I was jerked out of a sudden image of her figure disappearing into this very dark we were now exploring.

"Have you learned anything?" I whispered, for of course we couldn't converse in normal tones while sneaking past people's bedrooms.

"Three men's footprints-one most intriguing-overlaid a man's shoe tracks, but in a dainty size. I understand Lola Montez possessed an exceptionally petite foot."

"So did Cinderella," I answered sharply. I really didn't wish to encourage this fantasy that Lola Montez was Irene's mother. Nothing good would come of it. Indeed, nothing but bad had come of it so far.

Especially my night duty alongside the boarding house.

When we finally turned the corner to inspect the back of the building, I heaved a sigh of relief.

"A little less windily, Miss Huxleigh. We are closer to the sleepers than ever before."

He followed the trail to the back stoop, where, under the glare of the lantern I held, he plucked several invisible traces from the wooden stairs with a tweezer. They looked like tiny dry blades of grass.

Luckily, the room in question looked out on the back courtyards, and was entered just inside the back door.

After studying and testing the door, he reached to take the lantern into his own custody.

"I have much to study inside that room. Wait here, be quiet, don't move unless absolutely necessary."

"May I at least sit on the stoop?"

He swung the lantern light over the three steps in question.

"Yes," he said, shuttering the lantern so we were completely in the dark.

Then he went into the room Irene and I had so thoroughly searched only days before.

Slowly, I sank into a seated position on the filthy steps, thankful that only flea market clothing would be ruined.

The time was that no-man's-land between midnight and dawn, when decent folk are asleep in their beds and indecent folk are most busy about their evil business.

No one moved in the space between the backs of Boardinghouse Row, but night life made itself known. The trash that had collected here shifted in the sounds of slight chimings of glass or rustles of paper. Mice, rats, insects moved under the cover of refuse, seeking food and shelter.

Above me, the laundry, most of it left out for the night, flapped in the intermittent wind like phantom whiplashes and ships' sails. The shifting white cloths above moved, ghostlike, hiding the dark night sky.

And then came the click of dog nails on the damp pavement. I glimpsed ranging canine figures, some quite large.

I sat as still as still could be, not wanting to attract the beasts' attention, not knowing what Sherlock Holmes was learning inside Lola Montez's last residence, not sure what the morning would bring, hope or despair.

A long time later the door behind me whispered open. Someone bent over me.

"She's not there, of course, although signs of her activities abound. I must follow the trail on foot. Can you get yourself a cab and return to the Astor House?"

I had done something of the sort only hours before. Now it seemed an insurmountable task.

While I remained silent, he leaned closer, bringing an overwhelming scent of tobacco that painfully reminded me of Irene, and her absence.

"I must follow the trail now, unencumbered. I'll let you know what I find in the morning."

Morning. What a bitter, rueful word. I doubted I'd like what I found "in the morning," no matter what Sherlock Holmes did during the rest of this night.

I stood up, my knees creaking like the laundry lines above us.

"I'll be waiting to hear your report." I sounded like a client.

When he said nothing more, I turned to rebuke his silence.

But he was gone, part of the immense dark of which I knew nothing.

I rose to make my way to the street, marveling that I should be abroad at such an hour, alone, and too numb to even fear what I should.

Once I made Broadway and its many streetlamps, I was able to hail a cab. I sank into the boxed-in seat, appreciating springs, and ordered myself returned to the Astor House.

42.

TAKEN BY SURPRISE . . .

He is dark, handsome, and dashing; never calls

less than once a day, and often twice. He is a

Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple.

-SHERLOCK HOLMES IN "A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA"

There is a kind of weariness in which feeling is forgotten. A weariness in which even the most hysterical mind has been too overtaxed to make its frantic mental rounds. That is the state in which I approached the door to Irene's and my rooms. I had the key clutched in my hand, but I wasn't quite sure how to use such an implement.

How I dreaded the emptiness beyond the door, dreaded the absolute reality that Irene was gone. Lost. Perhaps forever.

But I had nowhere else to go.

So I painstakingly pushed the key into its hole by the light of the gaslight on the wall.

I jiggled the key, having forgotten the particular touch of this lock . . . except I hadn't forgotten it, I'd never known it, for Irene had led, in this as in so much else, and always unlocked the door for me.

Weary tears were gathering in my eyes but I fought them, though there was no one here to hold them back for.

