Pirate King Read Online Free PDF Page A

on.”
    “It’s a farce, then?”
    “No, actually, it’s more along the lines of an adventure. Do you remember the story in The Pirates of Penzance ?”
    “Dimly.” I had probably fallen asleep halfway through the first act: Music has that effect on me. A source of continual outrage from my musical husband.
    “The young pirate Frederic, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, announces to his fellows that he has never been able to stomach piracy, and that even though this particular band to which he has been apprenticed is soft-hearted, he intends to leave them and devote himself to fighting piracy. He falls in love with the daughter of a Major-General, but through a piece of trickery, the pirates take him back into their ranks, capturing the girl and her sisters to take as their wives. There follows a great deal of Gilbertian shenanigans before the pirates are revealed to be not only Englishmen, and loyal to the Queen, but of noble birth as well, which makes them appropriate husbands for the Major-General’s many daughters. Happy endings all around.”
    To such had the wit of Chaucer and Shakespeare descended.
    “How many daughters?” I asked.
    “Productions of the opera have varied in the numbers of both daughters and pirates—there are four named sisters and simply a ‘chorus’ of pirates. In addition to Mabel and Frederic, Randolph has decided on twelve of each.”
    “ Thirteen daughters? Wouldn’t that make some of them a bit young to marry?” Or old.
    “We’re classifying them as four sets of triplets. And Mabel, of course.”
    “Mustn’t forget Mabel. And a dozen constables as well?”
    “For symmetry, one might imagine, but no, only six of those. Plus the sergeant.”
    “Twelve and twelve and two and seven—thirty-three actors?”
    “We won’t have pirates at first, but you have also to add Ruth, Frederic’s piratical nursemaid, and Major-General Stanley, Mabel’s father.”
    “And you want me to help keep that lot happy, healthy, and in some kind of order?”
    “Plus the crew—cameraman and assistant, make-up woman, seamstress, three or four others. No servants; Randolph banned the actors from bringing their servants along after Anna Karenina —two illegitimate pregnancies, one divorce, and a bullet wound between them. Because of the cold,” he explained.
    “Of course.”
    “So no personal maids or valets. However,” Hale added, his voice innocent but his eyes taking on a wicked gleam in their depths, “the four youngest sisters—youngest in fact, not youngest on film—will bring their mothers.”
    “Oh, Lord,” I said. I had encountered the mothers of young prima donnas before.
    He laughed aloud. “You begin to see why I greeted you with such enthusiasm this afternoon.”
    “You all but wept in joy. Well, if that’s the case, I’d best—” I started, but he cut me off.
    “There’s something else.”
    What on earth could surpass what he had already described? “Yes?”
    He reached for the decanter, replenishing our glasses. The level in the glass rose; I braced myself. “You seem a sensible kind of person, Miss Russell. The kind of person who pays attention to details.”
    “I try.”
    “And the kind of person who dislikes … wrongdoing.”
    The very model of an unwilling apprentice pirate, one might say. “Yes,” I ventured.
    “And quite, well, sensible.”
    Like my shoes? I wondered.
    “Plucky, even.”
    Plucky?
    “Because I was thinking, perhaps you would be willing to … extend your assignment. Just a little.”
    Please, please don’t ask me to dress up as one of the daughters . “Er,” I said.
    “So that in the course of your job, if you come across something—how to say this? Something out of the ordinary—you will bring it to my attention.”
    I kept my face still, although my heart gave a little thump. Was the man aware of the same activities that had attracted Lestrade’s attention? Or had one of his blue-blooded chums dropped a hint