The Shadow and the Star (13 page)

With jittery moves, she reached for her chemise and drawers, and found them still damp from her scrubbing the night before. After examining the grime at the knees, she bundled them up to launder at the bath and shrugged halfway out of the nightgown, too flustered to do things in proper order and put her petticoat on underneath first. She sat down with the gown rumpled around her waist. Her hair fell over her bare shoulders as she brushed it out with Miss Myrtle's silver brush, one hundred strokes on each side, trying to find some calm in the routine.

But her mind skipped around in a distractingly foolish way, not concentrating on the problems at hand at all. She absentmindedly coiled up her hair and pinned it before she put on anything, stepped into her calico skirt, and buttoned her blouse, trying to use Miss Myrtle's hand mirror to see if anyone could tell she hadn't a stitch on beneath it.

She put up her hair, after dropping the pins four separate times, and when she was ready, it was still over two hours before the bath would open. So she sat back down on her bed and pulled out her money box to refigure her accounts, although she knew perfectly plainly what her situation was.

She set the note and coins in piles, arranged in order of value, until the whole of her hoard lay on the bed: a single pound note, three shillings, and twenty pence, before subtracting this week's rent on the room and the sewing machine. Precisely eight shillings and tuppence with which to eat, bathe, and launder. Even if she found a position, she wouldn't have enough to carry her through until she was paid, especially if the employment agency arranged to have the premium taken out of her first month's wage.

There were still Miss Myrtle's silver-handled brush and mirror. But not yet. She was not going to part with them yet. She picked up the mirror lovingly, turning it over and over in her hand.

She stopped, and rotated it back half a turn, gazing down into the reflection.

With a stifled shriek, she dropped the mirror and sprang back on the bed against the wall, staring upward. In the early morning shadow of the peaked ceiling, he lay along the attic beam like a panther, utterly still, watching her.

Leda began to breathe in choking gasps. He moved, pivoting down from the beam like smoke materializing into substance. With controlled grace, he lowered himself by his arms, dropping lightly to the floor on one leg.

"Waterfall," he reminded her incisively—and Leda closed her eyes and regulated her breath.

For a bare instant.

"You
villain
!" she screeched, when she'd got her breathing in hand. "You—you
voyeur
! What were you doing up there? In my
room
! You were
watching
me! And I was—oh, my
God
, I was—"

The horrible realization of what he must have seen put her out of wind again; she had to pause and discipline her inhalation, which showed an alarming tendency to outpace the capacity of her lungs. She grabbed up the brush and threw it at him. He barely shifted, avoiding it, and Leda scrambled for the poker on the floor.

"Brute!" she cried. "You contemptible
wretch
! Get out of here!" She swung the poker at him wildly; it whizzed past his nose and she swung again, but he only altered his stance, not giving up ground. "Get out!" she screamed. "Get out, get out, get out!" She was close enough now that the poker would demolish him; she lifted it over her head and brought it down with all her might.

He didn't even flinch; he only raised his hands with a motion that seemed whimsically slow and clapped them together on the descending rod, stopping it dead over his head. For a moment he looked at her between his upraised arms, as if asking if she were finished.

"Get out of here!" Recklessly Leda yanked at the poker to wrestle it away from him, throwing her weight into his resistance. He gripped it. She gave a squeal of fury, trying to regain control, winning an inch and redoubling her effort.

Abruptly, he let go. She tumbled backward with the force of her own pull, landing with a painful jolt on her bruised hip. Somehow the poker had ended up in his hand instead of hers. She looked up at him standing quietly over her and curled herself into a ball sitting on the floor, weeping with mortification and fury.

"How could you? Oh, how
could
you? You're a beast�you don't deserve to be called a gentleman! You're a low, evil, wretched blackguard, and I'll have the police on you if you kill me for it! I shall! Don't you think I won't! Monster!" She put her face against her knees. "Go
away
! Go."

In the midst of her tirade, she became aware of Mrs.

Dawkins' voice outside. The door rattled. Leda lifted her head and froze.

"What is it?" the landlady barked through the barrier. "Who's in there with you?"

