Ladies in languishing Aesthetic dress, their polonaises edged in key-design embroidery and their hair banded by golden fillets, slouched past, redolent of the glories that were Greece. Sunflowers and lilies, the favored flowers of the Aesthetic movement, decorated many gowns. I even spied a green carnation in one gentleman's lapel and began to regard the towering Redbeard, in conventional dress for all his larger-than-life size, as a bulwark of conventionality.

It became a game to pick out famous figures from their cartoon versions in Punch: the dapper little man in cutaway coat and monocle, a lightning strike of white streaking his thick black hair-the very Mr. James McNeill Whistler whose hand had suffered from the ministrations of my predecessor.

I trembled inwardly as he approached my post. "Tea, sir?" I inquired.

The small hands, so delicate for a man's, twitched. "If you can pour it into a cup instead of a cupped hand, my good woman," he shrilled in an American accent.

This I managed, even while searching the crowd for the one familiar figure I had expected-Irene's. Where was she? Surely she was not asking our cabman to drive endlessly along the river?

"My earnest congratulations," Mr. Whistler remarked in Prussic acid tones as he gazed into the limpidity of his unadorned tea. He eyed the cup. "Blue china. Florence has improved her taste since last week-in both receptacle and tea mistress."

With that terse praise he moved on. A flurry near the archway caused a universal pause. A woman had arrived, but it was not Irene. I could only see thick, flowing hair and languid hands. Gentlemen buzzed around her like bees at a honey hive. I stared beyond them, wondering what awful eventuality had occasioned Irene's absence.

"You pour with the liquid rhythm of a villanelle," said a deep, musical voice at my elbow. My elbow! I looked down to find a large young man half-reclining on the carpet, gazing up at me like a spaniel through wings of long brown hair.

"I beg your pardon?" said I.

"And well you should for wasting the poetry of your pouring on this callow mob. You should pour only for a chosen, appreciative few."

"Indeed." As a parson's daughter I had found that word an adequate response to almost any situation.

"Quite right to keep your own counsel, prim nymph of the afternoon libation, as utterly, utterly cool as a marble chessboard, mute as concealed pain."

"Would you like a cup of tea, is that it?"

Long pale hands fanned into ten eloquently separate fingers-an overblown flower losing its petals. Everything about my admirer drooped-his shoulder-length hair, his soft velvet tie, the green carnation in his lapel and most of all, his expression.

"I seek ambrosia," he whispered.

"I am very sorry. I'm not serving any of that. Perhaps the punch table-"

"Cruel sprite of ancient rites. I withdraw, but my admiration remains."

With that the odd young man rose-which took some time as he, like Redbeard, towered over six feet when standing-and ebbed into the murmuring cl.u.s.ters.

Another hush. This time the woman who entered the room was she whom I expected-Irene, calla-lily grand in her white gown. She was accompanied by a man I had never seen. I blinked and almost spilled a drop of tea.

"So sorry, Mr."-I looked up and suddenly knew Redbeard's ident.i.ty-Abraham Stoker, the great actor Henry Living's manager, properly known as "Bram." "Mr. Stoker."

Our host was watching Irene with as much puzzlement as myself and ambled off to survey her at close hand. Soon she had commanded her own swarm of humming gentlemen-Mr. Whistler, whose shrill voice made up for his short stature in a.s.serting his presence, Mr. Stoker, the melancholy young poet and a half-dozen others.

Her escort, an unremarkable man who apparently did not mind being supplanted, presented himself at my station. "All is well?" he hissed as I served him weak tea with two slices of lemon, as requested.

"Of course."

"She said I was to keep an eye on you."

"Who are you?" I asked. I knew who "she" was.

"Pinkerton," he whispered, then winked and withdrew with his teacup.

I don't know why I was to have an eye kept on me, for all eyes were on Irene. Her ringing voice announced her progress as she sailed from group to group around the long room.

"Oh, this fashion for Aesthetics has its attractions, chiefly in its pract.i.tioners," she would say with a nod to all the oddly attired gentlemen. "And Mr. Tiffany was telling me only the other day of his preference for the ingeniously set semiprecious stone over the too-flagrant appeal of emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds."

"So true," said he who had admired the perfection of my pouring. "Precious gems offer only four colors, but semiprecious stones rainbow the world. Art is not to be found in crude cost, but in effect and emotion."

"We know your too-too opinions, Oscar! What of the lady's?" someone gibed.

I sat appalled. Every word that Irene had uttered was truth-seen through a wavy gla.s.s. Heads had inclined wisely around her while she quoted Mr. Tiffany as if he were a close friend, as if she were intimate with the wearing of jewels.

"I myself remain hopelessly partial to the gaudy appeal of fine stones, like diamonds," she spoke again, no doubt as honestly if misleadingly.

"Why not?" a gentleman quipped. "They bring out the fire of your eyes."

"Her eyes are crystals of seared topaz whose fire is to be most found in the hearts of her ardent admirers," another wit riposted.

