rooms at Claridge’s for the night, not only for ourselves, but for Artémise and Bartola as well. The two of them happened to have taken to each other. However, their presence at the hotel was not primarily for lubricious purposes. Their mission was to transform me once more into Count von Klapisberg the Viennese Uranian. It was Clarihoe who had suggested that if I wanted to pass for a man, it would be much easier to adopt the attitudes of an effete homophile in view of my curves being in the wrong places, as he put it. The artist and the modiste had worked through the night to design and create my suit. Algernon had already provided me with silk kerchiefs and scarves as well as a mahogany cane with an ivory handle, again borrowed from his father’s collection.
Shortly before midnight, in my man’s attire, the pair of us stealthily climbed on board a neat little dinghy we had already espied moored to a pier near Blackfriars and rowed it towards the Alberta. We might have been able to steer our course by simply following the noise coming from the royal vessel. Music from the bands playing was mixed with raucous laughter and shouting. This was punctuated by occasional outbursts of people jumping about or running after each other in drunken stupor, screaming and hollering, mixed with sounds of retching or vomiting. We found an easy place at the stern where the athletic Algernon (once an ace bowler) was able to reach a railing and hoist himself up. He then bent down to offer me a helping hand, but I managed quite well by myself.
Once aboard it was easy to mingle with the revellers, in varying degrees of inebriety. We blended seamlessly with the invited guests. We caught sight of people of both sexes and of all ages in various states of undress and excitation running around seemingly without purpose. We saw elderly buffoons chasing sprightly teenagers of both sexes, drunken lords threatening to walk on the railings and being restrained by their less inebriated companions. There were guests failing to balance bottles of champagne on their foreheads and ending up by smashing them on the floor. We espied couples fornicating, fellating, kissing and we caught sight of Bertie, the Prince of Wales. He was in a corner of the main reception room with a girl who might have been about thirteen on his knees. King Leopold, not to be outdone, was by his side with a girl on each knee. Algernon and I who had not one drop of alcohol between us grabbed each other’s arms and tottered drunkenly out of the room. We wandered among the guests, joined in the drunken conversations and laughed at their jokes. We got talking to a comely girl and she told us her name was Adelene.
‘And how old are you, Adelene?’ I asked.
‘I have papers wot say I am eighteen,’ she said, ‘and they told me it cost three shillings and seven pence from Somerset House.’ She laughed and ran away. We looked in every nook and cranny and although we saw a good dozen girls who were more in need of a mother than a lover, of toddlers and babies there were no sign.
Algernon took comfort in our failure to find Alice on the yacht. ‘It means she is alive and well somewhere else,’ he said. I had learnt by now when to keep my less than encouraging counsel to myself. He was obviously not going to slow down in his quest, and I was going to be with him all the way.
A week later, Minahan turned up at Water Lane and said that he had finally located the two kidnappers. They were holed up in the Temple Bar neighbourhood of Dublin. We saw the hand of Moriarty in this strategy. We were certain that any attempt at getting information from them would prove futile unless we came up with a bold plan.
Algernon was able to borrow his cousin the Earl of Cadmington’s yacht the Tartary. All the members of the Club and Jeremiah Minahan joyfully climbed aboard and we set sail from Tilbury at dawn the following Saturday, in a festive spirit in spite of the circumstances, aiming for the fair city of Dublin. Upon reaching it that same afternoon, we moored near Sarah’s Bridge and in three separate groups we made for Temple Bar. Coleridge, paired with Minahan, attracted some attention on account of the former’s colour and the latter’s great height. In a bar some drunken men approached the black man and we prayed that there would be no trouble. In London our American friend had often been derided by folks who did not like the colour of his skin. We held our breath as we watched.‘Are you a Catholic?’ the inebriated Irishman asked our black friend, looking him squarely in the eyes.
‘Yes my friend, I sure am,’ said Coleridge.
‘Then a big welcome to you in Ireland sir. Do us the great honour of drinking a pint of Irish Guinness with us.’
As there are a large number of bars and pubs in Temple Bar Square, we found a place where there were three clustered together, two side by side and the third opposite. Each group went into one of them. Algernon and I found ourselves in the Hound and Hare. We noticed a rum pair sitting with their backs to us. How lucky could we be? They might easily have been the two men we were looking for. I pretended I needed the Powder Room and walked very slowly towards them, but not looking at them. I was able to overhear a conversation.
