The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer Page A

me, leaning upon their cue-sticks, their attitude so insulting that I began to fear Lord Rodney might prove to be just such a villain as his younger brother. So similar were their oval, symmetrical faces and democratically blunt, pleasant features that one might have taken them for twins. I found no difficulty, however, in telling which was which simply by the expression of their eyes; Lord Rodney’s gaze was open and anxious, whereas his brother Geoffrey’s was hooded like a cobra.
    I did not speak for a long moment. To tell the truth, I could not speak; in the terror of the encounter, all the words I had prepared turned coward and fled my mind like conscripts deserting a battlefield.
    But I managed (I thought and hoped) to keep my spine stiff and my head high, and facing them I tried to glare rather than stare; I hoped my silence therefore seemed like scorn.
    I hoped, also, that I seemed considerably older than my fourteen years. Such usually seems to be the effect of my height, my figure-augmenting underpinnings, and my sharp features.
    Lord Rodney, I noticed, put down both his cue-stick and his cigar at once. And nervously he broke into speech. “So, you are the nameless one who sent in such a mysterious note, of which we understand nothing? I assure you, you are acting under some absurd misapprehension, my lady.”
    “Lady? That’s no lady,” Geoffrey corrected his brother with quite a preening air of indifference. “That’s the lodger.”
    “Aha!” I cried. Bless Geoffrey’s callous comportment and deplorable manners; he infuriated me, and instantly I found my voice. “And you say you know nothing of this affair? How dare you trifle with me.” Although Geoffrey was the one who had aroused my ire, nevertheless I spoke straight to Lord Rodney, as if his younger brother were of no account—so better to irk him. “Kidnapping is a serious matter. Police and press can be hushed up with money, of course, but not Florence Nightingale. How do you think she would react if she knew what you have done? To whom do you think she would address her first hundred letters? And she will know if you do not act promptly to set the situation to rights. She has hired the famous detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes—”
    “Bosh and wind,” broke in Geoffrey. “How can this girl possibly know anything of—”
    I turned on him. “Florence Nightingale received me in her chamber, as you would know if you had followed me there the second time I visited her. And if you were not so busy abducting a defenseless, respectable, elderly woman—”
    “I am not responsible for that!” Lord Rodney cried out in a tone that would have been more appropriate emanating from Mrs. Tupper. “I never expected—”
    “Shut up!” Geoffrey barked at him.
    But at the same time I looked upon Lord Rodney with a far more kindly gaze, reassuring him, “I quite believe you never expected the matter to go so far, or I would not be here talking to—”
    “Balderdash!” the hot-blooded Geoffrey exploded. “He told me to get the message any way I had to. So I did what needed to be done. And now he will not let me dispose of the old woman. He thinks we can just let her go, and you, too, I suppose. Well, at least one son of our father has some guts.”
    With which coarse utterance, in a single moment, not giving even so much warning as a coiling snake might have done, he darted to seize me.
    Were it not that the billiards table stood between us, he would have had me. But he needed to go around that obstacle, giving me just enough time to whip out my dagger and menace him with its stiletto-like eight-inch steel blade.
    He stopped.
    “You are not to lay hands on me,” I told him softly between my teeth as he froze, staring, “for two reasons. This is one.” I cocked my uplifted dagger so that the gas-light shone more prettily upon its blade. “The other is that my brother has seen me enter this house, and is waiting near the gate to see me come out