Good Night, Mr. Holmes Part 31

A FAMILIAR FORM OF ADDRESS.

I cannot say which of the three objects in our new quarters was the more ignored in the week that followed: the Norton chest, the grand piano or the bird, Casanova.

The parrot required food and water (our housekeeper, Mrs. Seaton, cleaned the cage). It greeted me as rudely as ever, but in the course of my tending I found that plying it with peeled grapes (a great favorite of Irene's) encouraged a gentler diction. We even were making progress on "Ca.s.sie want a crumpet?"

Irene sometimes paused beside the cage to coo French at it in hopes of stimulating some risque phrases. I wouldn't have recognized a naughty French phrase if I heard it, which is no doubt why a foreign language is always favored for such things. I quite suspect that the French couch their most licentious thoughts in English or German.

Save for a daily drive at five o'clock through Regents Park, our lives were models of domestic tedium. I had never before appreciated how much the struggle to earn one's daily bread gave life structure and even excitement.

G.o.dfrey called on us once or twice a week, not pleased by our lethargy. He frowned at the closed chest and the covered piano and whispered little French nothings, of a salacious nature, I fear, to Casanova.

His third visit was quite different, however. On being admitted that evening by Mrs. Seaton, he burst into the sitting room, where I sat sewing and Irene reading.

"News!" G.o.dfrey flourished the Daily Telegraph.

Irene sat forward. "Of the King? He is in England!?"

"No, of your former employer, Tiffany. He is in France. He is in Paris, in fact, for the auction of the French crown jewels."

"Oh, is that all?" Irene reluctantly set aside her book.

"It is the auction of the century. Diamonds dating back to Cardinal Mazarin will be sold, as well as those inadvertently left behind by the fleeing Empress Eugenie."

"What is it to me?" Irene said. "I have funds, but not so many that I may bid against Mr. Tiffany."

"Miss Adler, this is the collection of jewels from which the Zone of Diamonds disappeared. They are its sister stones, so to speak. I propose that we go to Paris to observe the auction. We both speak French. Perhaps we can uncover some clue to the Zone's whereabouts."

"Go to Paris?" Irene took the folded newspaper G.o.dfrey had been waving under her nose and studied it. "The auction occurs in only three days."

"We can be in Paris in one."

"The best clue to the Zone lies buried in that box of your father's."

"I know, but if we are stalled in the present, then we should inquire into the Zone's past."

"This is mad!" Irene laughed despite herself. "One can't simply pick up and go on a wild goose chase to Paris-"

"Why not? My time is my own, as is yours; no cases pend. We could reclaim your trunks in person. Besides, Paris in May is most delightful."

Irene worried the braid on her skirt as she considered. I had never seen her so indecisive. Suddenly she glanced up at G.o.dfrey. "Very well. If you are game, I am. But I still think the scheme is mad."

"As do I!" I put in. "Irene, it would be most improper for you to travel with G.o.dfrey unchaperoned, and I have no intentions of going to such a sinful city as Paris!"

"A pity," G.o.dfrey said, "for if you went you'd see that Paris is not so much sinful as seductive, therefore the guilt, as with beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Yet it is best that you remain to tend my office in my absence; I've dismissed your replacement."

Delighted as I was to contemplate the daily discipline of work, the notion that G.o.dfrey could so blithely forego my company on an adventure stunned me. I glanced at Irene, who was regarding G.o.dfrey with equally keen surprise.

'Irene?"

She shook herself at my voice as if escaping a reverie. "Mr. Norton is quite correct This will be a whirlwind trip, will it not?' He nodded. "Dear Nell, I cannot in good conscience drag you from pillar to post so soon after our thrilling escape from Bohemia. And we... might uncover news of the Zone."

"You will go, then?" G.o.dfrey said hopefully.

Irene nodded. "Despite one serious drawback to your proposal." She glanced sternly at me. "And that drawback is not propriety, Nell; I refuse to abide by conventions that hamper my freedom. No, the great pity is that our flight has left me with no suitable gowns for my first visit to Paris."

"My dear Miss Adler, you would take Paris by storm in rags, like a good Republican; in what you wear tonight, the city will fall at your feet."

