My Sherlock Holmes Part 2

The mayor of the village of Lagny and the chef des gendarmes were duly horrified by our descriptions, but permitted us to depart for Paris upon our pledge to provide what information and a.s.sistance we could, should these be called for at a later stage of their investigation.

In due course the hack pulled up at my lodgings in the Faubourg St Germain. A light snow had fallen in the metropolis, and I picked my way carefully to my door lest I slip and fall to the stones. Exhausted by the activities of the past day and night, I turned my key in the lock of my lodgings and pushed the door open so that my guest and I might enter. When we did so we were confronted by an unantic.i.p.ated sight. My quarters had been ransacked. Furniture was overturned, drawers were pulled from their places and inverted upon the floor. The carpeting had been torn up and rolled back to permit a search for trapdoors or loosened boards.

Every picture was pulled from the wall and thrown to the floor, including that of my friend and idol the great Vidocq. Shocked and offended by the invasion of my quarters I proceeded to examine their contents, a.s.sessing the damage and grieving for the destruction of precious mementos of a long career. I clutched my head and expostulated my outrage.

Drawing myself together at length and hoping in some manner to mitigate the harm which had been done I turned to confer with my visitor, only to find that he had disappeared without a trace.

I flew to the doorway and exited my premises. The hack had of course departed long since, but a row of dark footprints showed in the fresh snow. Following without heed to the risk of falling I dashed the length of the Rue Dunot. At length I found myself standing upon the doorstep of the establishment of M. Konstantinides. I sounded the bell repeatedly but without response, then pounded upon the door. Neither light nor movement could be seen from within the shop, nor was there response of any sort to my summons.

At once the meaning of these events burst upon my tortured brain. The Englishman was a dope fiend, the Greek apothecary the supplier of his evil chemicals. How Konstantinides has obtained knowledge of the bird was unfathomable, but it was at his behest rather than that of either the Carlists or the Bourbons that I had been recruited.

Konstantinides had ransacked my lodgings merely as a distraction, to hold my attention while the Englishman brought the bird to his shop. By now, even though mere minutes had pa.s.sed, it was a certainty that both the Englishman and the Greek, along with the black bird, were gone from the Faubourg and would not be found within the environs of Paris.

What would become of the bird, of the English detective, of the Greek chemist, were mysteries for the years to come. And now at last (Dupin completed his narrative) I learn of the further career of my student, and of the scorn with which he repays my guidance.

As I sat, mortified by my friend and mentor's humiliation, I saw him clutching the small volume from which he had read the cruel words as if it were a dagger with which he planned to take his own life. All the while he had been telling his tale I had been carried away by the narrative, to another time and place, a time and place when Dupin was young and in his prime. But now I had returned to the present and saw before me a man enfeebled by the pa.s.sage of the years and the exigencies of a cruel existence.

"What became of the bird?" I inquired. "Did it disappear entirely?"

Dupin shook his head. "The apothecary shop of the Greek Konstantinides was reopened by a nephew. Of the elder Konstantinides nothing was ever again heard, or if it was, it was held inviolate in the bosom of the family. I attempted to learn from the nephew the whereabouts of his uncle and of the Englishman, as well as of the bird itself, but the younger Konstantinides pled ignorance of the fate the two men, as well as that the bird. For two generations now the shop has remained in the family, and the secret, if secret there is, remains sealed in their bosom."

I nodded my understanding. "And so you never again heard of your pupil, the strange Englishman?"

Dupin waved the book at me. "You see, old friend? He has become, as it were, the new Dupin. His fame spreads across the seas and around the globe. Did he but make the meanest acknowledgment of his debt to me, I would be satisfied. My material needs are met by the small pension arranged by our old friend G-of the Metropolitan Police Force. My memories are mine, and your own writings have given me my small share of fame."

"The very least I could do, Dupin, I a.s.sure you."

There followed a melancholy silence during which I contemplated the sad state to which my friend had fallen. At length he heaved a sigh pregnant with despair. "Perhaps," he began, then lapsed, then again began, "perhaps it would be of interest to the discerning few to learn of a few of my other undertakings."

Shaking my head I responded, "Already have I recorded them, Dupin. There was the case of the murders in the Rue Morgue, that of the purloined letter, and even your brilliant solution of the mystery of Marie Roget."

