The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle Read online

  Miss Doolittle called back the address. “You do know it?” she asked. “Please hurry!”

  Did I know it! I knew it as one of the most dangerous streets in all of London. It was that very same part of Swandam Lane where Holmes and I had investigated the strange disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair in a lascar’s opium den years before. I was loath to carry any young lady to such an evil place, but what choice had I? I gave the reins another jog and we rattled along through the dusty streets of London, plunging into the strangle of midday traffic.

  It required all my skill to avoid a mishap. Half the traffic these days seemed to be motor cars, and the horse evidently cared for their roaring and their fumes no more than I. They harried the slower traffic of hansoms and growlers, landaus and cabriolets and omnibuses like collies nipping at the laggards of the herd, worrying at traps and dogcarts and donkey carts and coal wagons and brewer’s drays, bicyclists with their knees up churning, costers plodding along with their barrows, a cats’-meat man with his cart and a half-dozen mongrel dogs leaping about in his aromatic wake, ragged children weaving among all in an eternal game of tag without a thought for life or limb. Even once untrammeled lanes seemed choked with vehicles of every kind. Here is a fellow walking in the middle of the street, reading his paper and smoking his pipe, oblivious to the railway van creaking at his heels. There goes a funeral procession all in black, at a stately pace, or a group with placards marching for home rule for Ireland or votes for women. Over there men have torn up the paving stones to work on a gas main. So it was some time before I noticed we were being followed—by a man on foot! My first idea was that the hansom driver, fueled by outrage at my piracy, had managed to dog our trail, armed with a knowledge of the streets even more encyclopedic than mine. But the driver had been as old as myself, and our pursuer was a young gentleman—and when I say gentleman, I mean dressed so, from patent boots to top hat, though his shoes were white with dust and his wardrobe showed an unfashionable amount of wear. Where he had picked us up I could not imagine, but I felt sure he would not be able to keep pace with us. Several times I was sure we had lost him in the turbid stream of humanity. Yet whenever traffic forced us to a crawl, there he was, puffing away behind us, indefatigable as Pheidippides. And at every halt Miss Doolittle begged me to make haste.

  Finally we left the crowds behind and were bumping through the winding, rutted roads, which pock the riverside. There the high streets are knotted into dark alleys and dead ends meant to trap the unwary traveler in their coils. Only my years scouring those alleys with Holmes, sniffing out the black tar of moral turpitude, rendered them sensible to me. We had almost reached our destination when a singular event occurred. We were passing through a muddy strait so close upon the river that I could smell the oil and the brine. It was populated by a set of rather desperate-looking shops whose roofs on either side leaned toward each other as if to crowd out the spying sky. Suddenly a figure emerged from under a low awning and stepped into the street full in our path. It was a man small and stooped in stature, but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with the arms of a Borneo ape. His eyes were concealed behind brown-tinted spectacles. I strained with every sinew to drag the horse to a halt. It was sure the man would be trampled to his death. I cried a warning. Still he stood his ground. The horse reared snorting above him. Then it seemed to me that that he reached up and dealt a hammer blow upon the side of the poor brute’s skull. The horse shied and staggered. I heard a scream as the cab slued round, broadsiding a shop window, smashing the shutters to flinders. I was hurled from my seat into the street, striking my head upon the stones.

  I must have blacked out. Yet I remember as in a dream staring up at the sky, blue as hyacinth, then an eddy of shadows, which resolved into a face demonic in outline. There was a prognathous jaw, with high, sunken cheekbones, and a beetling brow; the eyes peering over his spectacles were yellow as a cat’s. Gruesome as those features were, there was yet something beyond the merely physical, unseen and unseeable, an aura that was almost an odor, and absolutely loathsome. The entire vision was but the tick of the clock, and then the world slid away.

  When I came to my senses, the horse was standing in the street, head down, listless. The cab was leaning against the wall of a crockery shop on the corner. The young man in the top hat was there, peering inside the ruin of the cab. He swore and kicked the footboard. “Gone!” he cried in anguish. He glowered at me. “You bloody fool!” He threw his hat to the ground and kicked it, but almost immediately retrieved it, dusted it off, and set it back on his head.

