“We have an unexpected problem,” Arthur replied, stabbing his finger down at what was now revealed to be a folded-back section of a newspaper. There were several more like it on the desk; Arthur picked this one up and handed it to her.
The first thing she saw was her own publicity photograph, taken in her costume of the Tudor Rose dance. Dancer Revealed A Fraud! shouted the headline.
Her heart in her mouth, she skimmed through the article as best she could, wrestling with the English. Quickly she got the gist of the matter. The real Nina Tchereslavsky had turned up—and how had that happened?—and the reporter was trumpeting the fact that Ninette was an imposter. He did not quite go so far as to claim her shipwreck story was the fabrication they all knew it was, but it would not take much for people to wonder about that, too.
At the bottom of the article was the photograph of the real Nina Tchereslavsky, in a costume of the Rose Fairy from Sleeping Beauty. Ninette stared at it, numbly.
“All right. What are we going to do?” Nigel demanded. “It is not exactly a front page matter at the moment, but if there is a day that has not got a lot of news in it, the story very well could soon be there. Should we—”
You are going to brazen it out, said Thomas the cat, strolling into the room in a leisurely manner, eyeing the top of the desk for a moment, before leaping up to it in a lithe bound. Take a look at those photographs. Do you think I chose that particular dancer at random for Ninette to impersonate?
Five heads bent over the newspapers, all of them analyzing the two pictures. As Ninette’s panic started to ebb, she looked over the two, side by side, and after a moment, she nodded. She looked up to see the same conclusion in the faces of the rest.
“All things considered, there is not a great deal of difference between the two of them,” Nigel admitted.
All ballerinas tend to look a great deal alike, the cat pointed out. That’s out of necessity. They have to be petite, light boned, thin. They tend to have very large eyes, and stage makeup exaggerates that. That newspaper man made a grave mistake in choosing to echo Ninette’s Rose costume with the other woman’s; the pictures could easily be of the same dancer in different costumes. So the obvious course here is to make the counter-claim that this woman is the imposter.
Nigel stared at the cat. “You’re not joking, are you?”
I never joke. I sometimes make witty remarks, often sarcastic ones, but I never joke, not where Ninette is concerned. No, I think you should brazen it out. Claim that this woman is the imposter.
“What possible motive could she have for impersonating Ninette? I mean Nina?” Arthur ran his hands through his hair. “This is very confusing. . . .”
The cat raised his chin. Ninette is very successful here. She is one of the main attractions to this theater, and when your new musical play is finally performed, that popularity will only increase. Now remember if you will that people are insular. It does not matter to a Londoner that a performer is popular in New York. He might go once to see the man, but unless all London decides he is good, the average Londoner will not go a second time.
“What are you saying?” Arthur asked, puzzled.
That we should forget entirely what anyone in Berlin or New York or even Paris thinks. That we should forget what a balletomane thinks. Ninette’s audience does not go to ballets, and does not care what the rich people that do would have to say about this. We need to concentrate on what Blackpool thinks.
“I see what you are saying,” Nigel replied slowly. “Blackpool thinks that what Blackpool says and does and has opinions about is of the first importance in the world.”
The cat nodded with satisfaction. Precisely. So when we go and speak to your friends in the newspapers here, we must be firm in saying that our Nina is the real one, and that this imposter’s attempt to take her place is motivated by the greed for the position Ninette has achieved here. What dancer would not wish to be in that position? That any sensible person from outside Blackpool or knowledgeable about ballet would find this laughable has no bearing. This will not even be a ripple in the London papers, but it might well move into greater importance here. Perhaps, as you yourself pointed out, even a front page story if there are no accidents, fires, murders, or notorious robberies. No, I think that the best thing we can do is respond with affronted dignity and a touch of scorn. The cat licked a paw thoughtfully. And one never knows with dancers. They often become hysterical over absolute nonsense. She might indeed decide for herself that what you are building for Ninette is of the primary importance to her.