‘I am getting uzed to thzis scity, you know Barney?’ I needed no more. We continued drinking, watching the two men at the same time. When Noah (the short one) went to the bar to order another round, we knew that they were not going to leave for a while. We slipped out and stealthily warned the others that quarry had been sighted. It was easy to pounce upon them when half an hour later they emerged from the bar in a fairly tipsy state. We crowded around them and started hollering like a bunch of drunken rowdies, creating the impression to whoever might have been watching us that we were part of the same group of friends celebrating. Ivan and Coleridge had wasted no time. They held the giant Barney in a vice-like grip whilst Bartola injected him with her secret preparation. The veteran immediately became groggy and pliant. The knife-thrower was similarly dealt with by the Bishop, Probert and Armande. The revellers of fair Dublin, ignorant of our sinister ploys, enjoyed the sight, no doubt thinking that two members of our party had partaken a bit too freely of the black stuff. Singing loudly and walking with the pair firmly under control, the small Noah was put in the care of the Bishop and Frunk. The Sudan campaigner was in the hands of the gigantic Minahan, Coleridge and Vissarionovich with Bartola in tow. We took three separate hansom cabs at safe intervals and we all regrouped at the Sarah Bridge. We re-embarked on the Tartary less than an hour after we had cast anchor. At first light next morning, we were bound for the Thames estuary.
The crossing was uneventful and we moored next to Blackfriars Bridge on Sunday before sunset. Minahan chose to go home to Uverdale Street as he didn’t like to leave Barbara by herself. As the men were still in a drugged state, we had nothing to fear and took them to Water Lane without any need for a circuitous route. We brought them straight into a basement room which had secure doors, and let them sleep off the effect of Bartola’s concoction.
The next day the Italian revived them with an elixir she had brewed, and when they regained their lucidity, we began questioning them. They seemed to have no recollection of what happened in Temple Bar, thinking that they were still on the emerald isle. This was a belief we saw no need to disabuse them of. They did quickly cotton on to what their kidnapping was all about. We allowed them the use of the facilities, fed them and kept
them tied to their chairs facing each other in what was now effectively their cell. Algernon suggested that I spelled out to them the terms of our agenda. Left alone with the two men I sat between them in a position where they could both see my face.
‘The first thing I need to tell you is that you aren’t going to leave this place alive,’ I began, taking a lengthy pause, ‘until you tell us everything we need to know. I take it you know what I am talking about.’ They nodded, then looked at each other in what I took to be a mute appeal to each other to resist any temptation to talk.
‘Your best bet is to talk to us,’ I said, ‘because you have a melogent and we have a full house.’ I suspected that they would be gambling men. They said nothing.
‘Think of this. Moriarty sent you to Dublin, not because he loves you, but because he knows you are the weakest link. What do you boys do but get caught? He’s not gonna like it much, is he?’ The pair react to the name Moriarty as if they had been simultaneously stung by a wasp, although they try hard to conceal this. They begin squirming and fidgeting on their chairs.
‘Now you help us and we will protect you. We’ll send you as far from here as you want to be where the Professor can’t reach you.’ My strategy was to convince them that we were a much safer bet than their boss, but I had not counted on their loyalty to the man. ‘Who isth Moriarty?’ Noah says, looking at his partner who nods and then repeats it.
‘Obviously we’re serious about finding the baby. You’ve seen us for the ruthless team we make. We didn’t take the trouble of coming all the way to Dublin for the boat ride. We have many ways of making you talk. We could starve you, refuse you water, allow you to soil yourselves, stop you sleeping. If all that fails, we’re capable of inflicting severe physical pain on you. The big Russian guy has been known to kill a man with one punch on the head. We have…eh…what shall I call them? Instruments. And we won’t hesitate to use them if we feel that’s the only way to make you talk.’ Ivan Vissarionovich had never killed anybody. Our instruments of torture are pretty anodyne and we do not mean to use them anyway. I do, however, have a secret weapon. The men look at me defiantly. You had to admire their misguided loyalty. There is no doubt in our minds that if Moriarty felt that his security had been compromised he would not think twice before sending other men, devoted to him, to execute perceived weaklings.
‘Tell me one thing,’ I ask. ‘If we let you go and spread the word that we discovered where you were, kidnapped you and made you talk. How do you think Moriarty would react?’ They look at me with an assured smile, shake their heads, and speak together.
‘He knoze usth, he knoze we’d never talk,’ says Noah.
‘Nothing that you can do to us will make us...’ I smile in the knowledge of the efficacy of the method I was keeping as a last resort. We leave them alone and in the early afternoon we all descend upon them, Algernon carrying a big leather bag full of all manner of instruments. God knows where he had got them from. We waste no time and approach our prisoners in a menacing manner. I am wearing a slinky black dress going all the way down to my ankles, with long loose sleeves, and I have used kohl round my eyes quite generously. I am an actress and love visual effects. The pair act unperturbed. I take a few steps towards them. The others form an arc around us as if this was going to be some form of theatre. Algernon moves towards me. He opens the bag, produces a sheet and hands it over to me.
‘You know what this is?’ I ask.
‘A rubber szheet which can be wrapped around our head to asphyxiate uths. We know it.’
‘It doesn’t frighten us.’
‘We can only die wanth.’
‘We’ll see,’ says Algernon who then produces an ordinary hammer. ‘You can break all our bonesth, we ain’t talking,’ says Noah. Barnaby smiles happily. The thumbscrew holds no terror for them. Nor does the blinding iron rod used for abacination. Of course they might have been bluffing, but physical torture is not something we had seriously contemplated.