  He stared round in a daze, stepping one way and then another in indecision, almost tripping over his own feet. From here the street forked into two snaggletooth alleys, impassable save on foot. Miss Doolittle and her abductor—or was he her escort?—could have escaped down either of them. Sherlock Holmes might have said which, but the muddled young fellow in front of me could hardly even guess. He looked back at me and cried shrilly, “You should have your license revoked!” Then he set off down one of the alleys, chosen willy-nilly, and was soon swallowed by the shadows. By the time I picked myself up and brushed the dust from my clothes, the street was silent. The shopkeeper stood in his window scowling at me, but he seemed disinclined to bring his quarrel into the street. Up and down the street there were eyes staring from blank windows, chinks, and crevices, like wolves shadowing a campfire, but no one stepped forth with aid or challenge. The horn of a steam packet lowed upon the air.

  What must I do? Leave the horse and strike down one of the alleys? Or find a constable and cry up a search party? Miss Doolittle might be in the direst of circumstances, but again she might not. I remembered the horrid face from my vision, but had there been a second face? The features of Eliza Doolittle, etched with concern? Had I been party to an abduction, or a meeting of confederates? Any police involvement would inevitably lead to my real identity being discovered, as well as that of “Mr. Morello.” I deemed that the best I could do was get back to Holmes as quick as I might and let him decide our course.

  I settled the horse and inspected the cab. Its hurts seemed superficial enough, remediable by paint and wax. I took my place on the box once more and, taking the reins, returned to Wimpole Street with all haste, full of misdoubt.

  Chapter Five

  The first thing I saw when I returned to Professor Higgins’s abode was the hansom driver, sitting on the front step, eating a pork pie, with a pewter tankard ready to hand. I expected hard words from the fellow, if not outright violence. He offered neither. He inspected the cab, the horse, and his hat, and pronounced them “none the worse for a bit of hijinks.” I stuttered some kind of apology. He bid me good day, urging me to “take your drops, guv’nor.” I learned afterward that Pickering had paid the man three days’ hire, explaining to him that I was a wealthy patient of “Dr. Higgins” who sometimes went barking mad and stole hansom cabs for amusement.

  I hurried into the house and broke in upon Holmes and Pickering having tea in the laboratory. “Holmes! The most extraordinary thing—!”

  They were not alone.

  “Barton! Home is right. About time you made it back, you dog! Stop off for a little tipple?” cried Holmes, talking over me. “Henry Higgins, this is my brand-spankin’-new English secretary, Mr. Hill Barton. Talks just like the upper crust. Everything’s extraordinary or stupendous. I like to split a rib just listening to him.”

  Henry Higgins was in his early forties, tall and angular, with an intellectual brow and a pugnacious jaw. He was dressed expensively but with a carelessness so extreme that it could only be deliberate. I might have taken him for a racetrack tout or a newspaper editor, but never a man of science. He sat on a low bookcase, studying me over a cup of tea, kicking his heels against a set of Plutarch’s Lives.

  “Private secretary is usually the province of a younger man,” he said sharply. I was to find that Higgins spoke almost exclusively in sharps. Every remark was meant to cut.

  “He came vouched for
by a lord and two dukes. I guess he could be a grifter out to fleece me, for all that. But he’s so damn distinguished-looking.”

  “We’ll board him with the lad who blacks the boots. Not much gets past him.”

  I little appreciated this badinage, especially after the trials of the morning, but I put on my best hail-fellow-well-met and let it pass. I was desperate to tell Holmes about the girl’s disappearance, but durst not raise the suspicions of our host.

  Higgins set down his cup. “What did you find that was so extraordinary, Mr. Barton?” he asked.

  “Oh!” I was at a complete loss. “Er, fellow down the road. With a . . . chicken. A chicken that does sums.” I cursed myself. Could I have thought of anything more idiotic? My only excuse was that on my way home a market van had overturned at Oxford Circus, and the crash had freed half a dozen strutting cocks from their cages, to add to the normal hazards of traffic.

