"Oh, why am I cooped up here hiding from a phantom pursuit!" she cried, pacing our rented Turkish carpet. "What was he like?"

"Who? Holmes?" G.o.dfrey smiled and leaned back in his chair to choose his words while Irene fretted with impatience.

She had already extracted my impression of the man, but he intrigued her like a legendary chimera: nothing would suit but that he be known to her in some ultimately personal manner.

G.o.dfrey began his summation. "He was quick and to the point-a tall, almost cadaverous figure, hawk-nosed and sharp as a hypodermic needle, with an astuteness that implies a man far beyond his years. I should not like to plead against him in court.

"He evinces a touch of the dramatic common only to slightly vain men, yet his hands and fingernails were blotted with what I first took for ink and later concluded was an a.s.sortment of chemicals, like those of a boy who has been toying with a magic set The cold-blooded inquiry of the scientist resides in his eyes, yet he has the makings of a fine judge-mercilessly fair but unfailingly decisive. Not a man to kowtow to convention, I think, or to be intimidated by rank. There is a... certain machine-like acuity to his manner; he would be cold company to a woman, or a cat. I should rather earn his admiration than his enmity."

"Quite a thorough character sketch from five minutes' conversation," Irene mocked. "But you may not be the best judge of what a woman would find cold company."

"And you may not be the best judge of me," G.o.dfrey returned, unruffled.

Chapter Twenty-nine.

MUSIC LESSONS.

St. John's Wood rang with music as that summer of 1887 fluttered into autumn. Irene soon engaged an instructor: even a few weeks away from her art had caused a diminution in range. She had a photograph of herself wearing Mr. Tiffany's dazzling corsage of diamonds reproduced, making it known through an agent that she was available for select concerts.

Her Continental experience had enhanced her reputation beyond tarnishing. Offers drifted in like falling leaves; Irene chose only the most prestigious. She avoided the operatic stage as too likely to be publicized abroad, instead evolving a program of Schumann songs, "Frauenliebe und leben," which were well received.

Despite my joy at seeing Irene take up the notes and staff of her career again, both G.o.dfrey and I harbored doubts. Once he called when Irene was at the dressmaker's, for her concert engagements required new gowns. He lifted the ill.u.s.trated circular from the side table and studied Irene in her queenly evening dress, only a tiara missing to complete the picture.

"It is a bit more spectacular than Lillie Langtry's famous 'little black dress,' is it not?" I said.

"Irene could sell more than soap with this," he agreed. "It is right for her to sing again, but must she advertise herself so successfully?"

"You think it brazen?"

"Of course it's brazen-and brilliant!" G.o.dfrey smiled. "I should expect nothing less of her. But the King of Bohemia will not have forgotten her. Such publicity may attract pursuit, may even kindle his jealousy and rage."

"He is to be married next spring. I have read it in the papers."

"A civil marriage will not distract him from losing Irene. She has outwitted him. Only the rare man will accept that from a woman."

"Would you?"

"I? I do not attempt to outwit her, therefore can never be outwitted by her. It is, as we say in law, moot. Do you think that I don't discern the real purpose of the nigh-hopeless task she has set me among the banks?"

I blushed but could not defend her.

"She is like my mother," he said abruptly, "mortally wounded by the way the world would limit her. To think that I am following her purpose will make her feel less constricted. Performing again will help also. I only wish I was more certain the King of Bohemia will not strike at her as she becomes visible again."

"Do you not think that Irene has considered that fact?"

"Of course. She misses nothing. But I do not know whether she is ready to face it. And there is a difference."

Autumn came, and with the turning leaves even more concerts for Irene. I a.s.sisted G.o.dfrey at chambers, even, on occasion, relieving him of the effort of contacting yet another bank. Our inquiries met only polite denials. No inst.i.tution in London guarded a safe-deposit box engaged by the late Mr. John Norton.

"Then we shall have to widen our search to the surrounding cities," G.o.dfrey said calmly.

I sometimes believed that he continued this systematic search in the perverse hope of proving to Irene that the Zone was within reach.

I was reminded of fairy tales where the princess sets her suitor an impossible quest to prove his worth, though surely G.o.dfrey was no suitor and Irene certainly not a princess, much less a queen.

Yet Irene was evading something, as G.o.dfrey had implied. Whether it was her past-or the future-I could not say. It was sad to think that G.o.dfrey might be paying the price owed by the King of Bohemia.

We heard no more of Mr. Holmes, although Mr. Tiffany was often in the newspapers as the grande dames of American commerce-the Mmes. Pulitzer, Vanderbilt, Astor and Stanford-proceeded to snap up the best of the French crown jewels.

