way through the crowd, murmuring greetings here and there, Kate a step behind. They paused on the outskirts of a group gathered in front of the fireplace. Dominating the group was Oscar Wilde, a tall man, several inches over six feet and portly. His dark brown hair fell nearly to his shoulders and his lips were full and finely chiseled in a face that spoke of dissipation. He was elegantly dressed in a lavender tailed coat, flowered waistcoat, and white silk cravat, loosely tied. Listening, Kate thought that his sentences, although they were clearly extemporaneous, seemed as perfectly composed as if he had constructed them in writing and delivered them from memory.
The conversation was not about some mystical topic, but on the subject of America. 'Of course,' Mr. Wilde said, drawling out the words with wry humor, 'if one had enough money to go to America, one would not go.' With languid grace, he tapped his cigarette into the fireplace behind him.
'I fear you are right, Wilde,' said the tweedy, heavyset gentleman beside him. He adjusted his polka-dot tie with one massive, beringed hand. 'I will be launching an American tour in a few days, but I must say I am still smarting over what happened with my Study in Scarlet. Virtually purloined by Lippincott.'
Kate looked at the man, surprised. He must be Conan Doyle! How odd. In her imagination, the author had resembled his character-lean and gaunt, with piercing eyes and a hawklike beak of a nose. But Mr. Doyle was clearly fond of his table. He was stout and hearty, with the thick hands and the wide, flat nose of a boxer. He had the appearance of a man who had never read a book in his life and had not noticed the absence.
'Ah, yes,' Wilde said lazily, leaning one elbow against the green marble mantel and pulling at his jowl with his fingers. 'Until quite recently, American publishers took what
they liked without the annoyance of parting with their money.' He rolled his eyes dramatically. 'Americans. Always in hot pursuit of the next moment, as if they were catching a train. It is a state of affairs not favorable to poetry.'
'Perhaps,' Kate said quietly, 'Americans do not require poetry to accompany their affairs.'
All eyes shifted to her. The corner of Doyle's mouth quirked. Another man-intense and dark-haired, with fine-cut intellectual features under heavy brows-smothered a laugh and ended by breaking into a violent cough that shook his double pince-nez from his nose.
Wilde cocked one eyebrow, scantily amused. 'Quite good, quite, quite good, my dear lady,' he drawled. He paused, letting die silence lengthen while Kate felt her cheeks redden. 'An American, I presume.' He turned to the dark-haired young man. 'One can always distinguish American women by their exquisitely incoherent speech, Willie. Like exploding crackers. One is reminded of Sheridan, in The Rivals. They are as 'headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.' '
The young man with die pince-nez spoke up. 'I hardly think the lady's remark was incoherent, Oscar. In fact, I rather imagine she bested you.' His voice held more than a hint of the Irish. His soft gray tie was inexpertly and crookedly tied, and he wore a small cluster of feathers in his lapel. Kate's eyes widened slightly when she saw them-blue feathers, bright blue, iridescent blue-and she realized that they were very like the feather she had found in the carriage. The young man smiled at Kate. 'Well done, Miss…'
'Gentlemen,' Aunt Sabrina said, 'may I present my niece, Miss Kathryn Ardleigh. Mr. Wilde, Mr. Doyle, and Mr. Yeats. As you have guessed, gentlemen, Miss Ardleigh is an American by birth-'
'But Irish by nature, I perceive, as well as by name and appearance,' Wilde interrupted elegantly. He took Kate's hand and bowed over it with an extravagant flourish. 'My friend Willie Yeats is quite right, Miss Ardleigh. You have bested me. But I confess it willingly, for besting Oscar Wilde is allowed only to that exquisite divinity who boggles him with her beauty.'
'Then I fear you are easily boggled, Mr. Wilde,' Kate said, retrieving her hand. Her eyes fastened on Willie Yeats's blue feathers. 'And therefore easily bested.'
Wilde's eyebrows went up. Yeats chuckled dryly, and Kate realized that he must be the man for whom she was copying the cipher transcript. She would somehow have to pursue the matter of Yeats's feathers. But she was momentarily sidetracked by Conan Doyle's remark about A Study in Scarlet.
