The Adventuress (43 page)

“No doubt some eccentricity of Singh’s, whose letters are otherwise admirably Western, if a bit rococo.”

“These are
not
lozenges, Irene! These are not slips of the needle. These. . . flyspecks, these mere flecks in the larger design of the letters, are equally recognizable, if we will but see it.”

“Excellent, Nell! And... they are?”

I leaned back. “Islands. Or, I should say, islets. I believe them to be very small, not worth recording on most maps, in fact. They may even vanish and reappear with the tides. We are lucky that one of Godfrey’s maps indicated their presence. Yet these islets are the key to the entire cipher.”

“Wonderful! And how is that?”

Her air of enthusiasm did not deceive me; I must prove my case or it would hold no water.

“I now ask you to examine the compass letters as I have arranged them.”

“You have drawn them so close together that they almost resemble a tangle of ribbons.”

“Exactly, and most people would see only the tangle. But what does the tangle enclose? More, of what shape does the enclosed space remind you?”

Irene pursed her lips and tilted her head. She twisted the drawing sideways, then angled her head again.

“The lower stroke of the N dips between the O and the E, and the S nests near the E. It makes a rather pleasing design, but—”

“I will give you a clue.”

“Can’t you simply tell me?”

“Do
you
ever simply tell me?”

Irene smiled. “You obviously wish me to see a shape. Is it animal, vegetable or mineral water?”

I ignored her teasing. “Animal.”

“
Animal
. Then I would say a snake; certainly the letters are somewhat serpentine. Too obvious? Well, then, what animals would cross your mind? Ah—a parrot! Or a cat!” I must have blinked, for she suddenly returned her gaze to the paper. “The N’s dip is the forehead and ears line. And if you connect the dots, the lozenges could be eyes and nose! Or the
islets
are eyes, rather. Yes, I see it. But it looks more like a fox than a cat, Nell.”

I spun a map tracing to her side of the table. “To the stranded party, it looked like a fox from the overlook above. And see on this map, the French cartographer has written Bai de Oeil-de-Reynard. Eye-of-Fox Bay! If you turn the map—so—the topography matches the inner area of the conjoined letters. I even think that here, where the line of the fox’s nose nestles into the top of the S, is where the treasure cave lay before its collapse.”

“You astound me, Nell! What clever work. Now we know as well as any survivor of the wreck where the treasure is to be found. All we lack to a solution is the identity of the Quarter members and their director, the knowledge of who pursued the sailors in Jerseyman’s Quarter to their deaths, and how—and who was responsible for filching the palace sealing wax all those years ago.”

Her list quite deflated me. “But now we know—”

“Exactly where the blackmailer will direct the prince’s expedition, which we had only to discover by joining it. Oh, those deciphered tattoos will make recovery of the treasure surer, but as for identifying the villain . . .”

“You still believe that one controlling hand has directed all these events?”

“One person has at least set many of them in motion, yes. This was such an untidy scheme at the outset—a happenstance alliance of high- and low-born, a treasure lost beyond any one member’s ability to claim it, and the wait of years for the means to raise it; the folderol of the tattoos, clearly devised by a subtle intellect to pacify the party and send its members off thinking the plan safeguarded by their very own skins; the special sealing wax; the drama of the severed fingers, the sailors’ special method of identity.

“None of this was necessary, Nell, save to disperse the party with a false sense of security amid the trappings of a melodrama. The problem has not been Quarters and tattoos, but method and opportunity. Until the prince’s oceanic expeditions developed methods of deep-sea exploration to rival the fictional exploits of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, our mastermind has had to forestall the others and plan his own extraction of the treasure.”

“But the viscount has no tattoo! Surely he would not be exempt.”

“No, he would not be exempt. For the plan to work, its author would have to subscribe to all particulars—and publicly. Our man bears the mark of Singh upon his flesh, and also the burden of Singh’s death upon his head; for why was the Indian killed except to ensure that no more Quarter members’ relatives, such as Louise, could be brought into the equation? The loyal Jerseyman’s crude approach alerted Louise’s uncle to the treasure, stirred our interest, possibly drew the inestimable Sherlock Holmes into the Montpensier affair, and has nearly overturned the entire conspiracy.”

At that instant the door to the suite flew open. On the threshold paused a great bear of a man with a mottled face. My heart nearly leaped from my throat. It was the second man I had spied following Dr. Hoffman.

“Quickly, Irene! The revolver!”

The intruder was undismayed. He took a giant step toward us, then laughed. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me?” he demanded, looking directly at me.

“Of course I do! You are the individual who followed Dr. Hoffman and myself the other day.”

He laughed again. “For what purpose, do you think?” he asked with a leer.

“Who knows? Irene, the revolver! This man may be dangerous. He did follow Dr. Hoffman, as he boasts.”

She remained by the table. “Why on earth would you neglect to mention him to me, Nell?”

“You neglected to mention a great deal more to me,” I countered.

“My omissions did not come clattering into our rooms uninvited, like this ungainly fellow.”

“For heaven’s sake, do not debate it, Irene! Get the revolver! This may be the sinister intelligence you sense at the heart of the web.”

At that the visitor laughed again, and Irene joined him. I grasped the top rail of my chair, thinking to have it handy for defense.

“What I have come to report”—the brute in the doorway stepped closer—“is that Sherlock Holmes has led me to the maker of the palace sealing wax.”

“How wonderful!” Irene clasped her hands like the rescued soprano in an opera before rushing into the villain’s arms.

“Godfrey!” I complained as the light dawned. “You quite terrified me. I thought you were peacefully poking about in moldy records in search of shipwrecks.”

