A Soul of Steel (30 page)

“The fellow I remember had a desperate air, raved that he needed to see the command. He did not want to retreat, or save his skin, so much as to see someone in authority, if anyone was then. Clawed at my uniform as if he were drowning, would not let me leave. Yes, the head blow could explain much, even the fact that he has not been seen in civilized climes since—”

“Hazel!” I said. “Were his eyes hazel?”

“Eyes, Miss Buxleigh? A field surgeon does not notice such things. Pallor, perhaps, and what is broken or battered.”

“J-Jasper had very compelling hazel eyes,” I insisted. “If you remember him as being agitated, you must have noticed. He must have looked directly at you, imploring you—”

The doctor leaned back in his creaking chair, his bootheels thumping the floor, his chin resting on his chest.

“If I had a bit of something to induce a trance, I might recall,” he said with a wry expression I understood more than he suspected. “My mind has fixed on Afghanistan more than usual lately. Perhaps it is this leg acting up.”

He banged his foot on the floor for emphasis, and his boot shifted the rug as it landed.

More of the cobra coiled into full view at my and Godfrey’s feet. Despite the provocation, we both managed to present Dr. Watson with rapt faces.

The physician suddenly clapped his hand to the desktop. “By St. Harry, you are right, miss! Peculiarly light hazel they were, like murky lakes in all that evil ocher dust. I remember thinking that it was a pity another brave young fellow was going to carry Afghanistan in his kit bag for the rest of his life, and that is when—”

Dr. Watson’s own eyes blinked, as if again in the heat and dust of the battlefield “—that is when something ripped into my left shoulder as cold as ice in that devil’s oven. I have never recalled it before, the actual moment of my being wounded.”

“What happened to—to Jasper?” I put in before the doctor’s memories should fade again.

He shook his head in a daze. “I next remember Murray. ‘Can you hang onto the mane for a minute, sir?’ he was saying. I was swaying by the side of a horse—a stringy packhorse— and then Murray slung me over and I thankfully remember nothing until I awoke in the makeshift hospital in Kandahar. It was four weeks of fever and short rations until Roberts came to relieve us.”

“And that is all you remember of poor Jasper?”

Dr. Watson nodded soberly. “That is more than I remembered yesterday. But, yes, how he clung to me, as if I were more than a mere lifeline! They will do that, you know, in the field, but this man was desperate beyond fear for his life. He would not release my arms, and as I moved to leave, his hands clung even to my medical bag.

“Then that icy furrow ploughed through my being, quickly followed by the heat of fever. Jezail bullets are manufactured crudely and often bear disease as well as death.” Dr. Watson sighed. “Sometimes forgetfulness is a blessing.”

We both nodded somberly, there being little else to say.

Godfrey rose. “I thank you, Doctor, for your time and recollection. Your story explains at least why Jasper may have lost his head and failed to return to England and Miss Buxleigh.”

I rose also, and the doctor saw us to the door.

“Certainly,” he said, with a gallant glance at myself, “he would never have neglected to return to as charming a lady as Miss Buxleigh of his own will.”

I was unable to savor or shrug off this gallantry; my eyes flicked back into the room. From the door, the dead cobra looked like a wrinkle in the rug. I wondered if the Watsons’ maid had good, steady nerves like myself....

We started down the passage to the outer door.

“I hope that I have been of help,” said the doctor.

“You have indeed,” Godfrey said heartily. “I’m sure that Miss Buxleigh’s mind is more at rest for our interview.” Godfrey had ever been an optimist.

“I fear,” the doctor added, “that my attention has been somewhat distracted by a matter of some moment apart from my practice. If you have gleaned anything useful from me, you are welcome to it.”

Godfrey donned his top hat and smiled as he took my arm in a solicitous way. “You have been an invaluable help, sir, and will never know how deeply I and Miss Buxleigh appreciate your assistance. It has been most enlightening in every respect. Thank you again. Good day, Dr. Watson.”

“Good day, Miss Buxleigh, Mr. Marshwine.”

On such cordial commonplaces we parted company. Paddington unfolded before us in all its everyday homeliness. I had almost expected to exit into a dusty, throbbing battlefield full of wounded men and dead snakes.

“Godfrey!” I demanded as soon as we had walked a decent distance from the Watson abode. “What of the cobra? We have left it simply lying there, halfway revealed, without warning anyone.”

“It is not our cobra,” he said with something of Irene’s offhanded manner.

“But what shall they do when they find it?”

He smiled as he spied a hansom to take us back to the heart of the town. “It should make a fine puzzle for Dr. Watson’s friend, Mr. Holmes.”

“The doctor will say that we were there, that we were inquiring about Afghanistan.”

“All the better. I would like to see Sherlock Holmes try to track down Mr. Marshwine and Miss Buxleigh.”

I settled into the cab in some unease, glancing out the window on the fine day. I clutched Godfrey’s arm.

“Look! That street boy. I saw him before—yesterday in Baker Street—the one with the cap that is too large!”

Godfrey leaned to peer out. “Only a lad trying to make a few pence running errands. I would not fret about him, Nell.”

“Baker Street is a far way from Paddington for a lad afoot.”

“Perhaps he was hired to escort some elderly person home by hansom cab.”

“He is signaling another cab—an urchin like that! How can he pay?”

Our vehicle jerked into motion, wresting away my view of the boy.

“Likely his patron gave him the fare back, though I admit that a cab is rather royal for his sort.”

“He could be a minion of Sherlock Holmes, set to follow us.” 

“My dear Miss Buxleigh,” Godfrey said, drawing the curtain on the passing scene of the street outside, “did I ever tell you that you are possessed of a most ungoverned imagination?”

