Dark Detectives Read online

  “I’m sorry. And Burke and Hare were Irish.”

  “I believe in Home Rule for the people of Ireland, and Egypt and India come to that. Mountmain’s interest in the country of his birth involves replacing the muddled and unjust rule of England with the monstrous and tyrannical rule of Declan Mountmain. Have you read any of his pamphlets? He claims descent from the Mage-Kings of Erin, whomsoever they might be. If he ever has a Diamond Jubilee, it will be celebrated by ripping out the beating hearts of Wicklow virgins. Distasteful as all this Union Jackery might be, Vicky doesn’t insist her ministers cut throats at the Palace. At least, not since Palmerston.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have been passing Mountmain’s town house this morning, in the borrowed clothes of a tramp?”

  Kate’s eyes went wide.

  “Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “Something glimpsed out of the corner of my eye.”

  “What are you going to do about your blessed jewel?”

  Beauregard considered the matter.

  “I rather thought I might try to steal it back.”

  Kate smiled, eyes crinkling behind spectacles. She was much more appealing than generally reckoned, he thought. A face made beautiful by character (and wit) wore far better than one made beautiful by nature (and paint).

  “Now that’s a lovely notion. Charles, I always admire you most in your all too infrequent excursions into larceny. Do not even consider embarking on such a venture without me.”

  “Kate, you know that’s absolutely impossible.”

  “Then why did you mention it? You know me too well to think I’d just flutter my handkerchief and let you bravely go about your business while I fret the night away in fear of your life. Make no mistake, Charles, that young fellow you saw wasn’t the first corpse to be found in the immediate vicinity of Declan Mountmain.”

  He could give in now, or he could argue the afternoon away and give in around teatime. Or he could give in now, and tell Kate that the burglary was set for tomorrow night then make the attempt this evening.

  “By the way,” she said. “If you’re thinking of telling me you don’t intend to do your housebreaking later than this very night, I shall not believe you.”

  “Very well, Kate. You may come with me. But you will not come into the house itself. You shall wait outside, to alert me to any danger. By whistling.”

  “We’ll discuss the specifics when we come to them.”

  “No, now. Kate, promise.”

  Her nose twitched and she looked everywhere but at him.

  “I promise,” Kate said. “I’ll be the whistler.”

  He raised his cup and she clinked hers against it.

  “To larceny,” she said, “and the ruin of rogues of all nations.”

  After arranging with Kate to meet later, Beauregard took a cab back to Chelsea. He wished to call on one of his near neighbours in Cheyne Walk. The occult wasn’t his field of expertise, and he wanted a little more knowledge before venturing into Mountmain’s lair.

  Mr. Thomas Carnacki, the celebrated “ghost-finder”, admitted Beauregard to his comfortable sitting room.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  Carnacki had been entertaining an actorly looking man. He waved aside the apology.

  “Machen and I were just yarning. You know his work, of course.”

  Beauregard was unfamiliar with the author.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Beauregard,” said Machen, offering a bony hand to be shaken. There was a little Welsh in his accent, thinned by London.

  “I’ve come to make inquiries on a matter relating to your speciality.”

  “Machen might help, as well,” Carnacki said.

  The dapper little man offered Beauregard brandy, which he declined. He wanted to keep his head clear for the rest of the night’s business.

  “Have you heard of the Jewel of Seven Stars?”

  Carnacki and Machen said nothing, in the distinctive manner of people reluctant to venture onto shivering sands.

  “I see that you have. I assume you know of its recent discovery, inside a mummy.”

  “I had doubted its authenticity,” Machen said. “It’s a fabled object.”

  “Professor Trelawny is convinced that it is the genuine gem,” Beauregard said to Machen. “It is certainly as old as the mummy. Three thousand years.”

  “That merely means that it’s an old fake. Made in imitation of an item that probably never existed.”

  “There’s a curse, of course,” said Carnacki.

  “Of course,” Beauregard agreed.

  “One might say, the curse of curses.”

  “Trelawny mentioned the Plagues of Egypt.”

  “Frogs, locusts, boils, blood, gnats, and so forth,” Machen chanted.

