The Adventuress (42 page)

I saw no blood, but a strike such as that on a practice floor would have finished the contest.

The Italian barked one word;
“Basta?”
Even I knew that meant “enough?”

The viscount frowned. Irene’s sleek head shook violently. She did not waste energy on words but lunged again, forcing her opponent to raise his blade and retreat. Again her stinger bloodlessly sliced through his shirt fabric. The garment gaped open, revealing the viscount’s chest—revealing what had been concealed: the site of the tattoo!

Now I saw the point of Irene’s madness. I leaned forward to spy what her rapier had disclosed.

They both moved too quickly. Had I glimpsed coils of dark hair... or a sinuous letter of the late Singh’s design?

I found myself tightly gripping the Divine Sarah’s hand, as she was squeezing mine, not in custody, but in suspense. My concern was no longer for Irene’s safety; I awaited the successful unveiling of the viscount’s chest. If anyone had told me that I would someday stand on a beach at dawn hoping that a man’s shirt would be sliced to shreds upon his body, I would have called that person insane.

Irene lunged again. This time a long, diagonal slash nearly halved the fabric. But still it hung from the viscount’s shoulders. He hunched over, as if to keep the tatters upon his back. I began to detect a suspicious pattern beneath the flying shreds, began to discern an “S”, or was it an “N”?

Irene lunged again, slipped on the stones and went down.

Another’s fingernails bit into my palm. My own grip pressed a thin hand. Beside me, Sarah, her face aflame with dread and excitement, whispered encouragement in French.

The viscount grinned horribly and thrust his rapier at the prone figure on the ground.

Irene rolled away like a kitten and catapulted to her feet. The viscount’s thin blade buckled as it struck stones. He turned, or attempted to, but Irene’s rapier— behind him—plucked the shirt from his back in one fluid gesture and sent it flying into the sky like a torn white flag of surrender.

He pivoted, his face red with fury and defeat, his bare chest heaving, his slack stomach revealed in all its hirsute glory.

We stared at him, we three supposed ladies. I don’t know why Sarah Bernhardt would ogle the viscount’s bare chest, but I knew why Irene and I found it so riveting.

For it was bare indeed... of any trace of a tattoo.

Chapter Thirty-three

N
ELL
L
OSES
A
N
O
SCAR

The viscount’s
second rushed forward to swathe him in a cloak. Without a word, the viscount turned and stalked down the strand, his second accepting the rapier from Irene and boxing it with its mate. Then he, too, left, following along the shore.

No one had noticed me.

Irene was accepting the hearty congratulations of the Italian second, whom the daylight revealed to be a lean, rather homely man with thinning steel-gray hair and rakish eyes.

Sarah released my hand to rush forward and shake Irene’s. “My adorable Maurice could have done no better. You must tell me your secret.”

Irene pushed the errant lock of hair off her forehead and smiled. “Let me introduce Signor Genturini, sword-master for the La Scala Opera House in Milan. He is my secret weapon, and my once and present tutor. I telegraphed him, and he came instantly to refresh my languishing fencing skills.”

Genturini bowed far more fluidly than his age would have suggested.

“I must study with you!” Sarah insisted, gazing intently into his eyes.

“My honor,” said he, bowing as he took his leave.

“Yes,” Irene said, “you could never play Hamlet convincingly without mastering a few intricacies of swordplay.”

“I should make a most dashing Hamlet,” Sarah responded, assuming a pose. “I see that, now that I have witnessed you in Hamlet guise, my dear Irene.”

Irene turned to gather her hat and jacket, which lay on the pebbles, then noticed me. Little shocked my friend, but the sight of me did that morning.

“Nell? How on earth—?”

“I suspected some deviltry, so I followed you.”

“Before dawn? From the hotel? Perhaps I underestimate your resourcefulness. Yet I cannot commend your actions, however well-meaning. The viscount could have recognized you. That would have ruined all... as your impetuosity did before.”

“My
impetuosity! Now that is the kettle—and a very large kettle—calling the little pot black! Besides, the viscount has never noticed my existence in any situation, nor did he here.”

“My friends—” Sarah took each of our arms, thus inserting her slender person between us. “You debate suppositions. It is true that the mediocre man did not recognize my so amusing Miss Uxleigh. His loss. Nor did he recognize you or your true sex, Irene, so you have no reason to belabor poor little Nell.”

I outdid Sarah Bernhardt by at least three inches. How had I acquired that inaccurate sobriquet?

“And,” I went on to Irene, “before I am taken to task, I must inquire how you expected a dab of stage swordsmanship to see you through a duel.”

“After I saw the viscount pummel his miserable equerry, I knew I could duel the cowardly bully with a knitting needle and prevail!”

“Ladies, ladies,” Sarah remonstrated sweetly, as if her temper were never displayed. “All this is past and done.

We have had a most piquant escapade. What else is there to do but go to the Ritz and indulge in a most lavish breakfast?”

And so we all three did. But first Irene and I returned to the Hotel de Paris. No one glanced at us twice in the lobby, a sign, perhaps, that Irene was most effective as nature intended her: in the female form.

While she dressed, I fetched Oscar’s basket from its place by the parlor windows. Irene did not notice my new burden until we were ready to depart for the Ritz.