  But Holmes picked up the thread admirably. “I’m a big fan of animal tricks, Henry. Dancing bears, singing dogs, poker-playing rabbits, you name it. I told Barton to be on the lookout for anything along those lines.”

  Higgins was noticeably unenthusiastic. “If that is the case, you shall certainly not lack for entertainment in London, Mr. Morello. And at a very nice price, I would imagine.”

  “Maybe we could bring the fella up here after supper?” Holmes suggested.

  “I’m afraid my housekeeper Mrs. Pearce is not an admirer of poultry unless it’s been plucked.”

  “How is she with monkeys?”

  “Unyielding. If your goal is to throw my household into disarray, Mr. Morello, you’ve already achieved it. You were not expected until after tea at the earliest. I hope you’re not trying to impress me with your eagerness to begin work. I cannot abide an apple-polisher.”

  “I was planning to spend the morning taking in the sights,” said Holmes. “I got a look at Big Ben and the digs the king lives in, had lunch, and it was just on noon. So I come here direct.”

  “Do you do everything direct?” Higgins asked archly.

  “I don’t know why a body would go around anything he could go through instead.”

  This response delighted Higgins. “Pickering, our American friend is a veritable philosopher!”

  “Indeed!” said Pickering, who seemed for a moment to forget that Mr. Morello was not, in fact, Mr. Morello. He was busy fussing over the tea things in front of him. “Tea, Mr. Burton?” he asked.

  I nodded gratefully. I did not think to correct him on my name; it had slipped my own mind. He poured a cup and handed it to me.

  “Tea not to your liking, Mr. Morello?” Higgins asked. Holmes’s cup was still nearly full.

  “I’m partial to coffee,” was the laconic reply.

  Higgins left his perch and came to stand in front of Holmes. He laid a finger to the side of his nose. “But you were not born in America, I think.”

  “You’re on to me, bud.” Holmes sat back in his chair, entirely at ease.

  “Please refer to me as Professor Higgins. You were born in Sussex, I think.”

  “Sicily. Dot on the map called Corleone.”

  “You emigrated as a young child.”

  “I was nine. Just a bambino.”

  “To Sussex.”

  “New York. U.S. of A.”

  “Schooled at Eton.”

  “P.S. 34. Brooklyn. Graduated sixth grade.”

  “And you relocated to England?”

  “Three days ago.”

  Higgins was visibly frustrated. “But surely this is not your first visit to Great Britain, Mr. Morello!”

  Holmes shrugged, as if unwilling to contradict his host on such a minor point.

  “Well, we’ll put that question aside for now. You are yet determined to shed your barbaric yawp and speak the king’s English?”

  “I wanna sound so damn English even the king won’t know better.”

  “You needn’t fret yourself about the king. You won’t be dining at his digs.”

  “You learn me to talk proper and let me worry about the dinner invites.”

  Higgins rubbed the bridge of his nose, weary of verbal fencing. He turned to the colonel. “Speaking of dinner invites, Pick, would you let Mrs. Pearce know that Dr. Guest will be joining us this evening?”

  “Dr. Guest?” Color flooded Pickering’s features. “I feel fit as a fiddle. Do I seem otherwise?”

  “No, of course not. But I would like him to have a look at Eliza. Her temper seems a bit off lately, don’t you think?

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Well, it’s merely a precaution. I’m certain Eliza will be pleased to see him.”

  “You’re certain Eliza will be pleased to see who?” We heard her voice from the hall, and then the young lady splashed into the room. “Oh, tea! Thank heaven. I’m ravenous.”

  I nearly sobbed with relief. My fears for Miss Doolittle’s safety had been preying upon my mind all that time. Now here she was, miraculously, safe and sound.

  “Pleased to see whom, not who, Eliza.” Higgins’s habitual attitude of superiority became especially spiky whenever he addressed Miss Doolittle.

  She surveyed the tea tray and stuffed a napoleon into her mouth greedily.

  “Where have you been all afternoon?” Higgins asked her. “You look as though you’ve been marching about with those suffragettes again.”

  “I have not been marching about with anyone.” Her face was somewhat flushed, and the hem of her dress bedraggled, but she looked remarkably hale considering the circumstances.

