“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about handling yourself,” his manservant muttered.
“That will be all,” his employer repeated reproachfully, and shut the door of the automobile.
The note of its engine a near-silent, pleasing purr, the Silver Phantom pulled away from the kerb and drove off into the encroaching night.
Nothing about the exterior of the building gave any impression as to what it was, much like the Inferno Club that Ulysses had occasionally frequented in the past. But, much like the Inferno Club, it didn’t need to advertise what it was, as everybody who was anybody already knew.
Ulysses adjusted his emerald green silk cravat, re-securing the diamond pin and then, cane in hand, he strode up to the door. He rapped on the portal three times with the bloodstone tip of his cane.
Some moments passed before the door was opened by a burly bald ogre, who looked like he had a brick outhouse somewhere in his ancestry. He was dressed in a penguin suit that was straining to contain his barrel chest and bulging arms, and he had disconcertingly pink eyes. The albino stared down at Ulysses, a gormless idiot expression on his face.
“Ah, Mr White, how’ve you been keeping?”
The giant albino stared at him dumbly.
“It’s Quicksilver, old boy. Ulysses Quicksilver. Run along and tell...” – he suddenly faltered, faced with the silent giant’s lack of a response – “or whatever it is you do... Anyway, let the Queenpin know that I’m here, will you?”
The giant stepped back from where he had been effectively barricading the door with his bulk, admitting Ulysses to the small lobby, closing the front door after him before stepping through another door, leaving Ulysses alone in the gloomy vestibule. He had been gone for less than a minute when he returned and allowed Ulysses to pass into the house itself, without ever speaking a word.
Ulysses was immediately greeted by a sight that he hadn’t enjoyed in a long time, since before he ever set off across Asia in pursuit of the kingpin of the Opium trade in London, the villain known as the Black Mamba – the Queen of Hearts’ own Temple of Venus
He had entered an opulently dressed reception room – its walls papered with coral and cerise flocked wallpaper, bearing a grandly ornamented design – complete with Corinthian columns draped with extravagant velvet drapes.
It looked like a high-class tart’s boudoir, which was fitting, seeing as the place was home to the Queenpin of prostitution herself. And if a visitor to this House of Sin had any lingering doubts as to the nature of the business that took place at this exclusive address, the presence of the two scantily clad young women banished them immediately.
Ulysses felt a stirring in his loins that he had not enjoyed for a long time.
Each of the girls was young and lithe, their physiques tending towards voluptuous, with wide hips, narrow waists and swelling bosoms, all barely held in place by tightly-knotted corsets. They were heavily made-up, especially their lips and around the eyes, and the addition of stockings and suspender-belts only served to make them appear all the more appealing. Nothing, about their apparel, or lack of it, had been left to chance.
The only differences between the two, was that one was blonde and blue-eyed, the crimson of her underwear contrasting strongly with her natural colouring, and the other brunette, the electric blue of her own outfit a perfect contrast to the colour of her eyes, which were as rich and dark as chocolate. One was petite, the other long-limbed, one milky skinned, the other’s skin as warm and as dark as Jamaican Rum.
Almost all tastes were catered for within the Temple of Venus, although there were aspects of the world’s oldest profession that the Queenpin would not even countenance and which she punished with the lethal ferocity of a mother wronged.
“Good evening, sir,” the blonde girl said. “And what can we do for you?” She sidled up to him, making the most of all that Mother Nature had given her.
“I’m here to see Her Majesty,” Ulysses said, hardly looking her in the eye as he stared at her corset-enhanced cleavage.
“Her majesty?” the black girl echoed. “She doesn’t see just anyone, you know? She’s very particular. Has her ‘special’ clients,” she laid a hand on his shoulder as she pressed her body up against him.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Ulysses said, never once dropping his guard, keeping his hand firmly on his cane.
“Not that new,” the young temptress replied.
“Maybe not, but new enough.”
