No Good Deed 5

Quite to whom this pronoun referred, I was not sure. The owner of the alarming wall-eye was not in evidence, nor was anyone else, aside from the elegant lady herself. I had been admitted to a darkly dusty vestibule. Lighting was afforded by a damnable few candles. Some stood in candelabra on whatnots hard against half-panelled walls others were in sconce-like affairs affixed at uncertain angles upon the walls themselves. The woman crooked a finger and I enjoyed the grace of her movement from the rear aspect as she led me to a further door at the end of the vestibule.

She ushered me through the door into a large salon. There were numerous chaises-longues and many odalisques to decorate them. Again, I was struck by the rich variety of customer: my erstwhile driver was not the only horny-handed working man on display. Even so, I saw one or two exceptionally well-dressed gentlemen. Admittedly, they were in the company of more than one of the more beautiful jewels of the establishment, whilst the driver was in the company of a most-broken down jade.

'Take a seat, if you would prefer. Someone will provide you with refreshment, in any event,' the woman said, and she floated away between a portly fellow who was lighting a cigar for a statuesque female companion and a close-to-dwarfish fellow who was burying his head in the navel of a young woman whose skin was of a singularly cuprous hue.

I stood a little awkwardly under a one hundred candle chandelier in the middle of the large room, until a young lady of little more than fourteen approached.

'Would yuh like somethin'' She drew a toe back and forth along the carpet and looked up at me from under her bangs.

'I'd like a brandy if you have such a thing.'

She twisted a finger in a curl at the side of her head,

'Anythin' else.'

'A woman of mature years for preference.'

She made what she doubtless considered an attractive pout and made her way to a small bar in the corner, where she instructed the man behind it to effect at least the first of my requirements.

One of the better dressed fellows caught my eye and beckoned me over.

'First time, sir?' He said, in a booming voice that ought to have caused every head to turn. They did not, but then I supposed any bawdy-house lived by discretion, even in St. Louis.

'I am newly in St. Louis, sir.'

He was a stout fellow, with a high forehead and the thin-lipped mouth of a lawyer. Clean shaven, his jowls indicated more than fifty years of living well. He pointed to the woman on his left, an Hispanic-looking woman who reached no higher than his shoulder. Heavily rouged and powdered, nonetheless the most striking thing about her appearance was her hot-eyed gaze.

'This is Lola Montez. '

I looked from the woman to him and back again.

'Aw hell, she ain't the real Lola, that's just her nawm de ploom.' He guffawed, 'And this is Muskrat Jaw Jean.'

On his right stood as mannish a figure as ever I had seen in female attire, outside of a few specialised houses in Holborn. Aside from the absence of curves, her visage gave indication as to the origin of her sobriquet. The poor woman was entirely deficient in the matter of a chin, to the extent that she appeared to have no lower mandible at all. I imagined that this made it difficult for her to speak and perhaps that was her attraction.

The man thrust out a somewhat meaty, and, as it proved, clammy hand,

'Claiborne Fox Jackson, Governor of Missouri.' he said.

'Anson Northrup, gentleman at large.'

I could not imagine why he felt it acceptable to laugh quite so loudly at this point.