Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 56

I turned as the pulsing steps pounded nearer. No! The footsteps rang too loud for women's shoes. They were boots. I spun to run forward again, pressing ahead harder, and finally went gasping out into the night air, hearing the distant roar of the fairground crowd as a tiny buzz on the glittering horizon of lights that now seemed as far away as any sunset.

Onward the running footsteps came, in escape or pursuit, neither one boding well for me, alone and undefended as I was.

The Seine sparkled like a ribbon of spangled velvet. Some barrier darkened the view ahead of me, but rows of electric lights traced its outline.

The waterborne panorama building! I was on the level below the gangway that brought sightseers aboard. Heavy footsteps behind me impelled me forward into the dark pa.s.sage and through a door-size opening. Dim light from above sprinkled an a.s.semblage of bulky mechanisms. I felt as if I were in the lumber room beneath the stage of a theater, where deus ex machina gears lay momentarily idle and stage furnis.h.i.+ngs stood jumbled in piles.

I felt my way among the alien shapes, thinking that a panorama was a sort of stage in round form, hoping for some means to reach the main floor of the attraction. What had Irene called the trapdoor in the stage floor designed for the appearance and disappearance of ghosts and monsters . . . ? Ah, the vampire box. I had to hope there was a vampire box here that would allow me to enter the panorama's main floor and then exit into the peaceful night.

I still did not hear the report of shots, and the running footsteps had gone silent.

Nevertheless, I trod as softly as I could in the narrow aisles between wood-and-metal barriers and finally banged my toe on something sharp and metal on the floor.

I swallowed cries of fierce pain. Rejoicing outweighed momentary agony as my patting hands traced the shape of metal steps coiling upward.

I could hear the Seine lapping gently at the s.h.i.+p's exterior. Nothing moved here but the water, for this s.h.i.+p was a building.

I began to climb the tight steep staircase, trying to keep my stick on the curving handrail.

At last I came onto level wooden flooring . . . no vampire box to break free of, just the shadowy environs of the panorama display boxing me into a huge room shaped like the interior of a drum.

Faint electric lights cast fitful light on the painted scenes and figures filling the walls all around. These were not the bright lights of display, but night-lights left on to secure the premises while closed.

My heart beat faster at the notion that a guard might visit this echoing s.p.a.ce from time to time. Was I more in danger of being taken for an intruder than seen as a lost soul in need of rescue?

The panoramas I had heard of since my arrival in Paris had been like the main salon wax tableaux at the Musee Grevin: scenes of real-life pomp like the Czar's coronation or the French President's visit to the Russian fleet. These were huge paintings done in the round and populated with famous figures of the day as well as mobs of n.o.bodies, yet reconstructions in front of the painting, like the exhibits on the exposition grounds, used waxen figures.

So I was not startled to glimpse standing and sitting figures posted all around the room, and even to vaguely recognize a few silhouettes.

A new site honoring the French Revolution's hundredth year on the site of the former Bastille featured a panorama of the storming of the famous prison and a re-creation of the building itself, an eighteenth-century Breton village, and a Historical and Patriotic Museum with a panorama of the life of Joan of Arc! She whose b.l.o.o.d.y feast day this was. The Histoire du siecle panorama continued the theme by presenting the celebrities of each era.

Granted, these many displays repeated themselves, but the French are not a people to blow their own horn only once or twice, and certainly there were patrons enough for each new lavish and self-congratulatory display.

Why I had especially wished to see, that is, "board" this particular panorama on the exposition grounds is because it was the first actually to simulate motion, and very convincingly, too, to hear tell. The clever part is that motion is only of the painted views and not of the so-called s.h.i.+p, so there is none of the lurching that leads to sickness for the pa.s.sengers.

I could indeed testify now to the admirable stability of the good s.h.i.+p Panorama.

I began walking across the "deck," wincing at every creak of the planking beneath my feet. I had no reason to suspect that my unseen pursuers had followed me into the attraction, but no reason to a.s.sume they hadn't either.

I could not help noticing the agreeable representation of Le Havre harbor filled with painted s.h.i.+ps on a painted sea, nor the feeling of security I felt with waxen s.h.i.+p's officers dressed in the smart uniforms of the steams.h.i.+p company that sponsored the attraction.

I had entered by the back and from below. I need only find the front entrance to debark, then seek help. Meanwhile, I prowled the captain's deck in the "open air," the sole moving person among the wax effigies.