"Those are not the cases to which I refer," Dupin demurred.

"I know of no others, save, of course that which you have narrated to me this night."

Upon hearing my words, Dupin permitted himself one of rare smiles which I have ever seen upon his countenance. "There have been many others, dear friend," he informed me, "many indeed."

Astonished, I begged him to enumerate a few such.

"There were the puzzle of the Tsaritsa's false emerald, the adventure of Wade the American gunrunner, the mystery of the Algerian herbs, the incident of the Bahamian fugitive and the runaway hot-air balloon, and of course the tragedy of the pharaoh's jackal."

"I shall be eager to record these, Dupin. Is the list thus complete?"

"By no means, old friend. That is merely the beginning. Such reports may in some small way a.s.suage the pain of being aged and forgotten, replaced on the stage of detection by a newer generation of sleuths. And, I suspect, the few coins which your reports may add to your purse will not be unwelcome."

"They will not," I was forced to concede.

"But this-" Dupin waved the book once more. "-this affront strikes to my heart. As bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two-edged sword, so sayeth the proverb."

"Dupin," I said, "you will not be forgotten. This English prig has clearly copied your methods, even to the degree of enlisting an a.s.sistant and amanuensis who bears a certain resemblance to myself. Surely justice forbids that the world forget the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin!"

"Not forget?" my friend mumbled. "Not forget? The pupil will live in fame forever while the master becomes but a footnote to the history of detection. Ah, my friend, my dear, dear friend, but the world in which we live is unjust."

"It was ever thus, Dupin," I concurred, "it was ever thus."

THE FIRST MRS. WATSON.

"Well, and there is the end of our little drama," I remarked after we had sat some time smoking in silence. "I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honor to accept me as a husband in prospective."

He gave a most dismal groan.

"I feared as much," said he. "I really cannot congratulate you."

I was a little hurt.

"Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?" I asked.

"Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius in that way ... . But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment." ...

"The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"

"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it.

-The Sign of Four.

by BARBARA HAMBLY.

The Dollmaker of Marigoto Walk.

"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an a.n.a.lytical reasoner."

"Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house."

-"THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP"

My husband, Dr. John Watson, has written often that his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes loves the solving of crimes, and the trapping of evildoers, as a huntsman loves the chase, or an artist his brush and oils.

Yet as much as the solving of crimes-and sometimes I think more so-I have observed that Mr. Holmes loves the puzzles of human behavior for their own sakes, even when they have no bearing on the breaking or keeping of the law. Cold-blooded and logical himself, the eccentricities of human conduct delight him: he takes more pleasute, I believe, in discussing with the local cats-meat-man the mathematical system by which that gentleman picks racehorses to bet on, than by bringing to justice a bank director who embezzled thousands out of mere unimaginative greed.

Thus when poor old Mrs. Wolff came into the soup kitchen at Wordsworth Settlement House in Whitechapel, weeping that she had been drugged and robbed-and left unhurt-by a well-off gentleman, I am ashamed to say that almost my first thought was to wonder what Mr. Holmes would make of such astonis.h.i.+ng behavior.

This particular Monday night was foggy and chill, for it had rained on and off all day. I very nearly cried off from the little cla.s.s I teach there, for my health has always been uncertain. But I knew the little shop girls I taught to read looked forward to it. A number of my friends come down to the Settlement House in daylight hours, to help with the was.h.i.+ng and folding of clothing donated for the poor, or to teach the girls and boys of those horrible dockside slums-to teach also the innumerable Russians, Roumanians, Hindus, and Chinese who huddle ten and twelve to a tenement room enough English to seek employment-but I am one of very few who will work there at night. At least one night a week, and sometimes two, John spends with his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, either adventuring on whatever criminal case Mr. Holmes is pursuing, or dining with him and going somewhere to listen to music. On such nights I will frequently come down to the Settlement to teach, or help the regular workers there in any way that I can.

Thus I was there at ten o'clock-just finis.h.i.+ng up that evening's chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, in fact-when Mrs. Wolff stumbled in from the brick-paved yard, clutching with one hand the basket of oddments she carries to sell, and with the other the dirty remains of a woolen shawl about her, sobbing like a beaten child.

