The Great Game (44 page)

             
"My bosom," Jenny said tartly, "isn't emphasized."

             
Moriarty looked her over critically as the blouse came off. "Perhaps not," he said, "but you couldn't pass as a man with those underpinnings."

             
"As a man?"
Jenny asked. "Oh, I see." She loosened her skirt and petticoat and stepped out of them, and then pulled her camisole over her head. "Then the inner layer will have to go too. Help me with the stays on this corset." She turned her back to Moriarty and he loosened the laces. She squeezed herself out of the confining undergarment and then slipped the camisole back on before turning around.

             
Moriarty ran his hand along the rack of evening clothes left behind by the musicians and pulled out a jacket. "Here, try this on."

             
"One second." Jenny ripped a long, wide strip from her petticoat, and held one end of it in front of her, at the spot on her camisole that was just between her breasts. "You pull this tight while I turn," she instructed the professor.

             
"Ah!" he said.
"Very clever."
He held the strip of cloth open and taut while she slowly turned and wrapped herself in it.

             
"There's a safety pin on the neck of my blouse," she said, holding the cloth strip tight around her. "Would you get it for me?"

             
Moriarty complied, and she pinned the cloth in place. "And voilà, I'm a boy!" she said.
"Now what?"

             
"Only to those whose vision is dim are you a boy," Moriarty said. "But luckily the lights will be low. See if that jacket fits you while I find a shirtfront and collar in this pile of clothing."

             
Five minutes later Moriarty was straightening the white bow tie under the points on the high, stiff collar he had appropriated from the pile. "Now the shoes," he said, "and we have to do something about your hair."

             
"They're dark brown shoes," Jenny pointed out, "and the trousers are much too long, so the shoes won't show much."

             
"True," Moriarty admitted, "but they have an entirely different sound. But, as the musicians all seem to have worn their own shoes, we'll have to take our chances. Now the hair—"

             
"I can braid it and wrap it really quickly so it will fit under a hat," Jenny offered. "Or I can sort of put it down the back of the jacket."

             
"Let's try that," Moriarty said.

             
Jenny pulled her hair tight in back and twisted it and tucked it into the jacket. "What do you think?"

             
Moriarty examined her critically. "I think it will be dark, and we'll have to take a chance. Wait a second." He took a dark blue scarf from the shelf and wrapped it around her neck and over her shoulders. "There, that might do. Drape it casually in front. That's good."

             
He took her to the door of the room. "You'll need courage and fortitude," he told her, "but this should work. It's based on the sort of misdirection that magicians are fond of, and they make their living fooling people. There's a curtain right outside this door separating you from the stage. Conceal yourself behind the curtain. In a few moments I'm going to call for a committee from the audience to come on stage and inspect Madame Verlaine for an effect we have planned. When the committee leaves the stage, you join them as though you'd been there all the time, and walk back along the right side to a table about halfway down the room. A man and woman are sitting there. The man is handsome and elegant, the woman beautiful and regal. I believe her dress is light blue, but it may be too dark to tell. Sit down with them. I'll have the man put both hands on the table, palms up, so you'll know where to go. The man is Prince Ariste Juchtenberg and his wife is Princess Diane. I'll speak with them while Madeleine—Madame Verlaine—is being inspected. They'll get you out of here."

             
Jenny Vernet took several deep breaths and adjusted her lapels. "I hope this works," she said.

             
"It should," Moriarty assured her. "Come out with me now."

             
Moriarty took Jenny to just the right spot behind the curtain and then went on stage. Mim Ptwa Nim was just finishing telling an elderly lady that her defunct husband would not object to her remarrying. "He favors it," she purred.

             
"He won't be jealous?"

             
"Where he is there is no jealousy," Mim Ptwa Nim intoned, "only love."

             
"I hope you have found this exhibition of interest," Alexandre Sandarel said, approaching the audience. "We will conclude," he told them, "with a demonstration of the reality, and may I say the playfulness, of the spirits. For this I would like some gentlemen in the audience to come up and assist me. You will form a committee representing the rest of the audience to assure there is no fraud or trickery in what is about to happen." He peered out.
"You, sir?
And you?
Come onstage, please.
And you, sir.
And, yes of course, you also.
Anyone else?
You, sir?
Come on up."

             
Seven men answered the call for volunteers. Madeleine remained passively seated in her high-backed chair facing the audience, still apparently in a light trance. Sandarel produced one end of a thick rope, which trailed off to somewhere in the back of the stage. "Madame Verlaine?" he asked, approaching her.