A sudden clang from below ended my luxurious solo tour of the scene. Hard boots. .h.i.t the metal steps in quick succession, more than one pair to judge by the rat-a-tat-tat of oncoming footsteps.

Desperate, I looked around. I had not yet discovered the entrance area and was therefore trapped, with only moments to act. . . .

My mind and heart galloped, but in different directions. What would Irene do? What would she do! She would . . . act.

In two of the longest and quietest strides I had ever managed I stepped next to the wax figure of the s.h.i.+p's captain pointing out sights to a female pa.s.senger.

I planted my walking stick on the deck so that I had some support and tucked my hand into the crook of the waxen woman's elbow for further stability. Then I tilted my head politely to gaze with rapt attention at the captain's wax face.

The boots bounded onto the wooden deck behind me and stopped.

I dared not look anywhere but at the bland waxen features so near my own, on which my nearsighted eyes could focus perfectly. His cheeks were as rosy as ripening pears, and there was even a fleck of tobacco from the pipe in his gesticulating hand on his lip!

Behind me the boots began taking long, deliberately noisy steps around the scene.

I was thankful that my wool-check coat-dress not only had the look of a deckside garment, but that the st.u.r.dy material had no generous folds to be still settling from my last, hasty motion.

The boots, perhaps two pair, continued their lordly, leisurely stroll around the scene.

A sudden crack! Wood on wood. My startled heart nearly leaped out of my chest and undid the pin of my lapel watch. But my desperate caution had made me visibly immune to such a trick. I moved not a muscle.

The steps circled to my right now and then in front of me. I sensed motion between me and the panoramic painting, but my nearsightedness protected me from clear view of the man entering my line of sight. He was just a vague blur, like the people in the painting, and I had no trouble keeping my gaze frozen upon the captain.

My performance may have been "wooden" in theatrical terms, but that was just what the situation called for.

I heard one set of boots clattering down the rear circular staircase. The other prowler had paused somewhere before me. Then he moved toward me, pausing behind the captain's shoulder. I forced myself not to blink, and suspended breathing.

A hand reached out. I resisted the urge to avoid it. It dusted off the captain's shoulder. Then it struck the pipe from his hand.

The sound of the piece clattering across the floor could have taken place on another planet for all the attention I paid it.

Keep utterly still, I ordered myself. You are a statue. You cannot move.

Another vaguely seen blow, and the walking stick sailed from under my hand to go spinning across the wooden deck.

My hand remained clutched on empty air. I forced all the will in my body to keep each finger motionless.

The strain was intense.

The man sighed, and I could feel his warm breath on my eyelashes.

Then he spun on his heel and suddenly approached a couple in deck chairs, spinning the woman around. The waxen figure slumped, then slowly fell to the floor.

He made a sound like an inarticulate curse, then was stalking away. Again the metal stairs reverberated with descending steps.

I slowly let my breath depress, then inflate, my bosom.

Still I did not move.

Why were they bothering with me? I wondered. I was of no threat to them. Didn't their vile companions below need their defense? Yet the man I could not quite see had been looking for a woman among the mannequins. Did they think I was Irene?

I waited a long time, wis.h.i.+ng I dared disturb the chatelaine in my pocket to get out my pince-nez. But I had been warned by the Master that it was too noisy on certain occasions. I wished I still wore Irene's borrowed satin slippers of several days ago, for I could have slipped surrept.i.tiously out of them and stolen away over the wooden floor, but I wore high-b.u.t.ton boots too complicated to shed without wasting time or making a betraying sound.

The entrance had to lie ahead, and it had to involve stairs down to the level of the quai.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only ten minutes by the faithful watch affixed to my bosom, I eased my position and took a soft step forward, then another.

A third. A fourth. The building remained silent. Another. In between steps, I breathed.

And then the walls began moving. Just a blurred sense of the painted s.h.i.+ps bobbling in the breeze. I blinked like mad, but the impression only intensified. I heard the creak and thrum of underlying equipment in motion. I could see just enough to feel dizzy, and began running, my steps tapping like one of the wild Congo drums in the street parade.

I seemed to see an aperture, a curtained opening of the kind that blocks light from the seating area of a theater.

I reached it, felt the heavy velvet in my hands, rushed through.

And was suddenly jerked back by someone waiting behind the curtain. I tried to tear loose and bolt back into the panorama room and head for the back steps, but then I could hear boots springing up the metal steps two at a time.