Mr. Gerard braced his hand on the sewing machine table and shifted. He lowered himself onto Leda's bed, pulling off his dark, loose coat to reveal a normal gentleman's white shirt. The coat fell over his feet in a casual tumble, hiding the strange footwear.

"Open up!" The lock shook. "You're not to have men visitors, Miss Etoile! Not on fourteen shillings the week! Open this door!" Before Leda could gather her wits, she heard a key in the lock. The door burst open.

In her nightcap and a garish red dressing gown, Mrs. Dawkins stopped and glared at Mr. Gerard, who had a hand at his shirt collar, as if he were just hastily buttoning the last button. Then she swung on Leda, her bulging baby-doll eyes blinking rapidly.

"Well, I
never, "
she exclaimed. "You little slut; butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, would it? Respectable, you said. A lady, you said. No followers, you said. I thought something smelt about the way you've taken to coming and going so sly-like, w' no basket! Been slippin' 'em up here secret-like, has you? I won't have it!" She grabbed the chemise that lay bundled on the washstand and dangled it, leaning toward Leda. "I won't be bilked of the takings by no artful little tramp—if you pick up men and bring them here, you give me my share. A fine piece of work, Lady Miss Trollop—" She tossed the underwear toward Leda and bustled over, scraping Leda's money off the bed into her palm. "We'll see about whether I put you out in the street or not for chousing me!"

"Oh, no! Please!" Leda gathered her underwear into a ball and held it to her chest. "Mrs. Dawkins, it isn't—"

But the landlady was no longer looking at her, nor counting the small pile of money in her palm. Her gaze was pinned to Mr. Gerard's hand as he turned it over and slid a folded note beneath his thumb.

Mrs. Dawkins bobbed forward, snatching the money from between his closed fingers. She glanced down, and her bulbous cheeks grew pink. "Indeed, sir!" Her whole manner became servile. "That's very kind of you, sir. Very kind, I'm sure. Would you like a refreshment brought up, sir? Something to break your fast? I can send down to the corner for bacon in a moment—"

"No," he said.

"Tea? Nor toast?" She tucked the note into the bosom of her dressing gown. "Very good, then! I'll be right away downstairs should you need anything." She sidled toward the door. "Miss has only to ask."

"Just give Miss Etoile back the money that is hers," he said coldly.

"Oh, to be sure." Mrs. Dawkins laid the coins on the washstand. "But her rent is twenty shillings, you know; twenty shillings for a lady what entertains followers in her room, due prompt on Friday. That's today, sir. Today it is, you see." She folded the pound note into her hand, gave a meek duck of her head, and opened the door.

Leda didn't speak, knowing it was hopeless; she didn't even mention anything about going for the police. Mrs. Dawkins would believe nothing that she said now. As the door closed, Leda pressed her face to her knees.

"Look what you've done," she moaned. "Oh, look what you've done!"

"I might have done worse," he said. "What a remarkably unpleasant woman."

Leda looked up. He moved one hand across the other in a flicking motion, and at the same instant a loud thump came from the door. She looked around, expecting Mrs. Dawkins again, but instead there was a silvery disc stuck in the wood. Another appeared with a biting thud, and a third and a fourth. They were shaped like stars, many-pointed, two sharp rays of each disc buried in the door.

It took a moment before she realized that he had propelled them into the wood with that swift flick of his hand. He held up a fifth one between his fingers, turned it so that the multicolored light through the curtains sent a rainbow across it, and then closed his fist. When he opened it, the disc was gone: not buried in the door like the others—simply vanished.

They would take a person's eye out, those pointed stars. Leda pushed herself to her feet, leaning back against the wall with one arm behind her and her chemise clutched against her chest. "What is it you want?" she cried. "Why won't you go?"

"How much money do you have?" he asked, as calmly as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"Oh, do you plan to steal that, too? Here!" She swept the coins from the washstand and hurled them at him in a shower. "Take it all—it's worth my last pence to have you gone!"

He caught one of the shillings in the air; the rest fell on the bed and floor and one circled around on its edge before it went down with a spinning plop. He dropped the shilling he'd caught onto the bedclothes.

"You didn't go to the police," he said. "Thank you."

