“Mounting quickly, I galloped back to the wall, where the firing had begun in earnest. The living Ansar on the walls had realized by now what I had realized earlier, that as long as they stood out of reach, firing down on the corpse army, they would survive the night. The dead had rejected the pollution of Western ideas like ladders and siege machinery and so they could merely press against the walls harmlessly while the Khalifa’s army tore them apart with bullets. Things might not turn out so badly as long as the status quo prevailed and the gates remained closed and the walls unbreached. That’s when I opened the western city gates and galloped out into the corpse army of Khartoum.”
“My god,” Drake said softly. “Were you mad?“
“Not mad,” said Augustus. “Merely determined to escape. I find torture most disagreeable and I was certain that if I remained in this city the army would dispense of the corpses and then Von Slatin and the Khalifa would turn their attention back to me. I had one chance, and I was taking it. And so, as Chinese Gordon’s head started in on ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God,’ with the Khalifa’s army above me, and the living dead before me, I charged out into their midst. Immediately there were bloodcurdling screams as the fanatical corpses poured into the city, and no one had time to focus on one lone madman riding into the face of certain death.
“I could hear the firing line falling apart behind me as I rode, and rode hard. The horse sensed what was around him as these things grabbed at his bridle but he and I were fused together into one being with a single purpose: forward! And the animal acquitted itself nobly. Gordon’s head didn’t help in the slightest, it merely sang on:
‘And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us!’
“The dead broke into pieces before my horse’s hooves as I beat the demons off with my bare hands and we parted this mass of rotten tissue like the Red Sea. Behind us, their brown and dusty death march drained into Omdurman where they wrote their sharia law in blood, but ahead of us their rear came into sight and finally we broke through their line and galloped into the open desert like hell itself was behind us. Judging from the chorus of screams rising from Omdurman, that was not so far wrong.”
“And what then?” asked Lewis in an awed whisper.
“I rode for three days before a steamer passed and I was able to secure passage back to Cairo. It was not a simple matter, but it was tedious the first time around and I shan’t bore myself by describing the journey again. I will say, however, that Gordon’s head didn’t shut up once the entire time. At night I was forced to bury it in the sand or wrap it in cotton wool so that I could sleep.”
“It’s an amazing tale,” I said, finally speaking. “But come now, Augustus, even for you this is too much. If such an adventure occurred then, for example, where is the head of Gordon now? Shouldn’t we all be hearing the strains of ‘Meet Me in Golgotha’?“
“Oh no, my friend,” Augustus said. “I have distracted it with other subjects. Come. I’ll show you.”
“Augustus,” I said as we rose to follow. “We are calling your bluff.”
Without a word he led us upstairs and paused outside his study.
“Listen now, you must not repeat a word of this to anyone. I am trusting to your discretion and to your honor.”
And with that he opened the door onto a scene that is difficult to describe. One wall was hung with a large chart laying out stock market symbols, while on the desk a ticker tape machine chattered out the movements of the market. Charles attended to a small table in the center of the room. He turned upon seeing us and gave a slight bow.
“Gentlemen,” he said.”
“Charles!“ Drake exclaimed. “What are you doing hiding up here?“
“I am attending to General Gordon, sir,” Charles said, unflappably.
And there in the center of the table, resting in a velvet lined tray, was the head of General Gordon, his mouth moving and out of it yammered an endless stream of numbers and letters, abbreviations and words I barely recognized.
“Is that Arabic?“ I asked Augustus.
“Listen to him,” Augustus said. “He’s predicting tomorrow’s stock market.”
“American Mining up five, up two points American Telegraph, Capital Steam Engine Consolidated down one and a half...”
I was aghast.
“It has made me quite rich, if I might say so,” said Augustus. As Lewis and Drake cooed over his system, the room swam before my eyes and I felt sick. I excused myself and ran downstairs where I leaned against the wall.
