Blameless

like a veritable gypsy with her spattered dispatch case and wild hair. Madame Lefoux also looked the worse for wear, speckled with mud, her goggles dangling about her neck. Her top hat was still secured to her head by the long scarf, but her mustache was decidedly askew. Only Floote somehow managed to look entirely unruffled as they skulked—there really was no other word for it—through the side alleys of Nice in the wee hours of the morning.

Nice proved itself smaller than Paris, characterized by a casual seaside attitude. Madame Lefoux, however, hinted darkly that the city’s “Italian troubles” of ten years ago remained, hidden but unabated, and that this upsetting situation gave Nice a restless undertone not always sensed by strangers.

“Imagine! Trying to contend that Nice is really Italian. Pah.” Madame Lefoux flicked one hand dismissively and glared at Alexia, as though Alexia might side with the Italians in this matter.

Alexia tried to think of something reassuring to say. “I am certain there is hardly any pasta in the whole city,” was the best rejoinder she could come up with on such short notice.

Madame Lefoux only increased the pace of their skulking, leading them around a pile of discarded rags into a dingy little alleyway.

“I do hope the ornithopter will be safe where we left it.” Alexia tried to change the subject as she followed her friend, lifting her skirts away from the rags. There was hardly any point in the effort at this juncture, but instinct dictated one’s skirts be lifted.

“Should be. It’s out of gunpowder charges, and very few, apart from Gustave and myself, know how to fly it. I shall send him a note as to its location. I do apologize for that unfortunate landing.”

“You mean that unfortunate crash?”

“At least I chose a soft bit of ground.”

“Duck ponds usually are soft. You do realize, ornithopter only means bird? You don’t actually have to treat it as such.”

“At least it didn’t explode.”

Alexia paused in her skulking. “Oh, do you believe it ought to have done so?”

Madame Lefoux gave one of her annoying little French shrugs.

“Well I think your ornithopter has earned its name.”

“Oh, yes?” The inventor looked resigned.

“Yes. The Muddy Duck.”

“Le Canard Boueux? Very funny.”

Floote gave a tiny snort of amusement. Alexia glared at him. How had he managed to entirely avoid the mud?

Madame Lefoux led them to a small door that once might have been colored blue, and then yellow, and then green, a history it displayed proudly in crumbling strips of paint all down the front. The Frenchwoman knocked softly at first, and then more and more loudly until she was banging quite violently on the poor door.

The only reaction the racket caused was the immediate commencement of an unending bout of hysterical barking from some species of diminutive canine in possession of the other side of the door.

Floote gestured with his head at the doorknob. Alexia looked closely at it under the flickering torchlight; Nice apparently was not sophisticated enough for gas streetlamps. It was brass, and mostly unassuming, except that there was a very faint etched symbol on its surface, almost smoothed away by hundreds of hands—a chubby little octopus.

After a good deal more banging and barking, the door cautiously opened a crack to reveal a mercurial little man wearing a red and white striped nightshirt and cap, and a half-frightened, half-sleepy expression. A dirty feather duster on four legs bounced feverishly about his bare ankles. Much to Alexia’s surprise, given her recent experience with Frenchmen, the man had no mustache. The feather duster did. Perhaps in Nice mustaches were more common on canines?

Her surprise was abated, however, when the little man spoke, not in French, but in German.

When his staccato sentence was met only by three blank expressions, he evaluated their manners and dress and switched to heavily accented English.

“Ya?”

The duster ejected itself through the partly opened door and attacked Madame Lefoux, gnawing at the hem of her trouser leg. What Madame Lefoux’s excellent woolen trousers had done to insult the creature, Alexia could not begin to fathom.

“Monsieur Lange-Wilsdorf?” Madame Lefoux tried tactfully to shake off the animal with her foot.

“Who would be wishing to know?”

“I am Lefoux. We have been in correspondence these last few months. Mr. Algonquin Shrimpdittle recommended the introduction.”

“I thought you were of the, uh, persuasion of the feminine.” The gentleman squinted at Madame Lefoux suspiciously.

Madame Lefoux winked at him and doffed her top hat. “I am.”

“Leave off, Poche!” barked the German at the tiny dog. “Monsieur Lange-Wilsdorf,” Madame Lefoux explained to Alexia and Floote, “is a biological analytical technician of some note. He has a particular expertise that you may find rather interesting, Alexia.”

The German opened his door farther and craned his neck to see around Madame Lefoux to where Alexia stood shivering.

“Alexia?” He scanned her face in the faint light of the street torch. “Not the Alexia Tarabotti, the Female Specimen?”

“Would it be good or bad if I were?” The lady in question was a little distressed to be engaging in a protracted doorstep conversation in the nighttime cold with a man garbed in red and white striped flannel.

Madame Lefoux said, with a flourish, “Yes, the Alexia Tarabotti.”

“I cannot believe it! The Female Specimen, at my door? Really?” The little man thrust said door wide and nipped out and around Madame Lefoux to grab Alexia warmly by the hand, pumping it up and down enthusiastically in the American style of greeting. The dog, perceiving a new threat, let go of Madame Lefoux’s trouser and began yipping again, heading in Alexia’s direction.

Alexia wasn’t really sure she enjoyed being referred to as a specimen. And the way the German looked at her was almost hungry.

Alexia prepared her parasol with her free hand. “I would not, young sir, if I were you,” she said to the dog. “My skirts have been through quite enough for one evening.” The dog appeared to think better of his attack and began jumping up and down in place, all four legs oddly straight.

“Come in, come in! The greatest marvel of the age, here, on my very doorstep. This is—how do you say?— fantastic, ya, fantastic!” The little man paused in his enthusiasm upon noticing Floote for the first time, silent and still to one side of the stoop.

“And who is this?”

“Uh, this is Mr. Floote, my personal secretary.” Alexia stopped staring ominously down at the dog in time to answer so Floote didn’t have to.

Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf let go of Alexia and went to walk a slow turn around Floote. The German gentleman was still in his nightshirt, in the street, but he didn’t seem to notice the faux pas. Alexia figured that as she had just shown her bloomers to half of France, she didn’t have the right to be scandalized by this behavior.

“Is he, is he really? Nothing more evil than that? No? Are you certain?” Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf reached out a crooked finger and yanked down Floote’s cravat and shirt, checking the neck area for marks.

Growling, the dog glommed onto Floote’s boot.

“Do you mind, sir?” Floote looked decidedly put-upon. Alexia couldn’t tell if it was the man or his dog that irritated most; Floote could abide neither a wrinkled collar nor damp shoes.

Seeing nothing incriminating, the German left off torturing Floote with his vulgar behavior. Once again he grabbed Alexia by the hand and positively dragged her into his tiny house. He gestured for the other two to follow, giving Floote yet another dubious once-over. The dog escorted them inside.

“Well, you realize, under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t. Not a man, not so late at night. Never can tell with the English. But I suppose, just this once. Though, I did hear some of the terrible, terrible rumors about