“Hysterical over nonsense?” Ninette looked incensed—and then, flushed. “Ah, mais oui. The review in La Figaro—“
And who knows? Somehow the cat managed to shrug. We do not know how her reputation is faring on the Continent. It might be sinking. She cannot be young. It might be that to become the star of a music hall in Blackpool has become the height of desire for her. In any event, we very much need to make use of every chink in her armor. Including that. The cat looked up at them all. This does have the potential to do us a great deal of good, if we can keep our heads about us, and Ninette can be kind and gracious and say very little about what her life in Russia was like.
“I can do that,” Ninette said ruefully, “since I have no notion of what it could have been like!”
“You should describe what it was like in Paris, only don’t mention any real names,” Jonathon said firmly. “A dancer’s life is always the same no matter where she is from. Only in Moscow the winters are very long, there are heaps of snow, and it is always terribly cold. Make much of that.”
Ninette and the cat both nodded. Jonathon, that is an excellent suggestion. She could contrast our lovely weather with that of Moscow in the winter. Ninette, above all, you must make much of how happy you are, what a fine place Blackpool is, and how much you love the audiences here.
“That will be of no difficulty,” Ninette replied. “It is all true.” She looked about her at the men who had become such supporters and friends in such a short time, and unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. “One could not ask for better friends than you. I feel as if I have fallen into a fairy tale!”
“Yes, well, fairy tales have ogres,” Nigel grumbled. “We haven’t conquered ours yet. We don’t even know who it is!”
All the more reason not to allow this to distract us. Think of it as a diversion and not any sort of serious difficulty.
“They must have more evidence than just those photographs,” Jonathon pointed out.
They may. But they do not have me. The cat looked uncommonly smug. I will say no more.
Jonathon gave him a measuring look. “You are altogether too sly, Master Thomas,” he said severely.
I am a cat, was the self-satisfied reply.
“I do not know why I ever listened to you,” Wolf groaned from under Arthur’s coat.
Because I am cleverer than you, the cat replied. All three of the co-conspirators were in a pub opposite the building housing the flat of the fellow who had written the first article. They had discovered, by the simple expedient of buying a few drinks at the pub for his thirsty colleagues, that the man never kept anything he considered to be important at his desk in the newspaper offices. He was not well liked there; he never shared sources, and never put anyone else on to a good story, even if he never intended to follow it up himself. That meant that anything he had gotten from Nina in the way of files and proof would be in his flat.
They were waiting until he left for the evening. They had ensured that he would be gone long, and not in very good condition when he returned, simply by ensconcing Jonathon there in one of his many disguises, and with heavy pockets. By simple expedient of seeming to be a fellow who had won a great deal of money and standing rounds for the entire pub, Jonathon should keep him there, and drinking, for a good long time, without ever raising the man’s suspicions by being singled out.
“There he is,” muttered Arthur, as the fellow in question sauntered out into t
he fine spring evening, looking oddly both satisfied and irritated. But from all accounts he was a disagreeable man; perhaps this irritation was his natural state.
They watched as he strode down the street, heading right in the direction of his favorite watering-hole. They waited a good long time, just to make sure he wasn’t coming back, that he hadn’t forgotten anything, that he hadn’t changed his mind. As the dusk turned to darkness and the lamplighters came around—this part of the city hadn’t been electrified yet—Arthur and the cat took advantage of the shadows to slip across the street and into the narrow passage between the two houses-turned-flats. Wolf freed himself from Arthur’s coat and flew up to the third story to land on a ledge.
“He left it open, right enough,” Wolf said softly, and flew back down. “Give me the string,” he ordered Arthur in a peremptory tone. Wordlessly Arthur handed the bird a bit of fishing line. Wolf flew up to the ledge, disappeared inside, then emerged again as the string ran out from the coil Arthur held. When the bird was perched again on his shoulder, he took the string back.
