The main floor held the yard goods. I could hardly bear to view the familiar bolts, to pa.s.s the measuring stations. Then a tall, whip-thin hateful figure riveted my gaze.

My fingers tugged Irene's coppery sleeve. "There," I whispered.

She looked once in the right direction, then nodded.

"Fade away among the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, Nell; I have business elsewhere."

Obediently I ambled among the reels of lace and ribbons, while watching Irene through the glamorous fog of my veil.

She was marching toward the costliest bolts, her costume rustling noisily. Lizzie, always lazy unless there was sure money to be made, appeared with serpentine quickness at Irene's elbow. Irene addressed her without turning, sensing her presence.

"I'm looking for some really pretty stuff. Silk, with lots of shine, if you know what I mean. Something you can see from fifty feet away."

"Our more expensive fabrics are right here."

"I don't care what it costs, dearie," Irene continued in a loud, flat American tw.a.n.g. "My Homer runs the Velvet Swing mine in Deadeye, Nevada, sweetest little shaft to float a man to fame and fortune, and money ain't no object. What've you got in changeable silk taffeta, say peac.o.c.k-blue and mauve?"

"Here, Madam, a selection of the best China silks," Lizzie simpered. "Liberty's couldn't do better by you."

Liar! I hissed to myself. Liberty silks were peerless.

"Hmm," Irene sighed, slinging her reticule atop one bolt as she unceremoniously thumped another to the floor. "I got to see it unfurled, you know? All that glitters ain't silver. Many a nice bolt is all glisten on the outside and frayed on the inside. I've been sold some dogs of so-called China silk in my time."

While Irene spoke, Lizzie dashed glances at the un-tended reticule, the same obvious behavior I had observed before, to which everyone around us appeared annoyingly oblivious.

Irene threw a length of changeable silk plaid over one shoulder and preened before a pier gla.s.s. Lizzie very nearly slavered over the abandoned reticule.

Take it, I found myself urging silently, to my horror. Take it!

She didn't. Irene whirled to ask a question, then wandered farther afield to a more distant and even more disreputable fabric. I held my breath.

"I'll have this," Irene decided, her fist clenching a cerise-and-emerald-striped satin that would have looked brash on a jockey.

Lizzie carted the heavy bolt to the measuring station while Irene dug in her reclaimed reticule. As soon as another clerk materialized to help with the cutting, Irene's face fell dramatically.

"Why ... my favorite powder case is missing! My antique German powder case Uncle Horace gave me when the Velvet Swing came through. Solid sterling silver. With peridots. It was with me in the hansom on the way here!"

Everyone stood transfixed by Irene's air of outraged loss. Her whole rustling, glittering figure throbbed with wounded indignation. Then her eyes darted to Lizzie.

"You! You was hovering over my bag when I was rummaging with these here bolts. I demand you turn out your pockets, girlie."

Lizzie a.s.sumed her Queen of Siam pose. "I will not! Perhaps they do such things in America, Madam, but not here."

"I don't care where we are, missy. You was the only one around my bag and my powder case is plumb gone-"

One of Whiteley's floorwalkers, a cold-eyed man the shopgirls called the "Maharajah's private guard," slipped alongside Lizzie.

"I'll have the supervisor of clerks take a look, Madam."

'Thank you," Irene sighed. "I knew a man would know how to handle this kind of matter. Search her good."

Lizzie disappeared in the custody of the floorwalker and a buxom female supervisor. The gentleman appeared moments later, a small silver object in his palm.

"With Whiteley's greatest apologies, Madam. It was in her sleeve cuff. The girl has been dismissed. Please accept a length of whatever fabric you wish at Whiteley's expense."

"Why that's mighty kind of you! 'Tain't your fault if you have a lying snip among your clerks. Say, I can't stand the sight of this here stuff since I almost lost my Uncle Horace's powder case over it." Irene beamed at the returning woman supervisor. "But I will take, um, fifteen yards of that nice amber velvet by the wall."

Not a face cracked as the fabric was measured, cut, folded and bundled. Irene nodded thanks all around, promising to return, and flounced out of the establishment. At least I showed the presence of mind to follow discreetly and join her a street away from the emporium.

