The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer

Gladstone.
    But Sherlock’s gaze, hawklike, flew to me. “Enola!” he cried with the most intense excitement and fixity of expression.
    Because I could not stop looking at him, yet could not stay, I stumbled backwards up the steps, retreating.
    But my brother Sherlock did not move. “Enola,” he called. “Stop. Wait. Trust me. Please.”
    But I truly heard his words only afterwards, like an echo in my dishevelled mind as I tore myself away, fleeing like a deer. Back through drawing-room and music-room I sped, and now, belatedly and in blind panic, I thought of the service stairway—but I could not find it! Past the grand piano, past the pedestal table, through passageways beyond, turning after turning I opened door after door to discover only antechambers, and I could hear Sherlock’s energetic footfalls behind me, and his voice: “Enola! Confound the girl, where’s she got to?” Evidently he had pushed past Jackanapes to run upstairs after me, and no doubt Watson had done the same, two against one—at the thought I sprinted even faster. I began to hear doors slamming as they followed my course. “Enola!”
    At this point, as lackwit luck would have it, I blundered upon a winding little stairway—but it led only upward. So up I went, to find myself once again outside Florence Nightingale’s door.
    I opened it, shot into the room, and shut the door behind me.
    From beneath her silken eiderdown comforter Miss Nightingale asked softly and sweetly, “Goodness. Whatever is going on?”
    Without answering, but seeing that the key stood in the keyhole, I locked the door. Then I darted across the room, around the end of Miss Nightingale’s massive bed, to the windows that provided such a lovely treetop-level view of her back garden, at the same time unfastening my belt and slipping it through the handle of my satchel. Blessedly, the force of my fear had pushed me beyond fumbling and shaking to a state of extraordinary dexterity and energy. Speedily I refastened my belt, thereby strapping my precious baggage to my waist, even as I scanned my prospects for escape. After a hasty look, I chose one window and flung it open wide.
    “Enola!” shouted my brother’s voice right outside the door, and I heard him rattle the knob.
    Miss Nightingale might, of course, have answered him, or got up out of bed, walked to the door, turned the key, and let him in. But she did none of those things. Instead, she lay where she was, watching, I suppose, as I clambered up upon the window-sill, leaned out, and launched myself like a monkey at the nearest tree branch.
    My fingers found wood; my hands grasped. Three storeys above the ground I dangled, and descent would have perhaps seemed difficult had not worse difficulties goaded me so that I spent no time in contemplation. Like a veritable orangutan I swung, dropped, clutched another bough, dropped again, scrambled down, and so thumped to the ground. There I sped past a vegetable-garden, under a grape-arbour, behind a privy, and through a copse of linden trees to reach Miss Nightingale’s wrought-iron fence. As I vaulted it, I caught a glimpse of Miss Nightingale—her oddly angled white headgear was unmistakable—at the window from which I had exited. Though I could scarcely see her expression from the distance, she appeared to observe me with serene interest. I saw no sign of Dr. Watson or my brother.
     
    Once I had got well away—on the Underground, riding through a tunnel like a passageway to Hell, densely dark and choked with smoke—I finally had time and presence of mind to think.
    Shades of perdition, Enola, now what?
    At this very moment, I miserably surmised, my dear Sherlock was talking with my dear Miss Nightingale and putting too many twos and twos together. He would tell Miss Nightingale that I was his missing sister. Miss Nightingale would tell him that the missing Mrs. Tupper was my landlady. Heavens. With a helpless, sinking feeling that traversed the whole of my