Reserved for the Cat (42 page)

“Ain’t dishonest,” Stubbins mumbled. “Jest puttin’ things roight.” He cast a sideling glance at Ninette. “Ma’mselle Nina’s one uv us, ain’t she? So we gotter take care uv ’er.”

“All right then!” Nigel said brightly. “Here’s the papers, and here’s a few shillings for you two—it will probably take all day, and you’ll need some luncheon, and money for the ’bus. Off you go! Report directly to me soon as you get back!”

Ninette smiled to herself, knowing that Nigel had given the boys at least twice as much as they needed, and had given them no deadline to meet. He had, in essence, awarded them with a bit of a holiday and the money to make it a rather jolly one at that. She felt terribly touched by Stubbins’ mumbled assertion that she was “one of them” too.

“Do you think they can manage it?” she asked Jonathon, who rolled his eyes and laughed.

“Those two? They mastered my cabinet in an hour, and they know more sleight-of-hand tricks than any boys their age should command. It is a good thing that they are fundamentally honest, because they could pick a man’s pocket while he stood there looking at them.”

“I expect the shillings will run out about dark,” Nigel said comfortably. “Expect them back then.”

Scotty scrupulously divided the coins between the two of them before they left by the stage door, and they both took a moment to gloat over the windfall. “Cor, Scotty!” Stubbins said with enthusiasm. “Think on it! There’s ices, an’ bullseyes, an’ Kendal Mint Cake, an’ catapults each, an’ we kin go to th’ Tower an’—”

“Job first,” Scotty said solemnly. “We gotter do this fast an’ smart. Like Sherlock Holmes’ boys!”

“Baker Street ’regulars,” supplied Stubbins, who read as much or more than Scotty did.

“Right. So t’ be smart, we shouldn’t oughta do the same thing twice. So how kin we do this four dif’rent ways?”

All the way to the first newspaper office, sitting up on the top of an omnibus, the two plotted and planned like the pair of old campaigners they were. Both had come to the theater off the street as crossing-sweepers; a place like a theater always had need of honest and reliable errand-runners, and the old fellow at the stage door had been directed to find a couple. Both took all their money home to share with enormous families; both were acutely aware of how lucky they were to be where they were. Master Nigel made sure everyone in the theater got fair wages, he didn’t demand a share of tips, and he regularly put things in the way of those that needed them. Whether or not he realized it, Master Nigel had engendered intense loyalty in his little fiefdom; there was not a man or woman in that theater who would not have stood between Master Nigel and a runaway elephant. Having been singled out for particular service made the two boys feel rather like a pair of King Arthur’s knights, right out of the panto.

This was made even more acute by the fact that the job was to be done for Ma’mselle Nina. Now, there were plenty of acts that had passed through the Imperial acting like they were royalty. Not Ma’mselle. She was, as Scotty put it, “a right’un.” Treated everyone fair, said “If you please,” and “Thank you,” never looked down her nose at anyone, and when she wanted something out of the ordinary, you knew there was going to be an extra penny in it for you. Everyone knew she was going to be the star turn when the Big Show got trotted out, but she never acted like she thought it was her due. Truth to tell, both Scotty and Stubbins were just a little bit in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? She looked like a little china doll, pretty as a fairy, and nice as nice . . .

So both of them were going to put a lot of effort into making sure things went right for her—and it made them feel even more knightly. Or maybe like Sherlock Holmes. Or a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Raffles.

The first office they came to was so busy it had been easy for two boys who looked like they knew what they were doing to mingle with the rest of the crowd. There were plenty of boys their age employed in such places, messages needing taken, things needing to be fetched. Careful listening led them to the desk of the fellow that wrote up reviews and other artistic stuff; the boys waited until he left his desk for something, then slipped their folder under a big pile of stuff that was already there.

They left that office no more than three quarters of an hour after they had arrived. One down, three to go.

At the second office, Scotty, who was older, engaged the little girl in charge of putting files away in a mild flirtation, while Stubbins slipped Nina’s file in among the rest of those she had waiting. Scotty broke off the conversation reluctantly when Stubbins was finished, and privately resolved to come back when he wasn’t on a mission.

Two down. They were halfway done and it wasn’t even luncheon yet.

Office number three presented a bit of a challenge. There was a man at the door and it was clear he was there to keep out interlopers. They both eyed the fellow from a distance, Scotty frowning furiously. “I dunno,” he said, finally. “This ’un—”

“Got it!” Stubbins crowed in triumph, looking at something or someone just past Scotty’s shoulder. He darted out before Scotty could say anything; Scotty turned to see a youngish man burdened with a huge pile of books and papers coming towards the guarded door. In a flash, Scotty knew what was going to happen—

And it did. Stubbins rushed past the young man, brushing up against him just closely enough to knock his burden out of his hands, but not so closely that he ran into the fellow. He kept going as the pile toppled to the floor, as if he was in such a hurry he couldn’t be bothered to look back.

Scotty ran out to lend the man a hand. They commiserated on the rudeness of some people, Scotty piled up his arms full of papers and files again, and they parted. Except, of course, the young man now had the third copy of Nina’s file in the stack he was so carefully balancing.