"Vhy vould any do so to a poor voman, Mrs. Vatson?" she asked, when I'd brought her to the big room's tiny fire and sent one of the girls to get her soup. "Such nice gentleman he look, too, mit his beard all combed so nice, and his spectacles all rim mit gold. He buy me drink, he tell me I look like his sister-and him a goyische gentleman all in varm coat on such cold night! Look how I found my t'ings, vhen I vake up in alley behind Vish und Ring, eh?"

Certainly the contents of her big wicker basket-beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs, penwipers wrought in curious shapes, dolls of woven wicker with bright ribbons around their necks and cats wrought of folded tin with gla.s.s b.u.t.tons for eyes-had been rudely treated, being now all soaked and muddy from having been dumped from the basket into the gutter and trodden on.

"I make box out of tin," she went on, as one of the girls-Rebecca was her name, and a very sweet bright child-brought her up a cup of soup. "Beautiful box, all mit b.u.t.tons on it; two s.h.i.+lling I askin' vhor dat box. An' now it gone, an' he stole it from a poor voman, an' him mit nice hat an' his gloves an' his coat, an' bein' so nice to buy me schnapps, eh? Oy, the headache I got vhen I vake"-and indeed the woman's haggard face was the hue of ashes in the grimy glow of the gas jet and the fire. "Vhy he do a t'ing so, eh?"

"Maybe you were merely taken sick in the Fish and Ring," I suggested, "and stumbled in the alley and fell. The streets around there aren't terribly safe at this hour"-which was putting the matter mildly to say the least, the Fish and Ring being in one of the least salubrious streets of a neighborhood renowned for cos.h.i.+ngs, knifings, brawls, and hooliganism of all descriptions. "Perhaps someone happened along and stole your box?"

"Oy," she moaned, and pulled her shawl more closely about her. "Vhy vhould goyische gentleman vant poison poor voman like so, eh?"

"I don't know, Bubbe Wolff," piped up Rebecca, settling on the bench beside the woman and holding out her chapped hands to the fire. "But Zoltan Berg, he told me how that same thing happen to some woman his mama knows over Wapping."

"What?" I'd been turning over one of the wicker dollies in my hands, fascinated by the delicate workmans.h.i.+p; now I set it back in the basket and regarded the child in startlement. "This happened to someone else?"

"Zoltan's mama said," temporized Rebecca, an accurate witness if ever there was one. "This man came up and talked to her in the street, Mama Berg's friend, and ask her to the Blue Door Pub for mild and bitters, and next thing she know she wakes up in the alley behind the pub all cold and in the rain. She said he was a real nice gentleman, with a big brown heard and spectacles like Mama Wolff said, and said he was lonely an' she remind him of someone he knew."

The girl shrugged, skinny little shoulders in a hand-me-down pinafore and eyes too wise for a ten-year-old. Unprepossessing, the local police call them, and pert, but the more time I spend in the East End, the more I think that if ever I am granted the miracle of bearing John a living child, I would like her to have that kind of pluck and wit.

"He didn't rob her-anyway Mama Berg didn't say he did-and she got a drink out of it. And you know what sometimes happens, around Wapping and here, it could have been lots worse."

I s.h.i.+vered, and put a rea.s.suring hand on the little girl's shoulder. The other reason I was the only one of my friends who would work the Settlement Hall at night was, of course, that the fiend whom the popular press had called Jack the Ripper had operated within a few streets of where we sat, only last year. Though nothing had been heard of that ghastly a.s.sa.s.sin for nearly twelve months-and though I've always believed that if one takes sensible precautions one can remain reasonably safe wherever one is-I was, when it came time for me to return home, escorted through the Settlement's grim courtyard to my cab by at least six stalwart local gentlemen, and left to meditate, all the long rattling way back to Kensington, on the peculiarities of human conduct.

In John's stories about Mr. Holmes's cases, events follow neatly one upon another, without the intervening persiflage of day to day existence. This, I suppose, is the necessary difference between a painting and a photograph-the simplification of the background, that the foreground may stand in clearer relief. But in fact we live much more in photographs than in paintings, and for the next several days the Adventure of the Friendly Gentleman was crowded from my thoughts by the Adventure of the Imbecilic Maidservant, the Adventure of the Talkative Neighbor, the Adventure of the Blocked Stovepipe, and the Adventure of Mr. Stamford's Wedding Present. If I did not mention the matter to John it was only because it had become my habit to speak of the more harmless curiosities and occurrences at the Settlement House: and that, I suppose, indicates that however little harm had befallen Mrs. Wolff or Mrs. Berg's bosom friend at the Friendly Gentleman's hands, I guessed he was not quite as friendly as he seemed.