I thought of the dead abolitionists, far from their homes and their sweethearts, torn to bloody rags by a crowd of Musselmen. I thought of the wives of their hired riflemen, eternally waiting for their husbands to come home. I thought of the city of Omdurman and its thousands murdered by the corpse army of Khartoum when Augustus had opened its gates.
I thought of the vast road of blood that Augustus had ridden in order to bring back this thing that made him money, so many dead so that he could enjoy a better brand of cigar, a finer brandy. It made me giddy and sick. Money is different for men who are not born with it, and I knew that Augustus had not been born with money but had had to scrape for it, and so it inspired within him a kind of madness, and every day there were born more and more like him, men willing to lose their senses to secure a dollar.
From upstairs I could hear Gordon’s insane babbling and the voices of Drake and Lewis and Augustus and Charles and the clatter of the ticker tape machine and in my mind I imagined it was the sound of Gordon’s head spitting out blood-streaked gold coins, clinking one after the other into Augustus’s vaults and I thought of all the vaults around it in the bank, all smeared with blood, and I could smell it dripping and collecting, pooling on the marble floors and running together until it was a great stream, a cataract of blood rushing down the steps of the banks and out into the city streets to drown us all.
The Yellow Curse
It was a cool Spring morning and I sat in the clubroom of the White Street Society watching helplessly as my friend, Augustus Mortimer, fell apart. Breakfast was digesting in our tummies but newspapers littered the carpet at our feet and ennui gripped his soul. He tore through ‘paper after ‘paper, broadsheets and tabloids, dailies and weeklies, yellow scream sheets and small type mumblers, The Tribune, The Forward, The Dispatch, The Sun, The Age, The Mirror, The Herald, The New York Clipper: none could offer him relief.
“The Spanish War is over, the Philippines buzz with menace, the Catholics are in China, the Australians think they’re a country. I have tornadoes, and blizzards, and crime doctors, trunk murders, and electrocutions and none of it is interesting. None of it!” he wailed, lowering his head into his hands.
“Look here, Augustus,” I said, picking up a newspaper. “It says that today in Iceland they have formed their first football club. That’s interesting!”
Augustus moaned in despair.
“I am not an investigator of footballing. I am an investigator of the supernatural! Where are my Whistling Rooms? Where is my Phantom Pony? My Howling Death Owls? My House that Leers?
There was a crazed look in his eyes.
“You know,” he said. “I would even welcome the return of the Infant Aerialist!”
“Augustus!” I cried. “Do not even joke about the...about the...” I couldn’t bring myself to say the name of that supernatural suckling who had nearly cost us our lives. Instead, I merely rebuked him with my eyes.
“Don’t you see? I’m being driven out of my mind by boredom!” he exclaimed. “Dear God, relieve me from the hell that is New York in the summer!”
At that moment, the bell rang.
“Augustus!” I said. “The bell!”
“It’s some tedious visitor,” he said, dragging a sheet of newsprint over his head and turning facedown on the sofa. “Come to say something boring.”
As Augustus marinated in despair I heard the quick,
steady step of Charles crossing the hall and opening the front door. There was a moment of silence and then a cry. Then more silence and suddenly Charles materialized behind me.
“Sir,” he whispered urgently into my ear. “There is a foreign gentleman at the front door. He would like to speak with Mr. Mortimer, but...” and he indicated Augustus’s prostrate form.
“Yes, Charles, thank you,” I said.
I followed him into the front hall and noted that the door was closed. I opened it. On the doorstep stood a Chinaman. I screamed and slammed it again.
“Great Scott! Charles, it’s a Chinaman.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do we do?“
“Perhaps he will go away,” Charles ventured.
I pressed my eye to the mail slot.
“He’s still there, dammit,” I said. “They give me the willies, Charles.”
“Yes, sir. May I point out, sir, that perhaps we should invite him inside?“
“My god, man! Why?”
“The longer he stands on the doorstep the more attention he will draw from the neighbors.”
Charles was right. I had to overcome my instinctual aversion, invite the little fellow in, and then promptly hustle him out the back.
