The Difference Engine

Applause was thin and scattered. Ebenezer Fraser, watching from the shelter of the wings, in the shadow of ropes and sandbags, felt his heart sink. But at least it was over. She was leaving the podium to join him.

Fraser opened the nickeled catches of Her Ladyship's traveling-bag. Lady Ada dropped her manuscript within it, followed it with her kid gloves and her tiny ribboned hat.

"I think they understood me!" she said brightly. "It sounds quite elegant in French, Mr. Fraser, does it not? A very rational language, French."

"What next, milady? The hotel?"

"My dressing-room," she said. "This heat is rather fatiguing… Will you hail the gurney for me? I'll join you presently."

"Certainly, milady." Fraser, the bag in one hand, his sword-cane in another, led Lady Ada to the cramped little dressing-room, opened the door, bowed her within, set her bag at her neatly slippered feet, and closed the door firmly. Within the room, he knew. Her Ladyship would seek the consolation of the silvered brandy-flask she had hidden in the left-hand lower drawer of her dressing-table—wrapped, with pathetic duplicity, in a shroud of tissue-paper.

Fraser had taken the liberty of providing seltzer-water in a bucket of ice. He hoped she would water the liquor a bit.

He left the lecture-hall by a rear door, then circled the building warily, from old habit. His bad eye ached below the patch, and he made some use of the stag-handled sword-cane. As he had fully expected, he saw nothing resembling trouble.

There was also no sign of the chauffeur for Her Ladyship's hired gurney. Doubtless the frog rascal was nursing a bottle somewhere, or chatting-up a soubrette. Or he might, perhaps, have mistaken his instructions, for Fraser's French was none of the best. He rubbed his good eye, examining the traffic. He would give the fellow twenty minutes, then hail a cab.

He saw Her Ladyship standing, rather uncertainly, at the lecture-hall's rear door. She had put on a day-bo

He paused. It was not Lady Ada.

"I believe you mistake me, sir," the woman said in English, and lowered her eyes, and smiled. "I am not your Queen of Engines. I am merely an admirer."

"I beg your pardon, madame," Fraser said.

The woman glanced down shyly at the intricate Jacquard patterning of her white-on-white skirt of fine muslin. She wore a jutting French bustle, and a stiff high-shouldered walking-jacket, trimmed with lace. "Her Ladyship and I are dressed quite alike," she said, with a wry half-smile. "Her Ladyship must shop at Monsieur Worth's! That's quite a tribute to my own taste, sir, n'est-ce pas?"

Fraser said nothing. A light tingle of suspicion touched him. The woman—a trim little blonde, in her forties perhaps—wore the dress of respectability. Yet there were three gold-banded brilliants on her gloved fingers, and showy little stems of filigreed jade dangled at her delicate earlobes. There was a killing beauty-patch—or a black sticking-plaster—at the corner of her mouth, and her wide blue eyes, for all their look of seasoned i

"Sir, may I wait for Her Ladyship with you? I hope I will not intrude if I request her autograph."

"At the corner," Fraser nodded. "The gurney." He offered her his left arm, tucked the sword-cane in the pit of his right, his hand resting easy on the handle. It would not hurt to get a bit of distance down the pavement, before Lady Ada approached; he wanted to watch this woman.

They stopped at the corner, beneath an angular French gas-lamp. "It's so good to hear a London voice," said the woman, coaxingly. "I have lived so long in France that my English has grown quite rusty."

"Not at all," Fraser said. Her voice was lovely.

"I am Madame Tournachon," she said, "Sybil Tournachon."

"My name is Fraser." He bowed.

Sybil Tournachon fidgeted with her kid-skin gloves, as though her palms were perspiring. The day was very hot. "Are you one of her paladins, Mr. Fraser?"

"I'm afraid I fail to take your meaning, madame," Fraser said politely. "Do you live in Paris, Mrs. Tournachon?"

"In Cherbourg," she said, "but I came all that way, by the morning express, simply to see her speak." She paused. "I scarcely understood a word she said."

"No harm in that, madame," Fraser said, "neither do I." He had begun to like her.

The gurney arrived. The chauffeur, with a bold wink at Fraser, hopped from behind the wheel and whipped a dirty chamois from his pocket. He applied it to the tarnished trim of a scalloped fender, whistling.

Her Ladyship emerged from the lecture-hall. She had remembered her hand-bag. As she approached, Mrs. Tournachon went a bit pale with excitement, and took a lecture-program from her jacket.

She was quite harmless.

"Your Ladyship, may I present Mrs. Sybil Tournachon," Fraser said.

"How do you do?" Lady Ada said.

Mrs. Tournachon curtsied. "Will you sign my program? Please."

Lady Ada blinked. Fraser, adroitly, handed her the pen from his notebook. "Of course," Lady Ada said, taking the paper. "I'm sorry—what was the name?"

" 'To Sybil Tournachon.' Shall I spell it?"

"No need," said Her Ladyship, smiling. "There's a famous French aeronaut named Tournachon, isn't there?" Fraser offered his back to the flourish of Her Ladyship's pen. "A relation of yours, perhaps?"

"No, Your Highness."

"I beg your pardon?" Lady Ada said.

"They call you Queen of Engines…" Mrs. Tournachon, smiling triumphantly, plucked the inscribed program from Her Ladyship's unresisting fingers. "The Queen of Engines! And you're just a fu

Lady Ada regarded her with unfeigned astonishment.

Fraser's grip tightened on the cane. He stepped to the curb, swiftly opened the gurney door.

"One moment!" The woman tugged with sudden energy at one gloved finger, came up with a gaudy ring. "Your Ladyship—please—I want you to have this!"

Fraser stepped between them, lowering the cane. "Leave her alone."

"No," Mrs. Tournachon cried, "I've heard the tales, I know she needs it…" She pressed against him, stretching out her arm. "Your Ladyship, please take this! I shouldn't have wounded your feelings, it was low of me. Please take my gift! Please, I do admire you, I sat through that whole lecture. Please take it, I brought it just for you!" She fell back then, her hand empty, and smiled. "Thank you. Your Ladyship! Good luck to you. I shan't trouble you again. Au revoir! Bo

Fraser followed Her Ladyship into the gurney, shut the door, rapped the partition. The chauffeur took his post.

The gurney pulled away.

"What a queer little personage," Her Ladyship said. She opened her hand. A fat little diamond gleamed in its filigreed setting. "Who was she, Mr. Fraser?"

"I should guess an exile, ma'am," Fraser said. "Very forward of her."

"Was it wrong of me to take this?" Her breath smelled of brandy and seltzer. "Not really proper, I suppose. But she would have made a scene, otherwise." She held the gem up, in a sheet of dusty sunlight through the window. "Look at the size of it! It must be very dear."

"Paste, Your Ladyship."

Swift as thought. Lady Ada pinched the ring in her fingers like a bit of chalk, and ran the stone along the gurney's window. There was a thin grating shriek, almost inaudible, and a shining groove appeared across the glass.

They sat in companionable silence, then, on their way to the hotel.

Fraser watched Paris through the window and recalled his instructions. "You may let the old girl drink as she likes," the Hierarch had told him, with his inimitable air of mincing irony, "talk as she likes, flirt as she likes, saving open scandal, of course… You may take your mission as fulfilled if you can keep our little Ada from the wagering-machines." There had been small chance of that disaster, for her purse held nothing but tickets and small-change, but the diamond had rather changed matters. He would have to keep a closer eye, now.