It was when I found myself in Portman Square, nearly a week later, in quest of a patent fountain pen for John's birthday, that I bethought myself of Mr. Holmes-not that he ever had the slightest idea of when John's birthday was, nor his own, I'm sure. And the thought occurred mostly because it had been some weeks since I had visited Martha Hudson.

It was only the knowledge that Sunday afternoons frequently found her at leisure in the narrow town garden behind 221 Baker Street that induced me to turn my steps along Audley Street. Ordinarily I would never have interrupted her work, which I knew-she being the landlady of two sets of rooms and two single chambers-was both physically demanding and virtually unending.

I found her, however, as I had suspected, pruning back her roses for the winter preparatory to wrapping the more delicate varieties in straw against the cold, her tall form swathed in a very atypical (for Martha) dress of blue-and-white calico and her fair hair, instead of being confined to its usual firm bun, hanging in plaits down her back like a schoolgirl's. She greeted me with a smile and a hug, and I sat on the single iron bench in the bare garden until she'd finished, when we went inside for tea. Both her widowed sister-in-law, Jenny Turner, who was living there then (though she moved out not long after), and her maid-of-all work, the egregious Alice, were away for the afternoon. The kitchen was warm and extremely pleasant with its smells of cinnamon and sugar, and we covered a wide variety of topics from John's birthday (soon) to the shape of this winter's hats (idiotic) to the progress of John's novel (frustrating, owing to the demands of making a living for himself, a household, and a dowryless wife).

"Had he not been wounded and sent home," I mused, "I think he would have remained with his regiment forever, writing tales of adventure and romance and battle in the hills out beyond Peshawar. For he has never wanted anything else, really. No wonder he drives poor Mr. Holmes to distraction with 'making romances out of logic.'"

And the two of us gently laughed. "But had he not been wounded and sent home," Martha said, "he would not have met Mr. Holmes-which would have been a shame, I think. Your husband is good for him. I know it would never have occurred to Mr. Holmes to seek out a friend, or to work at unraveling the mystery of another human soul as your husband did at unraveling his. Mr. Holmes watches people, the way he will watch the bees among the roses in the summer: fascinated but apart."

Which led us, naturally enough, to speculation about why a man of evident substance should be going about Whitechapel buying doped drinks for penniless women.

"I thought it sounded like the kind of thing that would intrigue Mr. Holmes," I said, dropping a fragment of strong-tasting brown sugar into my tea. "I would have mentioned it to Dr. Watson, only he worries about me enough going down there-not that I would ever accept the offer of a gla.s.s of mild and bitters from a total stranger. Certainly not in one of those pubs."

"No." Martha gazed thoughtfully through the many-paned gla.s.s of the pantry window out into the bare yard, her large hands cupped around the blue-and-white porcelain of the cup. "Though mind you, they're simply neighborhood pubs. If you mind your own business there you're as little likely to come to grief as you would at the Lamb down the street-unless you drink the gin, of course. Still ... It's curious you should mention the matter. Something of the kind happened-or almost happened-two weeks ago to old Mrs. Orris, who sells flowers, and knitting, and apple dolls about the streets."

My whole face must have turned into a pair of raised eyebrows, because Martha went on, "It gave her a turn, because her niece knew Mary Kelly, one of the girls who was killed by Jack the Ripper last year. Mrs. Orris was walking home along Three Colt Street, which as you know is in a very bad part of the Limehouse, when she became aware that someone was following her. She heard the man behind her quicken his steps and she quickened hers, but was too tired to go very fast, for it was late and she'd been walking much of the day. She slowed down to go into the Ropewalk, where there were lights on and people.

