They hurried through the foyer and down the corridor to her office. She closed and locked the door, removed the hat pin in her hair and carefully removed her hat. She dimmed the gaslight and Leopold began to wonder of her intentions, especially when she withdrew a candle from her carpet bag beside her desk. She lit it with a match and did the same to a cone of incense that she placed in a brass dish. The room suddenly filled with the scent of sandalwood. Next, she opened a desk drawer and drew from it a small crucible of stone and set it on the desk. She lit some tissue paper and laid it within, and once a small flame was going, she dusted some strong-smelling herbs within. They smoked and flamed.
When she pulled out a spirit board from her bag and laid it on the blotter, Leopold had had enough.
“What in blazes are you doing?”
“You’ll have to be quiet, Mr. Kazsmer. I shan’t tell you a second time. Sit down.”
He looked behind and with a mulish expression sat in the cushioned chair and pulled it forward closer to the desk. The room’s perimeter now fell into shadows under the candle’s small flame as Mingli sat at her desk and positioned herself before the spirit board, fingers poised on the planchette as swirls of smoky incense curled around her and the crucible continued to flame. She closed her eyes and spoke. “Spirit world, hear my plea. I call upon you to release one recently departed.”
Leopold rolled his eyes. What nonsense was here? He’d seen his Romani friends do this many a time for the punters, getting coins out of them for some mumbo jumbo their compatriots did with strings and wires, with music playing on a gramophone hidden behind curtains.
He sat back and crossed his arms, wondering what on earth was next in her pantheon of ridiculous…when something in the corner of the room caught his attention. The candle flame flickered and a strange glow formed in the shadows.
The glow grew brighter, coalescing into a transparent shape of a figure. Though Leopold longed to, he dared not speak. Who knew what foul magic this could be, and if he interrupted he didn’t know the outcome. Instead, he could not help but draw slowly out of the chair as the figure became unmistakable.
Still glowing faintly, a transparent man had formed with his back to them. A man in an Ulster coat and a bowler hat. For a moment, the figure simply stood there, his glow as a faint halo around his shape.
“Good Lord! Thacker!” whispered Leopold.
Chapter Twelve
SLOWLY, THE FAMILIAR but transparent figure turned and looked at him. “Leo?” said the hollow voice.
“Spense. What are you doing here?”
The specter looked down at himself. “I don’t…I don’t know. Where am I?” He touched his face with cautious fingers. “I’m Thacker, ain’t I? Despenser Thacker.”
Leopold drew closer. “Spense.”
“And you’re Leopold. But…” He glanced around the room. “Something’s not right…”
“Of course it isn’t right.” Leopold squared with Mingli. “What have you done?”
“We needed help. I brought the inspector back to give it to us.”
“You had no right to do so! This is an abomination!”
“Wait,” said the phantom. He stepped further into the room though his steps made no sound and he seemed to be floating above it rather than standing on the floor. “This is my office. At the Yard.” He seemed to suddenly notice Mingli at last. “Who the hell is she?”
“Spense,” said Leopold. “Listen to me very carefully. You must go back from whence you came. You don’t belong here anymore.”
“Whence I came?” He looked over his shoulder, but the puzzled expression never left him. “I…I don’t know where I came from. I don’t really know…what this is.”
“Spense, listen to me—”
“Leo, I’m…I’m a little…frightened.”
Leopold sent Mingli a scathing glance. “It’s all right, Spence. I’ll send you back…”
“Back where? Leo…I’m beginning to think something peculiar is going on.”
“Inspector,” said Mingli crisply. The spirit turned to stare at her. “I am Special Inspector Mingli Zhao. I came to assist Mr. Kazsmer after you had been brutally murdered. Do you understand?”
“Murdered? What in the bloody hell are you going on about?” He gave a beseeching look toward Leopold. “Leo, what is this Chinky talking about? And why is she in my office?”
“It isn’t your office anymore, Inspector,” she cut in. “It’s mine. But things have gone decidedly out of our control and we could use the help of a ghost.”