  “There’s been blood.”

  “I hardly think we need to fear the Plagues of Egypt. Pharaoh, after all, held the Israelites in bondage. All are free in our Empire.”

  Carnacki swilled his brandy, beaming. To him, this was a parlour game. He prided himself on never being rattled.

  “It is a mistake to take Exodus, as it were, as gospel,” Machen commented. “Egyptian records make little of the tribes of Israel. And the plagues are almost totally expunged. Of course, the Egyptians believed that to forget a thing or a person was to revoke their very existence. To blot the plagues from the histories would mean they could be averted, as it were, in retrospect.”

  Beauregard wondered if Mountmain might not see himself as Ireland’s Moses. He decided to drop the name.

  “Do you know Declan Mountmain?”

  As vehement as Kate’s reaction to the name had been, Carnacki’s and Machen’s were more extreme. The ghost-finder spat a mouthful of brandy back into his glass, and Machen’s thin lips pressed together in disgust and rage.

  “He’s one of your occult fellows, isn’t he?” Beauregard prompted, disingenuously.

  “Mountmain wants to bring things back,” Machen said. “Old things. Things best left in the beyond.”

  “Is he after the Seven Stars?” Carnacki asked. Beauregard had forgotten the little man had the instincts of a detective. “They’d make a deuced combination.”

  *

  He distracted himself for the cab journey by running through the plagues of Egypt, in order. First, the waters of the Nile turned to blood. Second, hordes of frogs. Third, the dust became swarms of gnats. Fourth, an infestation of flies. Fifth, the cattle struck dead. Sixth, an epidemic of boils. Seventh, lightning and hail struck the crops and livestock. Eighth, locusts. Ninth, darkness covered the land for three days. And tenth, the death of all the firstborn throughout the country.

  In Exodus, the story reads strangely. It’s all down to the Lord and Pharaoh. The suggestion seems to be that the Lord visits the plagues on Egypt but influences Pharaoh to ignore them, “hardening his heart” against letting the tribes of Israel go free. Beauregard remembered officers in India who were like that, alternately inflicting hideous punishments and encouraging the offenders to defy them, as an excuse for continuing with the punishment.

  On the whole, it wasn’t the sort of behaviour one expected from a proper God. One of Mountmain’s eldritch and arcane Old Ones, perhaps.

  Carnacki seemed to suggest that the Israelites didn’t really come into it. The point was the plagues.

  The effect of all ten must have been devastation on a vast scale. In the aftermath, with no crops or cattle, most people maddened by disease or bereavement, the chaos would take generations to pass away.

  If he had been Pharaoh, Beauregard would have felt he had a legitimate complaint that disproportionate sentence had been inflicted.

  He had the cab drop him off in Cavendish Square.

  Kate turned up on a bicycle. She wore britches and a tweed-cap. He thought better of asking her if she were disguised as a youth.

  They walked up Wimpole Street.

  “Where do you think Mountmain has the jewel?” she asked.

&nb
sp; “I don’t expect to find it. I just want to get the lie of the land. Consider this an exploratory expedition. Later, Lestrade and his stout fellows can go through the place and recover the swag.”

  “You make a poor cracksman.”

  “I should hope so, Kate.”

  “Is that the address? It doesn’t look all that foreboding.”

  Mountmain’s house was dark. Beauregard did not make the mistake of assuming it therefore empty or the household abed. He had the impression that the Irish Mage conducted much of his business away from the windows. The room in which Bacon had died was windowless.

  “Do you favour the first or the second storey for your illicit entry, Charles?”

  “Neither. I hope to go in through the basement.”

  Iron, spear-topped railings stood in front of the house. The steps to the front door rose above a row of windows at ground level. He assumed these led to the kitchens or the wine cellars.

  “Have you noticed the device on the arch-stone above the door?”

  Beauregard looked up. Inset into the stone were what looked like polished nail-heads.

  “Ursa Major,” he said.

  The glints were in the form of the constellation. He looked up at the cloudless sky. Despite the warm glow of gaslight, the stars in the heavens shone.