"The man overtook her in front of the Ropewalk, and called out in a hoa.r.s.e, husky voice, 'Madam, I should like to have a look at some of your dolls.' Now, he had been following her all the way from Commercial Road, but when she turned and stood beneath the lights in front of the pub, he came up to her, looked at her face, barely gave her dolls a glance, waved his hand impatiently and said, 'Oh, I'm afraid my daughter already has some of these,' and strode away down Ropewalk Fields at once, and disappeared into the fog. As I said, Mrs. Orris's niece knew one of the girls who was killed last year, and was very upset by this meeting, and perhaps it was that that made her more observant, but she said she did notice that, daughter notwithstanding, the gentleman was not wearing a wedding band."

At that moment the bell at the front of the house pealed. I got to my feet, thinking that it might be Mr. Holmes-Martha's story, added to the two I had earlier heard, had filled me with uneasiness. But from where I stood in the kitchen door looking down the pa.s.sageway, I saw that it was a man and a woman. The man was tall and burly, extremely handsome and well-dressed in a camels' hair greatcoat and tall hat, the woman-barely a girl, I thought-elegantly turned out in copper-colored tweed that set off the striking brunette darkness of her hair. I could hear the girl apologizing, while the man snapped, "I distinctly told Holmes to keep me apprised of all and any details he might find."

The querulous outrage in the voice, coupled with my acquaintance with Mr. Holmes, struck me as absurdly amusing. After the visitors had gone Martha and I had a discreet chuckle over the thought of Mr. Holmes-who for all his protestations of logic and efficiency loved mysteriousness like a schoolboy-divulging all and any details to anyone, let alone the handsome and arrogant gentleman on the doorstep.

When I recounted the incident to John that evening he rolled his eyes and sighed, "Mr. Thorne. It has to be. Lionel Thorne has been coming into Holmes's sitting room almost daily for weeks, full of schemes as to how his missing wife might be found, and Holmes is hard put to persuade him that all his proposed courses of action will succeed in doing is driving her further into the shadows."

The first comment that sprang to my lips was that I scarcely blamed Mrs. Thorne, whoever she was, for fleeing from her husband. Though strikingly handsome, he seemed both pettish and managing, if nothing worse; but it was, in any case, not my business. Instead I remarked, "Weeks? That's unusual for Mr. Holmes, isn't it? He generally unravels his puzzles within a day or two."

"This is a rather curious case." John tamped the bowl of his after-dinner pipe with his usual meticulous concentration, as if he were cleaning a gun, while the dreamy scent of the clean tobacco mingled with that of the fire in the grate, and of the last few roses Martha had given me to bring home. We do not live richly, John and 1, but after a lifetime spent one half in a dreary Edinburgh boarding establishment, and the other half in such penitential quarters as are alotted to governesses, I find a four-room mansionette in Kensington the summit of well-being and joy.

"Mrs. Julietta Thorne-according to her husband-has always been a woman of great eccentricity, whose odd ways have over the years given him great concern that one day she would have to be restrained. Six years ago she disappeared, taking with her nothing but the clothes that she wore. Since that time, though she has never applied for a penny, letters have come reguarly to the family man of business-Mrs. Thorne owns considerable estates in Norfolk, her father having been the Viscount Wale, who placed all the lands in trust for his only daughter-and to the Thornes's only child, a girl named Viola, who is now twenty."

"I believe it was her that I saw," I said. "A dark girl, very pretty?"

"Indeed. The letters are posted from various European cities-several from Ma.r.s.eilles, one from Hamburg, and I believe from such places as Brussels and Danzig. They are invariably short, handwritten in what Holmes tells me is unmistakably Julietta Thorne's handwriting. They say that she is well and happy and occasionally give instructions about the estate, of which she has complete control by the terms of her father's will. I have read the letters-they contain nothing of a personal nature-and find them quite lucid, if a little brusque. But Mr. Thorne has been prey to mounting concern that this stubborn refusal to either return to her family or give them any means of communicating with her indicates a gradual slide into madness. A year ago he began making serious efforts to locate her; a few months ago he came to Holmes."

"And what has Miss Thorne to say to any of this?" I asked.

"It was Miss Thorne who insisted that her father come to Holmes. I understand that he was at first reluctant, but he has become a most intrusive client, calling, as I have said, two or three times a week of late and demanding to be kept apprised of every detail of the search. Miss Thorne apparently has very little to say, save that she does not believe her mother to be mad."