Number four was absurdly easy. They arrived just about luncheon-time, and everyone that could was running out for a bite. Scotty merely walked up to the wall of file cabinets, found the drawer for “T,” and inserted Nina’s file between “Titian” and “Toulouse.”

Their work done, they escaped into the sunshine outside, ambling away with their hands in their pockets as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Only when they were well away from the building did they look at one another and burst out laughing.

“Thenkee, Mr. Holmes,” Scotty said, doffing an imaginary hat.

“Thenkee, Mr. Raffles,” Stubbins replied with glee. “Now! About them ices!”

“Reckon we earned ’em, don’t you?” Scotty replied.

Stubbins nodded. “Reckon we did.”

“I
suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here,” said Alan Grainger, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Jonathon, who knew exactly why the young Water Master had called them all together—because the cat had told him—did his best to keep any tone of smugness out of his voice. “Didn’t find our Earth-Mage, eh?” he said instead, in as neutral a tone as possible. But he couldn’t help but gloat inside. So the young genius hadn’t had any more luck than his elders! Hard not to feel a bit sorry for him, especially when he looked at Ninette and flushed. Poor lad wanted to impress the lovely little dancer, and who could blame him?

“I’m afraid not,” Alan replied, crestfallen. “Whoever this is, he’s infernally clever, and I mean that almost literally. He set traps for us, and they weren’t the things intended to catch and perhaps harm
us
either. If we had been gulled by his deceptions, what we did would have hurt perfectly innocent people—well, not
perfectly
innocent, they were actually rather vile.” He flushed a deeper crimson. “But they were innocent of any wrongdoing towards us.”

“A good job you were being cautious, then,” Arthur said in an attempt to console him. “At least we won’t have that on our consciences.”

“Yes, but I didn’t find him, and Mademoiselle is still in danger.” He rubbed one temple. “I’m not used to failing.”

Jonathon snorted. “Then you aren’t trying things that are challenging enough.”

To his surprise and Alan’s obvious chagrin, Ninette nodded. “The more and harder things you attempt, the more you will fail. You are only guaranteed not to fail if you do not try.
C’est las vie.”

“We have all failed at this one, Alan,” Nigel pointed out. “Whoever this is, he’s a step ahead of us.”

“He certainly was this time,” the young man said glumly, and began to outline just what it was he had discovered.

That was when Jonathon’s head literally came up like a dog catching a scent. “Damnation!” he swore. “This is not just a trap. He’s misdirecting us!”

“Like in one of your illusions?” Ninette asked, brows creased in a thoughtful frown.

“Exactly. He
wants
us to look for him using magic. He wants us to waste our time doing so. And meanwhile, he is doing something else! But what?” Jonathon grimaced. “What is it that he doesn’t want us to see?”

“Whatever it is,” Wolf observed, “it can’t be good.”

“He doesn’t want us to see
him,
or rather, to find him.” Nigel rose from his chair and began to pace. “The question is—”

And then he stopped, and a look of surprise mixed with annoyance spread over his face. “Good gad. We’ve been making a fundamental error here. All along we’ve been operating on the assumption that whoever this is first attacked Mademoiselle with a storm and sank her yacht.”

“Nom du nom!”
Ninette exclaimed. “That was all a fabrication! It is the red fish!”

“Red herring,” Arthur corrected absently. “Exactly. So when we remove that from our puzzle, we need to know when the real attacks date from. And are they centered on Mademoiselle after all? It could just be coincidence, or it could be she was attacked just because she was vulnerable. We might not be looking for an enemy of Nina’s; we might just be looking for an enemy of Nigel’s.”

“I haven’t stirred up any trouble that I know of,” Nigel said slowly. “But then again, neither has Ninette any magically gifted enemies. But at least we know where to start looking for mine.”

“And what to look for.” Jonathon pursed his lips. “For that matter, the first attack that we definitely know of came after I had arrived.
I
might be the one that this magician seeks to ruin. And I must say I have made a considerable number of enemies over the years. I am not an easy man to get along with, and I do not suffer fools.”

“Surely not—” Nigel interjected, and then stopped. “No, you are correct, old friend.”

He began paging through a little book he kept, separate from the larger daybook in which he scheduled acts and noted things down about the day’s events in the theater. He had the daybook open too. He looked up.

“Do you suppose—when Harrigan broke his leg, do you think that could have been the first attack?”

All of them stared at him. It was Jonathon that spoke first. “Didn’t Mrs. Harrigan say that the street just opened up in front of him?”

Nigel nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Well then, that was the first attack, and it not only came after you joined us, it came after I began letting information on our planned productions get out.”

“It does seem to point to the notion that this is an enemy of yours, Nigel,” Wolf put in thoughtfully. But then Jonathon saw Alan brighten.

“There is no reason to think that this enemy might have been covering his tracks quite so effectively that far back is there?” he asked eagerly.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Nigel regarded the young man shrewdly. “I take it you have a notion?”

“If you know where that hole was, I can probably read what happened in the past,” Alan said with a look of determination. Jonathon whistled.

“I don’t know of more than one or two Masters that can do that.” He was impressed in spite of himself. But Alan only shrugged.

“It’s usually more in the line of a clairvoyant rather than a magician, but Water is uniquely suited to scrying,” he replied diffidently. “It’s more the aptness of the element rather than any virtue on my part.”