"The amber velvet is our-was our best fabric," I announced, breathless from the fear of being unmasked.

"Of course. Do you think I would have had that horrid silk taffeta on my life? And by the way, Nell, Americans do not speak in that ludicrous fashion you just witnessed, though Londoners like to believe it so."

"I don't care how Americans speak! That was wonderful, Irene, how you caught her red-handed."

We had arrived at the omnibus stop. Irene laid the fabric in my arms like an infant while she combed her reticule for the fare.

'Thank my Uncle Horace's silver powder case." She waved the object. "German silver, Nell, nickel and a mere kiss of sterling. Not the real thing at all, just like the Velvet Swing mine."

"But you caught Lizzie! That almost makes my dismissal worth it." I hugged the parcel to my bosom. Irene would look magnificent in the velvet, but no more glorious than she looked to me at that moment.

'Trapped her is more like it. She refused to take the bait of my reticule, perverse girl. I was forced to...deposit... the powder case on her person without her knowledge."

"You...? I don't understand."

"Listen. Lizzie would have taken it, given world enough and time-which we did not have, especially with you in that ridiculous hat that wouldn't fool a child. So I... accelerated events. Mohammed wouldn't come to the mountain, so I brought the mountain to Mohammed."

"What have Moslems to do with it?"

"Not Moslems, powder cases. I slipped the case to Lizzie when she was too busy eyeing my reticule to notice."

"However did you learn such a... dishonest skill?"

"From a music hall magician in Philadelphia-a Napoleon of the soft touch. I've never filched anything myself, but the skill proves useful now and again. Don't frown so pathetically, Nell; real thieves are far less visible than my humble self. Do you recall the woman who sat across from us on the omnibus?"

It took a moment to extricate that morning ride from a tangle of more recent memories and violent emotions.

"The dignified lady in the Persian lamb capelet with matching m.u.f.f?" I recalled. "Oh, yes, the m.u.f.f was almost as large as yours! I wondered why such a well-attired lady should have to ride a public omnibus."

"You are becoming quite a judge of fashion, my dear Nell, thanks to your sojourn in Whiteley's drapery department and my tender tutelage. Now I will tell you that your 'dignified lady' rides the omnibus because it is her profession."

"Her profession? However could that be?"

"You saw a literal false front-the lady's arms were not within her sleeves nor were her hands inside her m.u.f.f."

"She was... missing them?"

"Not at all. Her hands were liberated behind the fashionable facade to rob her fellow pa.s.sengers. Where but in the crush of an omnibus can one get close enough to fleece one's neighbor?"

"How awful! She looked quite respectable."

"It was a quite respectable roll of bills she lifted from the pocket of the commercial traveler beside her, the fellow in the checked suit."

"I tried not to look at him."

"Quite right. It was a rather dreadful check; yellow and brown look well together only on certain thrushes. At any rate, as we left I relieved the lady's m.u.f.f of its recent acquisition and returned it to the gentleman without mussing so much as a wrinkle in either of their attires. I told you my gift came in hand-y." Irene wriggled gloved fingers in my face until I smiled at her dreadful pun. Her insouciance was indefatigable.

"Couldn't you have called a bobby?" I said.

"Such a fuss, and our light-fingered lady was likely to vanish in the confusion. Instead, she will pummel her m.u.f.f in vain for its treasure. She may begin to believe her skills are slipping and take up honest work, such as clerking at Whiteley's."

I smiled despite myself. "Perhaps, though the means were somewhat... unconventional, the end was just."

"Exactly, my dear Nell. As in your own case."

"But in my case and that of your reticule-" The omnibus was coming with a dull clop of many horse hooves pounding a headache into the pavement. I could hardly think, but I knew Irene's logic had some flaw. "Lizzie didn't steal it."

"She would have, wouldn't she?"

"Yes... no! Perhaps-"

"If not my reticule, some less resourceful person's?"

"Possibly, but-"

"So Lizzie has been found out; you have been avenged, which we know from Mr. Hope is a most rewarding feeling, and I have fifteen yards of gorgeous amber velvet, which I well deserve for ridding Whiteley's of an unscrupulous clerk."