“It’s around the leg of the desk,” Wolf said as soon as his beak was clear. “That ought to be enough to hold one small cat.”
It’s salmon line, it ought to hold two of me, Thomas replied. He waited while Arthur fastened the straps of a harness around him and Wolf flew up to the ledge a third time, vanishing inside. With the harness fastened to the fishing line, and gloves on Arthur’s hands to prevent it cutting into his fingers, the musician hauled the cat jerkily up the side of the building with all four legs dangling limply. They had all thought about having Thomas try and help, but then thought better of it. Only when the cat actually reached the ledge itself did he hook claws up onto it and haul himself up.
The line was easily bitten through by Wolf’s sharp beak. After a moment, the line came falling down and Arthur coiled it up and put it in his pocket. Then he waited.
He could hear, very faintly, sounds from up above. Thomas and Wolf had determined, via trials in Nigel’s office, that there was very little short of a safe that a cat and a parrot could not get into. What was more, they had decided that they would rifle the entire flat to make it look as if someone had been searching for valuables. Those were probably the sounds he was hearing.
After a very long time, or so it seemed in the darkened passageway, Arthur heard a whistle. And immediately afterwards, a piece of paper, startlingly white in the shadows, came drifting down from above.
Now he was very busy indeed, as a veritable shower of papers came down. They had determined that they were not going to steal only the information about Nina. They were going to take everything that looked to be of any importance. That way the man would not be aware that it was the ballerina’s papers that they were after. Arthur had brought a briefcase with him, and by the time the last of the papers was gathered up, it was stuffed quite full indeed.
Finally, after some more sounds of implied mayhem from above, including the tearing of cloth, came what he had been waiting for. Ready for me? came the question into his mind.
“As ready as I am likely to be,” he whispered back. “Mind your claws!” And he braced himself.
With an impact that made him stagger, the cat landed on his shoulder. He ended up against the wall, breath driven a little out of him.
It isn’t me that minds the claws, it is you, the cat replied, with the sense that he was laughing. I think that is the most fun I have ever had since I was a boy and stealing apples.
“He’s a hoodlum, that one,” Wolf said severely, flying down to land on Arthur’s other shoulder. “It will be most of a day before that fellow can clean up enough to figure out just what is missing.”
“What did you two do?” Arthur asked, easing his way out of the passageway, carefully making sure there was no one in the street to see him when he did so.
“We tilted over and knocked to the floor every book and ornament we could move. We spilled his inkwell. I knocked over the pitcher of water at his washstand. We pulled the covers off the bed. We scattered all the papers that were not in the files, and overturned a chair or two. I uncovered all the food that I could in the pantry and the mice are already at it. But that was not enough for Thomas, oh no. Thomas slashed every pillow and cushion in the flat, tore open the featherbed and the eiderdown, and then shook what he could lift like a terrier with a rat,” Wolf said. “And as if that was not enough, he asked me to flap as hard as I could.” The parrot could not smirk, but he barked a sound like a laugh. “It looks like a snowstorm struck in there. The man might find a way to clean it all up in a day or two, but it will take a small army of maids to do it.”
It took Nigel some patient work to sort Nina’s papers out of the rest, but when he was finished, he had a very tidy stack. All of them sat contemplating it.
This could be very useful, the cat pointed out.
Nigel frowned. “But if I use them, they’ll know we were the ones that took them.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Let me think about this. If we use them, it has to appear that we had them before the real Nina appeared. Now how can I do this. . . .”
They all waited, Ninette holding her breath. Over the time that she had been here, she had seen Nigel say something about “thinking,” watched him close his eyes, then come up with something brilliant roughly three times. It had become apparent after the second time that he was not a successful impresario by accident, nor because he used his magic to make himself one. He was a shrewd businessman, with, when he needed to invoke it, the ability to see a way to do something that no one else would have thought of—or at least no one else would have thought of in as short a period of time.