  “Did you find my notes on Norris and the Assyrian lions?” he asked.

  I should note here that while Higgins’s laboratory was nowhere near the blizzard of notepapers, news clippings, and scrapbooks that our sitting room in Baker Street had once been, there were yet enough untidy stacks of manuscript strewn across tables and stuffed into bookshelves for lions to hide among. In one small nook stood a Pembroke table with a typewriter and a neat stack of typed pages squared up next to it. This and the piano were Miss Doolittle’s province.

  “I did not,” she gave back. “I don’t give a fig for your lions. Great hairy beasts. I’ve been out all day trying to find you a new dressing gown.”

  “They’re not actual lions, you silly girl. And I was unaware there was anything wrong with my present dressing gown.”

  “I don’t give an actual fig. And your dressing gown’s a disgrace, that’s what’s wrong with it. It looks like it was passed down to you from an early ancestor, possibly an Assyrian. Pleased to see whom?” She popped another napoleon in her mouth.

  “Pickering, you see what a devil she’s become? That’s all those chocolates you feed her.”

  Pickering demurred. “She’s right about the dressing gown.”

  “Pleased to see whom?” An edge had crept in the girl’s voice. “Dr. Guest is coming to dinner.” He said it in an offhand manner, but he was watching her face keenly.

  Eliza’s countenance went dark. “I’ll take my dinner in my room.”

  “You shall do no such thing.”

  “The fellow is odious.”

  “Odious? Where did you learn that word, you cat?”

  “Probably at your mother’s,” said Pickering.

  “My mother is in Cornwall. And Dr. Guest saved your life, Eliza. Never forget that.”

  “How could I, when he expects eternal fawning gratitude?” she cried. “And a level of familiarity which—”

  “Familiarity? Good God, Eliza, you sound like Mrs. Eynsford-Hill.”

  “Now there’s an idea! I shall invite Freddy to dinner.”

  “Freddy? Not at my table.”

  “Separate tables will suit admirably. Freddy and I can take our meal in the kitchen.”

  “You got a spirited filly there, Henry,” said Holmes.

  Somewhere in this exchange, Professor Higgins had crescendoed from good-natured banter to angry bluster. Now he marched to the door and thrust it open. “Gentlemen, I�
�m sure you’ll want to get settled before dinner. Mrs. Pearce will assist you in any way you require.” He was dismissing us from the room, and from the row that was brewing.

  “Appreciate the hospitality, Henry. We’ve got dinner spoken for at the hotel,” said Holmes.

  “Mr. Morello, we shall be working at times from morning till midnight. Separate lodgings will not be practical. You will stay here, at least during the first part of your training. Mrs. Pearce will see to everything.” As Holmes made to protest, he raised a peremptory hand. “I won’t hear any objections, sir. You will not achieve your goal without constant application.” He gave the bellpull a vigorous tug.

  “Run while you can, Mr. American. You’ll be reciting tongue twisters at two in the morning. Too true. Toodle-oo,” Eliza said as she made to leave.

  “Eliza. Remain,” said Higgins. He spoke quietly, but there was steel in his voice. “Pickering, perhaps you could assist Mr. Morello and his man.”

  Pickering seemed discomfited at the proposition that he should be asked to assist anyone, as if he were household staff. But he could see that he was not wanted in the laboratory, and was grateful for the excuse to remove himself. We all withdrew into the hall, leaving the professor with his pupil. Their voices rose as we shut the door behind us.

  “Watson, the keyhole!” Holmes whispered urgently. I bent to peer through the keyhole as he put his ear to the door.

  “Oh, dear!” said Pickering. He was not accustomed to such an unmannerly mode of spying.

  The emotions that had been seething beneath the surface while we were in the laboratory were now boiling over. I could see only Eliza at first, her face lit with fury, fists clenched. Then Higgins was there, his back to me, looming over her. He seized her by the wrists. There was a cry from the girl. I was ready to burst in upon the scene and thrash the blackguard when I heard a voice behind us. “Is this a habit of American gentlemen?”