"Herbal poison. It could have been something as simple as the crushed seeds-or pips-of several apples administered as food..." She paused while Hortense's haughty face blanched. "It could have been an exotic herbal hair restorer poured into a beverage, an innocuous tea, perhaps." Bertrand winced.

"It could have been other, more imaginative substances administered by other, less likely candidates." Irene pa.s.sed before the King and his mother, her candelabrum briefly illuminating their stiff disbelief.

I feared she had ventured too boldly on this course: von Ormsteins were not likely to put up with playing possible suspects for long.

Irene paused before the doctors, silent, her gaze compelling. An awful suspicion dawned in my mind. No one had considered the royal physicians! Were they the "patriots" Irene suspected of poisoning the King?

"The doctors," she declaimed, pausing, "the doctors tell me that the poison was neither drunk nor eaten. If... they are to be believed."

Here, both began stuttering at once. "Y-y-es! Cer-certainly so!"

"If they are to be believed," she emphasized, "the poison was... inhaled... through the skin. Something that was present daily, like a baby's powder. Something that could gradually weaken the King's resistance and then- at the right moment-could be administered in a ma.s.sive dose that would kill. Silently. Invisibly. Or... almost invisibly."

The Queen Mother began to sob quietly.

"Enough!" The present King put a giant arm around his mother's doll-like shoulders.

Irene ignored him, stepping instead to the bedcurtains. She swept them back as if revealing a stage setting.

"Nothing here has been changed since the late King died. Nothing. Not even the one thing that would change every day, for the victim was a king and was given every luxury. The bedlinens!"

With a long fluid gesture, Irene threw back the coverlet and bedsheets, creating a wave of lace-frothed linen. Everyone gasped at the bald presentation of the bed bereft of its occupant. Irene lowered the candelabrum to the revealed white linen. A fine golden dust glimmered amidst the weave.

The Queen Mother tottered forward to look. "Gold... gold dust."

"Lethal gold, your Highness," Irene said. "The tree is called Golden Chain and every part of it is lethal. It stifles its victims' breath and is nigh undetectable."

"The sheets," Dr. Sturm said with a start. "Yes... the victim was wrapped in his poison, his every move grinding it deeper into his pores, inhaling it."

"And such lethal wrappings could be changed daily!" Dr. Drang added. "Clever, oh, so very clever."

"Who," Irene asked, "would suspect a chambermaid?"

She turned her fistful of candlelight upon the silent young woman standing in the shadow of the huge wardrobe. The maid was of peasant stock, solid and plain. Under the melodramatic light of the candles, her stolid features crumbled into disbelief.

"It cannot be!" the accused maid cried. "I changed the sheets myself afterward, though the doctors ordered me not to! No trace should be left, nothing!"

Irene lowered the candelabrum and her voice at once. "Why?"

The maid's head had lolled onto her chest. When it lifted her voice was leaden, indifferent. "They felt, the others, that the eastern kingdoms could separate from the Empire, that we should take every opportunity to topple a king. I was already here in the castle."

"You did the deed because you were convenient?" The King's question clapped like thunder.

"We have always been here, waiting," the woman answered. "We are your subjects," she added bitterly, "your servants."

The Queen Mother spoke at last. "If the perpetrator had not been apprehended, she would have waited longer-until Willie was vulnerable... or myself, or any of us."

"Mein Gott!" Bertrand mumbled, realizing for the first time that he had risked losing more than his hair.

"I've taken the liberty, your Highness," Irene addressed the Queen Mother, "of having the captain of the castle guards standing by to take the wrongdoer into custody."

"Excellent," boomed the King. "Take her from this place she has dishonored. We wish to see her no more."

The old King's body servant left as the girl was removed.

"And he?" the King asked Irene.

She shook her head and set down the heavy candelabrum, shaking her strained wrist. "Only one was needed."

Hortense turned from her inspection of the sheets, her fingertips bronzed. "How could this powder remain in laundered sheets?"

Irene lifted the slender vial of Golden Seal, only half full. "No powder remained, but I needed to stimulate a confession. I suppose this subterfuge will be awkward to defend at the trial-"

"Trial?" The King was incredulous. "My dear"-he glanced to his family and plunged into the formal manner of address-"my dear Miss Adler, there will be no trial."