Still, none of them had ever worn the spectacular diamond corsage that glittered from shoulder to hip like a royal sash of office on Irene's concert bills. That November a Tiffany case arrived by messenger. The leather box enfolded a single row of diamonds set on a velvet collar and banded by pearls; a note from Mr. Tiffany thanked Irene for stirring global interest in the soon-to-be offered corsage. The necklace suited her for concerts, as the supple velvet would not impede her singing.

Irene felt secure enough to begin taking solitary drives in the landau with John Jewett at the reins each afternoon at five, returning for dinner at seven. This salutary combination of freedom and fresh air emphasized the pinked cheeks and sparkling eyes I had not seen since my first days in Bohemia.

So matters settled into a well-worn rut, as carriage wheels carve tracks into fresh snow. Yet snow melts. I had a sense of terrible antic.i.p.ation, as if all our lives were hanging fire before some unforeseen, climactic event. I blamed my overimaginative tendencies and applied myself more industriously to typewriting, as Irene concentrated on her singing and G.o.dfrey contacted outlying banks when he had time.

The brightest spots during those dark, London winter days were the enthusiastic receptions of Irene's recitals.

"I cannot account for it!" she complained in the landau on our way home from her latest performance. "When I poured my energies into a career in London, I was ignored. Now that I am forced to abandon my operatic ambitions and give only the occasional discreet concert, Success falls upon her knees to me!"

"Not every apple on a tree sours at the same time," I said, unearthing an ancient Shropshire proverb.

"Enjoy Dame Success's fulsome bows," G.o.dfrey urged. "She dispenses blows soon enough."

The horse's hooves padded through the light snow coating the cobblestones. Pa.s.sing gaslights bloomed at the carriage windows, striking fire from the thin line of diamonds at Irene's throat, painting G.o.dfrey's formal shirtfront an almost phosph.o.r.escent white.

It was a warm and comfortable moment. G.o.dfrey always attended Irene's concerts, as did I, and invariably escorted us home afterward. Like myself, he realized that Irene needed conversation following a performance, that her artistic nature did not taper off with the last note, but required a period of activity before facing sleep.

Nevertheless, there was peace in our very vivacity. We three seemed suspended in a scene from a Christmas globe that shakes slow-falling snow upon its little world. In the snug carriage interior, our feet upon hot bricks, it seemed that hardship and unhappiness could never touch any of us again.

We descended before Briony Lodge while Jewett took the equipage around to the mews. Caps of snow crowned the gateposts; falling snowflakes carpeted the walk and sifted against the lighted windowpanes.

G.o.dfrey took our elbows as we minced over the cold white carpet nature had provided. Our footsteps ruffled its smoothness as our skirts etched odd swirling patterns in the snow. The entire scene glimmered under a midnight blend of gaslight and moonlight.

Irene paused on the doorstep with a sigh. "It is good to be home. This is the first place I-what is it, G.o.dfrey?"

He had taken the key from her and unlocked the door, but it did not open, despite the click of the chamber. From within the house, where presumably Mrs. Seaton slept, came a m.u.f.fled thump.

"She'll just have to leave her bed and let us in if the key's caught," Irene said.

G.o.dfrey's head lifted as another b.u.mp sounded within. In a moment he had overleaped the steps and was ploughing past the snow-shrouded hedges before the sitting room windows.

He rattled a window frame, forcing the flimsy lock and jumping through it as if it were a door. A sound of scrabbling within the house magnified, accompanied now by grunts and inarticulate curses.

Irene turned as if to follow G.o.dfrey's eccentric entrance route, but I clutched her arm, just in time.

Behind us the front door cracked open. We spun to confront two unfamiliar male faces as startled as our own. The men pushed roughly past us, running down the narrow aisle of snow and through the gate before vanishing into the foggy white corridor of the street beyond.

Another man loomed in the doorway. I lifted my reticule in defense, but G.o.dfrey's voice deflected my blow.

"Are you both all right? Come in, though I can't recommend the sight."

He led us into the hallway, where a side chair lay askew by the wall, and locked the door behind us.

"The photograph?" Irene's voice was chiller than the night.

"Haven't looked," G.o.dfrey said, winded. "Better to secure the house first."

We lit what lamps we could to cast light into the villa's darkened corners. G.o.dfrey refastened the sitting-room window against the riffling snow, drawing the blinds. The upheld lamps cast our distorted shadows upon a landscape of disordered furniture. Cushions were scattered, drawers sagged and rugs lay rumpled, as if moles had tunneled under them.

G.o.dfrey proceeded to search the premises. Below-stairs we found Mrs. Seaton bound and gagged in the pantry. Casanova, ungagged as usual in the dining room, shrilly whistled "Hsst! Hsst!," a new saying owed to the burglars. I tended Mrs. Seaton while G.o.dfrey and Irene explored the upstairs, floors creaking with their steps. I finally rejoined them in the first floor hall, where we all stared at the disarray of Irene's bedroom. Her wardrobe shrouded the furnishings, as if some clumsy maid had resorted to covering the furniture with clothing instead of dust-cloths.

