Kitten, you ought to know, was a thing of beauty. I choose the word with the care a poet might, for the thing that made her irresistible was vague. The modern lady is encouraged by etiquette books and trivial magazines to seek what I call the ideal of inoffensive expressionlessness. Smile a small, refined smile as to not appear ungraceful; powder the cheeks and brow to appear flushed, but not artificial; choose dress shapes to make short seem taller, tall seem shorter, wide to seem slimmer and slim to appear rounder, and say or do nothing conspicuous when it can be helped. It all seems rather foolish to a fatal bachelor such as myself, whose romantic impulses were left behind in the uncut pages of my youth, but to a cub such as yourself, the ways of women will remain for some years too shrouded in mystery to judge.
Kitten did not subscribe to society’s usual dictates to women, except, of course, when she assumed a role for the purposes of bookaneering. Her personal wardrobe lacked the frills and feathers prized by ladies, had long sleeves, and was not tailored to be especially well fitting. She clothed herself in manly shades of brown, black, and gray. Her eyes, one gazing in a slightly different place than the other, were foreboding, of a blue color so fine as to be almost transparent—more intimidating than charming—and her pale pink mouth and smooth brow seemed ready to contract into a frown, as though she were listening to the beginning of a joke she would not find funny. She had a tendency to fold her arms under her ample bosom or clamp them at her hips in gestures of pointed impatience. Her voice was coarse, grating even. She might have qualified as plain or even dull if judged by our common standards. Without possessing the trappings of conventional prettiness, wherever she went there were men obsessed with her and women jealous. With age, the dark strands of hair were woven with silver while her face creased with the sorts of lines other women labored to hide, and her power over men doubled—tripled. There was a vulnerability, though; despite her exterior there were times, from a distance, when I saw her break down into tears and need Davenport’s company. As I’ve said, it is difficult to define her allure and, I’d propose, impossible to ever replicate it. It is too often overlooked in this age of magazines how attractive it is for a woman not to care a dime what men think of her.
I’ve mentioned my own interactions with Kitten were quite limited, but there were a few times, not long before her notorious final mission, when she spoke to me. These occasions were so rare that I remember each of them well, even when nothing important passed between us. Once, I was standing on the crowded Oramin bridge, in Berlin, when I heard my name called out in that unmistakable voice: hoarse, commanding, seductive, disorienting.
Under other circumstances I would have been tickled merely to have Kitten address me. “Perhaps this is a time for more discretion,” I whispered to her, thinking other bookaneers and competing parties could be in earshot.
“The vaults were empty, after all that fuss,” she said. “Do not look surprised, Mr. Fergins. I know why you’re in Germany and what you’ve come to help your master find. But the stereotype plates Pen wanted have been moved to a catacomb under an old circulating library up north.”
I studied her as I tried to discern whether it was possible she was trying to trick me, or whether Davenport had been working with her in this mission, in defiance of his own rules of bookaneering, and why she was telling this to me. “How did you know to find me here? How did you know where I would be?”
“I didn’t know. But I know Pen’s mind more than you could ever know, Mr. Fergins, and I supposed this is where he would set a rendezvous. I guessed it would be easier to find you than to find him.” I nodded, accepting her vaguely belittling but true statement, worthy of Davenport. She went on: “Give him this; it tells him where he can find me. Since I cannot stay in Berlin after tonight, I will trade him my information in exchange for a reasonable part of the takings of the mission. Do just as I say. You will find I do not like to give instructions twice.”
She was nearing fifty then and, as I’ve said, had become more striking than ever. Her self-possession, her composure, her poise, her alluring boredom, her selfish resolve, her secrets, all of it came out in every movement and every word she spoke. She handed me a piece of paper, gesturing for me to look at it. It was blank. I knew it was written in invisible ink. It was not a very elaborate method of hiding something, but Davenport would know he was the first to read it.
More than you could ever know—those were the words that teased me; in later years, as things began to go downhill in the Samoan mission, you could say they haunted me. It was Kitten, so there was more than one meaning possible. Did she mean that I would never be able to know how well she understood Davenport, or that I could never understand him the way she did? Either way, my heart was sinking with their weight. That night, after sprinkling a little lemon juice on the note in order to reveal the message, Davenport left me at the hotel and was not back until the next morning. I supposed he retrieved the information he needed from Kitten to complete the mission and then remained with her for the night. Davenport was insistent that his relationship with Kitten was kept separate from professional dealings, and that, with few necessary exceptions, the best bookaneers never worked together. I would not question him, of course, because to question him about anything was fruitless, but it mystified me how he could pretend their labors and emotions were not already mixed. I knew many bookaneers believed that would be the bookaneer’s downfall (his, not hers).