Charles and I counted to three and then I snatched the door open, grabbed the fellow by the collar and dragged him inside. We turned to hustle him out the back but Augustus blocked our way. Arms crossed, he regarded us coolly.
“I heard your cries of alarm,” he said. “And now I find you with a Chinaman.”
“We’re just disposing of him now, sir,” Charles said.
“Whyever for? It’s the most interesting thing to happen all day. Hello, little fellow,” Augustus said.
“I don’t think he speaks the lingo,” I said.
“What…brings…you…up...here?“ Augustus persisted.
“Augustus, this is ridiculous.”
“Mr. Mortimer,” the tiny Oriental said. “My name is Jim Gun and I come from the Chinese Merchant’s Guild. I wish one moment of your time.”
I stifled the urge to scream. He spoke perfect English!
“You have twenty seconds to interest me,” Augustus said.
“The mayor of Chinatown sends me to ask for your aid. The Tongs are about to go to war.”
“The Tongs are always about to go to war,” Augustus said. “That is a matter for the police not a man of science such as myself.”
“This time they will war over something that is lost,” Jim Gun said. “Zu Guo, the Heavenly Pearl, has been stolen. It is a mystical object of great power, and its theft has disturbed the delicate balance of power in Chinatown.”
With my eyes I begged Augustus to refuse. Unlike most New Yorkers, I hated Chinatown. Too many Chinese for my liking.
“William,” Augustus announced. “Let us ready ourselves.”
“But…”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Augustus said, and he seized a cane from the hat stand. Canes were a recent affectation of his, and my heart sank even lower when I realized he meant to bring it with us.
“Chinatown suffers,” he declared. “Rumors of war. A mysterious artifact. Something stolen in the night. Adventure calls. And I answer with a merry cry on my lips and a cane in my hand. Come, William! Prepare yourself for sights beyond the ken of mortal man! For we go now to solve....
THE YELLOW CURSE
One hour later, our hansom ‘cab was still stuck in traffic. A bulky extracts wagon blocked the way forward while a team and six dragging an omnibus blocked the street behind. To our sides a steady stream of dogcarts and runabouts dashed through the gutters, their tiger boys cracking whips and screaming obscenities.
Augustus and I sat across from Jim Gun, who rested his hat on his knees and stared at us blankly. His hair was shaved back to the middle of his skull and chopped off at the neck. It was most unflattering.
“Mr. Gun,” Augustus said. “Where are you taking us?“
“To my employer.”
“And your employer is?“
“The man to whom I’m taking you.”
“I see you possess the Oriental love of riddles,” Augustus said. “Very good. Very good.”
“Augustus,” I whispered. “How can you converse with him so calmly?”
“Do the Chinese make you uneasy?” he asked.
“Uneasy! They make my skin crawl!”
“Yes, the hooded eye of the Oriental makes it impossible to tell where he is looking. While it gives them a devilish advantage in unarmed combat it also limits their depth perception and makes them vulnerable to thrown weapons.”
“We are going to the Chung Wah Kung So,” Jim Gun said.
“Excellent!” Augustus replied.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“The Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association,” Augustus answered. “They are a neutral party, the highest authority in Chinatown. Run by the merchants and the heads of the family associations they arbitrate disputes and regulate business.”
Our hansom lurched sickeningly forward, nearly separating my head from my neck, then crashed to a halt.
“We shall walk,” Jim Gun said. “It is faster.”
“An excellent suggestion,” Augustus said and he leapt out of the ‘cab, followed by Jim Gun, leaving me to pay the driver and follow in their wake.
Augustus strode down the sidewalk, bearing east and south through the city, with the tiny figure of Jim Gun hopping along beside him. Swinging his cane ostentatiously, he tipped his hat to various individuals and, given the great vogue of the day for the heathen Chinese, he attracted not a small amount of attention. I hung back, for I had read about the snares of Chinatown that waited for the white man and I vowed to remain alert.