Thacker stared at her a moment longer before it all seemed to show on his faint features. He staggered back. “A ghost?” he said softly. But even as he began to deny it, the reality of it seemed to hit him full force. He grabbed his coat and opened it. Looking down, the unmistakable bloody gouges from Ogiel’s talons were all too evident. He brought up a sorrowful expression. “I don’t even remember…except. There was this enormous creature. And he…grabbed me, didn’t he?”
Leopold dashed his tears away with the back of his hand. “Yes.”
“And then…I don’t remember no more.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Something, though… Something about…light…”
“Never mind about that now, Inspector.”
Leopold trembled as he turned toward her, keeping his fisted hands close to his sides. “What do you mean, you horrid woman? This man has been taken from the spiritual plane where he belongs to fulfill your selfish desires.”
“Mr. Kazsmer, we are in desperate straits and the fact of the matter is, all of it is because of supernatural events. Including the Daemon Device.”
He stumbled back. “How do you know about that?”
“Why do you think I was chosen for this assignment, Mr. Kazsmer? I know far more than you give me credit for. Now, Inspector Thacker, do you wish to help us? To help to stop more murders and more mayhem?”
“Leo,” he said, looking at Leopold with a disturbingly translucent face. “Is she all right? Do we trust her?”
He gritted his teeth. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t…feel quite right. Did she say I was murdered?”
“Old man…I’m so sorry.”
“Then…I am dead?”
Leopold could only nod.
“That’s curious, ain’t it?” He felt his breast, his arms. “I feel like m’self. But I’m only a…a…”
“Ghost, Inspector Thacker,” said Mingli, matter-of-factly. “And the sooner you can accept that, the sooner we can work together.”
“This is unfinished business, innit?” He measured her more closely now. Looking about his office, he sighed. “What’s going on, then?”
“You were killed by a demon, Inspector. A most foul one, who is, no doubt, responsible for killing the women. However, Mr. Kazsmer and I have come across a snag.”
“Mr. Kazsmer and I,” he mocked under his breath. “So she’s got you by the nose, has she?”
“What? No! Sh-she followed me. And…well. There’s nothing for it but to tell you the truth. There is a bit more to me than I have let on.”
Thacker crossed his arms, his glow fluttering about him like smoke. “I knew there was something. Go on, then. It’s about time I was told.”
“It’s very curious. Almost as curious as…” He gestured toward Thacker. “Well…a long time ago, I learned how to do real magic by summoning daemons.”
Thacker looked from one to the other…before he burst out laughing. The sound made Leopold cringe, as if claws were run along his shoulders.
“It’s not funny, Spense. I mean…look at your own predicament.”
Thacker stopped laughing. He did look about him. “Say, was I in Heaven? And you pulled me out of it?”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Mingli, affixing her hat on her head again and pulling on her gloves.
“What’s so absurd about that? That a copper can get to Heaven? Here now!”
“We’re wasting what little time we have,” said Mi
ngli. “There will be time for explanations later. Right now, Inspector Thacker needs to be apprised of the human skins.” She grabbed her umbrella in the stand and opened the door.
“Human skins?” cried Thacker. “What the bloody hell is she talking about?”
“Where are we going?” said Leopold, trailing after her. “What of…” He gestured toward Thacker. “Everyone will see him.”
“No, they won’t. Only we can see him. Come along, Inspector. Mr. Kazsmer.”
“Now, wait just one moment, my good woman.”
She stopped and turned abruptly, facing Leopold mere inches. “Come now, Leopold. Pull yourself together, man. You can explain to the inspector along the way.”
They walked back through the foyer, where all manner of police in their dark coats milled with inspectors in plain clothes. And no one paid them any mind, except to glance at the curvaceous Mingli.
They pushed through the doors to the kerb where Mingli hailed a cab. Leopold looked back as the doors closed where no one had called the alarm or cried out at their glowing companion.