"No... trial? What will you do with her?"

"Question her for her confederates' names and whereabouts. Keep her where she can never do more harm."

"But-" Irene hoisted her candelabrum again to inspect the four royal faces regarding her stiffly.

"We are most grateful." The Queen Mother swept forward to usher us from the room. "You have solved a great misdeed and taken the weight of suspicion from our own shoulders. Now all must be forgotten."

"All," repeated Hortense, reaching to s.n.a.t.c.h the notes from my fingers.

"I will speak to you in the morning." The King bowed over Irene's hand to kiss it. "Until then."

"Yes," unprepossessing little Bertrand put in as if repulsing peddlers, "the family has much to discuss now that this business is behind us. The affairs of the kingdom have suffered of late. Good night, ladies."

Irene and I found ourselves in the corridor-unfeted and unsung. I joined Irene in her chambers, loath to retire until the evening's surprises had faded.

"Poor little fool!" Irene said bitterly as soon as we had crossed her threshold and found ourselves alone. For a moment I thought she referred to herself.

"Your performance was brilliant, Irene," I said to console her for the anticlimax of ingrat.i.tude that had ended the evening.

"A bit overdone, but the peasant mentality is still fresh enough to respond to melodrama." Irene laughed suddenly. "I thought Willie should have me carted away to a sanitarium when I began making my rounds with the candelabrum."

"No one could antic.i.p.ate where you were leading us. I thought for certain you were about to accuse Hortense."

"If I had been forced to accuse a member of the Royal Family, I would have chosen a far more public arena. As it is, that would-be patriot will pay an ugly price for her crime, heinous as it is."

Irene cast herself onto the chaise lounge and lit a cigarette with a lucifer from the table. "Don't look so disapproving, Nell; I've had a frightful evening." She threw back her head as she inhaled the strong smoke, then let it drift out in lazy tendrils. "I never dreamed that the little fool would not face public justice."

I huddled forward on the ottoman. "Where do you suppose they will keep her?"

"Below," Irene intoned grimly. "There must be a dark, dank 'below' we never saw beneath all this candlelit gilt and frou-frou. Oh, it quite takes the frosting off my cake," she burst out, "this ... high-handed royal trait of handling traitors in secret. I am responsible for that girl's admitting her crime; I will not live in ignorance of the price she pays for it!" Irene's foot began tapping the chaise frame, rapping like Mr. Poe's raven as smoke spiraled around her head.

"It is not the triumph you imagined, then?" I said.

"I expected more direct dealing. And more grat.i.tude. The family von Ormstein seem more obsessed with hiding the crime than wringing justice from it."

" 'Court intrigue and peasant revolt,'" I murmured.

"What?" Irene demanded.

"What G.o.dfrey warned me you meddled in."

"G.o.dfrey?"

"Norton. My employer."

"Oh." Irene was too agitated by the disturbing turn of recent events to consider past acquaintances from London, to even think of England.

"Perhaps we should go home, Irene. Mr. Dvoak is most concerned for you."

"I am singing 'Spectre Bride' next; I cannot go home. Besides, matters have not been settled with Willie."

"You mean... your relationship?"

"I mean this blatant disregard for the courts of justice." She took another puff upon the tiny cigar that had been feminized by the French suffix of ette, then crushed it out in a crystal tray. "I must talk to Willie first thing in the morning. Perhaps when his family is no longer present..."

"First thing," I agreed, rising. "And now let me play maid since yours has long since vanished-"

Irene cast me an alarmed look. "It would behoove us, Penelope, to wonder where our servitors go when their ch.o.r.es are done-a garret with bars upon the window?"

"I'm sure not. A servant's garret, certainly, but not so dreadful as that. And you say that my imagination has become baroque in Bohemia!"

"Perhaps mine has been blind, dear Nell; perhaps I have only seen what I cared to see, which is the first price of pretensions to royalty."

Chapter Twenty-two.

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA.

The King called upon Irene the next morning as she and I were indulging in hot chocolate and a surfeit of pastry in her sitting room.

"Good morning, dear ladies," he greeted us, in enormous good temper.

He looked like a man who had seen a ma.s.sive burden lifted from his shoulders, in great part thanks to Irene's investigation. The smart uniform he so often affected was brushed to its scarlet and black best, and his boots were as shiny as coal tar.