I tucked my feet up under me, as well as I could in the rather close confines of the chesterfield that I shared with John before the fire. We do, in fact, have two quite comfortable chairs in the parlor, but in the evening after dinner we frequently share occupancy of the enormous old green chesterfield, John with his arm about me as we read the evening paper together. I said, "It's a pity someone is not out looking for another lunatic in London," and recounted the story of the Friendly Gentleman with the beard and spectacles, as I knew it so far: "Why would anyone do such a thing?" I asked.

"I think you have the right of it, my dear." He puffed at his pipe-which had gone out-and set it aside, drawing my head down to his shoulder. On the hearth the old cat Plutarch (so named for his many Lives) blinked sleep ily into the flames. In the warmth and comfort of the room I thought of women like Mrs. Wolff, and Mrs. Orris, and the little flower sellers and costers' daughters who'd come into the Settlement House, women who had not more than single unheated rooms near the river on these cold nights, and who trudged the foggy streets trying to sell their flowers or their candies or their dolls until the night grew too bitter to endure. "It sounds like the man is a lunatic, though not a dangerous one, except insofar as the women he drugs are in danger being left unconscious in alleyways."

He drew breath to say-I am sure-I really wish you would not go down to the Whitechapel Settlement, and then, G.o.d bless him, let it out. After a moment he said instead, "And the women were not harmed in any other way while they were unconscious? Other than Mrs. Wolff being robbed, which as you said might have been done by any of the street Arabs in that neighborhood."

"I am certain of it," I said.

"It's curious," John went on after a moment. "I remember how wide spread the panic was in the city last winter, over the Ripper's crimes-to the extent that I had serious doubts about your safety when you started at the Settlement House in the spring. But despite all the fears he only took five victims, and they were within an understandable limit: they were fallen women, with whom a man might easily have a grievance for pa.s.sing along to him some loathesome disease. The crimes were appalling, but they had a-a logic to them. But this ... This is simply very odd."

"It's curious," I said, settling into the warm circle of his arm. "In spite of the fact that the Friendly Gentleman hasn't done anyone any harm-I thought of the Ripper, too."

In the days that followed there were, of course, many other matters demanding my attention: having the chimneys cleaned before the start of true winter, negotiating yet again with Mrs. Robertson next door on the subject of her incessantly screeching parrot, convincing Florrie-the fourth in a long line of barely adolescent maids-of-all-work-not to barter such objects as napkins and towels away to the rag-and-bone man just because he a.s.sured her that "Ladies like your missus don't got no more use for such an old thing as that."

Yet the Friendly Gentleman did not leave my mind. When I stopped to buy flowers from the girls in Piccadilly, and chatted a bit with them as they made up their bouquets and b.u.t.tonholes on the steps of the Fountain, I mentioned a warning about the man. Though one woman shrugged and said, "Coo, lady, for a nice bit of gin I'd take a kip in an alley"-laughed along with her neighbors at this-ot hers looked thoughtful, and thanked me for the alert. And at the Settlement House I put the word out among the women who walked about the city with their baskets of chrysanthemums, or feather tips, or knitting slung about their necks.

There was one woman about whom I worried in particular, who made dolls in her single room on Marigold Walk near the East India docks, and went about the city for miles selling them. Queenie, everyone called her, mostly I think because she spoke more politely than her neighbors. The dolls she made were truly exquisite, their round solemn faces bearing expressions of love, or shyness, or impishness far different from the usual vapid prettiness of a toy. Queenie would scrounge or trade bits of lace and silk from the rag-and-bone men, or beg sc.r.a.ps of satin from the dressmakers of Oxford Street, or beads that the dustmen found, and from these fas.h.i.+on angels that I would have treasured at the cost of my life in my own rather bleak and doll-less childhood. She was somewhat eccentric and absolutely fearless, and would talk to anyone about anything. Some after noons I would see her chatting with city bankers outside the Royal Exchange as she hawked her wares, or in the early mornings with porters at the Billingsgate Fish Market. She could not be made to understand that there were folk of ill intent in the world, or that it behooved a woman alone-and she was not a girl, but a woman, I would guess, in her forties-to be careful about where and with whom she walked.