The omnibus was upon us. Irene tripped up the stairs. I lurched upward in her wake-numb, dumb, the ill-gotten goods clasped in my innocent arms. I could no more have unloosed the velvet than I could have resisted Irene's firm hold upon my imagination, my demoralized moral standards and my ... my deliciously avenged dishonor!

"There, you see," my new-found friend crowed a few days later, handing me the day-late Echo our landlord, Mr. Minucci, gave her in return for voice lessons to his tone-deaf young daughter, Sofia. "Didn't I tell you so?"

Mystified at first, I found a familiar name catching my attention on the indicated page. "Ah, so he's dead, then."

"Quite. But that was not what interested me."

"Poor man," I went on, for the dead always are easier objects of sympathy. "Hear how these Grub Street hacks put it: 'The public have lost a sensational treat through the sudden death of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr. Enoch Drebber and of Mr. Joseph Stangerson.' As if murder were a 'treat' in any circ.u.mstances!"

"It might be when the victim is a Caligula," Irene said. "But read on."

"... the crime was the result of an old-standing and romantic feud, in which love and Mormonism bore a part-"

"We know all that," Irene interrupted.

"... the efficiency of our police force will serve as a lesson to all foreigners to settle their feuds at home-"

"Not likely! Keep reading. Look for the telling detail, my dear Nell, always and only the telling detail. The thing that is not said."

I read in silence, learning that "the credit for this smart capture" went to the Scotland Yard officials, Lestrade and Gregson. That Mr. Hope had been taken "in the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes," an amateur detective of sorts "who may learn a thing or two from the successful officers."

"I fancy he will learn to avoid such sensational circ.u.mstances in the future," I murmured.

"Who?"

"This Mr. Sherlock Holmes." I shuddered for effect. "How awful to have the police arrest a murderer in your very own rooms, I should never sleep there again."

"Perhaps they were not solely his rooms."

"Company would hardly be a comfort."

"No... unless it was the company of a medical man who could soothe one's frazzled nerves after the event," she said mysteriously.

"Irene!" I put down the paper with a smart crack. "What nonsense are you implying?"

She picked it up, smiling. "I have seen the name of Sherlock Holmes affixed to agony column items before, often enough that he might want to use a fellow lodger's name-say Dr. Watson's-instead. An 'amateur detective.' Hmm, I wonder where he lives, this aspiring sleuth?"

I s.n.a.t.c.hed back the newspaper. "It doesn't say and what does it matter anyway? Such unhealthy inquiries into where a strange man may live are not the proper business of a lady."

Irene laughed until she braced her hands at aching corset sides. "I am not in the business of being a lady, proper or improper."

Naturally I a.s.sumed at the time that Irene referred to her theatrical profession. I was dreadfully wrong, as I was to be so many times in my a.s.sumptions about Irene Adler... and Mr. Sherlock Holmes... and, most oddly of all, about myself.

Irene patted my hand as she withdrew the newspaper to study it further. "Don't fret, Nell. You are far better off for a.s.suming the best of a wicked world."

I was no longer so sure.

Chapter Four.

A SPARKLING COMMISSION.

"I fancy, Watson, that we are about to be visited by an eminent American," my friend Sherlock Holmes remarked as he parted the curtains overlooking Baker Street.

"I didn't know that there were any eminent Americans," I huffed in reply. At times I found Holmes's habit of discerning the rank and occupations of visitors before they had set hand to bell tiresome, most especially when I was deep in the latest edition of the Daily Telegraph.

"A successful American, then," Holmes corrected cheerily. "Once again you show a remarkable skill at the fine points of social observation, Watson. Come, take your nose out of the newsprint and have a look yourself. A second opinion would be welcome."

"But not necessarily right," I grumbled, rising to Holmes's bait. I had never yet outdone, or even matched him in reading people's histories on first glance.

"That robust-looking gentleman in black is bedeviled by where the 'B' of our address should be," Holmes indicated, "a sure sign of a visitor to our sh.o.r.es."

"I suppose you know he's coming here because he's hesitating while looking for the address."