The Adventuress (18 page)

“F-friend?” I inquired.

The miserable oaf regarded me with cocked head, as the vile Casanova was wont to do at his most uncooperative. His eye whites were as unappetizingly yellowed as his teeth. “Your friend, too, Missus, I suppose. She’s better out of it,” he said gruffly. “ ‘The beauty,’ the concierge in the hotel here called her, and right the old harridan was. ‘The beauty’ will have to get on alone now.”

I swallowed hard at the finality of that declaration even as the train gave a preliminary jolt. Would Irene decide not to board when she couldn’t find us? “What do you hold against us?” I demanded. “What can the likes of you possibly hold against us?”

“Even the likes of me has friends, Missus... or business acquaintances.” As he leaned forward to pierce me with a look, a strange rustle came from beside me. The abominable basket was shaking with some interior disruption!

“Oh!” I shr
ank
against the window frame. “I don’t doubt that you have friends... such as this fine Indian gentleman.”

He laughed until his eyes ran and his nose turned a decidedly unattractive cherry-red. “Singh’s a gentleman and I’m a lemming! And you two have much to answer for, or you’re a tragic railway accident. The track follows the coast from here to Toulon. An open window, a wee push... it’s a long bounce down the seaside cliffs to the water, milady.”

“Look here!” Godfrey leaned forward, perhaps to distract the man. He was rewarded with a knife point in the chest. “If you’ve some quarrel with me, out with it. Let me answer, and leave the lady unharmed. I’ve done nothing to earn any man’s enmity.”

“Then it’s a dull life you’ve lived!” Jerseyman wheezed with bitter laughter. “I’ve done naught but earn enemies, some undeserved, some not. It’s sweet to see a fellow speak up for his wife, but it’s a woman I too would avenge, a girl really.”

“Girl?!” I echoed, judging our captor to be well past sixty.

“A girl of good family. You done her in.” He turned on Godfrey with casual threat, jerking the knife tip to his throat.

I gasped in comprehension. “Louise! You must refer to Louise Montpensier!”

“At least the lady admits it. Likely you had little to do with it, Missus, though you may have aided his villainy.”

“Godfrey villainous?” I couldn’t help sounding incredulous.

“You’re his wife; you have to defend him.”

“I beg your pardon, I’m not—”

Godfrey’s glower would have frozen the Medusa to silence. It sufficed to persuade me to change my tune. “I’m... not obliged to support my, er, husband if he commits a wrong.”

This statement adhered to my philosophy; furthermore, it did not actually claim Godfrey for my husband. The idea was ludicrous to me, as I’m sure it was to Godfrey. Evidently Jerseyman had presumed the
English
people in the party to be man and wife and the American the odd woman out.

The train’s initial exertions soon turned to the bump, hiss and clatter of actual speed. I felt truly frightened.

Jerseyman waved his blade in my direction. “If you’re not bound to help out your husband here, then why did you and your lady friend come running to the L’Oiseau Blanc in Paris? Didn’t you guess what
kin
d of place it was? A
maison de rendezvous,
as they call it?”

“No! Not until I arrived there.”

Jerseyman prodded Godfrey’s collar with his knife point. Luckily, it was well starched—the collar, not the knife point.

“What kind of worm, Guv, would drag his own wife and another apparently respectable lady to such a place, as well as a young girl?”

Godfrey had no opportunity to answer, for besides resenting the “apparently respectable,” I was struck by an insight I could not help expressing. “Then you, sir, consider yourself a
friend
to Louise Montpensier!”

This gave the man pause. “I can’t say I ever met the young lady face-to-face.”

“Then why avenge her upon those who did her no harm?” Godfrey inquired with a barrister’s reasonableness.

“No harm!” The knife sawed the air near Godfrey’s Adam’s apple, which appeared about to become apple cobbler between the ruffian’s threats and the train’s abominable shaking. “First you force her into a low, vile place like that—I should know, I’ve slept under such roofs before—and you have the gall to call your own wife and another lady there. Then you take her away in a carriage. Within days, Mademoiselle Montpensier is gone, vanished! We put a lot of time into that girl; we don’t like losing her.”