We crossed Canal, passed Rag Picker’s Row and were approaching Bottle Alley when it happened. I saw Jim Gun take a small mincing step to the side and before I could shout an alarm three black-clad Chinamen stepped out of a storefront and scooped Augustus up in an enormous sack. I had read of this happening! I reached into my waistband for a pistol but it was too late and I found my own feet leaving the pavement as I, too, was scooped up in a sack and everything went dark.
“Hello, sirs. Hello,” a delicate voice said.
I opened my eyes and saw that I was lying on the floor, my cheek pressed to a richly colored carpet of Oriental design. My head throbbed as I rolled over onto my back and levered myself up into a sitting position. Four Chinese surrounded me, as implacable as the gruesome joss idols that lined the walls behind them. Silken banners in red and gold hung from the ceiling and moved lazily in the breeze from the open windows. One of the Chinamen lifted me up and sat me at a dark wooden table.
Across from me, an elderly Chinese dressed in Western clothes and sporting a wispy white beard, poured a cup of tea.
“Drink this,” he said.
I sniffed the porcelain cup suspiciously and the old man burst into delighted laughter.
“Oh, very good, sir. Very good!“
“I do not like being poisoned,” I said, pushing the tea away.
Augustus pulled himself up to the table beside me and sniffed his cup.
“It’s safe to drink, William,” he said. “I’d say it was Tibetan Six Mountain Pu’erh. About twenty years old.”
The old Chinaman beamed.
“Only a man of refinement could identify such a precious tea from aroma alone.”
I took a sip. It tasted like dirty socks.
“I do not like being scooped up in sacks,” Augustus said, curtly.
“I apologize for my methods. But it was only by transporting you through the secret Chinatown tunnels inside of sacks that I could bring you here unseen.”
“You’re Tom Lee,” said Augustus. “Head of the On Leong Tong. This must be your Tong house.”
“The Tongs!“ I cried. “We will be killed!“
“My apologies for deceiving you,” said Jim Gun, bowing deeply from where he stood by the wall.
“A minor injury was necessary to correct a greater wrong.”
“What are these madmen talking about?“ I said loudly, and winced as my head throbbed.
“Drink your tea, William,” said Augustus. “It will scour the chloral hydrate from your blood. So, Mr. Lee, why don’t you explain to me why you have acted in this disgusting and uncivilized manner?“
“As Mr. Gun told you, a precious item has been stolen. We Chinese are far from our homes and so we cling closely to one another, building Chinatown to satisfy all our needs. But these stones do not warm our spirit. For that we have Zu Guo, the Heavenly Pearl, a piece of our Celestial Kingdom transported here at great price. Gazing upon Zu Guo, oil is poured on the troubled waters of our hearts. For Chinese, it is a precious memory of our homeland. It belongs to no man. But now the Hip Sing Tong has stolen it.”
“And you On Leongs wish to steal it back,” I said.
“You misunderstand,” said Tom Lee. “We do not want Zu Guo for ourselves, it will be restored to the Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association who must remain above this conflict. If they antagonize the Hip Sings they undermine their neutrality, so they turn to us for aid. But if we On Leongs go looking for Zu Guo in Hip Sing houses, then it will incite them to violence and all of Chinatown will weep.”
“But us, being white men, have immunity,” Augustus finished calmly. “Chinese will kill Chinese without a second thought, for life is cheap in your land. But they will not lay a hand on the white man for they fear our laws. It’s a cunning gambit, Old Tom Lee, but you overlook one important detail. Why should I help you? I am a man of science, devoted to the study of that which is termed the supernatural. I am not interested in your trinket.”
“Then you misunderstand the nature of Zu Guo,” Tom Lee said. “It is a treasure passed down from mother to daughter for many centuries, smuggled out of China and into your country at great peril by four men who killed themselves when they reached these shores, for they could not live even a minute without it after spending so long in its presence. It kindles both great peace and great longing in a man’s heart. I will allow you to study this object for three days and three nights if you recover it for the Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association. Cigar?“
Dead Leprechauns & Devil Cats Page 5