' 'Is it true about the copyright of your work, Mr. Doyle?'' she asked, turning to him. 'It was stolen?'
'Yes,' Doyle allowed, 'it was. Though to be fair, the theft was rather made up by what Lippincott paid me to write The Sign of Four.' He coughed. 'Don't know that the offer would've been quite so handsome if American readers hadn't already gotten onto Scarlet.'
'You certainly have many American readers,' Kate said, thinking to turn the conversation toward the question she wanted to ask. 'They have banded into Let's Keep Holmes Alive clubs to protest the unfortunate demise of your famous detective.'
Doyle thrust his hands in his pockets. 'Chap's dead,' he said. 'Let him rest.'
'But why?' Kate persisted. 'If one of my characters were to win such a fervent following, I do not believe I would dare to-'
Doyle's half smile was patronizing. 'My dear young lady, I doubt you can understand the situation, not being an author.'
'But I-' Kate checked herself on the brink of betraying Beryl Bardwell. 'Perhaps you are right.'
'The truth is that I am no longer interested in detective stories,' Doyle remarked with a self-important air. 'My aim is to write serious books. Micah Clarke is one such effort. Have you read it?'
'I must confess that I have not,' Kate said.
'An admirable work, my dear Doyle,' Wilde put in lazily, 'if somewhat wearying. Still, one rather does enjoy robust adventure-when someone else does the adventuring.'
'Holmes gets in the way of my other writing, y'see,'
Doyle said to Kate, ignoring Wilde. 'And my psychic research, which is most interesting to me.' He looked around. 'Which of course is why I am here.'
'Ghost-hunting,' Yeats said with some scorn.
'My dear man,' Doyle replied, raising his chin, 'that is not an attribute one applies to the Society for Psychical Research.'
Kate regarded him with interest. 'But why can you not write both serious literature and detective stories?' she asked. 'Surely the two are not exclusive.'
Doyle spoke as if he were speaking to a child. 'My dear young lady, you clearly do not understand the labors of authorship. The difficulty is that each short story needs as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do.' He frowned. 'At any rate, Holmes is dead. Even if I wanted to bring the fellow back to life, I could not. He lies at the bottom of a vast precipice.'
'But Sherlock Holmes can hardly remain dead,' Kate objected pertly. 'Your readers will not allow it. And I think it would not be difficult to call him from the vasty deep, sir.'
Wilde's full lips curved slightly upward. 'Ah, but will he come when you do call for him? That, dear Doyle, is the question.'
'He will come,' Kate said, 'if you call in the right way. He should reappear in some interesting disguise, I think, so that the manner of his reappearance distracts attention from the fact of it. He should then explain to Dr. Watson that he sent Professor Moriarty into the dreadful chasm in his stead, perhaps with some sleight of hand, such as baritsu.'
'Baritsu?' Doyle asked doubtfully.
'A form of Japanese wrestling,' Kate said.
Mr. Yeats smiled. 'The lady is ingenious, Doyle.'
Doyle pulled his brows together. 'You are forgetting the tracks,' he said. 'In 'The Final Problem' Dr. Watson observed that two persons went down the path and none returned.'
Kate raised her brows. 'I imagine that a man of Mr. Holmes's resourcefulness could scale a cliff or two. I also imagine that he might go into hiding to escape the Professor's
confederates, while entrusting to his brother Mycroft the maintenance of his Baker Street lodgings. That would explain his absence from London and his failure to communicate with Dr. Watson.'
Wilde's puffy-lidded eyes were amused. 'As Holmes would say, my dear Doyle, 'The impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytic rea-soner.' ' He pursed his lips. 'There you have it, dear sir. The plot, trotted out in toto-or is it en tutu?' Ignoring Willie Yeats's groan, he added, 'What do you say, Doyle, to Miss Ardleigh's spirited resurrection of Sherlock Holmes?'
Doyle shook his head, stubbornly beetle-browed. 'Fellow's dead and dead he stays. I shan't have him bullying me for the rest of my days.'
