Those thoughts sat on the back of my neck like a great, black vulture that afternoon as I moved the papers and books about Lola Montez and Madame Restell's cryptic diary around the surface of the round table, desperately seeking inspiration.

Godfrey, a man of supernatural good sense, had betaken himself away from our rooms on some such feeble excuse as needing shaving cream because he'd left Bavaria in such a hurry.

What he was in haste to do was escape my black mood, brought on by the shocking audacity of Pink entering our lions' den to flaunt her claims on Quentin's time, energy, and attention.

Once already Quentin had been lured from the toils of Pink back into our camp. I must provide reason for him to make that change in obligations permanent!

Irene came over to gaze down upon the pile of confusing documents, then rested an encouraging hand on my shoulder.

I pushed the papers away in a rare fit of temper.

"I can make no sense of it! Lola Montez could have been, or have gone, or have done anything, anywhere. The woman was beyond amazing. An expert shot. Utterly fearless to the point of facing off a maddened mob. A femme fatale. A political idealist. A dreadful dancer. An amazing 'artiste.' A harlot. A heroine. She may be the mother of Queen Victoria, or Tiny Tim, for all I know, and for all she claims in her astounding autobiography."

Irene's hand never left my right shoulder, which forced the vulture claws to edge a bit to the left.

"She's a legend; face it, Nell. We'll never know the entire truth. And I don't think she would have wanted us to."

"What would she have wanted!?"

"The peace that she indeed found at the end, and the fight she waged getting there. Take either one away from her, and she is not a whole woman."

I braced my face on my fists, like a spoiled child. "Call me not a whole woman, but I can't stand Pink lording it over us, and Quentin."

"She's had a bitter pill to swallow: smothering a story of international sensation. It goes against her grain."

"Pink goes against my grain."

"Quentin chafes as much. Why do you think he was so eager to join in our risky expedition to the slaughter yards in search of rogue Jesuits?"

"That's another thing! Even Lola's invective against the Jesuits rings false. Yes, they were a force in Europe thirty years ago, but nowadays-?"

"Quite true. These greedy, brutal creatures here in New York seem to be the demented remnants of men fighting a long-lost cause. All of those whose faces I saw-and there were more whose faces I didn't see, for they weren't all at the slaughterhouse that night-were sixty years old or more."

"Goodness, they were doddering!"

"No, these men were quite vigorous still, Nell, and possessed of feverish political passion. Remember, King Ludwig was sixty when he met Lola, and she not yet thirty."

"He was behaving badly for a man of his maturity as well. Didn't you learn anything specific about these creatures, during your time among them?"

"Like all conspirators, they'd adapted noms de guerre. They referred to each other by the names of professions or crafts. One was called Woodcutter, another Baker. And one was called Doctor."

"He must have been an elevated type!" I said derisively, for none of these pseudonyms struck me as apropos. "Butcher," would have been more like it.

"Of course," Irene said slowly, "all these names were used in their German form, not English. I found that jogging my memory. It reminded me of someone we'd read or heard about in connection with Lola's California stay."

"We heard of dozens such people. I'll give Lola Montez one thing: she knew everybody there was to know in her day."

"Something . . . Lotta said."

"About a woodcutter, a butcher, a baker; they all sound like they're out of a fairy tale."

"I was thinking of the Doktor. 'Herr Doktor,' they said."

"Any doctor involved in such atrocities is not worthy of the title!" I was about to fulminate further when I remembered what Irene was trying to recall. "Oh." Then I had to decide if I wanted to say it, given the awful ramifications.

"What is it, Nell. You've remembered something."

Of course she'd ask until I said something, and I'm not adept at falsehoods.

"Lola's friend in Grass Valley, after she'd divorced Patrick Hull," I said sullenly.

"Friend?"

"Well, probably more than that, to be frank! The man she rode into the mountains with, who never came back. Wasn't he a German doctor?"

"No!" Irene straightened up. "No. He was German, but he allowed himself to be called Doctor, instead of by his inherited title of baron, which of course meant nothing in American society, especially in the gold fields." Her voice deepened. "You remember what family name he went by there'

"Adler," I admitted. "It's a stupid coincidence."

