"By yourself," Irene added.

I nodded.

"And not by yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you made a return journey in the company of Quentin Stanhope. Did you not notice then the thrilling aspects of railway mountaineering?"

"Ah, not in the manner G.o.dfrey describes. Perhaps such a reaction is only for the solitary. When one has someone to talk to-"

"Quite," said Irene, fanning herself with G.o.dfrey's letter. Her face looked quite flushed in the firelight.

"Is there not more of the letter to read?"

She glanced at the last page. "Oddly, no. Obviously, the journey has released G.o.dfrey's powers of . . . description."

"They do say that travel is broadening."

"Yes, they do." She glanced at me. "I was sure you would approve, Nell."

Nell and the Night Visitors

"A Monsieur le Villon of the Paris police, I believe,

speaks highly of your amazing deductive abilities."

"Monsieur le Villard," Mr. Holmes corrected me.

I bridled a bit, then showed confusion. "I beg your pardon?"

"Is the French connection you speak of Monsieur le

Villard, not le Villon?"

"Yes, you are right! These French names are so similar."

-CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS, THE ADVENTURESS

At night the countryside is darker than death and quieter than a confession. One becomes aware that one's cottage is an artificial island in a great dark sea of tossing fields and whatever chooses to prowl them.

A fierce pounding at midnight on a thick oak-wood cottage door sounds like blunderbusses exploding under the cas.e.m.e.nt windows.

I sat up in bed, heart galloping like a coach-and-four.

The moon was dark and so was the piece of night framed by my unshuttered window.

The booming began again. Our simple cottage seemed under siege.

A third bout of thunder forced my feet onto the chill bedside rug. I fumbled for the lucifers and lit my candle while my feet probed the dark for slippers to fill.

A flash of light under my door made me seize my dressing gown and fight my arms into its commodious sleeves.

Footsteps on the stairs!

Were we being invaded?

I tossed my long braid over my back so it should not catch fire in the candle flame, picked up the icy pewter holder, contemplating using it as a weapon, and rushed into the pa.s.sage.

All I glimpsed was Irene's waist-length hair rippling like a chestnut brown river against her scarlet-brocade dressing gown. She vanished into the puddle of lamplight that preceded her down the stairs.

Heedless as a child, I scurried downstairs in her wake, feeling no fear now but for her.

She was already at the wide front door, wrestling one-handed with the latch. "Nell! Good. Hold this."

I was now the Lady with the Lamp, only I held my candlestick in the other hand.

Irene attacked the latch again.

"We dare not admit anyone, Irene. It could be robbers. It likely is robbers."

"Robbers don't knock."

"Ruffians then, with unthinkable designs. Sophie sleeps at her own cottage tonight. We are two women alone."

"Not quite alone." Irene smiled grimly and lifted the handle of the small pistol from her dressing gown pocket.

Even as she pushed the hard latch over, and I opened my mouth to voice another objection, the knocks sounded again, virtually driving the door open.

Irene s.n.a.t.c.hed the oil lamp from my hand and stepped back, lifting the fluttering light to reveal our visitors.

As I feared: strange men. Two of them.

Even Irene recoiled from the dark, overcoated forms filling our doorway like the night made incarnate.

Her trusty little pistol, I reflected, had looked a bit too little. I searched the hallway for handy cudgels. Only the umbrella stand, alas, and Irene stood between me and its contents.

"Madame. Mademoiselle," one man said, nodding rather than bowing.

As I suspected! They were French. Worse and worse. And they knew that one of us was married, the other unwed. They had been studying us.

"You are alone?" the stranger inquired, looking past us.

What did he think? That we entertained visitors at half past-whatever in the morning? Only the Frenchman!

Irene had retreated as far as she intended and withdrew the pistol from her pocket.

"Madame Norton," the speaker rebuked, at last doffing his slouch-brimmed hat.

"Inspector le Villard," she returned, also returning the pistol to her pocket. "You look a thorough villain in that hat and coat. Why didn't you announce yourself at once? Come in, then."

I clutched my dressing gown close.

"We apologize for intruding at such an hour," the French policeman went on in his execrably accented English. "It is not our wish, but there is no help for it. When the Great demand, the mice must scramble."

"Oh, you are not a mouse," Irene answered, laughing. "Nor am I." She turned to see me cowering behind her. "Nell, hurry upstairs and dress while I settle our visitors in the parlor. Their business is obviously too urgent for the formalities."

I started up the steps, grateful to creep out of their sight in my shocking state of disattire. On the other hand, I was most anxious to hear what had brought the French police inspector and his companion to our country door at such an indecent hour.

Irene, as usual, was right: one of us must be properly garbed and able to attend to the situation with dignity. I rushed upstairs to don my petticoats and corset in the almost-dark, lace my boots askew and misb.u.t.ton my gown.

The flickering candlelight kept time with my shivers as I dressed in the chill bedchamber, my icy fingers mismanaging every stage.

At last I was reasonably clothed and hurried downstairs.

Irene had lit the two oil lamps in the parlor. The man with Inspector le Villard hunched over the charred logs in the fireplace, coaxing flames from the remnants of the woodbox.

Irene's pistol lay openly on the small table beside her chair, as I might leave a crochet needle in plain sight.

None of my implements was in view, however, for Inspector le Villard had set his dripping hat atop my worktable and had taken my chair.

I was forced to perch like a parrot on a tapestry-upholstered stool beside Irene's chair.

"You understand that I am entirely against this," Francois le Villard had been saying when I entered the room. He had utterly ignored my entrance and did not quite look at Irene. The inspector was a dandified individual much given to waxed facial growths, yet I was pleased to see that he possessed enough gentlemanly instinct to dislike addressing a woman in her dressing gown.

Irene had few qualms about being so addressed. No doubt it was a result of her many years on the stage. Actors and singers are always being seen half-dressed both offstage and on. It quite destroys their sense of propriety.

My reaction to the scene could not be farther from her mind. Her fingers were tapping the tabletop near the pistol. When she was abstracted or impatient her fingers often mimed playing some mute piece of music.

"You have fully stated every objection you could to coming here, being here, and remaining here, Inspector," Irene noted. "Now that your objections to your duty are done, what is the nub of the matter? Which Great Personage has forced you to such an unpleasant task? Or is it a name that dare not be spoken?"

While le Villard hesitated, Irene glanced at me. "I suppose we should offer you some refreshment."

"No!" Le Villard nearly shouted the word. "There is no time. You must accompany me into Paris at once. This matter is better understood when it is seen rather than heard."

The man at the fireplace stood and began to speak rapid French.

As he talked, Irene leaned forward, then sat up straighter, and then straighter still, like a puppet being drawn to attention by an unseen force. She was virtually at parade attention, and I could not say why.

Oh, how my head aches to hear a foreign language rattled off like a laundry list! Irene knew French like an Englishwoman's maid in London, but I! Only the caught crumb of a familiar word here and there hinted at some meaning.

Le Villard sat in my chair with his head and eyes cast down. The words "abbot noir" were bandied back and forth by the strange man and Irene more than once. Whatever he said drew her face into a mask of troubled disbelief.

This nondescript man who accompanied Inspector le Villard was no servant, as I had first thought, but his superior.

"I must go," Irene murmured to herself and only incidentally to me. She stood, shaken out of her strange paralysis. "I must dress."

The men exchanged impatient glances.

"Four minutes, gentlemen," she said sternly, reading their concern. "If you wish to clock me-"

She was clattering up the stairs like a racehorse before she finished her sentence.

Inspector le Villard did withdraw a gold timepiece from the vest beneath his sopping cloak and dry inner coat. He clicked the lid open.