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‘Stand aside!’ he commanded. Instantly, the crowd parted for him, and the ladies curtsied as he passed. I followed, grumbling something not very flattering about arrogant, chauvinistic men. I hated them even more now that I’d been one of them for a while.
Inside the dressing room, a voluminously voluptuous lady stood plastered against one wall, screaming with the stamina possessed only by professional singers and crazy demagogues on Speaker’s Corner. To her right, a girl in a maid outfit stood pressed against the wall, her face white. And on the other side, nestled into the chaise longue…
‘Holy Moly!’
Mr Ambrose cocked his head. ‘Indeed.’
There on the chaise longue, bold as brass, as if it were perfectly at home here and a well-known native to Paris, lay a coiled snake, its colourful scales shining in a poisonous pattern. As if feeling the attention, the reptile raised its head and hissed. Screams erupted all around in a high-pitched cacophony that was loud enough to ring my skull like a bell.
I gave a derisive snort.
God! And these ninnies called themselves women? The snake wasn’t even doing anything! It was just sitting there and hissing.
‘Calm down, will you?’ I called, cutting through the kerfuffle.
‘Calm down?’ the maid squashed against the wall exclaimed. ‘’ow should I calm down? Sere is a snake in madame’s room! A great, big poisonous snake, c’est vrai!’
‘No, no.’ I waved her concerns away. ‘I know this snake. I’ve seen it before in South America. It isn’t poisonous.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘No.’ I patted her hand. ‘It just wraps around its victims and squeezes them to death.’
Maybe, I realised as renewed shrieks threatened to rip apart my eardrums, I shouldn’t have said that last part out loud.
‘Well, Mr Linton?’ Cocking his head, Mr Ambrose gave me a look.
‘What are you looking at me for?’
‘You got them screaming again. You get them to stop.’
‘And how am I to do that?’ I demanded.
‘It might help if you removed the snake.’
‘Fine, fine!’ I sighed, pulled out my revolver and shot the snake through the head. And you know what? Those ninnies still didn’t stop screaming! If anything, the din got louder!
‘Parbleu!’ the prima donna exclaimed. ‘C’est scandaleux!’
‘You shot it!’ the maid shrieked. ‘You shot it!’
‘Well, of course I did. You wanted it gone, didn’t you?’
Annoyed, I turned towards her—unfortunately forgetting that I still had a smoking
gun in my hand. That ratcheted up the screaming to new and unexplored levels. Wincing, I raised my hands to cover my ears. Luckily, Mr Ambrose picked the gun out of my hand before I accidentally shot myself through the head.
‘Out!’ he commanded, cutting through the screams like a hot knife through foie gras. The assorted singers and dancers scattered. Only the prima donna and her maid remained plastered to the wall. I could only assume they had never dealt with Rikkard Ambrose personally before. Silently, he lifted one finger to point first at them, then at the door.
‘Mais…mais Monsieur Ambrose…’
‘Dis is Madame’s room!’ the maid protested. ‘You cannot just—’
‘Out. My secretary and I will attend to this problem. You will be notified when this room is once more ready for your use.’
The young woman’s eyes widened. ‘Our use? Mon Dieu, you cannot expect Madame to return to this place after what has just ‘appened and just pretend that—’
Mr Ambrose took a step towards them and gave them one long, hard, cold look. The words died in the maid’s throat, and she curtsied.