Irene sat down, slowly, in an empty chair at the table.

"She seemed to mourn his death, Lotta said, and left Grass Valley not long after. But then I would have been born sooner than I was told . . . . I'm not sure I'm any more ready to admit to my real age than Lola was, if that's the case."

"Irene, this is ridiculous! If that man Adler was your father and if the Ultramontanes here in New York are following a leader who goes by the same professional title he used then, he'd have to be . . . oh, my, at least sixty years old."

"I could have been 'betraying' my own father."

"Did he look anything like you? For you certainly don't resemble Lola."

"I don't know, Nell. Those men wore slouch hats and high-collared long coats. I never bothered trying to see or remember their faces, because they were always obscured . . . by the dark of night, or inside the slaughterhouse."

She turned to me, her features alight with a flood of new speculations. "If he was the same 'Dr. Adler' from Grass Valley, forget the issue of whether he could have fathered me. The fact is, he vanished, supposedly in a hunting accident, was never seen again in Grass Valley. You know what that means?"

"That he didn't necessarily have to be dead at all. He may have deserted Lola and she reported his 'accident' to save face."

"Exactly. And . . . he may have deserted her because he had followed her there from Germany and had learned what he wished to know, or he could no longer spend the time in such an obscure outpost. If he was indeed a German baron, he might have been needed back in Bavaria attempting to rein in Ludwig's errant heir to the throne."

"He was a spy even then!"

Irene nodded, her lips a thin grim line.

"But what did they want?"

"I said that I think their cause is deluded. That doesn't mean that what they seek isn't real, though."

"What? Lola's gold and jewels?"

Irene sat opposite me, then nodded seriously.

"Gold and jewels." The words lingered on her tongue. "Lola's gold and jewels, all gathered from her time with the king and from the money she made off that notorious liaison for the rest of her life. Where did they go? The jewels sold for nothing in California, say several accounts. But where were Lola's considerable gold-field investment profits by the end of her life? The biographies are vague, and you haven't made much headway deciphering Lola's lost papers. Was the money also gone and lost, worth nothing? Value shifts with time. What's priceless in one era is pathetic in the next. Yet-could she have invested her holdings through a friend?"

"Friend?"

"She had many prominent and wealthy friends in New York during her glory days, even if they were utterly absent at her end."

I sat up as if suddenly deposited on a hat pin. "Vanderbilt. The Commodore. The old man. Didn't he know her?"

"Yes. And that might be what made the Ultramontanes fix their sights on Six-sixty Fifth Avenue and its residents. I have an idea. I only hope Mr. Gordon is still in New York."

"Mr. Gordon? The absentee owner of the New York Herald, a rival paper to Pink's precious World?"

Irene nodded. "Exactly the one. Thank God it isn't Pink's paper. We must try to see him again at once."

"On our own?"

"What else? Would you want Pink along?"

I shook my head.

"Quentin?"

I paused. Not right now. I shook my head.

"Godfrey?"

"Maybe-"

"I agree. He is the most agreeable partner of the lot at the moment. Godfrey, however, being so agreeable, wouldn't wish to intrude on the investigation we've begun, but not finished. However . . . Sherlock Holmes would."

"Not him, either!"

"Then it is you and me, Nell. I think we can solve this riddle before Holmes reaches his promised and 'surprising' denouement. What do you think?"

I gazed at the snarl of papers that encompassed a peripatetic life of forty years and more mysteries and recent gore than would furnish a collection of Edgar Allan Poe tales.

"I think that we have to try."

55.

OF COMMODORES AND QUEENS.

Washington, D.C., November 3,1854.

My Dear Lola, Since our last meeting in San Francisco,

I have been most actively engaged in securing aid from wealthy

Southern gentlemen in our project . . . . When we succeed,

and we will, remember you are to be Empress of California. Have

sent by vie Steamer $50,000 to San Francisco.

-LETTER FOUND IN 1914 AMONG THREE NEEDLEWORK SAMPLERS

BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN DONE BY LOLA.