  “This all leads back to the Great Bear,” Kate said. “To the stars.”

  “I’m going. Remember, if there’s trouble, whistle. If I don’t come out, alert Lestrade.”

  “And the Diogenes Club?”

  He was uncomfortable hearing the name on her tongue.

  “Them too.”

  “One more thing,” she insisted.

  He looked at her. She kissed him, standing on tiptoes to peck at his lips.

  “For luck,” she said.

  He felt a great warmth for Kate Reed. She was a kindly soul. He squeezed her shoulder and scooted across the street, deftly vaulting the railings.

  The first window he tried was fastened. He took out his penknife and scraped away old putty. A pane came away entire, and he set it to one side. The black curtain wafted inwards with the rush of night air.

  He slid himself through the curtain, setting his rubber soles down on a flagstone floor about six feet below the level of the window. Glass crunched beneath his boots.

  The room was dark. He stood still as a statue, continuing to hear the crunch as if it were a volley of shots. His breath was even and his heartbeat regular. He was used to this sort of night-creeping, but it did not do to get too cocky.

  Had someone dropped something?

  He chanced a match and found himself in a storeroom. It was as cold as a larder, but the jars and vials on the shelves lining the walls did not suggest domestic arts. Free-floating eyeballs peered at him.

  If he had tried the next window along, he would have found it broken. Some mischance, or a less professional cracksman, had smashed it in.

  A tiny scrap hung from a spar of glass still in the frame. It was a fragment of cloth, similar to the stuff he still had in his cigar case. He thought of a man-shaped huddle, and shuddered. The match burned his fingers. He shook it out and dropped it.

  The after-trail of flame wiggled on the surface of his eyes. He had a fix on the door, and took a grip of the handle. He had a lock-pick in case he found himself shut in. He pulled, and the door moved more easily than he expected. He felt the jamb and realised the door had been locked, but forced. The lock itself was torn out of the wood, but the metal tongue was still out, fixed.

  He stepped into a passageway. His eyes were used to the dark. He proceeded down the passage, trying doors. All were broken in, locks smashed.

  He took out his revolver.

  Someone had invaded this house before him.

  The rooms were all like the one he had been in, stores for arcane items. He recognised certain occult implements. One room, a windowless hole, was given over to ancient books, and had been torn apart. Priceless volumes were strewn on the floor, leaking pages like flesh from a wound.

  Upstairs, there was a thunderous knocking at the door.

  It couldn’t be Kate. She would have whistled.

  Light leaked down. The gas in the hallway had been turned up. There were footsteps, and offensive shouts.

  Mountmain answered his own door. He had probably discharged the butler.

  Beauregard couldn’t resist a smile.

  The light showed a set of double doors, of some metal, at the end of the passageway. They had been abused and wrenched around the locks.

  “What the Devil do you want?” Mountmain roared.

  “The Seven Stars,” boomed a familiar voice.

  “What are they? And who are you?”

  “You know that as well as I do, Declan. I haven’t changed so much since Oxford.”

  It was Trelawny.

  “Get out of the house, or I shall summon the police.”

  “Very well,” Trelawny called Mountmain’s bluff.

  “Seven Stars, you say?”

  “And the mummy! Where’s Pai-net’em?”

  A tiny hand took Beauregard’s sleeve and tugged.

  His heart spasmed and he turned, raising his revolver and aiming directly at a startled face.

  Kate whistled, almost soundlessly.

  He did not waste words in protest. She had disobeyed him and come into the house. She must have seen Trelawny barge in.

  Mountmain and Trelawny continued their argument. It sounded as if blows would soon be exchanged. Mountmain was unlikely to hear them moving about beneath his feet.

  He nodded to Kate, and proceeded to the double doors.

  After a breath, he pushed the doors open.

  The room was large, and dimly lit by Aladdin-style lamps. Kate gasped at the obscenity of the bas-reliefs that covered the walls and the altar. Fishy chimerae and alarmed nymphs coupled with joyless frenzy.

  Beauregard was surprised to see the Jewel of Seven Stars laying in the open, on the altar. It held the lamplights, and its stars burned.

