We turned as one to the window, shocked to see airy gray plumes coughing into the sitting room. Smoke curled along the floor like fog and spumed up toward the ceiling. In only instants the room was choked with grey clouds.

Beside me I heard Irene gasp, then she was gone. Fire? The photograph! The Zone! I turned to see a dim figure stumbling against the bell pull, and heard the snick of the secret compartment as it slid open.

I looked back at the window, thinking to escape that way. The cleric was sitting upright like an animated corpse, his wavering voice raised.

"Not fire, ladies. False alarm. Surely not fire. Be calm and the smoke will disperse."

The quick dispersal he predicted revealed a strange cylindrical object on the floor. John had joined us and retrieved it with a grunt.

"Plumber's rocket," he said, frowning at the clergyman. "Somebody's played a nasty trick."

"Amazing, most amazing evening," that worthy stammered. "Well, I feel quite recovered now." He peered about to thank his hostess, but Irene had vanished, with the smoke.

I felt some embarra.s.sment at this rude dereliction of her charge and escorted his slow steps to the door. "Are you sure you are fit to leave?"

"Indeed, yes. I must trouble your household no longer. So pleased to have been of service to such a fine, kind lady."

The old fellow tipped his broad hat brim and toddled down the walk. The previous crowd had thinned like smoke. I was surprised to note that John had slipped out to drive the carriage around to the mews. When I retreated inside again, Irene was not downstairs-nor was she below-stairs or upstairs.

In her bedchamber, filled with neat stacks of her clothes, the wardrobe doors gaped, her evening's attire piled before them. I suppressed a superst.i.tious shiver, remembering the magician's curtain of smoke in our sitting room and Irene's shadow by the fireplace and then seeing her no more.

I wandered the ground floor, puzzled. Mrs. Seaton and the maid were setting things to rights and had no idea that she had gone, much less any notion of where. I paused by Casanova's cage and offered him a biscuit from the sideboard.

"I shall be glad when G.o.dfrey is solely responsible for her comings and goings," I confided to the bird, who sidled close to the bars to hear me.

"G.o.dfrey, G.o.dfrey!" he crowed with a c.o.c.ked head. "Ex-why-zed, jay-kay-el, ay-bee-cee."

What could one do with a bird that got even the alphabet backwards? I retired to the sitting room and read Cloris of the Crossroads until half past ten, when hooves clattered up our quiet street once again.

There in the house Irene found me, for I refused to give her the satisfaction of leaping up to greet her.

"Still up?" she inquired. She sounded breathlessly pleased about something and oddly alert. "We shall be up longer, I fear. I have sent John and the landau for G.o.dfrey."

I dropped the book and turned.

Irene, a bowler hat pulled low over her brow and a m.u.f.fler pulled high up to her chin, stood behind me in a gentleman's coat.

"Irene... what on earth?"

She moved briskly to the compartment to withdraw all its hidden booty. "We are discovered. Our self-sacrificing clergyman keeps his rectory in Baker Street."

"He was a spy?"

"He was a spy and a pseudo-arsonist and something of a theatrical director. If I am not mistaken, he hired and arrayed that entire cast of supernumeraries outside the house tonight, and arranged for the special effects of the smoke."

"But why? Why would a man of the cloth...?"

"He changes his cloth like an actor. I followed his cab to 221-B Baker Street, where he paused on the threshold with his companion-the rocket hurler, I suspect-to extract the key. I could not help myself-ah, vanity, thy name is indeed woman. I pa.s.sed behind the pair and taunted him with my knowledge."

"What did you say!?"

"Why, nothing but 'Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' I moved quickly on, and John picked me up around the corner. But G.o.dfrey and I must leave immediately. You and I must finish packing so I may flee as soon as G.o.dfrey arrives."

"Irene ..." There was no time for sad farewells. Irene was already bolting up the stairs, bowler and m.u.f.fler in one hand and the compartment's treasures in the other.

"I must travel in my proper s.e.x, I fear," she said in her bedchamber. "The whole point of marrying G.o.dfrey was to stifle comment."

She was stripping off her male attire while I tumbled her most essential clothing into a single trunk, my color-sorted piles all come to naught.

She paused in her shirt sleeves and came to take my shoulders in her hands. I looked into her face, too desolate to truly feel our imminent separation. She smiled at me, smiled her old wicked, speculative smile that used to fill me with dread and a certain, quite uncalled-for antic.i.p.ation.

"I would give anything, my darling Nell, to see Mr. Sherlock Holmes arrive at this house to find the den empty and the fox fled. Anything!"

Her smile deepened as her voice became a thick, cajoling honey.

"Who else can I rely upon for an accurate and thorough account of that delicious moment? Could I prevail upon you, dear friend, to don a slight alteration of feature, to play the left-behind maid and admit the hunting party to the empty house, hmm?

"Just a dusting of white powder over your hair, a dozen minor wrinkles..." She had propelled me before the pier gla.s.s and was sprinkling face powder over my nutmeg brown hair. A pale cloud of smoke seemed to have obscured my youth, my familiar features.