He looked back at Thacker who was glancing around curiously and bobbing slightly as he never actually touched the ground.
“Spense, are you…all right?”
“As right as a dead man, I suppose.”
“I’m sorry about all this. If I had known what she was going to do I never would have allowed it. But…I’m glad to see you again, for what that’s worth.”
The spirit smiled. “Ah, now. That’s good to know. You were always a good friend. But I wished I’d known about all them other things. I suppose it has to do with them spectacles.”
“Yes, they helped me to see the denizens of the Otherworld.”
“Blimey. Otherworld. Does it help you see g-ghosts, like me?”
“No. I’ve never actually seen a ghost before.”
“Well that’s just dandy. Glad to be your first one, I suppose.”
“Spense, I—”
“So what about these human skins?”
“I don’t know. I saw these surgeons in a secret surgery in a warehouse, and these skins were hanging on the walls. Almost as if they were leftover suits.”
“Cor. Can we go see them?”
“Well…You see I thought that it was best that the police didn’t see them. I knew they were gotten by supernatural means and so I destroyed them.”
“Leo! That was evidence.”
“So I have been told.” He hadn’t meant to glance at Mingli but he did. Thacker looked too.
“She’s a bit of a crumpet. Are you sure she hasn’t turned your head? You said you didn’t know if you trusted her.”
“I don’t quite. I don’t know anything about her, except that she has the recommendation of the Prince Consort. But all this seems to be mixed up with Manfried Waldhar and his dirigible company. The place is crawling with Germans.”
“Don’t trust those blokes m’self. But don’t know if I trust Orientals. Sly devils, they are.”
He thought of Raj but didn’t want to argue with Thacker. “I think it best you stay on your toes.”
A man on the street walking by him, turned to stare. And Leopold remembered that he must have looked as if he were talking to himself.
Mingli shouted to them. The cab awaited.
When Leopold got to the kerb, he shook his head. “The three of us can’t fit in there.”
The cabby glanced down and pulled his cap low over his eyes.
Leopold’s face heated. Of course, the cabby only saw two of them.
“Hush now, Mr. Kazsmer,” she said quietly, tugging him in by his arm. “Inspector Thacker can fit through the walls.”
“I can?”
Once Mingli and Leopold had seated themselves, Thacker looked in dubiously. Mingli motioned for him to come in and them thumbed behind her at the back wall of the cab. Just as the cabby pulled away from the kerb into traffic, Thacker leapt forward…and slipped through their bodies.
Shivering, Leopold felt the cold as the ghost passed through him, and then Thacker settled partway in the wall with only head and arms inside the carriage.
Thacker eyed his precarious position. “Ain’t that a corker! I’m half in, half out!”
It was disturbing to say the least. But Leopold kept his opinions to himself. He didn’t like this whole affair and boiled when he thought of Mingli taking such liberties without even asking him. And speaking of not asking him…
“Where are we going?”
“Whitechapel.”
He thought of his lockup and all the work that lay ahead and his heart gave a lurch. Did she know about that too? “Where in Whitechapel?”
“To a place I know. A place to get answers.” She sat back, eyeing Thacker’s transparent flailing arm, and would say no more.
Chapter Thirteen
THE CABBY STOPPED at a disreputable corner of sooty brick buildings that could have been housing or warehouses or places of criminal activities as well as anything else.
Thacker stepped through the carriage wall to the outside and hovered inches above the pavement. “I know this place. We raided it many a time. Thieves and wagtails, mostly.”
When the carriage rolled away, Leopold crinkled his nose at the smell. It all seemed like a pissing place and his suspicions of Mingli’s intentions rumbled to the surface once more. He touched the Webley in his coat pocket.
Mingli strode forward, using her umbrella as a walking stick. “Stay close to me, gentlemen. And it would be best if neither of you spoke.”
“This is outrageous,” Leopold sputtered.
“It may be so,” she said, “but this is my domain. Kindly listen to me for once.” She moved ahead, leaving him no alternative but to follow. Thacker glided forward behind him. The phantom’s fear seemed to have left him, replaced by a curiosity for all that transpired. Leopold was glad of it, but he still feared for his friend, even in his ghostly state.
They descended some granite stairs black with soot and grime and entered under a low lintel to a dark and smoky interior. The thick air smelled of some strange floral sweetness like a burning flower. Red lamps were positioned between rows of cots stacked three high, with men of various sorts—Chinamen, English scruffy wharf types with mutton chops, and even sweaty men in tail coats—all lounging or just dozing in a hazy state. To Leopold’s horror he realized they were in an opium den.
He was about to open his mouth to object when Mingli must have sensed it. She gave him a stern look before she greeted a Chinaman so ancient and wizened that he looked more fig than man. He puffed on a tobacco pipe with a long stem, sucking on it from one side of his mouth, and from the other blowing out the acrid smoke in rings. His hair was white and pulled back into a long plait hanging down his back, with a cap on his head that matched his silky tunic with frog clasps running down the front. She spoke quietly to him in Chinese while he nodded, not acknowledging Leopold at all. At last, he bowed and beckoned them to follow him to a curtained entry.
The backroom was lit little better than the room before, but there was no haze of smoke, no men lying in stupors from the drug. Instead, an equally wizened Chinawoman sat at a table laying out old, stained cards with Chinese characters on them. It reminded Leopold of Raj’s tarot deck.
Once the man closed the door leaving them before the old woman, she raised her head and gave a nod to Mingli, Leopold…and to Thacker.
Leopold was about to express his surprise again when Mingli raised an admonishing hand to him without even looking back.
The old woman swept the cards off the table, revealing a diagram of a circle with more Chinese characters and what appeared to be zodiac animals embroidered into the cloth. She spoke to Mingli in a raspy whisper and Mingli answered back in that inharmonic tongue. They seemed to argue back and forth for a moment until Mingli produced a foreign coin. She laid it in the center of the circle and stepped back. The old woman left it where it was, closed her eyes, and began to rock back and forth, murmuring a chant.
Leopold watched curiously as the coin began to glow. This was magic he did not know about and was ashamed that he didn’t. Much of his study involved the Kabbalah. He hadn’t paid attention to other cultures. Perhaps he needed to re-examine that.
When the coin’s glow began to fade, the old woman’s chanting slowed and she sat still. She studied the circle and Leopold realized that the characters and zodiac had shifted. The embroidery was different from what it had started out to be.
He felt a coldness on his arm and when he looked up, Thacker was clasping him there. He exchanged a look with his ghostly friend, but they both remained silent.
The old woman began chattering again and gesturing toward Thacker. He could well sense Thacker’s discomfort. He never liked it when others spoke alien languages in front of him. Poor chap. He can’t even have a drink to calm his nerves. Or could he? Leopold’s face reddened in embarrassment that he didn’t know anything about ghosts either.
At length, the old woman seemed to be done talking. She brought back her cards, palmed the coin, and spread the cards out again, ignoring Mingli. But before Mingli could leave, she pressed on her a small scroll, not even looking up from her cards. Mingli seemed pleased and took it, bowed, and marched out of the room.
Leopold moved forward and studied the woman and her cards. “I thank you, madam, for any help you have given us.”
Poised with a card clutched in her taut fingers, the old woman stopped and slowly looked up at Leopold. Her eyes searched his and she grinned with very few teeth. “You are most welcome…Mister Kazsmer.” He startled back, even as she continued. “But beware, sir. You meddle where you don’t fully understand.”
“It…is my curse, madam.”
She glanced at his wrist though it was covered. “So it would seem.”
Someone pressed sharp nails into his arm and he snapped his head around. Mingli had a deathgrip on him and she was scowling. Without speaking, she yanked him out of the room, and the three of them made their way through the smoky den and out the door to the pavement.
The Daemon Device Page 11