She sighed. She must look like a veritable gypsy with her spattered dispatch case and wild hair. Madame Lefoux also looked the worse for wear, speckled with mud, her goggles dangling about her neck. Her top hat was stil secured to her head by the long scarf, but her mustache was decidedly askew. Only Floote somehow managed to look entirely unruffled as they skulked—there real y was no other word for it—through the side al eys of Nice in the wee hours of the morning.
Nice proved itself smal er than Paris, characterized by a casual seaside attitude.
Madame Lefoux, however, hinted darkly that the city’s “Italian troubles” of ten years ago remained, hidden but unabated, and that this upsetting situation gave Nice a restless undertone not always sensed by strangers.
“Imagine! Trying to contend that Nice is real y Italian. Pah.” Madame Lefoux flicked one hand dismissively and glared at Alexia, as though Alexia might side with the Italians in this matter.
Alexia tried to think of something reassuring to say. “I am certain there is hardly any pasta in the whole city,” was the best rejoinder she could come up with on such short notice.
Madame Lefoux only increased the pace of their skulking, leading them around a pile of discarded rags into a dingy little al eyway.
“I do hope the ornithopter wil be safe where we left it.” Alexia tried to change the subject as she fol owed her friend, lifting her skirts away from the rags. There was hardly any point in the effort at this juncture, but instinct dictated one’s skirts be lifted.
“Should be. It’s out of gunpowder charges, and very few, apart from Gustave and myself, know how to fly it. I shal send him a note as to its location. I do apologize for that unfortunate landing.”
“You mean that unfortunate crash?”
“At least I chose a soft bit of ground.”
“Duck ponds usual y are soft. You do realize, ornithopter only means bird? You don’t actual y have to treat it as such.”
“At least it didn’t explode.”
Alexia paused in her skulking. “Oh, do you believe it ought to have done so?”
Madame Lefoux gave one of her annoying little French shrugs.
“Wel I think your ornithopter has earned its name.”
“Oh, yes?” The inventor looked resigned.
“Yes. The Muddy Duck.”
“Le Canard Boueux? Very funny.”
Floote gave a tiny snort of amusement. Alexia glared at him. How had he managed to entirely avoid the mud?
Madame Lefoux led them to a smal door that once might have been colored blue, and then yel ow, and then green, a history it displayed proudly in crumbling strips of paint al down the front. The Frenchwoman knocked softly at first, and then more and more loudly until she was banging quite violently on the poor door.
The only reaction the racket caused was the immediate commencement of an unending bout of hysterical barking from some species of diminutive canine in possession of the other side of the door.
Floote gestured with his head at the doorknob. Alexia looked closely at it under the flickering torchlight; Nice apparently was not sophisticated enough for gas streetlamps. It was brass, and mostly unassuming, except that there was a very faint etched symbol on its surface, almost smoothed away by hundreds of hands—a chubby little octopus.
After a good deal more banging and barking, the door cautiously opened a crack to reveal a mercurial little man wearing a red and white striped nightshirt and cap, and a half-frightened, half-sleepy expression. A dirty feather duster on four legs bounced feverishly about his bare ankles. Much to Alexia’s surprise, given her recent experience with Frenchmen, the man had no mustache. The feather duster did. Perhaps in Nice mustaches were more common on canines?
Her surprise was abated, however, when the little man spoke, not in French, but in German.
When his staccato sentence was met only by three blank expressions, he evaluated their manners and dress and switched to heavily accented English.
“Ya?”
The duster ejected itself through the partly opened door and attacked Madame Lefoux, gnawing at the hem of her trouser leg. What Madame Lefoux’s excel ent woolen trousers had done to insult the creature, Alexia could not begin to fathom.
“Monsieur Lange-Wilsdorf?” Madame Lefoux tried tactful y to shake off the animal with her foot.
“Who would be wishing to know?”
“I am Lefoux. We have been in correspondence these last few months. Mr. Algonquin Shrimpdittle recommended the introduction.”
“I thought you were of the, uh, persuasion of the feminine.” The gentleman squinted at Madame Lefoux suspiciously.
Madame Lefoux winked at him and doffed her top hat. “I am.”
“Leave off, Poche!” barked the German at the tiny dog. “Monsieur Lange-Wilsdorf,”
Madame Lefoux explained to Alexia and Floote, “is a biological analytical technician of some note. He has a particular expertise that you may find rather interesting, Alexia.”
The German opened his door farther and craned his neck to see around Madame Lefoux to where Alexia stood shivering.
“Alexia?” He scanned her face in the faint light of the street torch. “Not the Alexia Tarabotti, the Female Specimen?”
“Would it be good or bad if I were?” The lady in question was a little distressed to be engaging in a protracted doorstep conversation in the nighttime cold with a man garbed in red and white striped flannel.
Madame Lefoux said, with a flourish, “Yes, the Alexia Tarabotti.”
