The Case of the Left-Handed Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing back, I turned away, hoping she understood that there was nothing more I could do for her.
    “Sister of the Streets, God bless you!” she called after me.
    Her gratitude made me feel like a fraud, a farce, unworthy, for there were many, too many like her, and I could never possibly find them all.
    Striding on my way, I myself shivered with cold. And with fear. Listening.
    Tipsy singing and drunken yells floated faintly to my ears from the next street. A public house, still open? I wondered how this was allowed. Surely the authorities – 7 My attention diverted, too late I sensed a presence behind me.
    Some small sound, perhaps the chuff of shoe leather against the frozen mud and crushed stone of the street, perhaps the hiss of an evil breath – but even as I opened my startled mouth to gasp, even as I leapt to turn, something seized me around the neck.
    Something unseen, behind me.
    Fearsomely strong.
    Gripping tight, tighter.
    Not a human grasp. Some – some narrow doom, serpentine, constricting, biting into my throat – I could not think, and never even reached for my dagger; I only reacted, dropping my lantern as both my hands flew up to claw at the – thing, whatever it was, tormenting my neck – but already I felt my breathing cut off, my body thrashing in pain, my mouth stretching in a voiceless scream, my vision dimming to darkness, and I knew I was going to die.
     
    It seems to me that I next grew aware of a light in the darkness – but not a kindly light; this was orange, dancing, diabolical. Blinking my way out of blackness, I felt the cold harsh street beneath me, and saw that I lay nearly in a fire. A pool of oil, leaking from my broken lantern, burned merrily. In that gleeful glow, three or four men peered down at me – very blurred, that memory. Blurred by night and fog, by my confusion and pain, by my veil. As blurred as their drunken voices.
    “Is she dead?”
    “What sort o’ cad wud garrote the Sister?”
    “Mebbe one o’ them foreign Anarchists ’oo don’t like religion.”
    “Did any of yer see ’im?”
    “Is she breathin’?”
    Bending over me, one of them lifted my veil.
    I think he looked at my face for a moment before I struck his hands away. Before my shock at such impropriety roused me from my – swoon? No, one can hardly say I had tumbled down in a faint, not in any delicate-lady sense of the word. Surely if one is strangled half dead, one cannot be accused of fainting.
    In any event, blinking my way out of unconsciousness took a moment or two, which I remember imperfectly. I believe I struck out at the man who was lifting my veil, yanking it back down over my face again as I rolled away from the fire and wavered to my feet.
    “ ’Ere, missus, wot’s yer ’urry?”
    “Steady on, old ’orse.”
    “Watchit, Sister, ye’ll fall.”
    Hands reached towards me. But rejecting their offers of help – for they were staggering drunk, whereas I was merely staggering – I fled.
    I retreated, as the military would say, in bad order. Without ever having drawn a weapon. In a panic of dry sobbing. Indeed I hardly know how I blundered my way back to my lodging. But somehow, eventually, I reached my room, where, trembling, I lit every oil lamp, every candle, and stirred up the hearth fire, wastefully throwing on wood and coal until I’d roused a blaze of warmth and light in the night.
    I threw myself into my armchair and sat trying to stop panting, for each breath hurt my throat. Closing my mouth, I swallowed again and again, trying to swallow my humiliation as well as my pain.
    Despite the fire, I still felt cold with more than just night’s frost, chilled to the marrow of my soul. I needed to get into bed. Staggering up, I began to unbutton my high collar –
    My trembling fingers felt something hanging around my neck.
    Some alien presence, long and smooth, supple – it was as if a snake clung there. Despite the pain to my injured throat, I cried out as I snatched and