I turned to my neighbour, on the theory that the toughest nuts to crack (so to speak) hold the sweetest meat.
“What a most satisfying reading that was! And tell me, was that just water you were drinking?”
“You could have had some yourself,” she said.
“Oh! I didn't know, I thought it was only for the initiated. What a pity. I shall make certain to go forward next week.”
She relented a fraction. “You plan on coming back, then?”
“Of course! If nothing else I'd like to hear The Master-isn't that what you call him? I thought he was always here.”
“He usually is, but there are times when his body is emptied of Self, and he cannot attend in his corporeal person. He was, no doubt, here in spirit.”
“Oh!” I squeaked, as if a ghost stood at my shoulder. “Good, I so look forward to meeting him. Yolanda Adler told me about him. Do you know Yolanda?”
“Certainly, she's one of the-one of our regulars.” I wondered what she had been about to say. One of the initiated? The Leading Lights, as it were?
“Oh, and would anyone mind if I went to look at the painting up front? It's by her husband, isn't it?”
She had begun to gather her things to leave. Now she paused to look at me more closely. “It is. Most people don't even notice it's a painting.”
“Really? I'd have thought it was unmistakable.” I stepped towards her, forcing her to give way and let me into the centre aisle. I thought she might follow, but I heard her say good night to some of the others, and she left.
The painting was nearly all black. Its texture came from hundreds of circles, ranging from tiny dots to those the size of a thumb-nail. All showed the same pattern of light: droplets on a window, reflecting a cloudless night sky. In each and every one, a long streak of light indicated the moon, distorted by the droplets' curve; around the streak a sprinkling of smaller spots were stars.
It was subtle, complex, and breathtaking.
I don't know how long I stood there, oblivious to the emptying room and the tidying away of the altar and candelabrum, but eventually Millicent Dunworthy, sans ring and robe now, came to shut the painting away behind its doors. I stepped back reluctantly, eyeing the feeble padlock and thinking that this was one Adler I should not mind having on my sitting room wall…
But I was investigating, not planning an art theft. “Oh!” I exclaimed. (Such a useful sound, that, for indicating an empty head.) “It's like raindrops on a window!”
“Yes, it's lovely, isn't it?” She paused, and we both gazed at it. “Did you enjoy the service?”
I suppressed a degree of the empty-headed enthusiast, for this woman was more perceptive than the sharp- nosed woman I had stood beside. “Oh, it was ever so fascinating, all that about the light and the dark. It makes such sense, don't you think?”
Miss Dunworthy did think. “I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. Do come again, and bring your friends.”
“Oh, I will, most definitely. In fact, it's because of a friend I'm here-Yolanda Adler, Damian's wife,” I clarified, gesturing at the painting.
“You know the Adlers?”
“Her more than him, but yes. They've been coming here for a while, haven't they?”
“Well, Mrs Adler certainly. And him from time to time. Such a nice young man, he reminds me of my brother. Who was killed,” she added sadly. “At Ypres.”
“I'm sorry. But the Adlers weren't here tonight.”
“No. Something may have come up.”
“You haven't talked to her, then?”
“Not for the past week, no.” There was an air of puzzlement in her voice, indicating that she not only had no idea where Yolanda Adler was, she was surprised not to have seen her.
“Such an interesting person, isn't she?” I gushed. “So exotic. Where was it she's from? Singapore?”
“I thought it was Shanghai?”
“You're right! I'm a bit of a fool when it comes to geography. But I just love her accent.”
“It is charming, although it's so light, with your eyes shut you'd think she grew up in London.”
“How long is it she's been coming here, anyway?” I asked it absently, my attention on the painting.
“She was here at the beginning. January, meetings began. Although I have to say, she's never seemed as thoroughly committed to The Master's work as some of us. Over the past months, she seems to have lost interest.”
“Does she have any particular pals, among the Children? I was just wondering if she, too, found you because of a friend.”
“I've never noticed her being especially close to any of the others. Apart from The Master, of course. In fact, I rather had the impression that she knew him before.”
She reached for the doors then, to close Damian's painting away, so she didn't see my mouth hanging open.
“What, in Shanghai?” My question was a shade too sharp. She glanced at me over her shoulder, and I hastened to clarify. “I didn't know that the Children were an international organisation. Isn't that great!”
“As far as I know, this is the only centre. I merely meant that Mrs Adler knew him before we opened up.”
“Ah, I see. When was that, do you know?”
“Meetings began in January, we moved into this space the following month. Now, was there anything else?”
“Just, do you know if ‘The Master’ will be here next week?”
“One never knows,” she replied blandly, and bid me good night.
That blandness suggested that she knew more than she was saying, if not about Yolanda Adler, then about The Master. Perhaps I should know a little more about the competent, unattractive, and vulnerable Millicent Dunworthy as well.
I was waiting across the street when she left the meeting hall, the last one out and locking up behind her, a bit awkward around a white-wrapped parcel the size of the book and robe. She got the door locked, settled the bundle safely into her left arm, and marched away down the street, where the thick, petrol-scented air soon cleared the incense-induced headache from my skull.
Fortunately, the woman lived in walking distance of the hall-boarding a bus without her taking notice of me would have been tricky-and within a quarter hour she was vanishing behind the front door of a run-down apartment house. I waited until a light went on at the west side of the second storey, then I left.
It was now far too late to continue knocking up the Adlers' neighbours, even if I had been dressed for the deed, but nine-thirty would be just about perfect for the occupants of another district of Town.
However, I was having second thoughts about the garments I had chosen. They had been just right for the Children of Lights, but for an assault on the stronghold of London 's
Fortunately, the bolt-hole was on my way.
Before tonight I had discovered that, by a judicious use of safety pins and sticky tape, I could transform a pair of Holmes' trousers into something that did not look like a child playing dress-up from her father's wardrobe. Tonight's victim of my tape assault was a beautifully cut evening suit that I'd thought he kept at Mycroft's, although this might have been an exact duplicate of that garment. In either case, I made short work of converting it to my frame, and put it on over a white shirt fresh from the laundry, adding a sumptuous embroidered waistcoat I found in the back of a cupboard. My blonde hair, cut above my ears back in February, still only came down to the lobes, so I slicked it with some pomade and painted my eyes a little, dropping a silk scarf around my neck.
I looked, surprisingly enough, like what I was: a woman in (mostly) man's clothing. I opened the safe and helped myself to various forms of cash, then drew an ivory cigarette holder from the bristle of pens and make-up pencils in a cup and slid it into my breast pocket. After another look at my reflection, I painted my lips a brilliant red, then nodded in satisfaction.
The clothing I had started the day in, back in Sussex, I folded into a black cloth bag, adding one or two things from the wardrobe, just in case. I let myself out, and put out a hand for a cab to take me to the capital of Bohemia.
