The Black Mask

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  She glanced at the brandy glasses still on the desk. “Entertaining plenty of company, aren’t you? How do I know we’re alone?”

  “You have my word, your grace.”

  “Hmmph. Save your breath.”

  “Very well,” Beringer said silkily, knowing he had the upper hand. “You are at liberty to search.”

  “I don’t care to spend another minute with scum like you. You claim to have uncovered a disreputable secret about my daughter. Let’s have it.”

  From beneath his desk blotter, Beringer drew forth a second dossier. “On or about the fifteenth of September, eighteen-ought-five, her ladyship was brought to bed of a boy, presently known as Robert, Marquis of...”

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,” the duchess said, though a close observer would have seen her cheeks grow pale under her brave paint.

  Mr. Beringer prided himself on his observational skills. “Very well. In late January of that same year, her ladyship was visiting Parmeter House with a party of friends. Her husband was not with her. I have here statements from the chambermaid, a valet, and an undermaid that on at least three mornings, her ladyship was not alone in her bed. The inference must therefore be drawn, with the aid of a little elementary mathematics ...”

  “Enough! You’re a long-winded devil. Instead of gouging your betters, you should stand for Parliament.”

  “Too much work for me, your grace. I am a man of simple pleasures. Good food, good wine, the leisure to digest properly, these are my joys.”

  “How much do you want?” she said, cutting to the point.

  He told her. She refused absolutely to give him any information regarding her friends, but, after a word picture of the ruination of her daughter’s marriage and her grandson’s future, relented to the extent of offering to exchange political secrets she was privy to as the wife of a leading politician.

  “Very well,” she said finally. “How shall I pay you? I haven’t any money of my own.”

  “I am aware of it, your grace. However, I believe you possess a certain necklace that never leaves your skin? Aphrodite’s Tears?”

  “My ... my necklace?” For the first time in the interview, the duchess seemed shaken, her hand seeking the high collar of her velvet dress. Beringer noticed she was staring past his shoulder.

  ‘Very well.” With a grand gesture, she jerked the piece from her throat and threw it, jangling, at Beringer’s feet.

  Though stout, Beringer was willing to bend for such a prize. The necklace, a dazzle of baroque pink pearls and diamonds, swung from his hand. A genuine: smile lit Beringer’s face. “Truly a treasure beyond price.”

  ‘You can never sell it,” the duchess charged. “It’s too famous.”

  “Sell it? Never. No, nor break it up, either. I shall keep it safe ... yes, safe.”

  “You’d better take care,” the duchess said. “I have been warned the Black Mask has an interest in such things.”

  “The Black Mask?” Beringer repeated. “Why threaten me with that bugaboo?”

  “Curtman didn’t find him so.”

  “Curtman again? Curtman was a fool and always has been. Even as a young man, he never showed any flair, such as is my genius.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Of course. A useful tool at times, but it was always I who thought of our schemes. Our other friend showed more courage, but he was weakened by the restraints of conscience.”

  “Other friend?” The duchess’s voice seemed deeper.

  “I am being indiscreet...” Beringer said. “I shall stop.”

  “I hope you enjoy your comeuppance when it arrives,” she said bitterly.

  “I? I’m as safe as houses, your grace. Who could prosecute me without exposing themselves? I have all the evidence hidden away. If the authorities come and dare to search, they won’t find anything I don’t wish them to find. Think of the embarrassment to yourself and your family. Our business is concluded, your grace. I bid you a good evening.”

  He turned aside, holding up the necklace so that the pearls gleamed like sunset-colored moons in the candlelight and the diamonds offered their frigid beauty. He wasn’t even aware of the duchess’ departure, his courtesy and caution failing.

  After gloating a few minutes, he remembered with visible alarm that he’d not yet hidden away the two dossiers on his desk. Dangerous if the duchess came back with friends or, worse yet, a magistrate. He liked the location of his home, but knew there were several magistrates living within a few minutes’ walk. If the duchess appeared on one of their doorsteps, they would listen to her. And his strongbox was not easy of access on purpose. It took time to reach it.