“Why, Nell, what are you doing with Oscar?”

“I am conveying him to Madame Sarah, as a gift.”

And so I did. The actress was most gratifyingly thrilled with my presentation, and for once, Irene was a silent witness to
my
exploits.

“My dear Miss Uxleigh! How delightful! You know, many of my so-called friends are absolutely silly about my pets. They regard the lovely serpent as a low and vile creature. Some even express a horror at the sight of one, at sharing the same chamber with one!”

“No!” I murmured in a tone of shock that passed muster with Madame Sarah.

“Sooo,
I am pleased that you are brave enough to offer me this little gift. Let us see the scamp better... oh! the darling.” She had pulled the snake from the basket as easily I would withdraw a ribbon—an incredibly thin length of scaled green. Despite the creature’s fragile appearance, it speedily settled several times around its new mistress’s neck like a jade choker. “Has it a name?” Sarah inquired fondly, her voice vibrant despite the living necklace at her throat. I thought the serpent a great improvement over garlands of human eyes.

“I have chosen Oscar.”

“Oscar!?” The Divine One looked startled, then laughed. “Why not? It goes well with ‘Otto,’ and I shall have a wicked glee when I introduce it to our mutual friend, Mr. Oscar Wilde!”

Sarah threw the willow basket to the floor, unwound her new pet and lifted the snake high above her head. It flicked a long tongue at her. Then she wrapped it around her forehead like a turban and there it happily stayed, its lithe green body forming an exotic diadem in her fountaining hair.

Even I could see some beauty in the small serpent at that moment, and I felt assured that the late Mr. Singh certainly would rest easy to know that his former pet had a congenial home. I was also sure that Mr. Oscar Wilde could not fail to admire his new namesake.

Irene and I returned, sans snake, to the Hotel de Paris before noon. She retired for a nap and I adjourned to the maps and tracings in the parlor. Oddly, I was aware of the absence of the snake’s little basket by the window. Despite my certainty that Sarah would provide the serpent with a freedom, a suitable diet, and an appreciation that I never could offer, I realized that its presence had exerted a subtle influence upon me to which I had been totally blind. The thought turned my mind to the absent Casanova and then to the quieter, yet equally dominant, presence of Lucifer.

I recalled the parrot’s scabrous but somehow cheerful yellow beak, its scaled yet agile legs, its round eyes so like a snake’s staring expression. I conjured the cat’s pointed ears, black and furred on the exterior and deep pink within, its emerald eyes and jet-black nose and whiskers...

And then, while engaged in such idle remembrance of these dumb (in Casanova’s case, not sufficiently dumb) beasts, I made such a stunning discovery that when I leaped to my feet, I knocked my chair over.

My weary eyes regarded a certain portion of the map of the Cretan coast, then the configuration of the conjoined compass letters. I wrenched off my pince-nez, as if doing so would allow me to see the incredible truth more plainly.

I blinked. I pinched the bridge of my nose, which ached from the press of the spectacles. I clapped my hands over my mouth and danced around the table. In short, I behaved as if possessed by a monkey god. It remains one of my sincerest thanksgivings to this day that not even an Indian snake was present to observe me.

Then I gathered my papers and slipped back to my rooms, awaiting the proper moment for revelation and glory.

Chapter Thirty-four

A
N
OVEL
C
LIENT FOR
H
OLMES

“I do
not wish, Nell,” Irene said, “to contemplate Viscount D’Enrique’s chest over dinner.”

“It is not my desire to contemplate the subject at any time, but surely the absence of a tattoo must alter your theories.”

“Trial and error, Nell, trial and error. To that process all theories must be subjected. I admit that the fact that the viscount is apparently as innocent of tattoos as Mary’s little lamb forces my speculations in another direction. Although—” she balanced a dainty furl of the Hotel de Paris’s famed mandarin ice on her dessert spoon “—speaking of other directions, I suppose it is possible that Viscount D’Enrique’s tattoo is in an un traditional place.”

“Next you will be invading the man’s bath! Surely the point of the scheme was that the tattoos be located in the same spot on each conspirator.”

Irene let the ice melt on her tongue while she considered. “Quite true,” she said at last. “I must discover another thread to lead us through this labyrinth.”

I cleared my throat.

“Yes, Nell? You have a suggestion?”

“I may have found a new... filament. But where is Godfrey? You seem remarkably resigned to his absence.”

“I am not resigned to his absence, but satisfied of his need to be absent. There is a difference. As for his return, I expect him hourly.”

“Well, then, perhaps you can finish that extremely dilatory dessert and we can return to your rooms, where I will show you a most intriguing thing.”

Irene never displayed curiosity when one wished her to; it was one of her more annoying traits. Still, eventually we repaired to her rooms, where I was compelled to reveal my grand discovery to an audience of one.

“You will notice that I have meshed the four letters of the compass sufficiently that their lavish scrollwork intertwines.”

She studied my arrangement like the most docile of pupils.

“You will notice also that I have marked off on this map a portion of the Cretan coast.”

Irene went so far as to extend a hand for my pince-nez. Then she leaned over the table and examined the indicated elements with satisfying intensity and a number of noncommittal murmurs.

“You may have noticed, too, the small, decorative lozenges that appear near the O and the N.”