The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [16]
The Persons from Porlock! He looked up at her, suddenly confused. "You knew?"
"Of course I bloody knew," Irene Adler said. "As little as you clearly think of Scotland Yard, we are not fools… and certainly not clowns."
"I…" He faltered. "Have you come to arrest me?"
"Arrest you?" She seemed to contemplate the question. "For making a fool of yourself and sending up dear Oscar into the bargain? As tempting as that is, I think I'll decline."
Orphan's confusion deepened. "But what we did… the Queen…"
The Inspector shrugged. "Les Lézards may be overly fond of poetry," she said. "I, on the other hand, am not."
Orphan felt himself blinking stupidly. The Inspector's words were close to treason. Why, he wondered, was she telling him this? What did she want? He said, "I don't understand."
"No," Irene Adler said. "I don't suppose you do." She came closer to him then, and sat down on the edge of the bed, her face looking down directly into Orphan's. There were fine lines at the corners of her eyes, which were a deep, calm blue. "You're an enigma, Orphan," she said at last. "You show up at the Rose Theatre, and it ends up in flames. You show up a day later in Richmond Park – it ends up in flames. You belong to an organisation that terrorises writers and you live and work in the bookshop of a known seditionist. Why is it that trouble follows you around like a dog on a leash?" She leaned even closer towards him, and when she spoke, though her words were no more than a murmur, barely audible, they nevertheless hit Orphan like cold water evicted from a bucket and shook away the remnants of his dark sleep. "What is it about you that so draws the attention of the Bookman?"
Orphan wandered through the streets like a lost minotaur in a hostile, alien maze. Somewhere, unseen but deadly, was the Bookman: Orphan felt his presence like a ghostly outline, a shapeless, formless thing, a disembodied entity that hid in the fog and watched him from the rooftops and the drains.
What is it about you, Irene Adler had said, that so draws the attention of the Bookman?
Her words kept running through his mind, a question lost in a maze of its own, seeking an answer he didn't know.
He had not answered her. Irene Adler, after examining him for a long, uncomfortable moment, said, "Do you miss her?"
A wave of anger took over Orphan. He could think of nothing to say, no suitable reply to that meaningless, cruel question. Looking at him, Irene Adler sighed. She said, "If it was in your power, would you bring her back?"
Their eyes locked. It seemed to Orphan that an invisible contest was taking place, a battle of wills between them, like a jousting tournament for a prize that was unknown.
He said, "She's dead."
The silence stretched between them, dark as an ocean under a moonless sky. Irene Adler stretched and walked away from him. She paced around the room, circling, coming closer, drawing back, as if trying to decide something unpleasant. She stopped by the window and looked out. When she spoke her face was turned away from Orphan. She said, "Death is the undiscovered country…"
She waited. The light from the window touched her face and pronounced the fineness of her features. She turned her head and looked at Orphan, eyes tired but still full of life, containing within them both a challenge and a question.
Orphan completed, as if compelled to answer, the Inspector's quote, the words torn out of him. "From whose bourn no traveller returns…" He sat up in the bed. "What do you want from me?" he whispered.
The Inspector, unexpectedly, smiled. "You still don't understand, do you?" she said. "Did your friend Gilgamesh not try to tell you?" She saw his