Leda watched him, suddenly wary. She didn't answer.

"I wasn't certain what you intended when you left," he added. "It seemed best to conceal myself." He picked up the mirror, turning it, holding it the way Leda had held it when she saw him. A faint smile touched his mouth as he watched the reflection of the ceiling beam.

She hugged the chemise, pulling up one of the folds that had fallen free.

"I'm not a thief," he said, still looking in the mirror. Then he put it down and reached for his coat. "A trespasser, perhaps. A changer of things that resist change." He looked at her directly. "That's why the police really want me, is it not? Not because I've hurt anyone, or taken for myself what isn't mine. They want me because I've disordered the pattern that they know, and it alarms everyone."

"It alarms
me, "
she exclaimed.

He shrugged into the dark coat and belted it. "I would like you to trust me."

"Trust you!" she echoed. "You must be mad."

"Miss Etoile, I have been in this room every night for the past week and more. Have I hurt you? Have I touched one of your possessions?"

"What?" Her voice went up to an unladylike squeal. "You've been coming in my room for a week?"

"And you've known nothing of it, have you? Until you moved everything and bathed yourself and the whole room in that exceptionally odorous soap."

"You
are
mad! What has soap to do with anything?"

"It reeks. That hampered me."

"It does not reek," she said indignantly. "Hudson's has no smell."

"It reeks," he said. "But it's my responsibility—my mistake—I was too impatient; I allowed my perceptions to become disordered."

"Certainly it's your responsibility. It isn't mine! I've every right to clean my floor and move my furnishings if I please, without some housebreaker complaining of it! And—and then hanging up in the eaves like a horrid vampire bat!" She felt herself flushing. "I will never forgive you for that, sir! Never! You could have spoken, when you saw I hadn't called the police! You could have revealed yourself!"

His eyes shifted away from her. For the first time, he looked somewhat guilty.

"You have forever forfeited the right to be called a gentleman," she concluded haughtily. "Why didn't you just go the way you came?"

"Because my leg is broken."

"I don't believe you. You can't go out the window, but you can climb onto ceiling beams?"

He reached down and pulled the string ties free on his leg. The dark cloth came loose, falling full like a skirt.

"That's quite all right," Leda said hastily. "You needn't feel you must prove it."

He bent over, moving his fingers up and down his calf beneath the fabric. "If you'll help me, I can set it. Then find me a splint and I'll be gone."

"But—" She put her fingers over her mouth and stared at his veiled leg. "—wouldn't you rather have a doctor?"

"No," he said simply. "You can help me."

"I really don't think I can," she said.

"Can you hold my foot?"

"Really, I think you should have a doctor," she said, backing up a step.

He looked up at her. "Keep breathing, Miss Etoile. We haven't even started yet."

Leda realized she was inhaling in unsteady gulps. She took a deep breath and let it out again.

"What of those newspapers?" he asked, nodding toward the pile on the stool which Leda had been saving all week, reading up on every detail of the robberies. "I think I could use them for a splint, if you've something to tie them with."

She looked at the thick sheaf of paper dubiously. "Would that work?"

"If we tore up your petticoat to secure it. I'll buy you a new one."

"Certainly not! I won't have strange men buying me petti—" She cleared her throat, refusing to discuss something so unseemly. "The towel, perhaps."

"Fine." He leaned over and pulled the pile of papers toward him, folding and arranging them in an even stack an inch thick. Hesitantly, Leda took her towel and clipped the edges, tearing it into long strips. Then she stood clutching the pieces, backed up against the wall.

"This is absurd," she said. "You can't possibly set your own leg. You'll pass out."

"I don't think I will."

"Yes, you'll pass out," she insisted, her voice rising. "Or you'll make some horrid loud noise. And then what am I to do? What will Mrs. Dawkins think?"

His mouth thinned in a quizzical tilt. "Why don't you move out of here, if you care so much what Mrs. Dawkins thinks?"

"I haven't the money, nor hope of employment, not that it's any of your concern, Mr. Gerard."

He turned his head, and then slanted a look back at her beneath his lashes. "There's a reward for information about who's committing the robberies," he said.