She finally turned to him and lifted the bowler hat from her head, then the money bag. Last, she pulled the long tortoise sh.e.l.l pins from her hair and shook it onto her shoulders.

G.o.dfrey Norton was not a barrister for nothing. Not a muscle of his face moved as Irene proceeded with her unveiling. During the following pause, G.o.dfrey studied Irene from stem to stern. Then he said conversationally, "Miss Adler, I presume?"

In answer she pulled a cigarette from her breast pocket. Before she could withdraw a lucifer, G.o.dfrey snapped a lighted one into his fingers. She inhaled long and shakily at its fire, then sat back.

"I could smoke one myself," G.o.dfrey said.

Irene offered him her case. He managed to light a cigarette from the last of the lucifer before his fingers should scorch, then shook it out. Twin blue hazes drifted around the carriage and mingled sinuously.

I fluttered my hand for mercy. "I shall have to get out and walk soon, and, believe me, I do not wish to."

"Sorry." G.o.dfrey cracked open a window so the smoke slithered into the glorious foggy haze of a London afternoon. "I confess myself at a loss."

Irene looked at me. I looked at her. We began laughing. She flicked her cigarette through the window slit. We began laughing harder. We laughed and laughed until we fell into each other's arms in relief and hilarity and hysteria.

G.o.dfrey Norton watched us and wisely held his tongue.

At our new rooms on a still-shabby street of four-story rooming houses in Chelsea, G.o.dfrey saw us into an adequate suite furnished with antimaca.s.sar-covered anonymity. "You apparently have funds," he began.

I nodded.

"Another day," Irene said from the window to which she had gone as a caged bird seeks the light.

The comparison reminded me of Casanova; I was startled to find my ears missing the parrot's sotto voce serenade of squawks, grumbles and ostentatious feather-preening, so like the subtle rustle of taffeta petticoats.

G.o.dfrey eyed the stiff figure in masculine dress with the auburn hair cascading to its shoulders. His eyes sent mine a mute message of pleased greeting, then he bowed his way out.

Irene and I remained silent in our alien rooms, our only possessions the clothes on our backs, save for the money, the photograph and the ruby brooch from the King of Bohemia. She removed these items from her hat crown and her pockets and person, stringing them along the broad windowsill like offerings for the pigeons. I was startled to see that she had also saved the younger Tiffany's offensive octopod brooch. It lay entwined with the King's starfish of rubies, together the beginnings of a bizarre seascape.

"It was wise to telegraph Mr. Norton," Irene said from the window. "I could not have struggled on a moment longer."

I joined her there, once again viewing a carriage roof and a vanishing top hat. This time I knew its possessor and Irene was staring down in numb indifference.

She bent her forehead to the gla.s.s. "I am tired, Nell, so very, very tired."

Chapter Twenty-five.

A FRIEND IN DEED.

True to his word, G.o.dfrey did not intrude upon us.

This put me to some suspense. I found myself worrying when he did not even inquire at what point I might return to his employ-Irene's gold would not last forever, and, besides, I had my own living to earn-or when I would remove the unlovely Casanova from his custody. I felt redundant.

Irene, of course, was indifferent to G.o.dfrey's absence. She occupied the first few days of our return with converting her foreign money into pounds.

Once she had funds to support herself, she set about restoring her lost clothing. Instead of haunting the used clothing markets with a hunter's pa.s.sion as she had used to, or hieing to a dressmaker, she purchased excellent but unextraordinary items from the department stores (not Whiteley's) with as much enthusiasm as she would have bought dust cloths from the ragman.

All her actions those first days occurred in a methodical fog. After the enterprise of our headlong escape from Bohemia, it seemed a trifle tame.

One evening after dinner at a respectable restaurant, we sat reading in our forlorn rooms, both silent. I missed the familiar clutter of the Saffron Hill rooms, thinking it sad that much that once meant a great deal to Irene lay unused while we languished here.

She stirred and sighed. "I shall require an agent."

"For performance?" I chirped, cheered by the idea of Irene resuming her singing career.

She smiled wanly. "Performance seems a world away! No, we must find larger, more permanent quarters, and someone must inquire of my Paris acquaintance, without betraying my whereabouts, if my trunks arrived untrammeled. Do you think, Nell, that your barrister friend, Mr. Norton, would care to act for me in these-and more delicate-matters?"

I was astounded that Irene had accepted G.o.dfrey as "my friend" rather than her long ago rival for the Zone of Diamonds or merely my (perhaps) former employer.