“You
don’t like losing her?” Godfrey’s voice clapped with the thunder of righteous indignation, at which he excelled in court. It was a pity our questioners did not wear white horsehair wigs and abide by the English system of jurisprudence. “How do you think
we
feel? I pulled that child from the cold, wet grasp of death itself that afternoon. Of course I brought her to the nearest shelter! She was soaked, chilled and distraught, yet to involve the police would be to brand her as an attempted suicide. Naturally, I asked my... er, wife and her friend to help with Louise. For this you threaten me?”

“You didn’t bring her to that place to misuse her?”

“Of course not!” Godfrey’s eyes narrowed to steel-bright slits as he saw our captor dueling with doubt. He pressed his advantage: “And how do
you
know of that incident? Did you see Louise jump into the Seine? Were you following her? Why? Do you know why she was determined to destroy herself?”

“To get away from you, I’d think.” Jerseyman had decided to rely upon first impressions. “Young girl like that, her uncle so careful that he had a man assigned to follow her. We’ve all been careful of her. Then you take her to that place and the next thing we know, she’s gone, sunk like a stone, and not even in a proper body of water. We got an investment in that girl an’ if it’s gone for good, I guess I’ll satisfy meself by takin’ it out of your hide—”

“Sir!” said I.

Jerseyman and Godfrey stared at me as if I’d gone mad. In the ensuing silence, I heard a new rustling from the basket, which shook as if with an ague. The Indian was smiling, an expression that emphasized a shallow, sinuous scar meandering from one bottom eyelid to his chin like a single tear track—an elongated “S,” as in the tattoo! Were the scar bas-relief rather than engraved, it would have resembled... a snake.

“Sir,” I repeated, thinking to distract Jerseyman from threatening Godfrey further, “am I to understand that you consider yourself a... a Dutch uncle?”

“The Dutch have nothing to do with it, lady! That’s one breed we haven’t got in our company, the Dutch.”

I cast frantically about for a more felicitous expression and, God forgive me, found it. “Is it possible, sir, that you and your”—the basket beside me was heaving closer—“companion are secret friends to dear Louise? Guardian angels, so to speak?”

It was sheer blasphemy to attach such an elevated designation—and a Romanish one at that—to the debased examples of humanity before me, but I am told that the Deity welcomes the lost sheep. Perhaps He may extend mercy even to a heathen Indian holding captive something decidedly unlamblike in a basket.

“Guardian angels?” The man laughed and nodded. “So you might say. We look after her interests, Singh and I. Have for years.”

“How . . . nice.” The Jerseyman was so intrigued by my question that he had lowered the knife an inch or two from Godfrey’s throat. “I assure you that we meant her no harm, did her no harm, mean her no harm.”

“Mean?” Jerseyman pounced on the present tense.

I was speechless in the face of my misstep.

“Louise is alive, we believe,” Godfrey said quietly, “though the Paris police think her dead.” He waited until the knife was withdrawn fully before speaking again. “I see the story now. You and your henchman here drugged and tattooed Louise. You left her to awaken alone and discover her fiendish alteration. Why was it not you who pulled her from the river into which she cast herself after your infamy? Why was it left to me?”

“Lost her for a bit,” the Jerseyman said sourly. “So she dove in herself? I didn’t know what to think. When next we spied her, she was wet and with you. Then you forced her into that low place. After that, the two gentleladies arrived in a fine carriage—and when next I look in at the Montpensier house, the police are coming and going and the neighbors say that Louise drowned in the mere. I figured she’d killed herself, like her dad, over what you’d done to her.”

“Good God, man, it was
you
and that foul tattoo that forced her to the river! I saved her from drowning!”

“Uh.” The Jerseyman’s grunt echoed my traditional interjection with quite different effect. His seamed, sly face grew sheepish, although I doubt that even the Deity would have found it pleasant. “We made sure the girl was fast asleep for the needle. She couldn’t have felt a thing. Singh has a touch of velvet; he did me when I was cold sober. Why would Louise do herself in over a little tattoo? Pretty, too. Singh does a first-rate job. He’s a bloody artist, and he’s got all these foreign curlicues to his work. ’Course, her dad was a despondent sort. Had to have been to kill himself, don’t you think? Especially with—”

“My dear sir!” I imbued those undeservedly polite words with scorn and disbelief. “Have you no idea of how an abduction would horrify a young girl of tender upbringing? Of how she would feel to awaken in a strange, vile place, her clothing disarranged? To have no memory of events, nothing but a foul, disfiguring tattoo inked across her hitherto unblemished flesh? Had you considered how she would explain such a thing to the aunt who loved her? To the maid who assisted her in dressing? To her stern uncle and guardian? To her future husband? Sir, you are an uncivil and ignorant creature, as benighted as this poor heathen sitting on his heels here.”