The others all must have been used to this as well, since everyone, even Wolf, remained completely quiet. Traffic noise from the street below came in through the open windows, filtered slightly by the gold gauze curtains there that kept the insects out. A newsboy cried the latest edition from the corner, and that was when Nigel opened his eyes and smiled.
It was to Jonathon he turned.
“I need one of our smartest boys,” he said. “Two if you can manage it. They have to be clever, a bit manipulative and sly. Baker Street Irregulars, if you will.”
Jonathon grinned unexpectedly. “I know just the lads,” he said. “I use them myself as often as I can, and I thought—well, this is for later, but I thought we might put them in the act. I could do with a couple of apprentices.”
Nigel tilted his head to the side. “You’ve always said you didn’t need—”
“That was when I was going to be traveling about all the time,” Nigel interrupted, flushing. “I didn’t want to have to keep track of a damned boy on trains and boarding houses and strange theaters. But when this scheme of yours blossoms, we’ll be a repertory company. The whole theater will be keeping an eye on them. Never mind that now, you want Scott Merry and Stubbins. They’re thick as thieves, those two, and smart as they come. Scotty’s the older by about a year. What’s the plan for them?”
Nigel was already separating out the material into four piles. “I am going to want them to somehow sneak these into the files at the four major newspapers. I want it to look as if, when we first engaged Ninette, that I sent these publicity materials to the newspapers. By then, the whole brouhaha of her being found on the shore had died down, so this would have been by way of a reminder to them that she was a great dancer on the Continent.” He removed folders from a drawer of his desk and wrote Nina’s name, the name of the theater, the words Biographical Material, and a date on each of them, then filled each folder from one of his piles.
Jonathon shook his head in admiration, and Arthur beamed. “Brilliant!” the musician crowed. “And when we go to those papers to say that we have no idea where this imposter came from—”
“They will go to their files, find this, and be convinced we gave it to them long before this woman appeared.” Nigel beamed himself. It was an infernally clever idea. “Now, I’ll want the boys to put these in almo
st the right place, so that it’s logical to have been overlooked.”
“Let me get them,” Jonathon said, and took off. He returned with two boys somewhere between twelve and fourteen years old. One, taller, with black hair, was obviously “Scotty,” which meant the other, a smaller, darker boy with an innocent face until you saw the gleam of mischief in his eyes, must be “Stubbins.”
Nigel explained what he wanted, and, to Ninette’s astonishment, why he wanted it, although he didn’t reveal that Ninette was the imposter herself, nor that the materials were stolen.
“Now maybe this seems dishonest—” Nigel concluded, sounding doubtful.
Scotty snorted. “Bloody well it don’t,” he replied. “No reason t’hev given ’em this stuff before the big show, right, guv’nor? ’Cept now we gots this gel yappin’ ’bout how she’s the real Ma’mselle. An’ if we gives ’em the papers now, they says, ‘well, y’coulda just got all this anywhere! ’ an’ we’re still lookin’ bad. But if they gots the papers and thinks they gots ’em afore this gel shows up, then Bob’s yer uncle!”
“Ain’t dishonest,” Stubbins mumbled. “Jest puttin’ things roight.” He cast a sideling glance at Ninette. “Ma’mselle Nina’s one uv us, ain’t she? So we gotter take care uv ’er.”
“All right then!” Nigel said brightly. “Here’s the papers, and here’s a few shillings for you two—it will probably take all day, and you’ll need some luncheon, and money for the ’bus. Off you go! Report directly to me soon as you get back!”
Ninette smiled to herself, knowing that Nigel had given the boys at least twice as much as they needed, and had given them no deadline to meet. He had, in essence, awarded them with a bit of a holiday and the money to make it a rather jolly one at that. She felt terribly touched by Stubbins’ mumbled assertion that she was “one of them” too.
“Do you think they can manage it?” she asked Jonathon, who rolled his eyes and laughed.
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