Irene dodged these fulsome compliments and surfaced in the center of another group, always probing for news of diamonds. Her weapon was our scant half-hour with the American king of jewels.

"Mr. Tiffany was telling me of a magnificent corsage his artisans are readying for a future Paris Exposition," she whispered to the ladies. One in particular bowed her head to better hear the news, and in that cut-steel profile I recognized at last the infamous Lillie Langtry.

"Oh!" complained the young woman beside me whose white gloves had been baptized by a few tea drops as my eye fixed upon the Jersey Lily. So does idle curiosity lead to a downfall.

I mopped the mess up with a napkin and listened for more news of this mythical diamond corsage, for Mr. Tiffany had not breathed a word of it to either of us.

"A corsage?" Lillie Langtry repeated in her clear voice. "That does not sound a worthy centerpiece for a major exhibition."

"Not a simple shoulder corsage, my dear, but a lacework of two thousand diamonds swagged from shoulder to bosom to the opposite hip, thus," Irene explained, gesturing appropriately to her figure and thus drawing the gentlemen again.

The women sighed and gasped.

"There will be large diamond rosettes at shoulder, center bosom and hip," Irene added. "Of course such a piece will be years in the making. A pity that the fashion for diamonds is spent. Mr. Tiffany wastes his time."

"Perhaps not," put in a portly gentleman who drank a cerise punch that echoed his choleric features. "There was talk years ago of a singular diamond belt, all matched stones falling to the floor in several strings, like a waterfall."

"Now that would be an Aesthetic application of a bourgeois stone," the young poet declared, "tied into a belt to secure a lady's Grecian draperies or a snood to hold her flowing hair."

"A thing of myth, no doubt, Oscar," jeered Mr. Whistler, "as is Tiffany's corsage. I'll believe such fabulous artifacts when I see them-and when I do, I'll grind them to powder and use them in my paints. The cool simplicity of j.a.panese blue-ware outshines the brightest French-cut stones."

"Was it French, do you think, Mr. Whistler? That belt?" Irene put in quickly.

"I don't know what the deuce it was, Miss Adler, or even that it was. Nor do I care."

"Norton did," the florid-faced man put in. "Great fancier of diamonds. Said there was a fortune in them. Now the Dutch own them all and half of South Africa as well, and we pay a pretty price for such vices as diamonds."

"Norton?" Irene inquired brightly.

"Must be dead by now," the gentleman rambled. "Old Norton. Wife had all the money, you know. One of Sheridan's granddaughters-three dazzlers with flashing dark eyes and wit to go with. Wrote verse and novels, you know. Left her husband, too-litigious barrister, no d.a.m.n good, rotter through and through, but that's another story. She didn't have much for diamonds, but her novels made a pretty penny to buy paste with-until old Norton took it all in a lawsuit."

'Tell us more of Mr. Tiffany's fabulous corsage," a woman begged.

"I must not," Irene said quickly. "It is a secret. I have said too much already."

"Why is it that tales of rare jewels are always secrets?" drawled a pallid young man with lank flaxen hair.

"That is what makes them so rare," put in the poet.

Everyone laughed and the conversation turned. Irene remained abstracted, perhaps wondering how to divert the talk to her purpose again. But the stream of chitchat babbled on, interrupted only by the rougher rapids of witty venom from Mr. Whistler or the languid poet.

One by one and two by two the guests departed. I knew Irene had capitulated when she collected the quiet gentleman and withdrew despite all pleadings that she stay. Lillie Langtry left only then, drawing the remaining lone gentlemen after her in a train.

Mrs. Stoker finally revisited my table. "Nicely done, Miss Huxleigh. May we count on you for Sunday next?"

"No! That is, I will not be able to come here again."

"Oh?"

"It is not possible. I am sorry."

"Another position? But this is for a few hours only. Perhaps you can manage it."

"I cannot," I said firmly, trying to excuse myself with the truth. "I am not comfortable in such a role."

"Ah, you disapprove of our set. That is understandable, given your clerical background. Well, I cannot argue with philosophical differences. Cook will pay you on your way out. Good day."

My pay was a half-sovereign, nearly enough to make me reconsider. I waited where Irene had left me, and a hansom soon rattled up. Her escort leaped out to aid me inside, then tipped his hat and walked down the road.

"You were not planning to go alone at all," I reproached Irene. "You did not tell me about Mr. Pinkerton."

"A lady needs an escort, however perfunctory, but I required a more sensitive observer than he. We will have a tea party post-mortem by the hearth tonight. Did you manage to acquire any delicacies for dinner? You had motive and opportunity. Oh, do not bestir yourself so; I already feared as much. We shall have Mrs. Minucci's lasagna-again. By the bye, it is not Mr. Pinkerton. The gentleman is a Pinkerton, a fellow London agent, only one of several."

"Hmm. And what have you achieved by making a spectacle of yourself and a pourer of me?"

"A great deal. Someone mentioned the Zone. I shall have to look into the matter of 'old Norton' further."