Jerseyman blinked at my tirade. “It had to be done, Missus, for the girl’s own good. If Louise was to keep a finger on the compass, so to speak, in her father’s stead, it had to be done. What other way was there? The uncle wouldn’t deal, and would Louise heed the likes of us if we sashayed up to her on the street and proposed she let us ink a little picture on her skin?”

“I take it,” Godfrey said, “that you are responsible for the servant Pierre’s dereliction of duty on that fateful day.”

“You may take it and put bows upon it, sir! We managed to delay the brute long enough that he lost sight of Louise. It’s a wonderful thing, is it not, what care her uncle takes of her? He was fiercer than a Tibetan terrier to get past, but by him we did get. Singh draws with pins and needles and I tell him what to do. Singh an’ me might be all that’s left of our Quarter.” Jerseyman frowned. “But you don’t know anything ’bout that and never will.”

The Indian beside me had followed the conversation thus far with scant understanding but with quick intelligence. I noticed that the knife had vanished from his knee, a sign that our captors were no longer determined to blame Louise’s ruin upon us. Still, the oddly animated basket continued its creep toward my skirt folds. Godfrey had been so intent upon convincing the Jerseyman that he failed to notice this anomaly, although I was conscious of every quiver within the woven reeds.

Jerseyman
hims
elf was disarmed now, the knife tucked into some hidden place upon his disreputable person, a servile grin upon his face. “I can see that Singh and me has jumped to conclusions about you two. And if you claim Louise is still about and kicking, so much the better. We’ll be takin’ our leave now, but you two must sit still and keep mum—”

“Wait. Did you and your friend here follow me in Paris?” Godfrey asked.

“Follow you, yes. We took you for the villain of the piece.”

“Godfrey!” I couldn’t keep from interrupting. “You were followed about in Paris?”

“Yes, after Louise’s presumed death. It was one reason I wished to get Ire—er, to remove
you
and our mutual friend from the city to calmer surroundings, my dear.”

“Most thoughtful,” said I, “though you could have warned her—I mean, of course, myself. You are entirely too protective of female sensibilities, Godfrey.”

“Perhaps.” He turned again to Jerseyman. “Paris must have been a hard berth for seasoned tars like yourselves. Was it you who sent the letters to Monsieur Montpensier?”

Jerseyman turned his head as if to spit. “Hard as two-sou nails, that uncle. His brother was likable enough, considering his family pretensions, but I couldn’t get nowhere with the elder brother and I dared not tell him of my mission. Nor will I tell you, sir, no matter how smoothly you wiggle around to it. Consider yourself lucky to be out of this business. Take your lady wife and her friend for a nice jaunt along the Riviera and forget Louise Montpensier and us two.”

As the fellow rose, our compartment door burst open.

Godfrey leaped up to confine Jerseyman, while the Indian screamed shrilly and hurtled like a monkey to Godfrey’s back. No knife blades flashed in the gaslight; it had happened too fast for anyone to produce one.

A capped silhouette stood in the passage against the background of blinding daylight that poured through the passage windows; that was all.

‘Tickets,” this intruder called loudly in French into the shadowed chaos within.

At that moment the awful basket rolled from seat to floor, its latch springing open as it struck the boards. A round of dirty greenish rope spilled out. I bent to seize it with some notion of binding our attackers when the rope began lifting of its own accord, rising up... up... up. Tiny eyes shone like jet beads in the darkness.

I screamed and jumped up onto the seat.

Just above me, the gasolier swung like a censor, emitting an incense of pungent fumes. The Indian, alerted to the escape of his captive, gave up on Godfrey and began patting the seat cushions in the gloom, plaintively mewling for his pet.

Into this tangle strode the ticket-collector, not pausing to aid Godfrey in containing the Jerseyman or to assist myself in eluding the detestable snake, or even to help the Indian, now crawling upon the floor pleading for his missing property’s return.

No. Instead, he stepped smartly through the cramped scene to the window, where he jerked the curtains open.