             
"Yes?"

             
"Is your spirit guide still here?"

             
"She is no longer speaking through me," Madeleine said in a soft monotone that the audience strained to hear. "But I can still sense her presence."

             
"Will she move some objects for us?"

             
"She will try, but she needs absolute silence and privacy."

             
Sandarel turned to the audience. "If we are very quiet, we may be able to induce Mim Ptwa Nim, Madame Verlaine's spirit guide, to show us her presence by physically materializing and moving some objects that we will place near Madame Verlaine. We must place screens around her to insure her privacy. So, to prove that something psychical is indeed occurring, I have asked
these gentleman
to come onstage and assist me in tying up Madame Verlaine." He turned to the cluster of gentlemen onstage. "If one of you would please examine this rope to make sure that it is, indeed, what it seems to be: a solid length of number seven rope, of the sort used by mountain climbers."

             
One of the men looked over the rope carefully, as though he had some idea of what a "number seven" rope should look like, and then four of the men watched while three of the men tied Madame Verlaine securely to the chair, with her hands fastened to the arms. Sandarel supervised the bondage, and the whole audience could hear him urging them to, "Tie her tighter! Right, pull up on that rope! Now wrap it around a couple of times for good measure!"

             
When the committee was finished tying and roping and looping, it would not have occurred to anyone in the committee, or in the audience, that the knots were cleverly devised so that Madeleine could slip her hands out of the ropes at will. Of such secrets are most miracles made.

             
Four tall screens were produced, and Madame Verlaine was boxed inside of them, along with an empty cigar box, a small brass bell, a tambourine, a silver bracelet, a brass carriage horn, a corked bottle of wine and four wine glasses, a vase, and a bible; all of which were placed in a semicircle on the floor in front of her. The committee distributed itself around the screens.

             
For about two minutes nothing happened, and then the manifestations began. First the cigar box
came
flying over the screen in front, and then a loud honking began from within the screens. Then the honking stopped, and the carriage horn in turn was tossed over the front screen. For a long moment there was nothing further, until all at once the bell rang and rang and the tambourine clashed and appeared atop the screen, apparently held by a ghostly hand, while the bell kept ringing.

             
This kept up for a while until, with a shocking suddenness, all four screens were blown outward as by a great wind, and everything came to a shattering halt. There, right where she had been, Madame Verlaine still sat, bound to her chair. On her lap was a wooden tray which had not
been there before, and on the tray were four glasses of wine. The uncorked bottle was by her feet, but there was no corkscrew in evidence.

             
The committee untied her, examining the ropes carefully as they did so. Then they knocked and prodded at the arms and back of the chair in which she sat.
But the rope was real and the chair was solid; no hidden panels, no trap doors.

             
"Look," Doctor Sandarel said, pointing to the floor near the chair. The bible that had been placed on the floor now lay open. The silver bracelet lay on the right-hand page. "It is a message," he proclaimed. "Will one of you please pick up the bible and read what is encircled by the band of silver?"

             
One of the committee picked up the bible and read:

             
" 'The
words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

             
" 'Dead
flies make the perfumer's ointment give off an evil odor; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.'"

             
Sandarel nodded. "Ecclesiastes," he said. "Perhaps it is a message for someone here. I will not try to interpret it, but perhaps My Lord Bishop has some idea?" He peered out into the audience. "No? Well, so be it. You gentlemen of the committee may return to your seats now, and we thank you for your assistance."

             
The audience applauded, and the committee left the stage and returned to their seats. Jenny, in her borrowed suit of black, slipped out with the committee and sat at Prince Ariste's table, and no one seemed to notice that the committee had one more member leaving than it had coming.

             
Sandarel took Madeleine's hand, and together they came forward and bowed to the audience. "Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen," Sandarel said. "We have enjoyed this chance to enlighten you as to some of the mysteries of the human mind. You have been a kind and generous audience and as attentive as we could hope for. We trust that you will take away from this evening's presentation more than you came with. I know that we will. This ends our presentation. May St. Simon smile upon all your
endeavors.
"

             
They exited together, amid enthusiastic applause. "A very exhilarating experience," Madeleine whispered to Moriarty as they entered the green room. "One could come to enjoy the attention and the applause."

             
"Bah!" replied Moriarty. "
Come,
let us get away from here. We still have much to do."

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly!

Like a teatray in the sky.

— Lewis Carroll

             
Sherlock Holmes looked incredulously at Moriarty.
"A kite?"