“If you’re looking for something sweet,” the buxom blonde said, sliding an arm around Ulysses waist, “I’m as sweet as sugar. All you need is one taste of these cherry lips.”
“Or would you prefer a little spice?” the other asked, drawing herself closer still.
In one fluid motion, she slid her hand from his shoulder, down his chest to the front of his tightening trousers.
“Oh, sir!” she suddenly gasped. “I do declare that you do. Or have you just slipped that stiff, hard cane of yours into your pocket?”
He took a moment to enjoy the sight of her taut body and high breasts.
“Maybe another time, eh, ladies? But, like I said, I’m here to see the boss.”
“Suit yourself,” the blonde said, turning and walking away, apparently losing interest in him, just like that.
“Her Maj is very particular about who she sees,” his dark-skinned temptress said, making no effort to hide her disgruntlement at being rebuffed.
Relaxing his body again, letting out his breath in a loud sigh of easing tension, Ulysses reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a leather card holder. He took out a calling card and handed it to the disgruntled whore.
“She’ll see me.”
Eliza looked down at the card disparagingly, attempting to feign disinterest. Then she looked back at Ulysses, giving him a sour smile. “Wait here. Mr White, keep an eye on this one.”
The two girls left the reception room, disappearing into the depths of the house, leaving Ulysses alone with the hulking albino. He threw the giant an uncomfortable grin but Mr White simply stared back at him with imbecilic disinterest.
He could hear music coming from somewhere within the house, the occasional chink of wineglasses, laughter and the high-pitched, affected laughter of girls. There was also the occasional masculine belly laugh as well as the barely audible grunts and screams of sexual abandon.
Some minutes later, the time delay suggesting that she hadn’t hurried back, the spurned Eliza returned.
“Follow me,” was all she would say. She fixed him with her deep-brown eyes, but there was no desire there now, only annoyance.
ELIZA LED ULYSSES along various corridors as they made their way through the house, up three flights of stairs, and across landings hung with portraits of the great mistresses – Lady Hamilton, Nell Gwynne, Madame de Pompadour and the like. They passed through rooms painted with eighteenth century pastoral scenes of shepherds and shepherdesses at play, and even one dressed to look like a Roman brothel, with erotic Pompeian frescoes on the faux-cracked plaster and containing semi-naked girls attending to a party of toga-clad, middle-aged men.
Finally they reached a set of cedar wood doors, the entrance to the inner sanctum of the mistress of the house.
The room was lit like much of the rest of the house, subtly, by latticed rosewood lanterns and yellow-flamed gas lamps. The Queen of Hearts was reclined on a chaise longe covered in cushions, when Ulysses was at last admitted to the room, as if she had been lying there posing for a portrait artist, appearing to be everything a prostitute was supposed to be.
She appeared demure, whilst at the same time dominating. She knew the Kama Sutra inside out and yet she could come across as coy as a sexually precocious sweet sixteen year-old.
She wore the scarlet dress as if it was an extension of her own body, another skin that she wore. It fitted her so well, making the most of the fine, carefully sculpted physique beneath, its bodice keeping her breasts high and firmly together, t
apering at the waist, only to flare again from the hips.
She lounged there with a deceptive, languid ease, carrying an air about her of a woman who was mistress of all she surveyed. Yes, she could afford to be choosy now; she was the Madame of this establishment, High Priestess of the Temple of Venus, but she also liked to keep her hand in. After all, she enjoyed her work.
She moved and part of the dress fell away, a long slash in the fabric revealing a supple, shapely leg up to the thigh. Ulysses felt his heart skip a beat.
Ulysses didn’t know if she was older or younger than him. She didn’t look any different from the last time he had set eyes on her over two years ago now. He certainly couldn’t tell by going on appearances and he thought it impolite to ask.
He gazed again upon her luxuriant dark hair – dark to the point of being almost black – which was swept back from her high cheekbones and arranged so that a few carefully placed tresses fell across her swan’s neck and teased at the mound of her breasts, which were also draped with a fine pearl necklace. And then there were those languid green eyes of her, locked behind long, alluring lashes. It was easy to see why so many men who spent a night in her company fell hopelessly in love with her and were never the same again.
