A Curious Beginning

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I had just returned to the caravan and resumed adventuring with Arcadia Brown when Mr. Stoker burst in, soaking wet and covered in soapy lather. His hair was dripping rivulets onto the floor, and he had wrapped a bath sheet about himself like a toga. He loomed over me, drenched and panting, having obviously run all the way from the bath tent.

“You look like one of the less capable Roman emperors,” I observed. “Go back and finish the job properly.”

“I have a crow to pluck with you. It just occurred to me—”

“It just occurred to you that I was at liberty and might make my escape. Yes, I know. You are a wretched abductor, Mr. Stoker. I suggest you do not take up felonious activity as a career.”

His expression was sullen. “You will have to make allowances. It is, after all, my first abduction.” He drew the bath sheet about himself more tightly.

I put aside my book. “I am tired of this silly pretense that I am being held prisoner. Let us dispense with the absurdities.”

“It is not absurd,” he said, sounding slightly aggrieved. “I am keeping you captive until I learn the results of the inquest and discover the truth of what happened to Max.”

“You are doing no such thing. I might have stabbed you forty times with a hatpin while you slept. I could have bolted the door to the caravan and set fire to it. I could have poisoned your tea. I could have thought of a dozen ways to have killed you and carried them out before sunrise. So let us stop pretending that you are my captor or that I am staying here out of anything other than my own irrepressible curiosity.”

His nostrils flared like a bull’s, and he seemed to grow even larger as he stood over me, hands flexing on his bath sheet. But when he spoke, his voice was controlled. “What do you mean ‘curiosity’?”

“I mean that we have been so busy running hither and yon we have not considered the baron’s murder properly. Murder is an act of chaos. It lies with us to bring order and method to the solution of the deed. We are scientists,” I reminded him.

“I am a scientist. You are a dilettante,” he returned with as much hauteur as a man in a bath sheet could manage.

“I am perfectly happy to stand my professional credentials against yours any day, my dear Mr. Stoker. But I am not the one dripping upon the carpet. Now, please go and finish your bath, and when you return we will proceed in an orderly fashion and prepare for the performance—a performance which you neglected to inform me would put my life in danger,” I added with a narrowed gaze. I went on. “The professor has made it quite clear that if we do not have an act, we will not have a place here, and I quite agree with you—this traveling show offers an excellent chance to consider our options. So our first order of business is to formulate an act that will satisfy the professor and the punters. But not until you have finished your bath,” I repeated. “And you will want to shave off that monstrous beard. At present you resemble one of the less domesticated varieties of yak.”

He stroked his chin. “I rather like it,” he said stubbornly.

“No, you don’t. You are forever tugging at it and scratching. You wear it because you have been too distracted by your work to shave, but you have nothing like that excuse now. Besides, if anyone manages to follow us here, it will help to disguise you if you remove that atrocity.”

He considered this for a moment.

“Very well. I will go and have a shave. And when I return, we can practice for the act.”

“An excellent notion. Is there anything I ought to do to prepare?”

His smile was thoroughly nasty. “Yes. Paint a bull’s-eye on your chest. I shall be throwing knives at you and I should hate to miss.”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


Mr. Stoker returned in due course, hair untrimmed and dripping but smelling deliciously of fresh soap and clean male animal. He had not touched the beard as of yet, and I raised the point with him.

“I was about to take care of it when Leopold offered to shave me later. He is quite experienced, you know.”

“I should have thought the one thing of which Leopold had no experience was shaving.”

“In that case, you would be wrong. He accepts himself for what he is, but he has upon occasion shaved the whole of his face.”

I paused, struck by the enormity of such a thing. “And those are the only times he has seen his own face. I cannot imagine it.”