"Not any deep deception, simply something superficial that would disguise you from future hara.s.sment. After all, you stay to face the music we flee. If you would deign to play a role for the briefest of times. Just this once, this one first and last time, I swear..."

Chapter Thirty-four.

A SUPERIOR WOMAN.

"That was odd," I remarked to Holmes when he had removed the clergyman guise and was smoking a victory pipe in his own semblance.

"True, I would not expect anyone to address me by name when I am disguised, but my back was to the street. Perhaps the fellow didn't even look at whom he spoke to."

"I must confess, Holmes, that I feel rather ashamed about deceiving that humanitarian lady I watched ministering to your so-called 'wound' tonight. Have you no compunction about tricking one who has offered you only sympathy?"

"The race is to the swift, Watson, not to the sympathetic. Irene Adler may be lovely in more than appearance, but I have engaged to save the King from his folly... though I find that his story of their liaison and her supposed intention to harm him does not tally with what I have thus far observed of the lady."

"Really, Holmes, perhaps you have undertaken to help the wrong party in the affair."

Holmes laughed heartily. "You would have been utterly demoralized, Watson, had you been in my rather tattered shoes at the Church of St. Monica earlier today. When Miss Irene-or I should say Madam Irene-gave me the sovereign for my witness duty, she did it with the air of an angel offering a sample of heavenly grace. I will have the coin put on my watch chain as a memento... there they were, the wedded couple, one on either side of my disreputable self, thanking me as if I were St. Peter himself and had admitted them to their particular paradise."

"Again you reward civility with deception! Still, she's not a respectable woman, I suppose, despite her marriage."

'To use less than my full wit in my client's behalf would insult the woman's own intelligence, Watson. No, Madam Irene is not one to sue for consideration. I hope this Norton is worthy of her."

"A fine-looking fellow apparently, from your report"

"Looks," Holmes said a trifle sharply, "are no guarantee of either wit or character. Witness the King of Bohemia. However, I must admit to a certain glee at having succeeded where all the King's men have not with Madam Irene." He briskly rubbed his hands together and spoke again.

"We must retire soon and rise early. I wish to surprise our quarry at home tomorrow before the fact of her marriage changes her life and habits. That is why I have asked you to wire the King on your way home tonight. One cannot expect royalty to rise at six o'clock without cause, but in this case I imagine the King will be all too happy to lose some sleep if he regains the photograph."

"And then, tomorrow morning?"

"Then we will call en ma.s.se, as it were. You, I and the King. We will be shown into the sitting room and could decide to decamp even before Madam Irene can arrange a suitable toilet to come down to greet us. The King may enjoy retrieving the photograph with his own hands. I do owe him some small satisfaction for all his money."

"You would leave without seeing her face-to-face in your own stead? That seems a bit ungentlemanly, Holmes."

He shrugged in that fine careless way he had in all matters to do with women. "Is it me you wish to meet her face to face-or yourself?"

"I am soon to be a married man, Holmes!"

He smiled tightly. "Yet not blind, Watson, decidedly not blind. As I am not. You had not seen the object of our hunt until tonight. There, too, I had the jump on you; I'd met her before noon. I detect in your questions an unspoken wish for more than this case affords. Madam Irene is a married woman now also, I remind you, and I am not a marrying man. Please do me the courtesy of burying any fond hopes you may have cherished in the matchmaking way. We are natural opponents, she and I, and so it shall remain."

Holmes had let his pipe die and set it aside. He was silent for a moment, then made one last comment on the matter I was some future day to t.i.tle "A Scandal in Bohemia."

When Holmes spoke again, it was with the abstraction that signaled his retreat to the Elysian Fields of his intellect.

"Obviously, Irene Adler-and that is how I shall always think of her-is a superior woman, but she shares with most of her s.e.x a certain emotional short-sightedness that handicaps them in matters of a purely intellectual nature."

"Holmes, I cannot sit here and permit you to libel the intelligence of women again. What of Miss Violet Hunter, that plucky young governess! You yourself called her 'a brave and sensible girl, a quite exceptional woman.'"

Holmes smiled around the stem of his pipe. "I see by your accurate recall that you are scouring your notes and preparing a narrative for another of my cases. What do you plan to do with these tales?"

I bristled a bit. "It is possible mat they may someday find their way to print, if you have no objection."

"If they are accurate I will have no objection. Yes, I recall Miss Violet Hunter, and a clever, brave female she was, but not on the level of Irene Adler, who likely harbors unsuspected depths. However, at bottom she remains a woman and p.r.o.ne to the s.e.x's reliance on intuition and sentiment. That will be her downfall."

"Perhaps I should make a note of this," I said with a modic.u.m of sarcasm.

"You will at least concede, Watson, that the emotional exhilaration of Madam Irene's recent marriage will have blinded her to the vulnerability of her situation-but, come, cheer up! No harm is to be done. It is not as if we were wresting some valuable prize from her grasp, is it? Although that would be a sweet end to the business, if we were to unearth some treasure beyond a mere photograph from her secure hiding place. Do not stare, Watson, it is possible."