‘Right Algie, the pièce de résistance now.’ With a sardonic smile Clarihoe put his hand into the bag and let it linger there for a while. The men clearly register some slight, hardly perceptible unease, but burst out laughing when he brings out a shiny goose feather.
‘The professor trained us in how to deal with that, go ahead.’
‘If thath all you can do, our thecreth thafe.’ They are so self-assured that we do not doubt their determination. I do, however, have the ultimate weapon.
‘I need to go up,’ I declare. My companions look at me in surprise because they have no idea what is in store. I come back down with a small box containing a white powder. The Club look at me dubiously. I hadn’t really made my mark at the time, so they are right to withhold their approval. I had bought the powder on a whim when I saw it advertised outside a Magic Shop in Tottenham Court Road.
‘Itching powder,’ I say. The two men look at each other questioningly and my colleagues smile to show their approval.
‘Now, my good men,’ I tell our two captives, ‘I will apply this to you, a little at a time and will only stop when you start talking.’ Approaching Barnaby, I take a small pinch of the stuff between two fingers of my left hand, grabbed his collar from behind his neck with my right hand, move it back by an inch and drop it in. The effect is immediate. As his hands are tied there is little he can do except squirm in an attempt to scratch the itch with the backrest of the chair. His face is contorted in agony, his eyes are filled with tears and his face has turned red. He is covered in sweat. He begins sputtering.
‘I don’t believe the professor trained you to resist this,’ I said. There is no response. I augment his torment by dropping another pinch inside his trousers. I leave him there wriggling like a worm and move on to let Noah benefit from the same experience. I go back to the tall one and flick some more stuff through his shirt sleeve towards his armpits. Barnaby begins hopping up and down and contorting about, his body bent in impossible shapes. Tears are now streaking down his cheeks and we begin to fear that our chair is in danger of losing its backrest. My own fingers begin to itch and I have to wash the powder off. The Club are unable to stop laughing and this adds to the torment of the kidnappers. They are still not ready to surrender.
‘Where is your Chrithtian charity?’ entreats Noah. ‘Untie my hand... pleeeease, let me scratch myself, pleeeeease...’
‘This is un-English,’ says Barnaby. ‘You’ve got to play by the rules.’
‘Thiss isth below the belt.’
Once they start moaning, the breach we had hoped to dig in their defence walls appear and we have a foothold.
‘Is the baby safe?’ I ask. ‘Just answer that and I’ll give you the use of one hand.’ They both nod and we do what we promised. The moment they have one free hand, instead of using it to scratch their own itches, they manage, by dint of heaving and hoisting, juggling and jiggling, to get their chairs in a position which permitted them to scratch each other’s backs. We knew that you had to be of above average intelligence to work for Moriarty, and there was the definite proof. When they have gained sufficient relief, they collapse on the floor against a wall, still tied to their chair.
‘Will you really arrange for us to leave the country?’ Barnaby asks.
‘You are in no position to ask for anything now,’ Armande says.
‘We’ll deliver you to the police,’ Algernon threatens. I am shocked to note that this prospect seems to hold no terror for the men. If Minahan was right, the police poses no threat to villains with friends in high places.
‘Just tell us about the kidnapping,’ I ask imperiously.
They swore that they had no idea of the final destination of the stolen baby, but revealed that Moriarty had given them instructions to deliver her to a woman in Kensington. No, they did not know her name, they were only given the address. As the perambulator was cumbersome, they had thrown it in the Thames, had proceeded to Campden Street and found the house with the blue door as instructed. The lady was expecting them
and took possession of the bundle without inviting them in.
‘Describe her.’
She was a genteel woman with brown eyes and black hair, perhaps a schoolmarm or a nurse. She had a small nose, a large forehead and a mole on her chin, was on the plump side and rather below average height.
We wasted no time. Bartola, the Bishop and I were knocking on the blue door within the hour. A woman fitting the description given by the two villains opened the door. The moment she saw us, all the blood was drained from her face. We left her with no option but to let us come inside. She hadn’t thought she was doing anything wrong. All she did was to collect a baby and hand her over to her sister.
‘Who’s your sister? Where is she?’
‘She lives in Derby,’ the woman said, ‘at Plantagenet House—’
‘You mean the seat of the Home Secretary?’ I asked, and the woman with the mole nodded.
When we told Algernon he angrily confronted the kidnappers with the intelligence. At first they denied that they knew any more than what they had told us, but when I threatened to start the itching game all over, they signified their willingness to tell us everything.
The story which unfolded needs to be told in connection with another strand. Loulou, or Lewis was Sir William’s firstborn. His mother had died in his infancy. Nowhere in the land, has it been said, would you find a father and son who were so devoted to each other. Sir William had waited thirteen years, looking after his boy with complete dedication before marrying the widow of an American civil war casualty, the daughter of an American historian, Elizabeth. She was a highly strung woman many years his junior. She disliked London and politics and chose to move permanently to the peaceful and rural Plantagenet House in Derby, where she devoted her time to horticultural delights and rarely ventured into London.
The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy Page 8