“I cannot believe it! The Female Specimen, at my door? Real y?” The little man thrust said door wide and nipped out and around Madame Lefoux to grab Alexia warmly by the hand, pumping it up and down enthusiastical y in the American style of greeting. The dog, perceiving a new threat, let go of Madame Lefoux’s trouser and began yipping again, heading in Alexia’s direction.
Alexia wasn’t real y sure she enjoyed being referred to as a specimen. And the way the German looked at her was almost hungry.
Alexia prepared her parasol with her free hand. “I would not, young sir, if I were you,”
she said to the dog. “My skirts have been through quite enough for one evening.” The dog appeared to think better of his attack and began jumping up and down in place, al four legs oddly straight.
“Come in, come in! The greatest marvel of the age, here, on my very doorstep. This is—how do you say?—fantastic, ya, fantastic!” The little man paused in his enthusiasm upon noticing Floote for the first time, silent and stil to one side of the stoop.
“And who is this?”
“Uh, this is Mr. Floote, my personal secretary.” Alexia stopped staring ominously down at the dog in time to answer so Floote didn’t have to.
Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf let go of Alexia and went to walk a slow turn around Floote. The German gentleman was stil in his nightshirt, in the street, but he didn’t seem to notice the faux pas. Alexia figured that as she had just shown her bloomers to half of France, she didn’t have the right to be scandalized by this behavior.
“Is he, is he really? Nothing more evil than that? No? Are you certain?” Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf reached out a crooked finger and yanked down Floote’s cravat and shirt, checking the neck area for marks.
Growling, the dog glommed onto Floote’s boot.
“Do you mind, sir?” Floote looked decidedly put-upon. Alexia couldn’t tel if it was the man or his dog that irritated most; Floote could abide neither a wrinkled col ar nor damp shoes.
Seeing nothing incriminating, the German left off torturing Floote with his vulgar behavior. Once again he grabbed Alexia by the hand and positively dragged her into his tiny house. He gestured for the other two to fol ow, giving Floote yet another dubious once-over. The dog escorted them inside.
“Wel , you realize, under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t. Not a man, not so late at night. Never can tel with the English. But I suppose, just this once. Though, I did hear some of the terrible, terrible rumors about you, young miss.” The German raised his chin and attempted to look down on Alexia, as though he were some kind of disapproving maiden aunt. It was a particularly unsuccessful look, as, aside from not being her aunt, he was a good head shorter than Alexia.
“Heard you had married a werewolf. Ya? What a thing for a preternatural to go and be doing. A most unfortunate choice for the Female Specimen.”
“Is it?” Alexia managed to get just those two words in before Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf continued on without apparent pause or need for breath, shepherding them into a messy little parlor.
“Yes, well , we al make the mistakes.”
“You have no idea,” muttered Alexia, feeling a strange aching pain of loss.
Madame Lefoux began poking about the room with interest. Floote took up his customary station by the door.
The dog, exhausted by his own frenzy, went and curled in front of the cold fireplace, a posture that made him look, if possible, even more like a common household cleaning device.
There was a bel rope near the door, which the little man began to tug on, at first gently and then with such enthusiasm he was practical y swinging from it. “You wil be wanting tea, I am certain. English are always with the wanting of tea. Sit down, sit down.”
Madame Lefoux and Alexia sat. Floote did not.
Their host bustled over to a little side table and took a smal box out of a drawer.
“Snuff?” He flipped the lid and offered the leaf about.
Everyone declined. But the German seemed unwil ing to accept Floote’s refusal.
“No, no, I insist.”
“I do not partake, sir,” objected Floote.
“Real y, I insist. ” A sudden hardness entered Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf’s eyes.
Floote shrugged, took a smal portion, and inhaled delicately.
The German watched him closely the entire time. When Floote showed no abnormal reaction, the little man nodded to himself and put the snuffbox away.
A disheveled manservant entered the room.
The dog awoke and, despite a clearly extensive association with the domestic staff, launched himself at the boy as though he posed a grave threat to the safety of the world.
“Mignon, we have the guests. Bring up a pot of Earl Grey and some croissants at once. Earl Grey, mind you, and that basket of kumquats. Thank God for the kumquats.”
He narrowed his eyes at Floote once more, in an “I’m not finished with you, young man”
kind of way.
Floote, who was a good deal older than the German gentleman, remained utterly impassive.
“Wel , this is delightful, ya, delightful. Alexia Tarabotti, here in my home.” He took off his nightcap to enact a twitchy little bow in Alexia’s direction. The action revealed a set of precariously large ears, which looked as though they rightly belonged to someone else.
“Never met your father, but I have studied much over his stock. First to breed a female soul ess in seven generations, ya. It is a miracle, some have claimed, the Female Specimen.” He nodded to himself. “I have the theory, of course, to do with brood female mixing outside of Italy. Bril iant choice of your father’s, ya? A little of the fresh blood of English.”
Alexia could hardly believe the statement. As though she were the result of some kind of horse-breeding program. “Now, I say—!”