  On the other side of the room, the bookcases rose to the ceiling. A rolling ladder made it possible to obtain those books otherwise out of easy reach.

  With the dossiers under one arm and the necklace still dangling from his hand, Beringer tottered and huffed his way up. At the top, he paused, breathing heavily.

  Then he pushed aside one section of the bookcase, revealing that the books were no more than spines and an inch of cover, glued to a flat panel. So long as no one tried to pull out a copy of one of the very dull books—mostly sermons—the illusion was perfect. Behind the panel was his strongbox, locked with a cunning pressure lock. It took just the right touch to open and even he, with all his practice, sometimes was driven to the swearing point before it opened.

  The dossiers slipped from beneath his arm and fluttered down like wounded birds. As he glanced down, saying, “Damnation!” by a lucky chance his hand pushed forward in such a way as to open the lock. With a heavy sigh, stuffing the necklace into his pocket, Beringer started down the ladder to collect the papers blowing about the carpet.

  Two steps from the bottom, he paused, doubting. Where had the draft come from? His beautifully paneled library was never drafty. He hated drafts, blowing cold down the back of his neck when all he wanted was quiet, warmth, and comfort. Now a significant draft was making the candle flames dance. Beringer looked around wildly, the chill on his skin sinking down to his bones when he saw the figure standing silently by the curtains.

  “You!”

  “I.” The slim figure, clad all in black even to the inky leather mask that, clung to his white cheeks and brow, walked slowly forward. He held his voice to a harsh whisper.

  “What do you want?”

  “Come, come. Let us not play such foolish games, Beringer. You know why I have come. The same reason I appeared to Curtman. His evil ways drew me to him. They say, don’t they, that the devil claims his own?”

  Chapter Six

  “Do you claim to be some diabolical angel of vengeance? You’re nothing but a common thief!”

  “And you are an uncommon one ... no!”

  Beringer cast one desperate glance upward and tried in a mad scramble to reach his secret cache. But the whip-like figure of the Black Mask flashed across the room, seized the heavier man by the tails of his coat, and yanked. Beringer tumbled off the ladder, striving to stay upright. But his heel slipped on one of the loose pages, and he fell with a crash that shook some of the genuine books off the shelves.

  A silver-mounted pistol appeared in the mountebank’s hand. “Don’t move.”

  With a great deal more elegance than Beringer displayed, the Black Mask whisked up the ladder to peer into the secret horde. Even though his attention seemed to be on what he saw, the pistol never wavered in its aim over Beringer’s heart. No sooner had Beringer stolen out a fat hand to give the ladder a push that would shake the interloper off than the finger on the trigger tightened.

  “I really shouldn’t, if I were you,” the Black Mask said. “It would be such a pleasure to kill you.”

  With a sweeping of his arm, the Black Mask sent everything tumbling down over Beringer’s quivering form. Papers, small boxes, miniature paintings cascaded in a seemingly never-ending fall, Beringer flinching under it all.

  The dark figure stepped down from the ladder after being certa
in the box was empty. “My, my, such an extensive collection. Whatever shall we do with so much? I know ...” He pointed a commanding finger toward the fireplace.

  “No. You don’t understand. You have no idea how much I’ve paid ... listen, there’s plenty for us both. We’ll be partners,” Beringer said, sweating. ‘You can’t expect to go on robbing forever. You’ll end on the gallows. Be sensible. You can’t ask me to burn my life’s work.”

  “You’ll make me weep in a minute.”

  “Look. Look at this.” The fat man scooped up a box and flipped open the latch. A brilliant cascade of rainbows seemed to float in the air. “They give me their jewels when they have no money. Look. A fortune. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires. All yours, if you go away and leave me in peace.”

  These papers must be burnt.”

  “No, I beg of you.”

  “Yes. Come now. You need the exercise. I fear you lead an unhealthy life.” The comment was punctuated with a wave of the pistol.

