The Shadow and the Star (10 page)

Someone started a cheer. Lord Gryphon swept Samuel up as easily as Samuel had lifted Kai. A multitude of hands caught his arms and legs and tossed him high in rhythm.
Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray
!

They tossed him three times, then pushed him upright and lifted him onto Lord Gryphon's shoulders, in spite of his wet bathing britches. Kai wriggled and screamed in Lady Tess' hold, wanting up, too, which sent Master Robert off into wails until Dojun the butler swung him up and started toward the coconut grove that overhung the beach.

Half the crowd began to move in that direction; the other half stayed on the beach and cheered on the Hawaiians who took the canoe again to search out the shark. From somewhere word came that the Hawaiian king was resting in his house at Waikiki. By the time they reached the tall palms, girls waited with garlands of flowers and maile leaves. Lord Gryphon swung Samuel down. As everyone stood back and grew silent, the girls came forward and placed the garlands around Samuel's neck, enveloping him in sweet scents and cool leaves.

"His Majesty honors your courage." The first girl kissed him on both cheeks, and as the second one began to do the same, he squirmed back, which made her and the crowd all laugh, and she grabbed his shoulders and kissed him anyway.

He backed up and collided with Lord Gryphon, who leaned over and murmured, "Tell 'em something to say to His Majesty."

Samuel wet his lips. He took a breath. "Please tell him—His Majesty—that it was—really, it wasn't anything. Please tell him—the flowers smell good."

That seemed to make everyone laugh, too, but Lord Gryphon put his arm around Samuel and pulled him hard and close, so it was all right. It was wonderful. Samuel was shaking a little. He looked back out at the brilliant turquoise band of water inside the reef, and beyond that to the rolling lines of surf, where the great shark had slipped like a shadow back to the dark and blue depths of the sea.

"
He's made off with the goods again!" Mrs. Dawkins
was pink with gusto, accosting Leda on the dark stairs with the latest news of the outlandish robberies that had begun the week before. "Third time in a sennight. Here's the paper, miss! Read all about it. A Japanee prince this time. Oh, he's a downy cracksman, this one is. Hoisted a sacred sword right out from under this Japanee's nose, with the peelers standing guard all over the place." She was almost squealing with glee over the discomfiture of the police. "There's a jolly for you, miss. And he'll have left something filthy again, but the paper don't say what, o' course. They never do come out and say, but a body can guess, can't she now? It'll be somethin' out of whatever indecent house where he sends the police to find that sword."

Leda was well aware of this third robbery, and the bizarre pattern of them, in which a priceless piece was stolen from one of the diplomatic envoys come for the Jubilee, and something indescribably lurid left in its place. That was strange enough, but even more peculiar was that this thief seemed to have no interest in the stolen property itself; he sent a note to the police telling them where to recover every treasure—each time in a "house of iniquitous accommodation," as the papers politely phrased it.

"How very interesting," she said discouragingly to Mrs. Dawkins, turning away to mount the black well of the stairs. Actually, Leda knew considerably more about the unorthodox thefts than her landlady, having taken up the habit of making tea for Inspector Ruby and lingering in the police office until after midnight, thereby giving the impression that she was still employed at the dressmaker's. "Good night, ma'am."

A quick hand tugged at her dress, holding her back. "Friday, miss. Fourteen shillings the week."

"It has been Friday only for half an hour, Mrs. Dawkins," Leda said. "I hope you didn't feel you must wait up for me. I will be happy to pay you in the morning."

Mrs. Dawkins grinned, unembarrassed. "Wanted to remind you, miss. Wanted to remind you. Those Hogginses the floor beneath you, had to run them out today. Plenty of people wants me rooms to let who'll pay proper, miss, just as you do. Them as don't pay, can't expect me to support 'em, can they? I'm no ladies' charity society, I tell you I'm not. Fourteen shillings the week, and no meals included. We're connected to the drains, miss—that's worth half a crown right there, and so I tells 'em."

So she had told Leda, frequently. Finally detaching herself from her landlady, Leda proceeded upstairs. In her room, she washed her face and watered her geranium on the open windowsill by candlelight. The night heat intensified the smells of the neighborhood, but one of the leaves on the geranium was broken, mingling a fresh, sharp scent with the heavier odors. She trimmed the leaf off with her fingernail and crushed it in her hand, pressing it to her nose to drive away the stench of the breweries.

She stared out the window into the humid darkness. The great slum that began in the street behind hers—a place she didn't wish to look, refused to look, could not bear to look—she felt it pulling at her, trying to drag her down into it like a gaping maw. She thought of Pammy, who had refused to accept or nurse her baby until Inspector Ruby informed her sharply that he'd have her up on infant murder charges if she didn't show some sense. Leda had a joyless feeling that her own life had probably begun in much the same way, unwanted and ugly, and not at all in the quietly respectable manner that she would have wished.

