Spider Dance (57 page)

“Irene,” Godfrey noted glumly as we stood in the warm summer air and inhaled the smell of manure instead of cleansing chemicals. “And Father Hawks. And Lola Montez. Two are dead, one missing.”

“As pretty a puzzle as Watson ever attempted to record. Ah. My pardon. Watson is a physician and my self-appointed biographer.”

“We know who Dr. Watson is,” Godfrey said shortly. “What we don’t know is who this devil’s nest of torturers are. You forget, Holmes, that Nell and I have faced the Ripper without your assistance. If you can’t produce any clues to Irene’s whereabouts, we’ll find these monsters on our own.”

Holmes regarded us with an eye as cold as a cobra’s. “I doubt it. If anything is clear, it’s that your wife’s quest and mine are one in the minds of these villains. Like it or not, we three are allies . . . or losers. Together. I will lose only a client. You and Miss Huxleigh will lose far more. Perhaps it’s time to meet these shadows face-to-face.”

“How?” I demanded.

“Offer them what they want.”

“What?” Godfrey asked.

Holmes studied his own long, narrow, violin-playing fingers. “I might do, in a pinch.”

How long and terrifying was that dark and endless
upward sweep . . . of this long and terrifying staircase . . .
leaving below the light and its comforting rays.
For in that penumbra there were spirits
lurking to destroy me
. . . .

—
CONSUELO VANDERBILT BALSAN,
THE GLITTER AND THE GOLD
, 1952

“Quentin Stanhope,” Mr. Holmes said in the carriage as we progressed toward the main part of Manhattan. “Which hotel does he stay at?”

“The Fifth Avenue,” I replied, then blushed as I felt Godfrey’s gaze linger upon me.

Holmes still directed this interrogation, except that it had moved locations and victims. “Did you leave him a message on any of your various visits?”

“No.” I avoided Godfrey’s ever more curious gaze.

“Then we’ll call on him directly. Miss Huxleigh is right that we could use an ally of his talents in the forthcoming search. The man must return to his hotel sometime.”

Not if he was welcome elsewhere, such as at Pink’s place uptown, as they called it.

Once again I stood supplicant at the hotel’s registration desk, but this time Quentin was reported to be in.

“Mr. Stanhope came in quite early this morning,” the clerk mentioned with a carefully blank expression. “He may not wish to be disturbed.”

“Nonsense,” Holmes said. “He would be more aggravated should he miss our call.” He eyed me and I nodded.

I knew the room number, even if the clerk refused to reveal it.

We marched next to the elevator. I hoped that the warmth I felt in my face was purely imaginary as we wafted upward four floors.

Godfrey nodded thanks to the elevator operator as we left it and moved down the dim hall, which was carpeted in a dark maroon pattern.

When I paused by the right room number, Godfrey lifted his stick to knock, but Mr. Holmes nodded at me.

“You must be our spokesman.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but after two more raps, Quentin’s annoyed voice came from beyond the heavy walnut door.

“Yes? Who is it? I told the desk clerk I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

It suddenly dawned on me that he might not be alone behind that door, but Mr. Holmes prodded me with a short irritated nod, and I certainly didn’t want to seem timid in his eyes.

So I answered.

“It’s me. Nell. Quentin, something has—”

The door jerked open wide.

Quentin stood there, unshaven and uncombed, in a hastily tied garnet silk robe.

My face seemed to be changing to that lurid color.

“Nell! What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

I was solely the object of his regard, which no doubt Mr. Holmes intended, for he took my arm.

Quentin blinked with the bleary surprise of a child hauled from bed at an ungodly hour.

“Holmes? Godfrey?” He turned to me again, as if for explanation. “Nell? Is this something to do with the strange young man who called for me at the hotel very early this morning? I can’t begin to imagine who that could have been.
Certainly neither of you two,” he added, surveying the tall, grim figures of Mr. Holmes and Godfrey.

“You would certainly never imagine, Stanhope,” Holmes said crisply. “That was Miss Huxleigh in a walking-out costume devised by Mrs. Norton.”

“Nell!?”

It was flattering how repetitively he turned to me for explanation, but I wouldn’t be allowed to play spokesman here.

“May we come in and sit down?” Holmes demanded more than asked. “We’ve had a long night of it ourselves.”

I held my breath, not eager to cross the threshold.

May we come in indeed? Not if a lady in deshabille also occupied the room. I knew Quentin was too much the gentleman to permit that. What I didn’t know, and most certainly did not want to know, was if this was indeed the case, and if that lady might possibly be someone I knew.

Quentin stepped back from the door like a polite host. “Come in, certainly, though I am in no state to receive a lady. I apologize.”

I breezed past him on winged feet. The chamber, a bed-sitting room suite, was deliriously empty. “That doesn’t matter, Quentin. Our business is far too urgent for anyone to stand on ceremony.”

A round table by the window was hemmed in by three light chairs. Quentin lifted an armchair over to it, and ushered me onto its heavy upholstery, and then there were four.

“What’s happened?” he asked, alert all at once as the men took their seats. “Godfrey, a pleasure to see you here, but weren’t you on Rothschild business in Europe? And Holmes—”

“Irene’s missing,” I said, keeping my voice steady and still sounding as if I were hiccoughing walnuts.

“Missing? When? Where?”

“Last night” Holmes was surgically precise. “Around midnight. From a boardinghouse at Seventeenth near Broadway. Miss Huxleigh was awaiting her across the street, but Mrs. Norton never came back.”

“Awaiting her in the garb of a young man?” Quentin asked me.

