In the uncertain light within figures were writhing like demons on Judgment Day. I thought of Mary Jane Kelly's cramped, vile room in Whitechapel and what slaughter had transpired there. I cowered, yes, cowered against the flimsy wooden wall.

A high thin scream came from inside the office. I'd heard wounded animals and infants scream so, and hurtled through the open door despite myself.

Then I stopped and blinked, blinded, in the light from an unshuttered lantern.

When I could finally see past that brutal fist of artificial sunlight I saw Irene holding a pistol far bigger than the petite one she was prone to carry. A dark-haired child in a pale dress and stockings clung to her trouser legs. And a hulking male figure was before them, frozen like a statue.

"Nell, behind you!" Irene called, raising the pistol to shoulder height.

I spun, the weight in my arms lifting and spinning me faster and harder than even I had thought.

I hit him in the stomach, some looming man with angry eyes and reaching fists.

And continued spinning around, barely keeping my feet . . .

. . . just in time to meet another man head-on as he charged out, brushing me aside. I fell like a sack of rocks.

The impact dazed me. Before I could recover, Irene rushed past me, her pistol aimed as she discharged it.

The sound exploded in the empty slaughterhouse.

A pair of black satin slippers stopped by my nose.

"Oh," came a small, fearful voice. "Are you all right?"

I sat up. "You're all right, that's what matters," I told the slender child, smiling at her despite my sudden, pounding headache. "My, what a lovely frock."

She was an achingly thin willow of a girl, with a small trembling mouth and great dark lonely eyes. I hugged her, no longer worried. If Irene and her pistol were ahead of me, nothing fearful could lie behind me . . . except little Consuelo, who said: "That was a very good discus throw. I've been studying the Olympic Games of the Greeks, you know. Do you dance? Miss Irene said she would teach me."

I looked around, though the open door. In the vast, black empty chamber, figures even darker were scurrying away like monsters in a dissipating bad dream.

Some of the figures came to the doorway and turned out to be Godfrey. Sherlock Holmes. Quentin. And Irene, looking royally annoyed.

In fact, they all looked royally annoyed with me.

Except for Consuelo. Children are often so much wiser than adults.

52.

TALL, DARK, AND HOLMES?.

Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.

-MAXIM OF NELLIE BLY

FROM NELLIE BLY'S JOURNAL There is only so far that one may goad an Englishman or a beau.

Quentin Stanhope had done a disappearing act on me.

He wasn't at his hotel, and had left no word as to where he might be. I next tried the hotel of Sherlock Holmes. Presto! Also unavailable.

At last I called at the Astor House Hotel, and found Mrs. Norton and Miss Huxleigh "not in."

Well.

If there's one thing I can smell, besides a Paris perfume, it's a rat.

His name is Quentin, and now I knew my docile English spy-cum-nursemaid had gone rogue. Oh, he was very good at squiring me about the lower quarters in search of baby-sellers. But once he was on a true trail, it was bye-bye, Nellie Bly.

I can't say I was surprised. I always knew he was in America solely to keep me from doing things. This may sound conceited, but I understand I'm a dangerous woman to some, at home and abroad, because I won't leave well enough alone.

Leaving well enough alone is the way women and horses have been kept in harness for generations.

That very first article by Quiet Observer saying girls should stay to home and not intrude on the working world had gotten my ire up at the age of seventeen, and I haven't stopped since then, although I've since made peace with the curmudgeonly old columnist who goes by the coy initials of Q.O.

Any one man may be all right. In a bunch, they're a cowardly nest of nay-sayers to free women anywhere.

Quentin Stanhope is no different. Nor that hoighty-toighty Sherlock Holmes. As for Irene Adler Norton and Miss Nell, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could toss the trunks they brought to New York.

Bunch of Continental snobs, if you ask me!

Now to my next step.

It came to hand on my exit from the Astor House in the form of a begging Street Arab. I never stint on a source.

"Here's fifty cents, my lad. I wish I knew when a certain lady with a lapel watch left this hotel a few hours ago."

One could count on these street rapscallions to spot and value articles of jewelry faster than a Forty-seventh Street diamond dealer.

"Nothin' simpler," said the filthy-faced lad. "If ye have anither fifty-cent piece."

"I've the fifty cents, but have you the information I want?"

"Love the hat, ma'am. M'name's Archy. It was just a couple hours ago, at dusk. A tall, dark fellow had me watchin' for when a bustlin' lady wearin' a silver belt come out, and where she went."

"Hmmm," I said, recognizing Sherlock Holmes at once. "I suppose you can't tell me."

"The lady took a horsecar with another gennelmen in a checked suit. Fast fellow. And Mr. Mayberry's hack followed with the tall dark fellow. A regular Brit in a top hat. Handsome as the undertaker's horse. It's a regular Madison Square farce."

"Here's a fifty-cent piece that says I want Mr. Mayberry's hack for myself."

"He's just back on his favorite corner, there. Wait! My fifty-cent piece!"

I threw it behind me and bounded into the conveyance in question, beating out a top-hatted swell escorting a Union Square fan dancer.

"Where to, ma'am?" my genteel driver inquired.

"Where you took your last fare."

"It'll be pitch dark with night there by now. You're better off stayin' in the lights of Broadway. That's no fit place for a lady alone."

"I don't expect to be alone long," I told myself, not worrying a whit what he thought about overhearing me.

But my brave words came back to haunt me when the driver began taking darker and sharper turnings into the unsavory area that led to the docks.

I couldn't imagine Nell Huxleigh going here, or Sherlock Holmes permitting her to do so.

Yet if the tall dark man who called upon her hadn't been Holmes, it must have been Quentin. Yes, Quentin would be the more likely candidate to squire Miss Nell around at night . . . but why here?

When the driver stopped near a completely darkened building, I leaned out over the doors that kept me a passenger, reluctant to get out.

The area was utterly deserted, and had that disused atmosphere you find in abandoned buildings.

While a I hesitated, I heard the distant rattle of harnesses and carriage. Shortly after, a Gurney came grinding down the damp cobblestones, its horses straining as if overloaded.

"What on earth can that Gurney be doing here at this hour?" I speculated aloud.

My driver heard me.

"Doin' what I long to do, Miss. Gettin' the hell out of this nasty place."

I still made him drive forward a hundred yards or so, though he swore that where we had stopped had been where he'd left "the gentleman" (that had to be Quentin, not Holmes; Holmes was too brusque to be taken for a gentleman) "and the lady off."

There was obviously nothing here.

No lady, and no gentleman.

No Holmes, no Nell.

No Quentin.

I felt a bit like a jealous spouse trying to trail an illicit couple. Disappointed, and foolish.

I knocked on the trapdoor to let the driver know he could hie for the safe, electrically bright lights of Broadway again.

Whatever anyone had been up to in the dark of night, Quentin would be mine again in the morning.

53.

SULPHUR AND SMOKE.

Men for a little gain cross the seas, enduring at least as

much as we, and shall we not, for God's love do

what men do for earthly interest?"

-SAINT ISAAC JOGUES'S LETTER TO HIS MOTHER ON

LEAVING FRANCE TO BE A MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS.