Dark Detectives Page 14

  She nudged Edwin, and nodded at “Moriarty”.

  The actor was drifting out of the circle of artificial light, towards the pile of crates, as if drawn to worship at the chin of the Easter Island head.

  “That’s odd,” Edwin commented.

  “You’re just jealous.”

  So far, they hadn’t been able to take advantage of this opportunity to root about among forbidden treasures. The priceless and ancient artefacts were just backdrop, and heaven help anyone who strayed accidentally into the camera’s line of sight. The director might well have the powers of instant trial and execution granted to battlefield commanders.

  Von Seyffertitz was definitely looking for something. Through pince-nez, he peered at runic marks chalked on the crates, tutting to himself.

  “Old Beauregard told us to be on our guard down here,” Edwin said. “There was some bad business to do with the Museum in his day, round about the Jubilee. He’s a bit cranky about it, if you ask me. Long and distinguished service and all that.”

  Ever since descending from street level, Catriona had felt a chill that was more than the cold. Beyond the fragile light, the shadows were deeper than they had any business to be.

  “Mr. Beauregard is rarely mistaken,” she reminded Edwin.

  It was time for the antagonists to tussle again. Parker called the “crew” clear, and pulled Barrymore and von Seyffertitz together as if refereeing a boxing match. The Austrian seemed reluctant to leave off his poking-around for something as insignificant as doing his job.

  “I’ll bet that fellow gets fed up with being defeated,” Edwin said. “I’ve seen him as the villain in a half-dozen flickers.” Like her, Edwin was secretly devoted to the newest art. They attended the kinema far more than the theatre, and had an especial fondness for the serials made in Paris, Fantômas and Judex. When she had occasion to use an alias herself, Catriona often picked “Irma Vep”, after the ambiguous villainess of Les vampires.

  “I wonder if he is ever tempted to fight back properly, and best the hero. Just once.”

  She saw what Edwin meant. Moriarty was giving a strong account of himself for an elderly mathematics professor—in actuality, exactly the sort of person it is supremely easy to toss off a waterfall and Sherlock was taking all the knocks.

  Von Seyffertitz weaved and punched like a far younger man, landing a few potential bruises on the famous face. Barrymore was in a bit of a sweat. Had the Professor forgotten the scenario? He was supposed to lose.

  Von Seyffertitz got a wrestling hold on Barrymore and threw him to the floor. The director called “cut!” Concerned people descended in a swarm. The star was bleeding. Moriarty mouthed an insincere apology.

  “My face, my face,” wailed Barrymore, theatrical voice filling the cellar.

  Edwin nodded that she should take a look.

  She ventured near the actor, handkerchief out.

  Blood trickled from both nostrils, replacing the shaven moustache with a red imitation.

  “Is my dose broken?”

  She staunched the flow of blood, and felt for give in Barrymore’s nasal cartilage. She thought his valuable fizzog was not seriously damaged and told him so.

  “Thank heavens,” he declared, kissing her forehead, fulfilling the dreams of a million matinee-goers. She felt a sticky, unromantic discharge in her hair and discreetly scraped it off and onto a wall.

  “I must save myself,” the actor muttered. “This doesn’t matter.”

  Barrymore was relieved beyond proportion. She realised he had been afraid for his long-awaited Hamlet.

  “Bless you, child,” he said. “For the merciful news. One cannot play the Prince with a patch of plaster in the middle of one’s face. To have lost that for this penny dreadful would have been too much to bear.”

  Actors were a rum lot.

  Parker called an end to the night’s “shoot”. Until Barrymore’s nose recovered, there was no point in going on. An assistant gleefully totted up how much this delay would cost.

  “Tomorrow night, I want you to thrash that blasted Austrian within an inch of his ugly life!” demanded Parker.

  “You have my word,” Barrymore said, sounding better already.

  The equipment was dismantled, and the company began to withdraw on the double.

  Edwin touched her elbow and stepped into shadow, encouraging her to join him.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, trench-nerves-a-tingle.

  She nodded. He was right. She felt it too.

  The film lights were turned off, leaving deep darks and illusory afterimages. But there was another light, a reddish glow, almost infernal.

  Was there a whiff of brimstone?

  Equipment and persons were being crammed into a cage lift that was the most easy access to the surface.

  The glow was coming from behind the Easter Island head. A shadow, like a man-sized stick insect, moved on the face of the head, clinging to the hatchet-nose.

  “Look, Cat. You can see that the tunnel extends beyond that statue. It must be shored up and used as extra storage space.”

  The shadow detached itself from the nose and slipped around the head, briefly blotting the crimson glow, and disappeared into the tunnel.

  “That was a man,” Edwin said.

  “Was it?” she ventured, unsure.

  There was something in the way the shadow moved.

  “Come on, Cat.”

  Edwin was after the shadow. She hesitated only a moment and followed him. He had produced a revolver from under his coat. This was no longer a holiday.

  She wished she had dressed for this.

  The film folk were busy leaving. Only a few remained, and they were intent on their business, noticing nothing. Edwin paused at the end of the platform and looked at the Easter Island head.

  “I wonder how they got it down here?” he mused.

  The face seemed to snarl at them.

  Edwin led the way, climbing around the head by using the pendulous earlobe as a grip, and dropping to the cinder-strewn bed of the tunnel. She followed, fearing for the state of her silk stockings and white pumps.

  In the tunnel, the glow was stronger. Definitely a red lamp somewhere, beyond the array of dilapidated crates. It was also much colder here. She shivered.

  These crates were stacked more haphazardly. Some were broken, spilling straw onto the tunnel-bed. Some of the damage looked recent.

  Edwin was attracted to a crate that lay open. Straw and African masks were strewn nearby, as if thrown out to make way for some new treasure. He lit a match and tutted. She stepped over to look in.

  An elderly man, dressed in his unmentionables, was crammed into the crate, unconscious. She checked his breathing and pulse. Edwin lowered the match, to cast light on the man’s face. It was von Seyffertitz, a chloroform burn around his mouth and nose.

  “He’s been here for a while,” she said.

  “Then who was playing the Prof?”

  She shivered, not with the cold.

  “I say,” boomed a familiar voice, “who’s there? What’s going on?”

  It was, of all people, John Barrymore.

  “It’s Miss Kaye, isn’t it? The angel of nasal mercy. And you’re the lucky fellow who knocks around with her.”

  “Edwin Winthrop,” Edwin introduced himself.

  “Are you sneaking off to, um, spoon?”

  Edwin shook out the match too late. Barrymore had seen von Seyffertitz in the crate.

  “Good God, a body!”

  Edwin glumly lit another match.

  “It’s Gustav the Ghastly,” Barrymore said.

  “Someone has been impersonating him,” Edwin admitted.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Barrymore said. “He’s easy to ‘do’. I can look like him myself. A grotesque face is far easier to hide behind than a handsome one. When I played the uncanny Mr. Hyde …”

  Edwin waved the actor quiet.

  Barrymore became aware of the ruby light. He caught on at once t
hat there was something strange about here.

  Among the African masks was a white shock of hair. The wig “Moriarty” had worn. The pince-nez and a false nose were in with the mess.

  Their quarry was so intent on his business that he didn’t mind leaving a trail. That suggested an arrogance or confidence that was not comforting.

  “Come on,” said the matinee idol, striding forwards like a proper hero, “let’s get to the bottom of this.” Edwin took Catriona’s arm, smoothing her gooseflesh, and held up the match as they walked towards the glow. When the match went out, there was enough light to see by. Somehow, that was more frightening than the dark.

  A large brassbound trunk blocked almost the entire tunnel as if it were a dead end. But red light outlined it, revealing that there was a space beyond.

  They crept up and pressed themselves to the wall, to look past the trunk.

  It was hard to make sense of what they saw. An area had been cleared and a design marked on the cinder-floor in white powder or paint. At various points of the design stood Arabian Nights lamps, burning redly. Catriona could not at first discern the shape made by the lines and the lights. It was not the familiar magic circle, or a pentagram.

  There were seven lamps, spread not quite in a line. She moved her head a little, and saw it.

  “The plough,” she whispered.

  Edwin’s grip on her arm momentarily strengthened.

  “Clever Cat,” he said, proud.

  The lamps made up the Seven Stars. The constellation of Ursa Major.

  An open case—not a wooden crate but a coffin-shaped metal container—was in the middle of the design. A point of red glinted within the case. She fancied she could see it even through the metal side.

  And a thin figure stood over the case, arms spread wide, muttering in an unfamiliar language. The frock coat of Moriarty still hung from his shoulders, lifted by an otherwise-unfelt wind.

  Some species of ritual was in progress. With every atom of sense in her body, Catriona felt this was Evil. She knew Edwin and Barrymore were as aware as she of this, and were struck quiet.

  The man who had been Moriarty took a dagger from his inside pocket, and addressed the points of the constellation, tapping the tip of the dagger to his forehead and then pointing it at the individual starfires. Then, he let his loose sleeve fall back and swiftly carved a series of symbols into his left arm, raising lines of blood that dripped down into the crate. Switching hands, he as deftly repeated the carvings on his right arm, allowing a red rain to fall.

  Barrymore squeezed into the space between the crate and the wall, drawn into the drama like a star pulled from the wings. Edwin let Catriona go and took hold of the actor’s shoulder, holding him back. All three were now jammed into the small space.

  She saw that a body lay in the case, a light burning in its chest. Blood sprinkled a papery face and arms.

  The ritual-maker was not a young man. His face was as sunken as that of the actor he had impersonated, if not as that of the mummy he was incanting over. He was almost completely bald, and stringy in the arms and throat.

  Barrymore got free of Edwin and stepped into the makeshift temple. The ritual-maker saw him and halted, dagger pointed now as a weapon rather than a magic tool.

  “Back, play-actor,” he said. “I’ve waited too many years to be interrupted now. This has to be done precisely, as I once learned to my cost. It’s not easy to separate Pai-net’em from his treasure.”

  The ritual-maker spoke with an Irish accent.

  Edwin and Catriona stood either side of Barrymore.

  “Three interlopers,” the ritual-maker sneered. A drop of his own blood sparked at the tip of his dagger. “You’ll stay well back if you know what’s good for you.”

  The light in the mummy’s chest was pulsing.

  “Twenty-five years a convict,” the ritual-maker declared, “and months of waiting for a chance to come down here. This new wonder of the age, the cinematograph, was just stirring when I went into Princetown Jail. Now, it has opened doors, just as I am opening a door now, a door that will mean the ruination at last of England and all it stands for.”

  He was more than a madman.

  “I know who you are,” Edwin said, quietly. “Declan Mountmain.”

  The ritual-maker was shocked.

  “So, I’m not forgotten after all. I had thought all the others long dead. Evidently, England remembers its foes. Who set you upon me?”

  Edwin gave no answer, but Catriona thought to herself that this was no accident. Charles Beauregard and the Diogenes Club had foreseen something like this.

  She had heard of Declan Mountmain. Some sort of magician from the last century. His reputation was not of the best.

  “Your prison didn’t kill me,” Mountmain said. “And now, at last, I shall have my prize. The magicking is complete. Pai-net’em is bound. I may take the jewel. I’m glad of an audience, as a matter of fact. I might even let you live through the deluge to come, to tell the tale.”

  He knelt over the mummy and plunged the dagger into its chest. The corpse’s eyes flew open and glared redly. But only the eyes moved, blazing with ancient frustration.

  “Tied you proper, you Egyptian fool,” Mountmain chuckled. “You’ll walk no more.”

  The magician sawed at the mummy’s chest, cutting around the glow like a butcher. He thrust his hand into the hole he had made and pulled out the source of the light.

  Catriona could only gasp. She felt dizzy.

  It was a huge jewel, burning with an inner light.

  “With this, I shall bring down a cataclysm whose memory will last when the sun has turned cold.”

  Edwin raised his revolver and shot Mountmain.

  The magician laughed. She saw the bullet strike him in the face, make a ripple as if in a reflection of a face on the surface of a pond, and disappear. The shot embedded itself in the brickwork of a wall a dozen feet behind Mountmain.

  “The Jewel of Seven Stars has accepted me,” the magician announced. “As it once accepted this dead thing.”

  Mountmain brought his boot heel down on the mummy’s head, crushing it in its bandages. The eyes no longer moved.

  “I am become the Destroyer of Empire!”

  Mountmain’s laughter filled the tunnel. His eyes shone, each reflecting the Seven Stars.

  Whatever else the jewel had done for him, it had transformed him into the incarnation of the melodrama villain he had been impersonating. Mountmain was acting exactly like a Drury Lane dastard, threatening to evict the heroine’s mother into the cold, cold snow unless she bent to his wicked will.

  The jewel reached out to them.

  Catriona felt its pull. She resisted the impulse to faint, as if she were turned into the feeble girl who would be tied to the railway tracks.

  “O villainy!” Barrymore thundered. “Ho! Let the door be locked! Treachery, seek it out!”

  Edwin fired another useless shot, this time at the jewel itself.

  John Barrymore leaped upon Declan Mountmain.

  The indecision of Hamlet was thrown aside, and he was Sherlock incarnate, incisive brain directing instant action.

  She saw how surprised Mountmain was at this attack, how almost amused …

  Barrymore’s hands went to Mountmain’s throat.

  They grappled together, as if tottering on the brink of the Reichenbach. Mountmain fought back fiercely, as he had done when the camera was rolling. He clubbed Barrymore’s head with the mighty jewel, causing flashes of bloody light to flood the tunnel.

  Barrymore had Mountmain’s dagger, and was gouging at the magician’s wavering chest.

  “The point envenomed too,” Barrymore quoted. “Then, venom, to thy work.”

  The dagger seemed to affect Mountmain more than the bullet had.

  Edwin was calculating the odds.

  “The Seven Stars isn’t for the taking,” he said. “It has to be fought for. It has to be earned.”

  As usual, Catriona was anno
yed that things were being kept from her. But she got the drift of the situation.

  Barrymore and Mountmain fought like tigers. A lamp was knocked over, fire spreading along the white lines of the constellation. Shadows danced on the walls, and writhed on the contorted faces of the magician and the matinee idol.

  “Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damnéd Dane, drink off this potion …”

  “Pull down the stars,” Catriona said.

  Edwin understood at once.

  Mountmain had drawn power from his design. It was a condition of the ritual. She kicked one of the lamps out of place, and it shattered against a far wall in a splash of burning oil. She did the same for another.

  Edwin stamped on the burning lines, kicking the diagram to pieces.

  Barrymore had Mountmain bent backwards over the case, pushing him down onto the mummy’s bones. The jewel was trapped between them. There was blood on both men’s faces.

  Catriona kicked aside the last of the lamps.

  Fire spread, but the constellation was gone.

  Barrymore and Mountmain cried out together. It was as if needle-fingers scraped Catriona’s bones. There was something inhuman in the shared scream.

  Edwin held her.

  Mountmain lay broken across the coffin-case, one of the mummy’s arms around his chest. A last sigh escaped from him, with a whisp of smoke from his mouth.

  Barrymore staggered to his feet, slowly. His shirt was torn open, and a great red wound showed on his chest.

  “I am dead, Horatio,” he declaimed.

  “You that look pale and tremble at this chance,

  That are but mutes or audience to this act,

  Had I but time—as this fell sergeant Death

  Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you—

  But let it be Horatio, I am dead,

  Thou liv’st. Report me and my cause aright

  To the unsatisfied.”

  As he spoke, Barrymore’s voice grew in strength. His wound pulsed, not with flowing red blood but flowing red light.

  “It’s inside him,” Edwin breathed.

  The flesh closed over the light, and the red was in the actor’s eyes.

  “O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,

  Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!”