"I should be delighted to ask him," said I, relieved to have an excuse to visit G.o.dfrey the very next day, as indeed I did.

What a glorious May day it was-crisp-aired, with budding leaves crimping every tree limb and bush. A faint porcelain-blue bowl of sky yawned over London's everlasting grit and bustle.

"My dear Penelope!" G.o.dfrey greeted me with genuine pleasure. "Come in. Sit. Have a dish of tea! I have been fretting over your welfare this past week, but did not wish to intrude uninvited."

I noticed an insipid-looking male clerk laboring in the outer office as G.o.dfrey ushered me into his inner sanctum. There I felt that same cozy sense of belonging that I a.s.sociated with my late father's study-the comfortable yet practical a.s.semblage of furniture, the piled papers and open books, the air of quiet thought that suffused the chamber.

"Your 'intrusion' would never be that for me," I returned, "and as for being uninvited... I have come because Irene wonders if you would care to represent her in some matters both small and large, I think, though she has not confided her full intentions to me."

He leaned back in his chair, the tepid summer sunlight playing softly across his well-cut features. "Represent her! That is a change of tune."

"Her tune is not all that has changed, G.o.dfrey." I rose at a familiar salutation and went to inspect Casanova in his cage. The old brute stuck out his black tongue at me, but I offered him a bit of biscuit from breakfast anyway. Then I faced G.o.dfrey again. "I'm worried. Irene is not one to sit back and let life buffet her, yet she has been most strangely... pensive... since our return."

"A rather harrowing return, I gather."

"That is not for me to say," I answered primly. "I can only state that she has been very badly used in Bohemia, and by one who had every obligation to defend rather than harm her. I can't say how much she will find it necessary to confide in you, but do not judge her harshly, I beg you. Irene has had no fault in this save failing to see perfidy behind the mask of friendship."

He toyed with the white horsehair wig that lay askew atop a tower of law books. "You said Miss Adler sent for you because she needed help. Were you able to be of service?"

I smiled. "Yes, I think so; princ.i.p.ally in providing a responsibility for her to meet in removing me safely from Bohemia. That is what I fear she lacks now-a focus for her energies and talents. She has come back with quite literally nothing, save money, and shows no sign of restoring what has been lost."

"You said 'safely.' Had things come to so dangerous a pa.s.s?"

"Irene thought so. Ask her yourself, G.o.dfrey. I am not at liberty to speak for her."

"Very well. I'm trying a case in Fleet Street, but it should finish by mid-afternoon tomorrow. Bring her then."

He saw me out, murmuring "Adieu, 'Casanova'" in a most amused tone. Of the Italian libertine's colorful namesake he said not a word, which I found rather worrisome. G.o.dfrey was becoming as sphinx-like as Irene!

I suggested to Irene that we lunch in Fleet Street and stop in at the Royal Courts of Justice to witness G.o.dfrey's case. She agreed with uncustomary docility. I feared that her amiability reflected an indifference to everything around her, rather than any lifting of her mood.

I often had slipped into the visitors' gallery of the Royal Courts when G.o.dfrey appeared before the bar. He was surely the youngest barrister pleading and looked ever so dashing in his fresh white wig and black gown-not like his elders, who resembled animated racks of overweight mutton in their yellowed wigs and whose several chins would barely allow the b.u.t.toning of their neck bands.

That day Irene wore a costume of pearl grey trimmed with violet embroidery. Her bonnet was violet velvet, with an upstanding red ostrich plume that showed far more starch than Irene did at the moment. She carried a st.u.r.dy black leather handbag that the old Irene would never have touched, much less purchased.

She watched G.o.dfrey in court without comment, though I always enjoyed a glow of pride as I observed him make his "M'luds" and bows. To me, he was the only one who exhibited any style. I felt transported to the days when powdered wigs were everyday, when courtesy was an art and the art of argument was always attired in courtesy.

Irene leaned toward me during G.o.dfrey's interrogation of a hostile witness. "May we leave? I find the air close."

We rustled softly out of the courtroom and crossed Fleet Street. I led Irene through the ancient archway to the Inner Temple, with the Crusaders' emblem of lamb and gold cross emblazoned high on the plaster.

"I thought G.o.dfrey's interrogation adeptly handled," I noted.

"He has a flair for the dramatic," Irene responded noncommitally.

"From you that is a criticism?"

"It is a comment. I confess my mind was not much on Mr. G.o.dfrey Norton, but on my own case."