Holmes answered before I could, impatiently. “Miss Huxleigh had been got up by Mrs. Norton to pass as such in the dark. When Mrs. Norton failed to return to their watching post, Miss Huxleigh investigated and found Mrs. Norton, and the three dark-clothed men who had followed her, gone.”

“Nell!” Quentin viewed me with sympathy and alarm.

Holmes was summing up, and he did not stop. “Miss Huxleigh came first to your hotel, but you were out. She then came to my hotel, where I was able to put an end to her rather feeble impersonation. We returned to the boardinghouse to examine the area, and then I sent her back to the Hotel Astor, while I trailed whatever signs I could find. When I returned at dawn to report to Miss Huxleigh, Mr. Norton had arrived from Europe and was awaiting me.”

“What did you find?” Quentin asked Holmes, finally ignoring me, and Godfrey.

“Three men followed Mrs. Norton into the boardinghouse, and one particular room. Four sets of footsteps left the building. Mrs. Norton doesn’t seem to have been a prisoner. One would wish to assume that she had evolved from hunted to hunter.”

“She left Nell standing across the street, not knowing what to think?” Quentin sounded unconvinced.

“And wouldn’t you have done the same, if opportunity to track an enemy spy had so suddenly offered itself?”

“Yes, but—” He glanced at me, and I thrilled to see that he was not so sure in my case.

Godfrey spoke. Gravely. “It’s a better thing to suppose than some other outcome.”

“What do you want of me?” Quentin asked. “I’ll do anything. Now. Whenever.”

At this Mr. Holmes managed to summarize the events of both his and Irene’s separate investigations into threats and extortion against the Vanderbilt fortune and the amazing history
of Lola Montez and the even more amazing possibility that this notorious figure might have some intimate connection to Irene.

“So,” said Quentin after Holmes had delivered himself of two paragraphs of rapid summation. Godfrey was regarding him with some fresh respect. “Two Episcopal priests have been abducted and tortured, one to death, one for an interest in the late Lola Montez, the other for having assisted Irene in looking into the life of Lola Montez. And this Episcopal Club is where?”

“Near Broadway and Eighteenth,” Holmes said, “where I’m shortly going to create quite a stir in visibly inquiring about, er, Miss Montez and Mrs. Norton. I’ll also revisit the boardinghouse, but with much more visible effects.”

Quentin nodded. “You need me to follow you, unseen, and be on hand, hopefully, when the villains of the piece abduct you.”

“You and Mr. Norton,” Holmes said. “I trust you to be invisible, Stanhope, as it is your profession. I expect Mr. Norton to be implacable, as it is his wife.”

“And me?” I demanded.

The men regarded me as if they had forgotten my presence, as indeed they had.

Holmes had an answer at the ready. “You’ll remain at the Astor House, in case any one of us needs to leave information for the others.”

“No! I know both sites well, the Episcopal Club and the boardinghouse. I won’t be left at the hotel to worry and stew.”

Godfrey eyed Holmes. “She accompanied Irene to the Episcopal Club twice,” he said, “and knew Father Edmonds. If you appear there with Nell in tow, you’ll seem to be following up on Irene’s disappearance, and two will attract more attention than one. In fact, you mean nothing to these villains, but Nell has already been seen in Irene’s company.”

“Exactly,” Quentin said heatedly, “why she should not be risked further.”

Holmes, though, was nodding sagaciously.

Did the man ever nod in any other mode?

“Mr. Norton is right. It must look as if Miss Huxleigh has engaged a Pinkerton to assist in a search for her friend.”

“You will never pass as Pinkerton,” Quentin said hotly.

“I will by the time Miss Huxleigh and I venture forth this afternoon. I will then,” he said, eyeing Quentin,“return Miss Huxleigh to her hotel and make myself annoying visible at both the Episcopal Club and the boardinghouse as dark descends. That’s when you and Mr. Norton will pick up my trail, in guises of your own. As I recall from certain Monte Carlo adventures, Mr. Norton has the usual dramatic tendencies of a barrister.”

Godfrey nodded. “I’ll manage a disguise, though no one in this affair has reason to know me. If you are accosted, Holmes, you’ll let them overpower you and take you—”

“Wherever they took or intended to take Mrs. Norton. Or where she followed them.”

“And,” Quentin said, “we shall follow you.”

“And so shall I,” I added.

Three sets of eyes gave my brave assertion the lie.

“It’s bad enough,” Holmes said, “that you are exposed by accompanying me by daylight. That is sufficient risk. We can’t have our roles compromised by looking out for you.”

“Then don’t look out for me! If you work by dark, I can don the walking-out clothes Irene gave me. No one will notice me.”

“You are not,” Holmes said, “Mrs. Norton. Your male costume would never fool me for a minute, as hers did once, and only once, I might add.”

“I don’t need to fool the great Mr. Holmes, only a few shadowy men who were stupid enough to kidnap an innocent priest who knew nothing that would serve them.”

“Holmes is right, Nell,” Quentin said. “We’ve all been up and awake and agitated for hours now, and by sunset it’ll be twenty-four hours. We can’t afford to dilute our effectiveness by worrying about you.”

“Then don’t,” said a voice that wasn’t mine. “She can accompany me,” Godfrey went on, “as she so often has. We are
the amateurs. Perhaps we need reinforcements.” He smiled at me, which was reinforcement enough.

“You’ll carry a pistol?” Holmes asked him.

“If you’ll provide one.”

Quentin nodded. “Yes, but I don’t like it, Nell being out and at risk.”

I sniffed. “Irene never objected to my company on many a dangerous jaunt. I won’t be left behind to be told what happens. I want to know. I want to be there.”

Quentin rubbed a hand over his weary face. “So do we, Nell, so do we. I only hope we lure the villains into the open.”