Holmes's face shone with a self-mocking glee I could not interpret. He was often terse until ready to unveil all aspects of a case; now I sensed some greater constraint against speaking freely, as if he cherished hopes even he dare not voice prematurely. He seemed to be dropping clues before my very nose, knowing that I should never show his acuity in finding them, much less following them to their conclusion.

Holmes clapped his hands together. "So. Madam Irene will lose only a photograph that cannot mean much to her anymore, and she has gained a husband. Splendid, for any vindictive feelings she might have harbored toward the King-perhaps with good reason-are now moot. I trust that she shall not feel too vindictively toward myself; I am told that true love consoles for a variety of losses. I shall not lose, however. Triumph awaits us on the morrow, Watson, when I shall at least justify the princely payment the King has given me and recover the scandalous photograph."

"Perhaps I should write the case up now and not bother to wait until tomorrow, since the outcome is so certain."

"You could, no doubt," Holmes responded with a twinkling eye. "But wait a day; there will be many details so dear to the writer's heart, I a.s.sure you, Watson. Many nuances of expression, perhaps even some surprises. Oh yes, I entertain hopes of a surprise. And think how Madam Irene will be shocked to find her nest empty-you are quite right, Watson. I should remain to witness her chagrin. It is the only gentlemanly thing to do."

At this he leaned back in the easy chair, narrowed his eyes and chuckled at the contemplation of some intensely private pleasure.

Chapter Thirty-five.

CLOSING CURTAIN.

It was the happiest of days-and the saddest.

It was the loneliest of tasks-and the most selfless.

It was the wickedest thing that I have ever done-and the most delicious.

But I must save the best for last. (In truth, I need not do so, but I have acquired some sense of drama from my years with Irene Adler.) After John had conveyed Irene's baggage to the landau, we sat up all night-Irene and G.o.dfrey and I. We picnicked before the sitting room fire on all the teacakes Mrs. Seaton could provide. G.o.dfrey had brought a magnum of champagne and I fear I drank my share. At one point in the evening I actually went to the dining room and imported Casanova's cage to the party so he could hear G.o.dfrey's telling of the Mutterworth will and its discovery, in which the parrot had played such a key but inadvertent part "Topiary parrots!" Irene cried in mirthful disbelief often enough that Casanova soon joined her in the chorus. He had an ever-ready ear for the irrelevant We laughed, we reminisced, we looked forward to the foiling of the King through his peerless agent, Sherlock Holmes, on the morrow. We discussed Irene and G.o.dfrey's plans, which were appallingly sketchy.

They would return to Paris. "A proper honeymoon," G.o.dfrey declared. Gla.s.s brims chimed. The new ring glittered on Irene's hand. For a moment the emerald glow reminded me of the snake ring the King had worn.

I shivered as the clock struck three. Irene put a steadying hand on my shoulder. "You will be magnificent, Nell. It is time for your transformation."

Upstairs I sat before her dressing table mirror watching my likeness fade under her expert hands. Another visage clarified in the looking gla.s.s-older, paler. For a moment I saw the face of my future. Still, there was some resolution to the features no matter how enfeebled.

"Men are much easier to disguise," Irene mused, "they wear so many styles of facial hair; that is how Mr. Holmes's snowy locks and holy demeanor last evening took me in. We women must always go bare-faced-unless we mimic men, as I have on occasion, or paint our features, and even artifice is no disguise."

"You are certain Mr. Holmes does not suspect your rash greeting?"

"He would have been here by now if he did. I did not dare look back, but he must have wondered who had recognized him in his clerical guise. Of course it was dark and his own doorway; he undoubtedly decided that a pa.s.serby had recognized Dr. Watson, a.s.suming the other figure to be himself. How he will berate himself when he reads my note!"

"What note?"

'The one I have left in the secret compartment in place of the photograph he expects. Remember to show no surprise at anything that occurs tomorrow."

"Tomorrow! Today."

"Indeed," Irene said, fluffing my powder-grayed hair.

She brought her vibrant face to mine, so we were paired in the mirror like Siamese twins. "Oh, my dear Nell, I shall miss you! We are veterans, you and I, of so much. G.o.dfrey and I are newly conscripted into alliance, and I confess some small apprehension. I am old to embark on wedlock."

"Then it is about time," I said stoutly. "You would not want to be an old maid like myself."

She shook me in mock admonishment, giving my image a palsy to match its aged appearance. "I am thirty and you but thirty-two. Much yet awaits us both in life, if we are willing to meet it open-eyed and with courage. You, after all, are about to make your theatrical debut."

"I am sure that Ellen Terry is quavering in her buskins. Now do not disarrange my wrinkles, for I have spent a whole hour acquiring them."

I rose from the table to confront my altered image no more. Yet the ghost of it hung over me like a veil. It slowed my step and my speech and invested me with a mantle of dignity that served me well for the remainder of that long night.

At four I heard the lonely clatter of John bringing the landau around; the horse had undergone a busy time of it, too.

"Our train leaves at five-fifteen," Irene explained. "I expect Mr. Holmes to arrive shockingly early, the better to catch me napping."