He released Irene long enough to turn his hideous face in my direction. “I’ve found the wreck as well, in between shuffling behind the one-armed limping man who is scuttling after Dr. Hoffman. Or rather”—he turned to Irene—“I’ve found an obituary for Claude Montpensier, which says that he survived the wreck of the yacht
Solace
in eighteen sixty-nine. So at least we know the ship’s name, if we are no wiser to the other passengers.”

“What of Sherlock Holmes and the sealing wax?” Irene asked impatiently. “Are you sure it is Holmes?”

“The follower’s a subtle prey to hunt, but of a size to be Holmes. I recognized a certain kinship in our common eccentricities. We smell of unlikeliness. Whoever he is, was, or will be, he has led me to one...” Godfrey patted his well-padded person until he had extracted a grimy scrap of paper. “... one Hyppolyte Cremieux, proprietor of a tiny chemist and stationer’s shop near the base of the city.”

To demonstrate his success, Godfrey reached into his tom pocket and extracted waxy shavings in the distinctive black-and-crimson swirling pattern.

“How did you acquire these?” Irene asked admiringly. He lifted a worn and oversized boot to display its wax- impressed sole. “By accident. The floor was strewn with it. Once I realized this must be the source or a way station for the palace wax, I set M. Cremieux—a frail old fellow—on a hunt for a nonexistent English herb among his dusty shelves. In a workroom behind the shop, I found the wax we seek, cut into cakes, wrapped in paper like soap, and closed with the palace seal.”

“We have neglected the pursuit of the sealing wax between marrying off our young lovers and the shock of poor Singh’s death. How on earth did Sherlock Holmes manage to find such an obscure place?” Irene studied the shoe, then frowned delicately. “Perhaps you could shed your disguise and tell us the rest in person.”

Godfrey obliged by shutting the door to the hall at last and heading for the bedchamber in the rolling gait that I had observed on the street.

“Irene, if what Godfrey implies—”

“That Sherlock Holmes is the one-armed, limping man of whom Dr. Hoffman complained? If true, it is disturbing news. Most disturbing.”

“I know you fear discovery—”

She whirled to face me, her dark eyes afire with suspicion. “But does he
not
fear discovery? Why does he invite it? A one-armed man with a limp, indeed! I suspected that description the instant I heard it. You saw Mr. Holmes play the humble cleric in St. John’s Wood; it was the merest chance that his trick with the smoke bomb alerted me to his real identity. If Sherlock Holmes did not wish to be known when in disguise, I believe it would be so.”

“You are saying the disguise is too blatant?”

Irene snorted as delicately as a fawn, although as disparagingly as a hod carrier. “A child could see through it!” She conveniently ignored the fact that I had not, nor had I seen through Godfrey’s newest guise. Her eyes narrowed further. “Why did Dr. Hoffman not penetrate it? Or was he meant to, and did?”

“I don’t understand, Irene. You make this sound like a game within a game.”

“Exactly. A game within a game, just as the compass letters must nest within each other to attain their greatest meaning.” She gave me one of her extraordinarily luminous smiles. “You must tell Godfrey about your clever discovery, when he is himself again.”

“He is,” said the subject of our conversation, returning with his cuffs still rolled up from washing the last of the impersonation from his hands and face. “Do you mean to say that my astounding discovery has been eclipsed by Nell’s detective work with the maps?”

“I would not go so far as to say ‘eclipsed’,” said I.

“Nonsense.” Irene would have none of my modesty. “You must explain it to Godfrey.”

Which I did, much enjoying his initial confusion and dawning delight as the linking of the map with the conjoined tattoos became clear.

“Splendidly done, Nell! You have solved the cipher at the heart of this matter.” Godfrey leaned over the table to study the map, his handsome self again. “You know, Irene, we could overleap the whole tedious process of avoiding Mr. Holmes and of finding the conspirators and dash over to Crete to claim the treasure for ourselves. It is, after all, fair game.”

“And still difficult to put one’s hands on, or why would the blackmailer need to divert the prince’s oceanic equipment to the site? Besides, consider the cataclysm that buried the hoard twenty years ago, and the deaths that have followed. Perhaps it is cursed.”

“No!” said I. “I will not have a curse mixed in with all this stew. Tattoos and sealing wax and Sherlock Holmes provide enough nonsense at once.”

Irene suddenly sat at the table. “Nell is right. We must focus on the central knot. The question remains; why has Sherlock Holmes been drawn into this farrago? Why is he seeking sealing wax, and how did he find the manufacturer?”

“He followed Dr. Hoffman to the chemist’s shop,” Godfrey said. “This elderly Cremieux has been a patient of the doctor’s since Hoffman began practice twenty-some years ago. An arthritic affliction runs in the Cremieux family, and this Hyppolyte has long been too frail to leave the premises.”

“Why did Dr. Hoffman not say he knew the source of the wax?”

“It is secretly manufactured. I searched the workrooms for some time before I found the bricks of wax under a cloth. Luckily, old Cremieux is quite deaf, or he would have heard the extent of my search. Dr. Hoffman, besides, treats the man in his adjacent rooms, not in the shop. It is a process involving hand and foot baths, noxious herbs and manipulation.”

“Or—!” Irene slapped her open hand to the tabletop. “Perhaps Sherlock Holmes did not follow Dr. Hoffman
to
the chemist’s, but
from
it. That must be it! He is working backward to our muddle of blackmail, murder and sunken treasure—and maps. We must press on before he discovers the real problem underlying the Montpensier matter!”