  Trip after weary trip, in fear of his life, the blackmailer carried all his hard-won spoils to the inferno. He cowered back from the intense heat as indiscretions, infatuations, and immoralities burned. Paper, blackened to floating ash, flew up the chimney.

  While Beringer labored, the Black Mask stirred the rubbish with his booted foot, kicking aside the assorted jewel boxes that lay, like fat oysters pregnant with pearls, among the papers. “How do your victims explain the loss of so many pretties to their fathers and husbands?”

  “I don’t know,” Beringer snapped, his face dirty and sweating. “I don’t concern myself with their problems.”

  A certain crest caught the quick-moving eyes behind the mask. Quickly, he scooped up the case. Flipping it open, he saw the miniature of a sweet-faced girl, hardly sixteen, with round eyes and a soft mouth, done in ivory with diamonds around the frame. “Bella Fortescue.”

  “It’s not my fault the silly wench drowned herself,” Beringer said sulkily. “I told her no one would find out if she kept her gob shut. S’not as if she were pregnant. I told her no one would know she wasn’t a virgin if she didn’t tell ’em.”

  “But she was in love with William Perry and couldn’t face him.”

  “Silly wench. She could have got her hands on the Perry fortune. Enough for all of us in those pockets. But: she had to go drown herself in the Serpentine. Fat lot of good that money does me in the grave.”

  ‘You are unspeakably vile, sir.” It was so much his own thought that for an instant, Niles thought he’d spoken aloud. Then he saw the duchess in the doorway. He scowled. He had been embarrassed almost beyond bearing when he’d returned in his persona of the Black Mask to confront Beringer, having confirmed as Sir Niles that Beringer was indeed the blackmailer who, rumor whispered, had long preyed upon society. For some reason, probably his own sense of the romantic, he’d expected Beringer’s next “client” to be some young woman in trouble. But to come back and find a woman, well known not only to the world but to his own family, had been almost enough to make him save Beringer’s exposure for another evening.

  She entered with the same confident bearing she’d shown earlier. “Good evening, Black Mask. I’ve heard of you.”

  He bowed, afraid his voice would give him away.

  Looking toward the fireplace, she sniffed. “A grand auto-da-fe of the evidence, I see. No matter. Perhaps it’s just as well.”

  “Your own are burnt as well,” Niles said hoarsely.

  “Excellent. If you hadn’t, I should have had to.”

  “Is that why you came back?”

  “No. Magistrate Howe is rousing his minions and has promised to meet me here.”

  “He won’t find anything,” Beringer exulted. “That one is too clever for his own good. There’s no more evidence.”

  “I believe my unsupported word should be enough. If I, with my name, stand in the dock and proclaim that you attempted to extort money from me by threats of exposure, you’ll be lucky to be transported. They might even hang you.”

  Beringer’s cheeks were pale as uncooked pork, but he tried to bluster. “You wouldn’t dare! You’d be ruined.”

  The duchess gave the ringing laugh that had, more than anything else, made her the toast of London in her day. “Ruined? I? I have been ruined and redeemed a dozen times. Didn’t you ever hear how I was abducted at nineteen and not returned for a week? Or that my second girl bears far too clear a resemblance to a certain cardinal now living in Rome?”

  Beringer’s eyes were avid even through his fear, obviously plotting how to use this information given so freely. “You don’t dare expose yourself.”

  The duchess looked at him dispassionately. “I am very old, Mr. Beringer. They can’t hurt me now. As long as my daughter and grandson are safe, I don’t care what anyone says about me. They’ve said it before. You, however, should care.”

  “What’s to stop me telling the world about your precious grandson? If I’m ruined, he’ll go down too!”

  Niles took the man by the lapel and shook him as a cook shakes a jelly bag. “Speak civil, rot you, or you’ll never live to stand that trial.”

  Behind him, the duchess spoke softly. “Tell about my grandson and you’ll stand convicted out of your own mouth. The jury won’t even leave the box. And then you’ll hang by your bull-like throat until you are dead. I’ve seen dozens of hangings. Fat men seldom break their necks. Their friends come and pull on their legs until they die. Have you any friends, Mr. Beringer?”