She kept her seemingly half-closed, cat-like eyes on him for the whole time it took him to walk from the doorway into the middle of the room, barely blinking once. She had a relaxed air of expectation about her, as if she knew how she liked things to be done when a gentleman sought an audience with her. Ulysses noticed that she was toying with his calling card in her mesh-mittened hands. He paused, hat in his hands and bowed his head slightly.
“Ulysses Quicksilver, where have you been, my dear? I was worried some nubile well-heeled heiress had finally forced you into becoming respectable and that you’d gone and got married.”
“I was away for a while.”
“I heard,” she said, in a playfully chiding tone. But of course, she had. “But you’ve been back some months now and you haven’t been to see my girls once. I was beginning to worry that some frightful female had got you in the family way.”
“You know me better than that.”
The woman inclined her head, continuing to regard him with those penetrating emerald-green eyes. “Once I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure. How are you keeping?”
“Well,” Ulysses answered, almost too quickly.
“So why the appointment at the Daedalus Clinic?”
Ulysses almost blurted out “How do you know about that?” but answered his own question before vocalising it. Of course she knew. She made it her business to know. It was why he was here.
“It’s nothing... serious. Really. I’m quite well, thank you.”
The Queen of Hearts looked like she was about to cast scorn on his claims of good health but then also thought better of it, “I am pleased to hear it. And your visit here tonight? Wanting to give yourself a proper workout, are you? Put that legendary stamina of yours to the test?”
“No. Not tonight.”
“I suspected not,” the madam said, almost sounding disappointed. “So to business then. What really brings you here for the first time in nearly two years?”
“To business indeed. Actually, it’s funny that you should mention the clinic.”
“Funny? How?”
“Funny as in while I was there a man transformed into a giant cockroach. The police turned up – or at least they looked like Scotland Yard’s finest, only they were far too competent – and the poor bastard was carted away in an unmarked van. And I want to know where he was taken.”
The woman’s impassive expression didn’t even waver as Ulysses related his unbelievable tale, but then his line of work was not unknown to her.
“So you came to call on my services or, rather, my other service.”
“Where else would I come, but here?”
“You could have asked your bosses in Whitehall,” the Queen said, smiling cheekily back at him. “How’s your new boss settling in by the way?”
“Friend of yours is he?”
“Come now,” she said coyly, “what would little old me mean to a man of Lord De Wynter’s stature?”
“You’re Queenpin of London’s prostitutes and, as a result, you are mistress of the largest unofficial spy network in the city. You’re no doubt privy to changes in government policy before they’ve even been acted upon,” Ulysses growled. “Don’t give me all that His Coy Mistress claptrap,” his expression suddenly serious. “Have you heard anything?”
“About giant human-cockroaches?” she said with weary disinterest, although Ulysses knew that her mind would now be working like a Babbage Engine on overdrive, trying to recall any snippets of information that she was privy to, that might throw up links to something larger involving the Daedalus Clinic. “No, nothing. Why are you so interested?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested herself.
“Oh, you know, loose ends. Possibly some unfinished business,” he answered, making his own vague attempt at subterfuge. It was always the way with her; bluff and counter-bluff, always so guarded, especially when it came to anything about herself that lay beneath the public face she presented to London’s underworld, the city and its men of power.
Always playing her cards close to her chest; and she was good at it too. For a woman who daily and willingly, exposed everything to any number of men – and, rumour had it, women – very little was known about her. Ulysses didn’t even know her name, beyond her self-styled title of Queen of Hearts.
“I’ll look into it for you. Next time I’m enjoying a little pillow talk I’ll see what... comes up.”
“Thank you. That would be much appreciated.”
“And settlement of the bill?”
“I will make the usual arrangements.”
