Chapter the First
The front door opened so suddenly and forcefully that it badly startled me, causing me to pencil a ruinous scrawl across the conic sections I was so carefully drawing for my geometry class. Vexed, I looked up to see Joddy, the boy-in-buttons, hurrying to offer his tray to take the visitor’s card, but the man brushed past him to stride towards my desk, causing an odd pleating effect within my mind, as if time folded and compressed. After all, it had been less than a year since I had made peace with my much older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, while before that I had been on the run from them, terrified of them, and in disguise. Therefore, even though I was now free to be my youthful self in a tailored linen suit with skirt cut short just below my ankles—even though I was now at liberty to be the real-life, very modern, May 1890 Enola Holmes—it’s small wonder that once again I felt myself to be the fussy-frilly and obedient Ivy Meshle at her job in the reception vestibule of the great Dr. Ragostin’s office. After all, the sign was still painted on the front window: Dr. Leslie Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian. (An impressive way of saying that the completely imaginary doctor, my “cover,” purported to be a finder of missing persons.)
“Where’s Ragostin?” barked my visitor, addressing me principally with his cleft chin, above which I saw mostly a great deal of dark brown moustache, bristling eyebrows, and thick spectacles. He could not have been more than twenty-five years old, dressed like a gentleman but quite lacking a gentleman’s manners.
He looked familiar, distantly, as if he might be a Somebody I had seen in the newspaper, and he was handsome in a forceful way … for whatever reason, he put me sufficiently off balance so that I found myself uttering a meek Meshle sort of reply. “Dr. Ragostin is not here, but I am authorised to help you. Please be seated.”
He did no such thing, but continued to tower over me, his moustache hiding everything about his mouth but the very middle of his lower lip; I wondered how he circumnavigated that biscuit-duster in order to eat. He was saying, loudly, “I need Ragostin to find Wolcott Balestier!”
Pencil in hand, I tried to write it down. “Would you spell—”
“He may be a victim of foul play! I’ve alerted Scotland Yard, but they won’t listen to me!”
I tried again. “Would you please—”
“It’s those vermin venomous pirates have got him!”
I verily felt my eyes widen at that. “Pirates?” A black flag bearing a skull-and-crossbones fluttered in the wind of my mind.
“Craven back-stabbing cowards! They’d better not hurt my chum Cotswold!”
“Who?” I demanded, meaning the most intriguing pirates, seafaring marauders with sneers picturesquely scarred by the sword.
“My mate! My buddy! The best friend a man ever had! Wolcott Balestier!”
Oh, bother. We were back where we started. “Would you please spell the name, please?”
At last, and quite loudly, he did so. I copied it on top of my spoilt conic sections.
“Where’s Ragostin?” he insisted. “I’m told he’s the specialist!”
“I am authorised to handle the preliminaries,” I soothed. Actually, “Dr. Ragostin,” who was entirely a figment of my imagination, had gone out of business in July of the previous year, when I had ceased to need him to protect me from the way Mycroft and Sherlock insisted on interfering with my life. Now on amicable terms with them, I was pursuing my education and had almost concluded my first year in the Women’s Academy. So, faced with my loud and vehement visitor, I should have left Dr. Ragostin in retirement, but there was something about the idea of pirates—might the missing victim have been forced to walk the plank? I was quite fascinated. “What is Mr. Balestier’s relationship to you?”
“Friend!”
“And his home address?”
He answered me only partially. “Maiden Lane! Where’s Dr. Ragostin, the damn quack?” Such was the crude urgency with which this man spoke, nearly shouting. “He must find Cotswold!”
Cotswold was the name of a region in England near the River Severn, but evidently this pepper-pot of a man meant it as the nickname of a person, for, thrusting his tobacco-stained hand into his waistcoat, from some hidden pocket over his heart he drew a small photograph of the face of a man no older than himself, but in many ways quite his opposite. “Cotswold” had no bristling visage, no scrub-brush moustache, and no eyeglasses. Indeed, he had skin as fine as a lady’s, gentle arched brows over large, intelligent eyes, an elegant nose, and a wide but subtle mouth ever so slightly smiling. Reaching for the photograph, I noticed Cotswold’s immaculate collar, tidy hair, puckish ears, modest yet sufficient chin. But my vehement visitor did not yield the photograph; he snatched it away from me and slipped it back into his waistcoat.
“I want Ragostin!” he demanded again.
I answered quellingly, “I will tell him—”
“I will damn well tell him myself!” Lunging past my desk to the double doors of the office proper, the impetuous young man first pounded on them, then tried to thrust them open, only to find they were locked.
Necessarily, in order to turn around and see whether he would next try to break his way in, I stood up. “There’s only an empty room in there,” I told him, still patient because, willy-nilly, although I had thought I was on hiatus from my life’s calling of locating missing persons and things, I had become interested in the case. “Now, if you will give me your name—”
“I’ll do no such thing!” Fists clenched, he wheeled to glare at me. “I’ll deal directly with the professional or not at all!”
That struck a nerve, and so much for patience. I glared straight back at him, and because I am tall, our dueling stares quite equally clashed at close distance, intensified by the thickness of his spectacles. With fervor I told him, “I am the professional! Dr. Leslie Totally Fictitious Ragostin is merely my most unfairly necessary pseudo-masculine identity. I myself am the scientific perditorian, the finder of the lost! I—”
Copyright © 2023 by Nancy Springer