The darkness inside surprised me. The air felt cold, though the outside air had been tepid with leftover summer heat.

I couldn't remember where the gaslight was exactly, for that was another thing Irene had readily rushed to do herself . . . as she had readily rushed to the back of the boardinghouse.

I edged along the wall, hearing my feet shuffling on bare floor, patting the wall at shoulder height. Should I have gone left instead of right from the door?

I shifted to return . . . and a piece of tangible darkness seized upon me!

Instantly I was rolled up in it, like Cleopatra in a rug. This rug was composed of wool and solid stuffing (for I kicked and pummeled in my own silent resistance).

Someone broader and taller, a man, had encompassed me in the dark, and we fought along a good length of the wall. My panic at the memory of the three evil men revived my will. Messalina the mongoose could not have been more intent in her deadly struggles with the cobra.

Cobra! Cobra. I knew that word for a certain British spy's pseudonym in India years before. Was this Quentin then? Come to visit and-finding our rooms suspiciously deserted for so late an hour-deciding to stay?

"Quentin?" I interrogated the dark. All it could do was not answer me.

But it did.

"Nell? Nell! What on earth are you wearing? Where's Irene?"

I gasped, too shocked to answer.

At last one of our flailing hands found and twisted the gaslight key.

The strengthening flame finally revealed the features of the man who held me half-captive, half-embraced.

"Godfrey! Godfrey? Thank God you're here! You are here, aren't you?"

Godfrey was the antithesis of Sherlock Holmes. He didn't bring me water, he brought me brandy.

He also sat me down, but on the sofa in the middle of the room. Then he went around the chamber turning on all the gaslights until the room blazed as if for a ball.

"Irene's work," he said, eyeing my ensemble.

Of course it started me weeping again.

Godfrey sat beside me, his arm around my shoulder. "Just tell me," he said. "Start with the worst and work backwards."

"She's not here! Sherlock Holmes is looking for her. She vanished tonight. I'm to wait here until morning for news. Those three men may be murderous devils! Irene may have had her pistol with her, I don't know. We expected to encounter no more than a deserted room. I was to wait and watch, but I couldn't stay there, not when she never came back. It was but hours ago, Godfrey. If only you had come but a bit sooner, perhaps we'd all be here in this room, together."

"Time is a bawd, Nell," he finally said when I'd run out of all I could manage to say. "It never pays you back for what you lose by it."

We sat silent for a moment, sharing that bitter truth.

Then he spoke again.

"You say Sherlock Holmes is looking for her? Where?"

"He is a human bloodhound. If she has left a trace, he will find and follow it."

"Tell me again," he said.

This time I narrated events in sequence, and then Godfrey cross-examined me in the methodical way of a barrister. Strain had sharpened his features into something resembling Sherlock Holmes's hawkish visage.

"Stanhope knew about your genealogical quest?"

"No. Holmes did, of course. He steered us toward it that day in Green-Wood Cemetery."

"Why did he, do you suppose?"

"I think he wanted Irene otherwise occupied. You know that their paths have intersected before, generally with them both at cross-purposes. And-"

"And what?"

"Perhaps he thought, in his way, he was doing her a service. He'd been drawn into her quest, thanks to the murders of her former theatrical family members, shall we call them? Apparently he'd come across information about Lola Montez that made her a more likely maternal candidate than Madam Restell. Oh, Godfrey, why are we sitting here, exploring old questions? Why aren't we out looking for her?"

He sat back, shaking his head. "As you said, we can do no better than to have Sherlock Holmes on the trail. Rushing out would serve no purpose and would only mean Holmes couldn't find us if . . . when he has news to report. For now, we're best employed unraveling events from here. All we know is that when Holmes entered that boardinghouse two hours after Irene had, no one was there. Not Irene, and not the three men you saw follow her in."

I nodded, ready to choke on sobs again, but dampening the urge.

"Did Holmes mention blood in the rooms?"

"No. Only that there were signs that Irene had done more than merely visit the premises. I didn't tell him about the secret chamber in the hidden fireplace. But, I imagine, with his tricks of observation, he might have noticed that the wardrobe had been moved, or bricks and old crumbling mortar removed."

"So Irene did what she had intended to."

"Perhaps, yes."

"Could she have left before the men arrived?"

"Then why not return to me?"