“Very good, very good.” She stretched languidly, looking even more cat-like as she did so. “I do so enjoy the little gifts you send me.” She said, sensuously fingering the pearls at her neck. “I was thinking of getting something else pierced, or perhaps a jewel for my navel, what do you think?” She suddenly pulled her dress up over her stomach, revealing the taut olive-skin of her flat tummy.
“Y-Yes.” Ulysses blushed, despite himself. “Why not? I’ll speak to my jewellers.”
“You’re sure I can’t persuade you to while away an hour or so in my company, now that you’re here?”
Ulysses paused before answering. “No, but thank you. Not tonight.” He was suddenly very aware of the ape arm hidden within the sleeve of his jacket, and even fancied he could feel his shoulder aching numbly.
“Very well then,” the Queen of Hearts sighed. “But come and see me and my girls again soon, won’t you?” she said, lifting a small brass bell from a table beside the chaise long and ringing it.
The door opened and the dark-skinned beauty Ulysses had met downstairs threw Ulysses an unimpressed look.
“Eliza will see you out. And don’t leave it so long between visits next time.”
“AH, SIR, YOU’RE back,” Nimrod said, stating the obvious but sounding happily surprised, as he answered the door to his master. The rumour of a smile creased his face as he peered over Ulysses’ shoulder at the steam-carriage chugging away along the Mayfair streets, back into the night.
“Not disappointed are you, Nimrod?” Ulysses said, grinning at his manservant.
“No, sir. Not at all. I mean, it is not for me to have an opinion on the matter,” the butler replied, having deftly regained his perfected attitude of haughty indifference.
“Good. Then pour me a cognac, would you? Courvoisier, if there still is some in the drinks cabinet.”
“Of course, sir.” Nimrod turned to go about fulfilling his master’s wishes, but as he did so he stretched out a hand, a crisp vellum envelope held between white-gloved thumb and forefinger. “This came for you while you were out.”
“Post!” Ulysses declared, taking the letter.
All that had been written on the front w
as one word: Quicksilver. Turning it over he saw that it had been sealed with a stamp of red wax, bearing the unmistakable – and some might say overly theatrical – impression of a capital letter Q with a question mark inside it. If felt surprisingly heavy. There was something chunky contained inside.
He hastily broke the seal, catching the heavy iron key that fell into his hand, and then proceeded to unfold the letter, reading it quickly, an expression of delighted curiosity on his face.
“Nimrod, better take a rain check on the brandy, I think. We’re going out again.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll warm up the Rolls.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Department Q
LEAVING MAYFAIR, NIMROD turned the Silver Phantom onto Park Lane and then along Constitution Hill, proceeding past both Green Park, to the left, and Buckingham Palace, to the right, before finally turning onto the Mall.
Ulysses stared out of the window, lost in his own thoughts; thoughts concerning the enigmatic Queen of Hearts, the metamorphosed wretch from the clinic, not to mention the doctor dead at the freak’s hands – or rather, at his mandibles – Doctor Doppelganger and recollections of the other de-evolved creatures he had encountered not eight months ago, particularly the lizard-cum-fishman he had fought beneath Waterloo station.
St James’s Palace lay to their left, St James’s Park to their right, shrouded in darkness now. The street lamps cast their stuttering yellow light across his thoughtful features.
The car passed beneath the Admiralty Arch, and the bronze of Her Majesty, commissioned by Queen Victoria along with the building to celebrate her 90th birthday, the statue showing her, as she had been, in her prime, before the creation of the esoteric life-support system that sustained her – or the Throne as it was more commonly known.
Nimrod turned the car into Trafalgar Square, the spot where Ulysses had first encountered the rogue Megasaur released from London Zoo in the aftermath of the Darwinian Dawn’s attack on the Overground Line. Trains click-clacked on their way along the aerial Bakerloo Line, Nelson’s column dwarfed by the railway’s supporting pillars. From there they moved onto the street of Whitehall itself. The last time Ulysses had taken this particular route through town, it had been on the back of a raging dinosaur.
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