Spider Dance (42 page)

Of course I asked Quentin Stanhope to lunch at Del-monico’s.

Already he was squirming, no doubt remembering the disaster that had transpired the last time we two had dined at Delmonico’s.

I wanted him to remember that awkward occasion. A man not at ease is a man I can bend to my own purposes, even a self-assured Englishman.

For a wild moment, it occurred to me that I could try to enroll Sherlock Holmes in my quest . . . but, no, he had no such gentlemanly strictures piled upon him as Quentin. Nor had he the normal gentleman’s reluctance to treat a woman harshly. Only one woman might command extraordinary patience from him, and I was not she.

I wondered briefly what Irene and her henchwoman Nell might be up to. Surely nothing as interesting, as scandalous, as bloody awful as the Affair at Noll Cottage. At last I could put to use the information on Madame Restell I had gleaned during the previous month!

Nothing was wasted in the inventive reporter’s experience.

I made sure that the maître d’hStel at Delmonico’s seated Quentin and myself in the fenced outdoor portion of the restaurant, where we could be seen by all comers.

“Wouldn’t you rather lunch inside?” he inquired with a divinely attractive frown when we were led to a prized public table his English accent had commanded. “It’s beastly hot outside.”

“You’ve survived the beastly heat of India,” I pointed out, “and I prefer a natural breeze.”

At this he frowned further, for not a breath of wind was stirring.

“You said you had an investigative matter to consult me upon,” he noted as soon as we had been seated.

“Hold your horses, Mr. Stanhope. We haven’t even read the menu. It’s bad for the digestion to rush into lunch on a hot day.”

So we ordered, I an iced tea, he a lemonade, not iced. The British abhor ice, except in their manner at times.

Quentin’s manner was becoming frosty, if not ice-cold.

“This meeting smacks of an attempted bribery,” he said. “You know I can’t help you reveal the Ripper.”

“You’d be bribed by a lunch at Delmonico’s?”

“You have more on your mind than lunch.”

“Why, Mr. Stanhope, you can’t be implying that I would resort to . . . seduction to get a story.”

The dull flush beneath his sunburned skin was even more attractive. Perhaps I
would
resort to seduction to get a story, though I never had before. Silly Nell was not injudicious where she cast her girlish affections. . . .

“I am obligated to deal with you politely,” he snapped out as sharply as Sherlock Holmes might have, “but you are mistaken to think that because I wear kid gloves on occasion I don’t have access to iron fists. You treat matters of the greatest international gravity as a joke, or worse, grist for your personal glory mill. I won’t have it”

“My, the heat does make you testy!” I dropped my coy manner and leaned over the table. “Listen, Quentin. I’m on the trail of a really juicy story. A domestic story. Set here in
the good old U.S. of A. If I get this story, and you help me, you can keep your nasty old Ripper and all those funny foreign place names. This story will rock New York City, and the whole country!”

“What do I have to do?”

“Ever the cynic, Quentin.”

“Ever the news-hungry hound, Pink.”

The waiter came with our beverages. I admit that I had worked up a thirst. Englishmen are never easy. I would swear I will never marry one, but then I’d already sworn I’d never marry, so the oath was redundant.

The ice clicking against my teeth as I sipped the tea made Quentin set his jaw as he lifted his lemonade glass to his lips. I suppose iced teeth are anathema to an Englishman, the way smothered news stories were an affront to me.

“You don’t have to do anything,” I told him, “except trot around New York City with me and claim to be my husband.”

That Delmonico’s lemonade must be strong stuff, for I watched his expression grow as sour as his drink when he heard my words.

One of the most astounding stories of conspiracy, of turpitude,
of plot and counter-plot, ever revealed outside the
realms of improbable fiction
.
—The World

F
ROM
N
ELLIE
B
LY’S
J
OURNAL

Although I didn’t need Quentin Stanhope for my earliest investigations, it tickled me no end to insist he come along.

Maybe I wanted to a get a midge up Miss Nell’s corset. Maybe I wanted to make the ones who had gagged me after the Ripper hunt pay, and Quentin was the nearest representative.

Maybe I liked to be seen in his company. Certainly the boyos at the paper sat up and snapped their suspenders when he showed up at the
World
on my instructions . . . or at my insistent invitation, shall we say?

“Mr. Quentin Stanhope,” I introduced him around the office. “Of London.”

Talk about killing two birds with one stone! The office gossips had a new target for their suspicions, and I was putting Quentin through hoops for the sin of trying to shush me like an unruly child.