"An exaggeration, Mr. Norton," Irene said drily, "most out of character for a barrister. We would leave...?"

He shrugged happily. "The day after tomorrow, and return in three days. I will make the arrangements first thing in the morning."

G.o.dfrey left soon after, leaving me speechless, but not for long.

"I suppose it will do me as much good as Casanova to croak about your plans," I said. "I must express myself, however distasteful you find my opinion. Irene, this jaunt with G.o.dfrey is most improper."

She had returned to her book, so all I saw was the top of her hair where lamplight kindled auburn flames among its wood-brown l.u.s.ter. Her glance flashed its former fire.

"My dear Nell, if the outing were not half-mad and totally improper, it would not be any fun! Your friend G.o.dfrey is well aware of that. He feels that I waste away here and wanted to provide me with an irresistible lure to action."

"Apparently he has," I huffed.

Irene smiled. "Apparently, but I think he has misjudged the lure."

"You are not going because of the diamond auction?"

"No more than he is."

"But why, then?"

She simply smiled again and shrugged. Later, I heard her humming "Frere Jacques" to Casanova.

Even the Temple's almost celestial air of peace did little to quiet my conscience while I worked at the pile of ma.n.u.script in G.o.dfrey's Temple offices. The temporary typists employed during my absence had misplaced everything, lagging pitifully behind in their work.

I rapped the keys at my usual brisk pace, finding the activity a good method of dissipating my distemper. Pages flew through my platen, entering pristine and white to emerge soiled with type.

So I viewed the state of Irene's reputation, until I finally considered that her liaison with the King of Bohemia, no matter how innocent, had likely ruined that reputation forever. And then, I could think of no man on this earth by whom I would prefer her to be improperly escorted than G.o.dfrey Norton. In this case, he was the least of all possible evils.

Yet I also felt a sense of abandonment, as I had on Irene's first removal to Europe. This time the pang was doubled; the two people most dear to me appeared perfectly able to dispense with my presence. So sometimes I typed through tears of self-pity, for which I berated myself, and then I made a stupid mistake and had to rip out the sheet of paper and start all over again...

Someone entered the office at a moment when I least felt like dealing with the public. I kept typing to the end of the sentence, then turned, about to exercise my frustration on whoever had been unwise enough to enter.

The visitor was a tall slender man with sharp features. His silk plush top hat was properly in his hand, but he looked at me so intently that I felt certain he could see the tears ebbing in my eyes.

"Mr. Norton, I perceive, is away from chambers for a few days," he said swiftly.

I glanced through the open door to G.o.dfrey's sanctum. His wig and gown hung on their proper hooks and the cluttered desk retained an air of occupancy, perhaps because of his hasty departure.

"He is on the Continent," I announced importantly. "But how...?"

The visitor smiled wearily, as if the question were all too familiar. "An empty envelope bearing the name of a Fleet Street ticket agent has fallen on the floor by the door. Obviously Mr. Norton discarded it just as he left."

"With all this paper hither and yon you noticed that?"

"Observation is my profession."

"Indeed. Many could say that. If I did not observe these handwritten doc.u.ments properly, I should not be able to typewrite them accurately. I have a great deal of that very thing to do, so I suggest that you call again-"

"Perhaps you can settle my business now. Can you tell me whether Mr. Norton is a son of the late John Chappie Norton?"

The query doused my composure like a bucket of ice water. "How in the world should I know that?"

"You have worked with Mr. Norton for some time, although not in recent months. And you are observant, Miss-"

"Huxleigh!" I barked. "And it is true that I have... been away, but-" I would not, I would not ask this odiously prescient man how he had determined the length and interrupted nature of my employment.

He smiled briefly. It was not an expression that softened his angular features.

"You are reordering the doc.u.ments on the shelf above you. Half the files are kept horizontally, half vertically, but the fattest-therefore the oldest-are vertical. Obviously, a subst.i.tute who is too lazy to reach a bit higher has interrupted your admirable system, Miss Huxleigh."

"I had already concluded that the recent temporary was lazy, for the work is sadly behind. Any fool could see that. He apparently could not keep up."

The gentleman smiled again. "But you have not answered my question."