  Beringer subsided into a moaning lump.

  Ignoring him, the duchess touched Niles on the arm. “You’d better be off. Magistrates are not imaginative men.”

  “Dunno what you mean.”

  “I mean twice now you have discovered rather obscure men to be nothing less than criminals. Once might be accidental; twice begins to look like good staff work. I think if I had a guilty conscience, I would start locking my windows more carefully. Not to mention concealing any incriminating evidence beyond the cunning of mere man.”

  “Dunno what you mean.”

  “Of course not. Nevertheless, you have done me and mine a good turn this evening. I should hate to see your gallant career end on the scaffold next to that miserable object. So take this plunder and be gone.”

  Niles looked down at the piles of jewelry boxes. “Will you take charge of it all? See it returns to its owners.”

  “You don’t want it?”

  Niles shook his head. “Being a lady, you can give ‘em their baubles back and not a soul the wiser. Maybe there’s some wives who’d like to have their old necklaces back without their husbands knowing. Me, I’d have t’drop ‘em off in the post, and they’re a disreputable lot.”

  Some dismay shown on the duchess’s face. “I shall need a satchel to transport it all, but I accept your commission on the understanding that you leave at once. It’s not at all safe.”

  “I don’t like to leave you with him,” he said, flicking one finger toward Beringer. The man quivered as though under a lash.

  “Never mind about him.” With a little difficulty, for the hammer kept tangling in the lace, the duchess pulled a small pistol from her dainty reticule. “I don’t like to shoot things, but I assure you I am quite capable of doing so.”

  Niles escaped out the window just as the rattle of heavy boots came over the threshold. He cocked an ear and grinned when he heard the duchess say, “You certainly took your time about it. I’ve had time to stand off him and a dozen like him.”

  Half an hour later, Sir Niles Alardyce, a little less neat than usual, left the stable mews shared by the dozen or so young men of fashion who dwelt in the square. To all appearances, he’d either been saying good night to his horses or arranging the use of them in the morning.

  When he entered his chambers on the second floor, he all but tripped over his man, asleep in a chair. “Letter for you, Sir Niles,” he said, sitting up suddenly and blinking owlishly at the candle his master held.

  “Letter? Yo
u’re dreaming, Baxter. Go to bed.”

  “Never on duty, Sir Niles.” He shifted in the armchair and pulled a white square of paper from between the cushions. “Here, sir. All present and correct. The bloke what delivered it intimated there was a lady waiting on pins and needles for an answer.”

  Though permitted considerable freedom of expression by his master, Baxter knew a sore point when came to Sir Niles’s reputation with the females. Unlike the other gentlemen’s gentlemen’s masters, Sir Niles never confided either triumphs or disappointments to his valet’s sympathetic ear. Frequently, he knew only of the beginning or termination of an amour when told the particulars by one of his colleagues. This naturally injured Baxter’s pride.

  By the judicious offer of beer, he’d solicited the name of the lady who had sent the letter. But Miss Rose Spenser didn’t sound the sort of female Sir Niles usually chose for an inamorata. No, Baxter didn’t care for what he heard from the footman. Miss Rose Spenser sounded like the sort of girl a man like Sir Niles married, and Baxter liked holding bachelor household. “Women,” he frequently averred while lifting a pint, “women get into things.”

  ‘Very well, Baxter,” Sir Niles said, reading the script “Get to bed, man. I’m rising at six to ride with Buzzy Harbottle in the Park.”

  He read the note with close attention, weighing each word. What could she know of his activities as the Black Mask? Nothing. He dismissed the idea she’d somehow divined his secret. He read the note again. No. Whatever she wanted to discuss, it wasn’t that.

  Later, sitting by the window, he moved the window curtain aside. He didn’t know which was Rose’s window. For all he knew, her bedroom was at the front of Lady Marlton’s house and didn’t overlook their gardens at all. Yet often, especially late at night, he would look toward the other house, wondering if Rose were also sleepless.