Irene brightened at the King's obvious good spirits. She had begun to think that her good deed in unmasking the late king's murderer had taken a very bad turn indeed.

He began on an intimate, teasing note: "Irene, you are a sight to make the angels sigh in envy. I must whisk you to Vienna to acquire more of those winsome frivolities you ladies call combing gowns."

"Vienna! Oh, Willie, I feared I should have to kidnap you to get there again. As soon as 'Spectre Bride' is over."

"Tsk," said the King, sitting on the ottoman and putting his hands on his knees, fingers inward, elbows turned out. "We will go next week. We must wash the memories of past troubles from our minds. A jaunt to the capital will be like tonic water rinsing away impurities. Perhaps you could go now with Miss Huxleigh, and I could join you later."

"Willie, you are impossible! So set on one course and then, changing it, you rush in the opposite direction. I cannot quit Prague now; you know I am rehearsing 'Spectre Bride.' My investigative adventures must not distract you from my operatic efforts. I have never let them do that, I a.s.sure you."

"Your adventures, yes." The King sighed, a great bellows of a gesture from so heroic a chest. "It is best to forget these things. As for the opera, it is already attended to. You are free! You need never attend another rehearsal. The company will find another soprano to serve as prima donna."

"What are you saying?" Irene stood, nearly overturning her cup of chocolate had I not rushed to steady it. "That can't be! Mr. Dvoak is depending upon me."

"Mr. Dvoak gives you his blessing. 'Go, go,' he says. 'I cannot stand in her way.'" The King demonstrated Mr. Dvoak's farewell with repeated flicks of his hand, as though shooing chicks from a henyard.

"Willie! Mr. Dvoak did not dismiss me?"

The King shrugged, looking for a moment like a guilty little boy. I glanced from Irene's white face to his robust, complacent one and was tempted to box his ears. Seated as he was on the ottoman, I could reach them nicely.

"Mr. Dvoak has no need of you, Irene. This... operatic delusion is simply a convenience, is it not? An excuse for your removal from Warsaw to Prague on my account. I appreciate your discretion, but-"

She clasped her hands until the knuckles went white. "Your presence here was not a deterrent, certainly, but always-always!-my primary purpose has been my career. Now you tell me that I am brushed away like a piece of lint-"

"No, no, nothing like that. Dvoak accommodates us, that is all."

"Us? Are you employing the royal 'we,' Willie?" Irene's voice was ominously level.

The King cleared his throat. "I speak for the future, and in the future it will not be necessary for you to sing. You will not need the money, for I will provide that. As for audiences, you will have no more loyal and exclusive admirer than myself."

Here he pressed his hand to the medals winking over the vicinity of his heart. I held my breath. Like most n.o.blemen, he had learned to disregard persons of an inferior cla.s.s like myself. Thus it was that I was witnessing the King of Bohemia proposing to my friend, Irene Adler. And she did not like it.

"An exclusive audience smacks of an empty opera house, Willie," she said.

"It smacks of a full palace, Irene, a beautiful palace in the verdant hills to the south. All yours, Irene. You may have your little English friend with you there... pets, if you so desire, all that you wish."

She listened to him, her head half turned away as if she tried to heed another voice, as if she could not quite believe what she was hearing.

"South? We will live farther into the... country?"

"Beautiful country, Irene. You will be mistress of your own palace, of all you survey."

"Mistress?"

"And Vienna, we will have trips to Vienna-Paris, even, on occasion. Yes, Paris is more discreet."

"Discreet? Has not Prague been discreet enough?"

He bit his full lower lip, making himself seem to pout instead of showing indecision. My governess instincts for brewing mischief were raising my hackles. Large Willie was up to something very naughty, something I itched to slap him for, did I dare, but I could no more see it than Irene.

"It is your father's murder," she said suddenly. "Your family wishes to hide the fact; you fear that I would not respect your desires in this matter. That is why you have had me dismissed from the National Theatre and talk of banishing me to the country-Willie, for G.o.d's sake, it is not necessary to silence me this way! It is, after all, your family's affair and I do not need the credit. I must respect your wishes even if I do not approve of the treatment of the criminal. And now, I must find Mr. Dvoak and reclaim my position-"