  Kate gasped at her first sight of the jewel.

  Another item of stolen property lay on the floor, stretched out facedown before the altar. Its bandages were unravelled around its ankles and arms, and it was broken into a scarecrow pose, crucified rather than curled up at rest.

  The mummy of Pai-net’em. Kate stepped over the mummy and looked at the Seven Stars. Her fingers fluttered near it, tips reddened by the stone’s inner glow.

  “It’s a beauty,” she said.

  Beauregard had not bargained for something as easy as this.

  “Should we just take it and leave?” Kate asked.

  Beauregard hesitated.

  “Come on, it’s one in the eye for Mountmain.”

  She took a hold of the jewel, and screamed.

  A spindly arm had shot out, and a sinewy hand grabbed her leg, pulling her down.

  It couldn’t be the mummy. It was someone wrapped in mouldering bandages, a grotesque guardian for the jewel.

  At the scream, Mountmain and Trelawny stopped arguing.

  The mummy man rose up, loose-limbed and faceless, and threw Kate away. Her cap fell on the floor, and her hair tumbled loose. The jewel cast a bloody light across the mummy’s sunken chest.

  Living eyes looked out of the dead mask.

  Beauregard caught Kate and hugged her. He kept the mummy man covered with his revolver.

  Mountmain charged into the room and was struck dumb by what he saw.

  “What in the name of Gla’aki!”

  Underneath ancient linen, a lipless mouth smiled.

  Trelawny was at Mountmain’s shoulder. He barged past the Irishman and towered over the mummy man.

  “Stay back, Professor,” Beauregard warned.

  Trelawny reached for the Seven Stars. The mummy launched a claw-fingered hand at the professor’s throat, and ripped it away. A rain of gore fell onto the jewel and seemed to be absorbed.

  Trelawny fell to his knees, still trying to
draw air into his lungs through his ruptured throat. He pitched forward, dead. The mummy hung his head, almost in tribute.

  Beauregard put three shots into the monster’s chest, about where his heart should have been. He saw dusty divots raised in the cloth-wrapped flesh. It staggered but did not fall.

  Mountmain was backing away from the altar.

  “Interfering fool,” he snarled at Beauregard. “Are you content now?”

  “What is that?” Beauregard indicated the mummy.

  “What do you think? It’s Pai-net’em, wanting his jewel back. It’s all he’s ever wanted.”

  The mummy stood over the altar.

  Beauregard saw he had been wrong. It couldn’t be a man dressed up. The legs were too thin, like shrouded bones. This was an ancient, dried thing, somehow animate, still imbued with soul.

  “He’s the saving of your rotten world,” Mountmain said. “But he’ll rip you apart. My design may not be accomplished, but you’ll get no joy from my thwarting. Mr. Beauregard, and whoever you might be young sir, I bid you goodbye.”

  The Irish Mage stepped back through the doors and slammed them shut.

  They were trapped with Pai-net’em.

  “Young sir!” Kate sneered. “The cheek of the man.”

  The mummy had killed Whemple, Jenks, Bacon and Trelawny. And others. All who stood between it and the Jewel of Seven Stars. Now Mountmain thought it would kill Beauregard and Kate.

  The mummy bobbed a little, like a limber puppet. Flesh gobbets still clung to its claw-hand. It hovered by the altar, where the jewel was fixed.

  Beauregard was prepared to throw himself to Pai-net’em, to protect Kate. He did not think he could come out best in a wrestling match. And clearly his revolver was useless against this dead-alive thing from an ancient grave. Had he lain for three thousand years, seven sparks inside the jewel to keep him warm?

  Through the thin bandage, Beauregard saw Pai-net’em’s snarl.

  “Take it,” Beauregard said, indicating the jewel. “It was robbed from you. On behalf of my queen, I return it to you, with honour.”

  Did Pai-net’em listen? Could he understand?

  The mummy snatched up the jewel and held it to his breast. The Seven Stars sank in and the hole closed over. A red glow seemed to throb in Pai-net’em’s chest. He slumped, dormant.