A horridly strong grip had me around the shoulders while a hand clapped a thick, sickly-sweet-smelling cloth over my face.

I struggled like a drowning person, only my eyes above the noxious fumes that were suffocating my senses. I reached up, but my arm only reached as far as the small oval brooch of my watch before it flailed and fell limply away, a waxen appendage that did not quite belong to me.

A ma.s.sive blur was thundering toward me like an ogre from a fairy tale. As the image neared and resolved into that of a man, I could smell the reek of liquor and vomit, could see red streaks upon his coa.r.s.e, loose s.h.i.+rt, see finally and clearly his demented staring eyes, pale as the water that was rising over my head on a nauseous tide. . . .

He was laughing as he neared, a wild man. James Kelly came for me at last. I could sense rough hands pawing at the front b.u.t.tons of my gown, but thankfully could no longer feel, nor think, nor know anything but darkness.

No Quarter

I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and

lolling red tonques, with long, sinewy limbs and shaqqy hair.

-BRAM STOKER, DRACULA

FROM A JOURNAL.

Three of the Rothschilds' men had Irene and me pinned against the rough granite wall, presenting a defensive bulwark to any who would rush us.

We both struggled, in vain, to elude this misguided protective border.

The other five had run to aid the two plainsmen as they tried to herd the dozen or so drunken, moaning wild men and women into one corner of the cavern, away from the bonfire and the crude altarc.u.moperating table.

A few of the group were too wounded to resist. Others were so drunkenly in awe of the oddly attired Americans that they fell on their knees and clutched at the men's fringed trousers. Still, they were mad, drunken brutes who had surrendered to every b.e.s.t.i.a.l urge that the mind of man can imagine in the past couple hours and were not about to be subdued by only two men, however legendary.

Even I could see that neither plainsman was inclined to slaughter such inebriated and pathetic prey, for all their demonic deeds. I imagine they'd both seen, and perhaps done, worse in the Indian Wars.

I did think that the taking and flouris.h.i.+ng of one scalp would have ended the resistance immediately, and this did not seem too b.l.o.o.d.y an act to perform given what we'd seen them do to one of their own, or on the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution and the offices of the guillotine, but do not think it would have done the reputation of the Wild West Show much good for future engagements.

While we were at this impa.s.se, I heard a slight stir down the tunnel.

"Has Nell come back?" I asked Irene.

"I hope not, and I wish you had gone when you had a chance," she said, trying once again to thrust her personal guardian aside, with little success. "The worst have gotten away," she shouted in French at her defender. "Let me go after them!"

But their prime a.s.signment was obviously protection, not capture, and we were the prisoners of their d.a.m.ned French chivalry!

Then a new figure ran onto the scene. At first I thought one of the fiends' number had returned because of his simple workman's trousers and s.h.i.+rt, but this man was taller than any of the fleeing figures.

He paused, observed our tableau against the wall and the other Rothschild agents standing uncertainly behind the contesting figures, their pistols aimed but unfired.

He called some French words. Vite! for hurry, then some I didn't recognize.

The Frenchmen's actions soon revealed his orders. The three men left off impeding Irene and me to join the others in forming a human line that drove the remaining people into so tight a knot that they could no longer fight.

He picked a b.l.o.o.d.y petticoat from the stones and, with a tremendous, heedless show of strength, ripped the cloth lengthwise into rags, tossing them to the agents to use as bonds.

Irene rushed to seize some ruffles from the petticoat hem and went to wind them around the chest of the moaning woman, who still lay by the obscene "altar."

"Was she meant to survive this barbaric rite?" I asked as I knelt beside Irene to a.s.sist in the binding.

"If she didn't bleed to death or become so infected that her festering wounds would kill her. I don't think they thought beyond their frenzy."

"What is the purpose behind it all? And has the Ripper sprung from this cult, or is he someone quite separate?"

"Ask Sherlock Holmes," she said with a sardonic glance to the lean form that was bent over binding hands as we bound wounds. "I imagine that it will take even him some time to decipher the riddle of these lethal ceremonies. It is enough that we have stopped it for tonight, although I fear that-"

The woman we tended had become unconscious, and her release from pain seemed to permit Irene to think beyond the scene at hand.

"Buffalo Bill!" she called out, and he stepped from the ma.s.s of fallen men.

"We've got them hog-tied," he announced. "Danger's over."