Chapter Twenty-one

DIVINELY INSPIRED

A cable
from Irene awaited us at the hotel:
“Mes amis,
you get on splendidly. I am having abominable luck finding the captain of my heart in Paris. I await your next developments breathlessly.”

She had signed it with an unmistakable code name, “Sarah.”

“How odd. She says nothing personal,” I noted to Godfrey. “No word of missing us. You.”

“It is only a cablegram, Nell. Brevity is the soul of clarity.”

Godfrey was pacing my small sitting room, his hands locked behind his back, his long legs scissoring across the thick Turkish carpet.

“What Irene has chosen to say is significant. If she can find no trace of Captain Morgan in Paris, with all her resources of intelligence and connection, then he is no longer there. I doubt it is coincidence that cobras have emigrated from Paris of late as well.”

“Snakes stick together,” I sniffed. “So you suspect Captain Morgan of perpetrating the bad business in Montmartre?”

“Suspect? I am certain of it, and so is Irene.”

“Yet you left her behind to his supposed mercies.”

“Actually, Nell, I believe that you and I have drawn him here. In that our jaunt is an unqualified success.”

“Indeed,” I said, “if I wished to spend my life entering rooms into which serpents have preceded me, I have been uncannily successful!”

“Morgan, mysterious as he is, must be the key to Stanhope’s difficulties. Obviously, he is also trying to murder Dr. Watson.”

“And yet we have not warned the poor man!” I remonstrated. “We have left him defenseless.”

“Hardly.” Godfrey stopped pacing to eye me with a twinkle. “The dead snake cannot fail to alarm him. He will immediately acquaint his friend with the mystery. So Dr. Watson will have as guardian the formidable Sherlock Holmes.”

I remained silent, aching to add “Formidably given to strange drugs,” but I dared not. If I did, I would be obliged to confess to my forbidden reading. Nor did I want to mention my knowledge of the intense impression Irene had evidently made on this man who sneered at women and softer emotions, but reverenced hypodermic needles.

“But we must not rest on Mr. Holmes’s laurels,” Godfrey said. “Tomorrow we’ll begin hunting the hunter. I’ll make inquiries at the gentlemen’s clubs devoted to sporting pursuits. You can try the hotels.”

“You wish me to inquire after a male resident at a series of hotels? That is most improper, Godfrey.”

“Would you rather visit such institutions as The Royal Rhinoceros Regiment? Besides, many clubs forbid women the premises.”

“And what sensible woman would wish to visit those masculine enclaves? No doubt they are filled with decorative weapons, rank odors, hollow elephant feet, stuffed snakes and such.”

“Yes,” he said, laughing, “just like Madame Sarah’s Paris salon. What woman could possibly relish such an environment?”

“I’m glad that Irene is not here, for she would surely grasp any pretext to storm the gentlemen’s clubs in false whiskers. I have it! We will make our rounds together. Admittedly we’ll lose time, but we will have the advantage of two viewpoints to compare. That is the solution.”

“Not so soon!” said he, taking my new determination for instant action. “We must devise a plan of attack. The hotel will have a recent map of London, as well as some suggestions of where a former military man might stay. I suggest that we repair to the dining room. Brown’s
Table
d’hôte
was famous even in my Temple days.”

I smiled tentatively. “I have never dined alone in public with a male escort, but I am sure the experience will be bracing.”

And so it was. After a tasty dinner in the quite respectable hotel dining room—whitebait and brown bread, followed by summer pudding, all so delectably English, so fresh, so garlic-free!—we retired to my sitting room again to plan the next day’s campaign.

“There is just one thing that troubles me, Godfrey.”

“Only one?” He seemed pleasantly surprised.

“If Quentin intended to warn Dr. Watson, why has he not done so?”

“We can’t be sure that he hasn’t.”

“Dr. Watson seemed a bit weary, but not at all wary. There is a great difference, Godfrey. He was quite willing to sit down and speak of Afghanistan with two virtual strangers. No, I am certain that he knows nothing of this matter. He will be as mystified by the dead cobra in his study as I would be to find an expired toad in my glove box.”

An unwilling smile tweaked the corners of Godfrey’s lips, much more visible now that he had shaved off the mustache. “When you put it that way, I must confess that the circumstances are comical despite their seriousness.”

“Yes, the world finds much that is serious laughable. That is its main trouble.”

“You must admit the melodramatic nature of finding these dead serpents, and realizing that whatever sinister purpose they may have had is moot.”

“The motive, whatever it was, is not moot,” I pointed out. “Oh, I do wish Irene was here! She has a genius for taking some totally unforeseen course that nevertheless cuts to the heart of the matter. And what will we do about finding Quentin?”

Godfrey sat on a small tapestry-covered chair with a woebegone expression. “That is the purpose of our visit, true, and yet our only routes to the mysterious Mr. Stanhope are indirect.

“Well—” he rose with a sigh, his hands slapping his trouser legs “—our tasks are set for the morrow. Perhaps we will encounter some piece of luck.”

Luck, I was tempted to answer, was not something Irene relied upon in the slightest. After Godfrey had bid me good night, I reread her cablegram. The blithe good humor underlying it ill became an Irene forced to keep a safe distance from anything. Yet Godfrey was almost supernaturally calm in the face of our frustrating search, and remarkably resigned to the absence of his wife....

Of course I smelled what is known in certain, cruder circles as a rat, and it was not Captain Morgan, no matter how well qualified for the role. This would not be the first time my two friends had conspired to keep me ignorant for my own good. They might even be acting from some misguided impulse to “spare” me the ugly truth about Emerson Quentin Stanhope. I neither welcomed nor wanted such protection. From now on I would keep a weather eye out for well-intentioned subterfuge.