"No, but who should wish to harm me?" she asked, regarding me with mild disbelief in her large dark eyes, as the porters and costermongers and vegetable sellers of the Covent Garden market pushed and edged around us: I had encountered her in the market, deep in conversation with a toothless tramp and his dog, near a group of women sh.e.l.ling peas behind a rampart of baskets. "I mean no ill to any man, nor ever have."

I could not convince her otherwise, and in time simply bought a doll from her-a most beautiful Columbine with dark silk-floss hair elaborately braided-and went on my way with the flowers I had come there to buy. On my way through the narrow alley between baskets and hampers, stalls and barrows, I glanced back, to see one of the market women watching me closely, a hook nosed, gimlet-eyed harridan in a virulent green plaid shawl. But when I looked again she was gone.

That evening, however, when I went to the Settlement House, all thought of her and of the f.e.c.kless Queenie was driven out of my mind. I had finished my little cla.s.s of shop girls, and was preparing to depart for home, when, coming out into the bare brick courtyard of the gloomy Settlement building, I was nearly bowled over by a rowdy group of the local boys, scuffling and laughing as they dashed about in the cold. Some of these ragged youngsters had been living on the street for years, variously selling newspapers, or holding the horses for gentlemen, or more dangerously darting out into the jostle and clatter of traffic to sweep the horse droppings out of the path of crossing pedestrians who would then give them a s.h.i.+lling. "Give them," I say, if they were decent folks, though I have been p.r.i.c.ked to inner fury by the sight of young men-gentlemen I cannot call them-who would toss the payment out into the path of traffic, to roar with laughter at the nimble antics of the boys as they risked their lives diving for enough money to buy them a night beneath a roof.

It always astonishes me that these same boys, after twelve or fourteen hours of this, have the energy for games, but of course they do. I sprang back out of their path, but not quickly enough, and one of them collided with me, hurling me back against the brick of the wall and knocking himself sprawling through the open door and into the hall. He was at once on his feet, stammering, "Cor, I'm sorry, Mrs. W.," while his playmates jeered good-naturedly, "Argh, d'ja pick 'er pocket whilst you was at it, Ginger?" and "Hey, we gotta call 'im Ginger the Cos.h.!.+" as they crowded around me making sure that I was well.

The collision had knocked from Ginger's shoulder the satchel in which he carried his newspapers, and whatever other treasures he could find in the streets: a top, a bag of marbles (which thankfully had remained tied), and-I saw as he gathered them up again, still apologizing-a tin box that looked suspiciously like Mrs. Wolff's workmans.h.i.+p. ] said, "Ginger," and he looked back at me, box in hand, and I beckoned him over.

"Yeah, you give it to him, Mrs. W.," affirmed the others, but I gestured them away. I think Ginger saw the direction of my gaze, and the look in my eye, because he hung back until the others had retreated.

I took the box from his hand. "I don't think even d.i.c.k Turpin," I said, keeping my voice low, "went in for stealing from old women who couldn't defend themselves."

I suspect he knew from the start that he had crossed the line of even the rough and-ready ethics of the street, because he blushed hotly. At the same time I could see why he hadn't been able to resist temptation. The box was elaborately wrought of eight or ten different patterns of pressed-tin ceiling tiles, and was startlingly pretty. He mumbled, "Well, she was laid out drunk. I figured she'd just think as how the toff had took it."

"You saw him?" Perhaps I should have taken the opportunity to catechize him about how neither the owner's perceived unworthiness nor the unlikeliness of detection excuses theft, but the question I did ask was likelier to come to some good for someone, and not be a complete waste of breath.

"Oh, yeah. I was tryin' to sell the last of me papers, an' had gone in the alley to get outer the wind. This toff lugs ol' lady Wolff round the corner, an' dumps 'er down where the roof sticks out a bit at the back of the Fish an' Ring, 'cos it was still rainin', an' strikes a match. I saw his phiz good. Square face, beard like a holly bush, horn-rims to his goggles, an' a fair silk hat. He pulls her scarf off her head an' holds the match down near 'er face, lookin' at her close. I thought he'd light up his beard or her eyebrows. Then he blows it out an' heads up the alley, trippin' over 'er basket. I near laughed out loud, but ..."

He hesitated, and the sharp c.o.c.k-sparrow bravado wavered from his face, showing him to be, after all, a boy not much more than nine.