I was not certain that it was proper for G.o.dfrey to observe the storm of Irene's most personal items of apparel, but forgot my reservations when I saw the state of my own room as well.

"What have they gained from this upheaval?" G.o.dfrey asked.

"Nothing that I can see." Irene moved stiffly through the chaos. "Is it safe yet to inspect the compartment?"

"We are alone, I believe," he said.

"I sent Mrs. Seaton to bed with a soothing tisane," said I. "She is more indignant at the invasion of her realm than injured."

In the sitting room, Irene quickly approached the fireplace wall and pressed the secret panel. The mechanism tripped obligingly open. She withdrew the two Tiffany jewel boxes and, lastly, the photograph.

She sat with a sigh on the cushionless chaise longue, pausing for the first time to turn back her veil and draw off her gloves.

"Housebreakers?" I suggested hopefully.

"Curious housebreakers," G.o.dfrey said with a grim smile, "who brace the front door against early interruption-and easy escape-then flee past the lady of the house without pausing to tear the diamonds from her neck."

I stiffened to realize how vulnerable Irene and I had been as we faced those desperate men on the threshold.

"G.o.dfrey, have you been engaging in fisticuffs?" Irene asked suddenly.

By the lamplight I saw a dark smudge angling across his cheekbone. "Ruffians!" I said.

"Nothing so elegant as fisticuffs, Irene." G.o.dfrey smiled ruefully. "More in the nature of a blind scuffle in the dark. And those men were nothing so rude as 'ruffians,' my dear Nell. They said not a word when I challenged them; simply ran. I suspect they speak Bohemian."

"The disarray?" Irene wondered.

"These are not professional burglars, who know how to search without advertising their presence. They were in haste, hence the destruction."

"But the photograph is safe." Irene studied the broken room. "How... pathetic of Willie to have sent men to do this and still come away empty-handed." She glanced at G.o.dfrey. "I suppose you will chide me for my resurgent singing career, for having brought this distasteful attack down on our heads."

"No, I congratulate you upon it. Apparently your new fame has reached all the way to Bohemia. Do you still think he might wish to abduct you?"

Irene shook her head until the melted snowflakes on her veiling shone like diamonds and trembled free like dew. "No. He is concerned only for himself now, for his... security. How it must frighten him to know that I am free, with the photograph, and have no reason to protect him because I feel obliged to guard my own reputation. Such hypocrisy he practices!"

"Frightened men are dangerous," G.o.dfrey warned.

"So are free women," Irene replied.

"Must we move now?" I wondered.

"No." Irene stood. "We are safer where they think there is nothing to be found. Besides, the compartment remains secret. No one will find it."

Shortly after Christmas we were burgled again. The signs were slight but telling.

"Professionals this time," Irene said, her voice hard.

"G.o.dfrey will not like it."

"G.o.dfrey need not know."

"But he has been so kind-" I protested.

"Precisely why I do not wish to worry him, dear Nell. He is occupied quite enough. Now drink your tea and fret no more about the King of Bohemia's little games. He who has lost his Queen always pushes the p.a.w.ns about."

"I don't play chess."

"Perhaps I exaggerated my figure of speech. This King is about to gain a Queen, after all. Have you seen the afternoon edition of the Telegraph?"

"Is your portrait in it?"

"No, but hers is."

"Hers?"

"Clotilde Loatheman von Saxon-mine-again, or whatever she is called. Would you like to see her?"

"Certainly not. She cannot be half so handsome as you!"

"Handsome is as handsome does, and Clotilde does very well in the blue-blood department. Have a look!"

There was nothing to do but take the rustling pages Irene forced upon me. My eye fell on the offending likeness instantly-a portrait of one of those broad-browed, thin-skinned, pale-haired Nordic women whose noses could well serve as a ski slope. So I told Irene, at any rate.

She beamed. "Sometimes, Nell, your descriptive powers verge on the poetic! No wonder Mr. Wilde was so enamored. But have you read her pedigree?"

"It is almost as long as that of Mrs. Chandeley-Monningham's Pekinese in Shropshire," I commented. "But of course, his ancestors' n.o.bility traces back to ancient China. I suspect the King of Scandinavia's daughter has a pedigree that only extends back to the Dark Ages; before that, enter the Huns."

"Really, Nell, had you not been so tenderly reared in the parsonage, I believe we could have made a first-cla.s.s society cat of you! I had no idea you ever knew anyone named Mrs. Chandeley-Monningham!"