How long this charade could continue, Leda dared not think. Of her four dresses, she had determined that only the calico skirt and black silk showroom dress were completely necessary, one for everyday wear and the other for calling. With some regret she had taken the superfluous dresses to the bazaar and sold them. It had seemed agonizingly coarse to argue with a clothes-stall woman over pecuniary matters, and Leda was painfully aware that she had not gotten the full value of her gabardine and silver-gray stockinette. She retained her good bonnet and left the boardinghouse at her usual early hour every morning, dressed in her calico, spending her days walking and scanning the papers and office windows for positions, always seeming to arrive after some employment office had just sent over an ideal candidate, or joining twenty other hopefuls queued up in a hallway, or finding that the vacancy was not suitable for a female; resting in tea shops or parks when her feet grew so tired she could not stand.

She had to pay the rent on her sewing machine and return it by Saturday, and think of some excuse for Mrs. Dawkins about why she was no longer bringing work home. But she'd money to see her another week if she was careful, and tomorrow—today, now, as Mrs. Dawkins had pointed out—was Friday, the appointed time for Leda to visit South Street again. She intended to spend thruppence in the morning on two hours in the warm side of the public bath, and wear her black silk showroom dress after she repaired the fraying at the neckline.

Amid the uncertainty and unpleasantness, only the police station seemed a sure haven, even if it was a rather more masculine atmosphere than that to which she was accustomed. Inspector Ruby seemed to tolerate Leda's unwarranted lingering cheerfully enough, and Sergeant MacDonald in particular was most pleasant and attentive, but Leda was a little afraid that it might appear as if she were trying to fix his affections.

He did seem taken with her. Miss Myrtle would have been dismayed. A policeman, after all. It was hardly what might be called an eligible connection, but he was a very amiable man. Really, Leda thought he might do perfectly well. He shared a house with his sister in Lambeth, and Leda was quite willing to conform herself to such a situation, if he thought he might have sufficient means to support a wife and sister both. And his sister, Leda
understood, was still in her twenties—not beyond hope, she thought judiciously.

Perhaps Inspector Ruby and Sergeant MacDonald would be the ones to catch this infamous thief, and be suitably rewarded for their efforts. Perhaps even promoted. She wondered what position was next above sergeant.

According to the
Times
, not a single step had been made in identifying the perpetrator, or even the motive, and Mrs. Dawkins found great joy in calling the police a set of prime fools. It was brewing into a diplomatic disaster of major proportions, the
Times
went on in an editorial, straining relations with important nations. The foreign delegations must observe that the British authorities were impotent against crime in their own domain, or even worse, must believe that their nations were being made into fools deliberately.

That was all newspaper bluster. Leda knew the motive, of course. So did the police. And the
Times
, too, probably. She had not spent her hours in the police station with her ears stopped closed. Inspector Ruby and Sergeant MacDonald had done their best not to speak of it in front of her, but poor gentlemen, evidently they had no inkling of how their male notion of soft speech carried across a room. Leda knew all about the crimes. These were houses of low resort, every one of them, where the precious items were conveyed. And although Leda was not entirely clear on this point, they were evidently houses of a particularly dreadful sort, patronized by men of the upper classes with exceedingly violent and corrupt tastes.

The police theorized that it was a convoluted case of blackmail, in which some wealthy, extremely highly placed patron of these establishments was being shown the public humiliation that would happen to him if he did not pay up to his extortioner's demands. A very dirty racket, was what Inspector Ruby called it, and Leda agreed. This thief seemed to walk through walls, right past the best police and army guard they had to offer.

She rolled the geranium leaf between her fingers. It worried at her, to think that such horrible houses—whatever went on in them—had operated not one door down in her own street; that where she had seen only shiny-faced, subdued children, there had been something wicked and terrible underneath. She wondered what was happening to the children now, after the police closed the houses. She thought often of how she'd considered going to the authorities with her lesser suspicions, and had been afraid to do even that. She was no better than Mrs. Dawkins, really. Merely not as honest in admitting her selfish interests.

Tired as she was, she could not sleep. Before she went to bed, she rearranged things a little, panting as she shoved the heavy sewing machine and table to the center of the room and then pushed her washstand over by the door, trying to decide how to fit things up to take advantage of the fact that she would no longer need the best light for sewing. She wasn't sure, but a typist didn't take work home, she believed.

The rearrangement required her to move the bed, and she decided that she might just as well scrub the floor at the same time, so she pushed the bedstead over under the window, took off her skirt and blouse and corset, and set to work in her drawers. When everything in the hot little attic was as clean and polished as she could make it with a damp rag and Hudson's Extract of Soap—"Sweet as Roses, Fresh as Sea Breezes, for All Domestic Washing, Cleaning, and Scouring; Hudson's Leaves NO Smell"�she left the bed by the window, as it seemed cooler there, blew out the candle to save wax, and changed into her gown in the dark.