Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #7)

I came away angry and frustrated. I had learned nothing from them that I didn’t already know and they were not the least bit interested in helping me. It was going to be up to me to rescue the girl myself. If she’s still alive—the words flashed through my mind.

The train trip back to New York went on forever and I tried to formulate a plan. At least I had an address. I’d have to come up with a pretext for visiting Jessie—maybe a necklace that she left behind at my house. And what then? I could hardly drag her off by myself, could I? I decided to appeal to Mrs. Goodwin for help. She’d know what to do. She may also have heard of a Hungarian gang that kidnapped girls. I felt sick inside. Mrs. Tucker had suggested that maybe the girl ran away from white slavers. Had I delivered her right back into their hands?

I leaped off the train the moment it came into the platform in New York. I knew that Mrs. Goodwin would be sleeping, but this was a matter of life and death. I just prayed that Daniel had come back and headed straight to his house on Twenty-third Street. The wind off the Hudson was bitter as I leaned into it, hurrying toward Ninth Avenue. His landlady met me in the front hall.

“Captain Sullivan hasn’t returned yet, Miss Murphy,” she said.

“He’s been away all weekend, has he?”

“That’s right. Went off on Saturday morning to visit his folks. I’ll tell him you stopped by when he returns, shall I?”

“Yes please. Ask him to come and see me the moment he gets back. It’s urgent.”

“All right, my dear.” She ushered me back out into the street. I walked away feeling angry and disappointed. Just how long was he going to stay away this time? What if his family persuaded him to stay with them until Christmas?

I pushed such worries aside and decided that the only person I could turn to was Mrs. Goodwin, sleep or no sleep.

I went home first to find the address to which the Hungarians had taken Jessie. I was in the process of opening my front door when the door across the alley opened.

“There you are at last, Molly,” Gus called to me. “We’ve got Dr. Birnbaum here, waiting for you to come home.”

“Dr. Birnbaum?”

“Yes, in a very disturbed state. He has some bad news, I’m afraid.”

I hurried across to Gus and was shown into their drawing room, where Dr. Birnbaum was sitting next to the fire. He leaped to his feet.

“Miss Murphy. At last. These two young ladies were so kind. They invited me to stay until you returned home. I came to find you with the most disturbing news.”

“About our girl?”

“Of course. I decided this morning that I would go to visit her, to make sure she had settled in well and to offer my services in person. Frankly, I didn’t think that any doctor they could produce could have the skill with such a difficult case. Anyway, I went to Brooklyn and the address they gave you does not exist. There is no Brook Street.”

“No Brook Street,” I echoed. “I suppose I’m not surprised. I have just made a discovery of my own. The girl was not Hungarian. She was a dancer from a theater in New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Then why did they claim her as their relative?” Gus asked.

“I wish I knew. I can only assume the worst—that they wanted her for some evil purpose.”

“I wish I had been there when they came to collect her,” Dr. Birnbaum said. “I have some fluency in Hungarian. I might have been able to reason with them.”

“We only have their word that they were Hungarian, don’t we?” I said. “I wish you’d been there, too. At least you could have told me whether they were genuine or not.”

“Did you hear them say anything in that language?” Birnbaum asked.

“Yes, but since I don’t speak it, it meant nothing to me.”

“Nobody speaks it,” Birnbaum said. “It is one of the strangest languages on Earth. It bears no similarity to any other spoken language.”

I stared at him, as an idea crossed my mind. “Then that is why they claimed to be Hungarian,” I said. “A language that nobody else speaks. They could claim that the girl didn’t communicate with anyone because she couldn’t understand them.”

“Did the language sound like this?” Birnbaum asked and rattled off what sounded like a string of gibberish.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “And one of them said si. Is that yes in Hungarian?”

“No, Spanish or Italian.”

Sid entered the room at that moment. “Oh Molly, I didn’t hear you come in. What have I missed?” she asked.

“Molly has found out that the girl from the snowdrift was really a dancer from New Haven,” Gus said breathlessly, “and she’s been kidnapped by two men who said they were Hungarian but probably weren’t. And they left a false address.”

“Goodness,” Sid said. “So what do you propose to do now?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “It will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I fear the worst for that poor girl. I can only think of one reason that those men would want her.”