The Illusion of Murder (47 page)

“Don’t shoot!”
I yell at the top of my lungs as I lay my head back down. If he said anything, it is lost in the ringing of my ears.

A few minutes later, I am seated in Frederick’s compartment. He is giving me an apology, which my numb brain doesn’t process.

“Cenza—” I interrupt.

“Jumped from the train. Probably dead.” He kneels before me. “Sweet Nellie, I almost got you with that shot through the window, but I had to try it.”

“Had to try it? Had to risk killing me to get a shot at that man, woman, whatever he is?”

“You have to understand—”

“That you were willing to risk killing me for queen and country?”

“I fired from the
Amelia
at Lazarus, Lady Warton, whatever that monster is called.”

“And almost got me? You—the world’s greatest hunter?”

“I told you I was a poor shot. I have to—”

“See the white of their eyes, I remember.” I get up slowly, resisting Frederick’s offer to help me.

“Nellie, I need to talk to you about what you’ve seen and heard. A revelation about the personage in the
Amelia
having an affair with an actress could have a dire effect on an elderly woman whose health and welfare is of prime importance not just to my country, but to the world at large.”

I brush by him and slide open the compartment door.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To freshen up and get the glass out of my hair. And keep myself from finding a gun and showing you what it’s like to nearly get your head blown off.”

“Please. Another Nellie nearly killed her with grief. Don’t be the one who actually puts her in a grave.”
*

“I still have an issue to resolve with you.”

His eyebrows go up. “Just one?”

“One at a time. Did you fight off that assassin the night I was attacked on the bow?”

“Nellie, sweet Nellie, I wish I had so you would remember me for something besides a near miss.”

“Then it must have been Von Reich.”

“Lord Warton saved you.”

“What?”

“Sarah confided in me that she saw him running away when she found you lying on the deck. Warton was not a good man, not even a very pleasant one, but as you found out today, he will stop short of murder.”

“I will have to thank him in my prayers. After I forgive him for getting me almost murdered in the first place.”

“You are not a forgiving woman, Nellie Bly.”

“Mr. Selous,”
tapping his chest with my forefinger, “I have been battered, slandered, beaten, and kicked … and I have endured and fought for truth, and justice, and the American way. Or something like that. And right now—”

He pulls me to him, embracing me, smothering me with his warmth and masculinity. Our lips touch and a warm flush flows all the way down to my toes.

I finally push him back with weak knees. “Don’t go away.”

Before I slip out the compartment door, I tell him, “I’m taking you up on your offer to join you on a safari. You need someone to teach you how to shoot properly. Point and shoot, just point and shoot, don’t aim; I’ll show you how.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep”—he looks back at me with those blazing blue eyes—“because I’m going to hold you to that one.”

For a moment we just look at each other before I race down to my compartment and start picking the shards of glass from my hair.

He almost killed me. And yet I want nothing more than to rush back and have him take me into his arms and never let me go.

The race is still on. I will crawl to the finishing line if I have to, but for just a few precious moments I want to be held in his strong arms, feel his warm breath against my neck, and have him kiss me.

Maybe I’ll cry, but that’s a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it?

“Take a deep breath,” I tell myself. I have people counting on me to finish the race and that is exactly what I am going to do.

NELLIE ARRIVING AT FINISHING LINE IN JERSEY CITY

L
’
ENVOI

Almost before I knew it I was at Philadelphia, and all too soon to please me, for my trip was so pleasant I dreaded the finish of it.

A number of newspapermen and a few friends joined me in Philadelphia to escort me to New York. Speechmaking was the order from Philadelphia on to Jersey City.

I was told when we were almost home to jump to the platform the moment the train stopped at Jersey City, for that made my time around the world. The station was packed with thousands of people, and the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them, and the cannons at the Battery and Fort Greene boomed out the news of my arrival. I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.

To so many people this wide world over am I indebted for their kindnesses that I cannot, in a little book like this, thank them all individually. They form a chain around the Earth.

To each and all of you, men, women, and children, in my land and in the lands I visited, I am most truly grateful. Every kind act and thought, if but an unuttered wish, a cheer, a tiny flower, is imbedded in my memory as one of the pleasant things of my novel tour.

From you and from all those who read the chronicle of my trip I beg indulgence. These pages have been written in the spare moments snatched from the exactions of a busy life.

F
OR THE
R
ECORD

I covered 21,740 miles in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes.

I spent 56 days, 2 hours and 4 minutes in actual travel, and lost by delay 15 days, 17 hours and 30 minutes.

My average rate of speed was 28.71 miles per hour.

First-class tickets around the world (ships and trains) cost $805 (not counting the special train).

Nellie Bly,
Around the World in 72 Days
 

COVER OF NELLIE BLY’S BOOK

AROUND THE WORLD IN 72 DAYS

HISTORICAL NOTE

Who was the man in the
Amelia
?

For reasons that are not clear but perhaps arose from a sense of respect that Nellie had for Queen Victoria, the grande dame that an entire age of history is named after, Nellie never, even in her secret journal, revealed the name of Sarah’s lover, “the personage” in the
Amelia.

However, looking at the evidence, we find that the man had British “coppers” as bodyguards when he travelled, his very presence in the United States was a well-protected secret, and he was an aficionado of horse-racing.

These facts all fit Edward, Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria’s oldest son, a playboy who angered her when her beloved consort, Prince Albert, died two weeks after travelling ill in the dead of winter to an army camp to chastise Edward for having an actress smuggled into his tent.

This was the probable source for Frederick Selous’s comment that a “Nellie” had almost killed the Queen with grief: The actress was Nellie Clifton.

Queen Victoria never forgave her son. She wore mourning black the rest of her life and wrote her daughter about Edward, saying, “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder.”

Prince Edward, who enjoyed the night life of Paris, was a rumored lover of Sarah’s, but the “smoking gun” of the evidence was Nellie’s facetious remark, “How is old Bertie?”

“Bertie” was the pet name given to Edward by his family.

Prince Edward assumed the throne after the death of his mother, and is remembered by history as Edward VII, an able monarch who also has a period of history carry his name: the Edwardian Era.

T
HE
E
DITORS
 

EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES

F
ORGE
B
OOKS BY
C
AROL
M
C
C
LEARY

The Alchemy of Murder

The Illusion of Murder

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE ILLUSION OF MURDER

Copyright © 2011 by Carol McCleary

All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-7653-2204-3

First Edition: April 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-6070-0

First Forge eBook Edition: April 2011

*
Pulitzer’s concern was well taken. The world of 1889 was infinitely more dangerous than today, not to mention the lack of modern conveniences—no airplanes, automobiles, credit cards, ATMs, not even cell phones! A time when “high-tech travel” was on trains called Iron Horses and steamships had auxiliary sails to use when the boiler failed. —The Editors