"I..." What to do? I couldn't lie, yet I didn't want to betray information G.o.dfrey wanted to keep to himself. "It is not for me to say. Is it a matter of... inheritance?" I knew, of course, that Black Jack Norton had died penniless, but wished to ask the expected question.

"It is not for me to say," the gentleman returned, "but I have been trying to trace relations of the late Norton for some time."

I shook my head. "You must ask Mr. Norton when he returns."

"And that will be?"

"Thursday."

The gentleman nodded and replaced his hat as he stepped to the door.

"Sir! Whom may I tell Mr. Norton to expect?"

"Oh, I doubt he knows of me. But the name is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes. I will leave my card."

I took it wordlessly and watched the tall figure move through the clutter with catlike precision. My eyes didn't leave the door until long after he had closed it. When they did, they settled on the card, which contained not only the name of Irene's rival for the Zone of Diamonds, but also an address that was hauntingly familiar, even from the day when Irene and I had first met, and then together had met the late Mr. Jefferson Hope.

"Two-twenty-one-B Baker Street," I whispered, perhaps hoping that saying the address aloud would banish it. The print remained quite unaltered.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

"Sherlock Holmes!" Irene exclaimed.

I was too bursting with the news of my recent encounter to withhold it a moment after my friend's return to the door of Briony Lodge.

Now she stood in mid-threshold, her face blank with shock.

"Who," G.o.dfrey asked from behind her frozen figure, "is Sherlock Holmes?"

"Sherlock Holmes was making inquiries about G.o.dfrey's father?" Irene repeated in disbelief.

"More about G.o.dfrey, actually," I said.

Irene glided like a sleepwalker into the hall, reaching to unpin her bonnet-a smart new one with "Paris" written all over it. G.o.dfrey hovered behind her as she lifted her veil before the mirror. Despite her shock, Irene's face radiated well-being. Three days in Paris had erased weeks of heart-break in Bohemia, as if that clever Parisian milliner had put stars in her eyes and roses on her cheeks along with the fas.h.i.+onable bonnet atop her head. I developed new respect for millinery then and there.

"Irene." G.o.dfrey spoke low, his gloved hands pausing urgently on her shoulders, "what is so sinister about this Holmes fellow inquiring about my father? I no more like having my family history unearthed now than when you did it, but surely the matter is not so serious as you seem to think."

She gave him a vague, rea.s.suring smile. "No, it is not, G.o.dfrey. It is simply that the paths of myself and this Mr. Holmes have nearly crossed at times in the past. The first occasion was when Mr. Tiffany employed us both to trace the Zone of Diamonds."

G.o.dfrey set hat, cane and gloves on the hall console. "So the trail warms again. I wonder why?"

"Likely for the same reason that you wish me to concentrate on finding the Zone-the sale of crown jewels we have just attended in Paris. Perhaps Mr. Tiffany has engaged Mr. Holmes to renew the investigation."

"Or this Holmes fellow has stumbled on a new clue," G.o.dfrey said. "I suppose I shall have to see him; better I be forewarned."

"I regret greeting you with such disturbing news," I put in, feeling utterly forgotten and more than somewhat aggrieved since my dramatic news had precipitated the conversation, "but when the gentleman gave his name, I thought my poor heart would stop."

But my past cardiac condition was not as pressing to them as the present matter of Sherlock Holmes.

"What is this man's interest anyway?" G.o.dfrey sounded a trifle annoyed-perhaps not only by this revived interest in his unhappy family but also by Irene's fascination with the man Holmes. I had never observed a possessive streak in him before.

"All mysteries are his interest," Irene said, warming to her subject and growing even more radiant. "Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective and a splendid one. From what I've read-or inferred-in the papers, his fine investigative hand has touched every criminal sensation of the past decade."

"I have never heard of the man!" G.o.dfrey objected.

"Of course not. The police are quick to claim all credit for themselves. Subtlety was never their chief virtue."

"Apparently subtlety is not this man Holmes's virtue, either," G.o.dfrey grumbled, "or he would not have come openly to my chambers."

"How could he know that your typewriter girl has an astute nose for intrigue and a very long memory?" Irene, amused by G.o.dfrey's discomfiture for some odd reason, smiled fondly at me. "We must consider this latest development that Nell presents us, but first I will change."