We strolled through the Middle Temple yard toward the river, sparrows fluttering from gutter to gutter above us.

"I see why you love these ancient gardens." Irene stared at the placid Thames rippling in the mild light. She sighed deeply. "This peaceful spot is somehow removed from the tawdry concerns of latter-day London."

"I love the Temple Church," I said, leading her next to that venerable building. She accompanied me like a child, obediently staring at the effigies of the land's first n.o.blemen who had died in the days when knights knew the weight of shield and sword and holy crusade. The chancel was almost deserted. We were gazing up at the vast ceiling when a sudden skirl startled us.

The dissonant chords from the ma.s.sive freestanding organ soon resolved from bagpipe-rudeness to a mellow power. A lone soprano lifted over the softly growling organ's majestic ba.s.s. I saw a woman standing near the ma.s.sive instrument, sheet music fanned open in her hands, her mouth an "O" of outpouring song.

Irene stiffened as if confronting a ghost. She brushed past me in her haste to leave. I found her outside staring bleakly across the yard.

"G.o.dfrey must be through by now," I suggested.

"Yes, let us get this business over with."

He was indeed in, the wig and gown hanging from a coat rack crowded into a corner of his office. He offered no tea, sensing that Irene wished only to attend to business.

"Please be seated, Miss Adler." He gestured her into the leather wing chair facing his desk, leaving me to take a light side chair, which suited me perfectly. I had brought Irene to G.o.dfrey, as she wished. I had no idea what she wished of him, or what she would reveal of herself and our unfortunate adventure.

"We left Bohemia in some secrecy, as you may gather," she began.

G.o.dfrey nodded. Like most barristers, he had mastered the unintrusive nod and the noncommittal hmm.

"I need someone to contact a friend in Paris, to whom I have sent several trunks with my belongings. If they have arrived safely, I would like them discreetly transferred to my lodgings here."

"'If?"' G.o.dfrey said.

Irene's lips almost twisted into a smile at his curiosity, but she did not answer his question. Instead she opened the handbag that she had lifted to her lap like a well-behaved little dog and brought out a slip of paper.

"My friend's name and address. Do you write French?"

"I do, and at times even read it."

"Ah." Irene was mildly surprised. "Balzac and Sand?"

"Dumas pere and fils and Baudelaire," G.o.dfrey said with a laugh.

Her eyebrows raised. "You have adventurous taste for a barrister."

"You have intriguing adventures for an opera singer."

Irene's smile faded. She sighed again, and G.o.dfrey glanced sharply to me. He did not know Irene well, but he knew my tales of her well enough to realize that the woman who sat before him was oddly altered.

"I am uncertain how to proceed, Mr. Norton. Were any other recourse available, I a.s.sure you I should never rely upon the services of someone like yourself."

I cringed at Irene's disdainful tone; I knew it was directed at herself, not at G.o.dfrey or his profession. He could not understand how galling it was for someone as independent as Irene to find herself asking another's aid.

G.o.dfrey spoke without showing offense. "I a.s.sure you, Miss Adler, that you may depend upon me to respect your need for confidentiality."

She nodded, the flagrant red plume trembling in the filtered daylight. "The quandary is this: there are those in Bohemia who may feel it necessary to follow and find me."

"For what purpose?"

"I am not sure, Mr. Norton. One purpose might be so radical as to abstract me from England-it is unlikely, but possible."

"Another purpose?"

"Another motive might be to recover this." She wet her lips and lifted the photograph cabinet from her handbag. Now I understood the object's ungainly size.

"May I see it?"

"It is not necessary."

G.o.dfrey immediately leaned back in his chair, as if to demonstrate no interest in the object.

"It is mine, a gift," Irene said ironically. "The giver has... reconsidered. He wishes to become a taker. He would find my possession of this... item... threatening."

"Then return it to him."

"I cannot. By retaining it, I keep him from taking action against me. He has already had me dismissed from my position with the Prague opera."

"Dismissed?" G.o.dfrey sat forward, his eyes flashing. "He interfered in your operatic career, your livelihood? Why?"

"It did not suit him that I should sing."

"Indeed! May I inquire the ident.i.ty of this music hater?"

She smiled despite herself. "You may. I am not certain that I should answer."

"As you wish."

"Oh, Mr. Norton. You will forgive my sighs and indecision, but the matter is complicated. Perhaps you have a right to know your opponent and the range of his power, if you undertake to aid me in avoiding him. He is no one less than the King of Bohemia."