"But he's dead!"

"The dead, my dear Nell, are often the surest source of knowledge. After the agony columns, you would do well to study the obituaries. Whole novels by Thackeray and Hardy, scores of Wagnerian operas and dozens of Webster's 'White Devils' and 'd.u.c.h.esses of Malfi' lie hidden among those succinct little threnodies to perished greengrocers and consumptive debutantes.

"Survivors and heirs, old family wounds and fresh new wills, marriage and remarriage, greed and sorrow. Sometimes I even suspect that they contain the traces of murder never found out-murder by hand and more frequently murder by word. The latter is not a criminal act but can be equally lethal."

This thrilling monologue, rendered with affecting drama, held me rapt but dubious. "You read all this into the daily obituaries, Irene?"

She simply smiled. "The dead speak volumes. And why not? Who-at last-is to contradict them?"

Chapter Seven.

UNEXPECTED VISITORS.

The jaunt to Cheyne Walk might not have uncovered the Zone of Diamonds, but it showed me Irene Adler playing a role in which I had never seen her: femme fatale.

I had always a.s.sumed that Irene's worldliness far exceeded mine and usually avoided speculating as to what extent. Certainly she rivaled the Sphinx in keeping silent on her past. As for the present, while she a.s.sociated professionally with men, I saw no signs that the connections were anything other than that. I could never have stomached living with a courtesan, no matter how discreet.

Yet it puzzled me that a woman of Irene's beauty should ignore the giddy temptations presented to unattached women in her position. The only explanation was the pride she took in her many talents; she would not spend them cheaply-and most women cede their own pursuits when they wed (or even when they stoop to being some man's mistress), becoming more fabled for their role than their reality.

Then, too, possibly Irene had been wounded in an early romantic attachment and henceforward escaped the blandishments of hearts, flowers and other less-sentimental realities that lurk beneath the Valentine lacework. Even in my limited experience, romantic stirrings brought painful confusion rather than joy.

Whatever my speculations, though Irene violated every minor convention governing a woman of good reputation during our a.s.sociation, I never saw her bow in the least to behavior that hinted at the sordid scandal so beloved of the newspapers.

The spring of 1882-and of Irene's dazzling debut into Chelsea society as a personality, if not a gainfully employed artiste-brought sweeping changes to our chambers high above the operatic warbles of Saffron Hill street peddlers.

First, if I may edge my own small achievement to the fore, I received certification as a qualified "typewriter girl," as an operator of the new typewriting instrument was now called. The doc.u.ment, engraved in a spidery longhand, struck me as incongruous given the mechanical skill it celebrated.

I soon found myself in modest demand as a "temporary" employee called into offices throughout the City and surrounding villages to spin copperplate into cold type, so to speak. Other than needing spectacles-a tasteful if inhalation-inhibiting pince-nez that perched upon the bridge of my nose-to decipher these often illegible scribblings, I found the work congenial. Unraveling the mysteries of various hands to produce readable type gave me a strange satisfaction. In grander moments, I saw myself as revealing Rosetta Stones of lost meaning to a waiting world.

Surprisingly, my nomadic employment suited me. Perhaps I had acquired Irene's taste for the ebb and flow of sudden a.s.signments. More likely, my humiliating experience at Whiteley's had converted me to the benefits of will-'o-the-wispery: since I seldom stayed long at any establishment there was small opportunity to make enemies or edge into office intrigues.

I became a fearless patron of the ubiquitous omnibus and soon knew the major streets of London as if they were limned upon my palm. I had money in my handbag and feathers on my new workaday bonnet. In other words, I felt myself an independent woman.

If Parson Huxleigh's orphan daughter was surviving, Irene Adler was thriving. Her jaunt to Bram Stoker's tea had earned her an audition for the latest Gilbert & Sullivan light opera at the newly built Savoy Theatre on the Embankment. Her soon-won role did not suit her voice, she said dismissively, but she relished immersion in the theatrical life again and rigorously pursued the Zone of Diamonds among the Chelsea set.

I fretted that she must travel about town so late at night, but as usual was dismissed.

"You worry about me, Nell? You who so nearly donated all your worldly goods to a Whitechapel waif when we met? My profession requires the freedom of the city. I must go about alone at night; how else would I rehea.r.s.e and perform?"

"I would feel better if you had escort home."

"Oh, that could be arranged," Irene said with flashing eyes. "A good many gentlemen of the town stand ready to escort even a bit player like myself home after the performance-with a detour to a private restaurant, a carriage ride through Hyde Park... No doubt you should sleep easier if I obtained such shepherding."

"Heavens, no! It's simply that I worry for your safety."

"Worry not. I have my devices."

"Wit will not talk you out of every corner," I warned.

"This will." Irene produced a sinister little revolver from her all-purpose m.u.f.f.

"Gracious! I've never seen such a fierce mechanism. It's somehow more intimidating than a typewriter was to me at first."

"It's meant to be intimidating, darling Nell."