He took being paraded through the offices with good grace, and even shook hands with Mr. Pulitzer, impressing the boss with my taste in men.

Hah! No one knew or guessed my taste in men except myself,
and there it would stay until I said differently. It’s amazing how men in the working world want a woman hooked up to some other man so she will stay out of their hair . . . if they have any left.

So Quentin was the perfect shill for the office gossips—I could cite my undying devotion to my absent Englishman for years after this—and he also would prove necessary on my quest

He seemed to sense my goals, for as we left the building he took my arm like a considerate swain, rather than a husband.

“It must have galled you to the bone, Pink, to agree to keep the Ripper story quiet.”

“Yes,” was all I answered.

“It wasn’t because anyone underestimated you as a journalist, it was because they knew all too well your effectiveness.”

“So I’m to be a happy eunuch?”

He winced, and not from the strong sunlight in the street. “I’ll aid you as you wish, but you might consider telling me what the object is. It’s possible I might have some insight to contribute.”

“A modest Englishman! All right. We’re going to see a nursemaid at Bellevue.”

“A nursemaid in hospital?”

“In
the
hospital. That’s the way we say it here. She was stabbed.”

“Who would stab a nursemaid?”

“How about her employer?”

This he mulled. In fact, he said nothing more until we arrived, which is most unusual for a man. Usually they insist on knowing where they are going, or pretend to.

“Mrs. Mary Donnelly,” the nurse said, nodding to the figure lying halfway down a stark row of iron cots. The smell of carbolic acid tainted the air.

She was wan but she had the Irish mouth: a thin determined
slash above her overlong chin, which denoted stubbornness.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked, taking the sole chair near the bed.

Quentin Stanhope stood at my shoulder, pale summer straw hat in hand.

“They tell me I’ll survive, no thanks to that lying Mrs. Hamilton. A common whore. God knows what happened to the babes they sold her.”

“My name is Nellie Bly. I—”

“Miss Bly! Really? “Tis Irish you must be, you’ve got such a heart for the poor and downtrodden. Excuse me drizzlin’. Such a bad time ’tis been. “Twas no way I could allow that poor man to be diddled about the nature of his own so-called child. And what happened to the previous babe, I ask you? My God, what these people were up to! I only tried to warn the mister! And she stabbed me like a pig at the marketplace! What would she have done to the babe . . . me babies? She didn’t care, that harlot, except for diddling a rich man of his money.”

I was taking notes as fast as I could scribble. “You were so brave.”

“Not really. I denounced her in front of her husband. Who else could make things right for the poor babe in her clutches? I never expected her to have a knife, or to try to cut the throat out of me. She was mad. And he didn’t understand, he could hardly move for the shock of it. Poor man. His babe not his own? His wife a baby-buyer and worse? Why would he believe me? But I had to tell! I couldn’t let her kill another babe and then find another to take
its
place. Mayhap to a man they all look alike, but to me each is its own angel and I could not be fooled.”

Silence held at this, then Quentin spoke for the first time. I had told him the facts of the case an route to Bellevue.

“Was Mrs. Hamilton accustomed to carrying a dagger?”

“No, sir! I had no idea that lying whore would attack like a wolf! I only knew that the child they brought back from California was not the child they took. Men are such fools!
A woman is a woman to them, a babe a babe. Ye cannot fool a nursemaid who has cradled a child at her breast. The little faces are hairless mostly, and all ears and no nose, but they are as different as one rosebud from another. If you haven’t looked at a bush in full bloom, you wouldna know! But I know. ’Tis my job, my curse to know. No child is the spittin’ image of another, no matter how young. No woman with the instincts of a mother would say such is so. Ah, she was a demon mother, who would sell herself and all those other mothers’ children so! I would denounce her again, her and all her heartless kin. Poor Mr. Hamilton. D’ye know how he keeps himself now? And what has become of that poor babe? Where is he?”

She asked good questions, the kind I was wont to ask. I blushed to realize I hadn’t answered them before I came to her.

Quentin Stanhope took my elbow and drew me to my feet.

“We’re looking into it,” he assured her. “We shall find and account for both of the babies this gang presented as Mr. Hamilton’s child in turn. And when we find them, they shall have the homes they deserve.”

I turned to stare. I knew better than to offer such unlikely guarantees. His hand on my elbow pinched a good deal. I realized then that I also would have to offer these guarantees.

“That’s right, Mrs. Donnelly. We’re here to set things straight.”