The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [88]
I stepped briskly on my crepe-soled shoes to the door, then paused. The tinkling sounds had ceased, but over the rising burble from the tea-kettle was something else. Crying. Millicent Dunworthy was weeping softly. I scowled downward as I listened, and my gaze slowly came to focus on the folded newspaper she had laid on the table along with her keys and hand-bag. Here was the explanation of her tears:
ARTIST'S WIFE SLAIN AT LONG MAN
“THE ADDLER” AND SMALL DAUGHTER MISSING
The front door-knob rattled slightly under my hand; if the apartment behind me had been completely still, she would have heard the door coming open, but it was not, and she did not.
I left the shopping basket where it was and hurried down the stairs, my usual light-hearted relief at a successful burglary diminished considerably by that headline: Newsmen baying at our heels were not going to simplify matters one bit.
Outside, the growing heat and the enervating stink and humidity brought my spirits down another peg. My ransacking of Miss Dunworthy's flat had been, in truth, only partly successful. I wanted that book so badly I had even considered snatching it from the desk and stealing it outright. Had I no alternative, I might have risked it.
But I had an alternative—although not during daylight hours.
Which reminded me of Holmes. I walked to the corner and whistled up a cab to take me to the Café Royal.
I arrived a quarter hour late, and found Holmes well on his way to a conquest of Bohemia.
The Sacrifice of Submission: Be clear: Sacrifice is wholehearted, or it is nothing. It must cost dearly: Abraham offering his son; Woden hanging himself in a tree; the Son of Man accepting an agonising death. The greater the cost, the greater the energies freed for Transformation.
Sacrifice is the fame that sets quiescent Power alight,
and consumes the world in a crash and a billow of smoke,
and then in a whisper.
Testimony, II:8
DOMINOES MIGHT NO LONGER BE A FIXTURE IN the Café Royal, but Holmes had summoned a set, and was playing against a man I recognised as one of the foremost bookmakers in London; Holmes was winning. I looked with care around the other tables, not wishing to run into Alice or her Ronnie, but fortunately they were absent.
There was no doubt the Café community knew that Yolanda Adler was dead and Damian was being, as they say, sought for questioning. From the thrilled tones on all sides, it was the foremost topic of conversation.
The same gentleman who had ushered me in on Saturday night now escorted me to where Holmes sat, murmuring my name under his breath as he left. I looked after him in surprise.
“I thought I recognised him the other night,” I said to Holmes, “but he gave no indication that he knew me.”
“Of course not,” Holmes said. “The staff of the Café Royal are nothing if not discreet.”
I ordered something non-alcoholic and waited with little patience for Holmes to finish beating the bookie at dominoes. An importunate newsman made it to the first tables before being pounced upon and thrown out. Finally, Holmes accepted two pounds from the loser, then handed them back with instructions to place them on something called Queen Bea to win the next time she ran. The two men shook hands, the tout taking his beer and his loud check suit away to a table of similarly dressed individuals across the room.
I leant forward over my glass and started in. “I just had a few minutes in Miss Dunworthy's flat,” I began, only to notice that his attention was clearly elsewhere.