by Kim Newman
The Terrorists were not the only faction raiding their treasury to buy into the ‘sure thing’. Perry Bennett and Raymond Owen passed by, heaving large suitcases she guessed were filled with dollars siphoned from orphans’ trust funds.
Madame Sara and Dr Quartz queued for boards, in matching society-fools-on-a-spree disguises. They seemed to have clicked last night, which contradicted gossip about the Madame’s amorous proclivities among her own sex. It could be that the pair merely had a great deal in common, specifically shared interests in human vivisection and unusual medical procedures.
Outside the Casino, among the crowds drawn to bright lights, they breathed again. Elizabeth dropped Jacob Epstein. She shook out the hair that had been pinned up under her hat and was her own blank self.
The next moves were down to the bird girl.
A well-dressed, vacant-looking Englishman – half-eaten Vril Grill in one hand and sticky sauce on his chin – bumped into Gilberte. He gabbled an apology and then clapped eyes on Elizabeth.
‘Eliza,’ he gasped, astounded.
‘Stone the bloody crows!’ Elizabeth responded, in an unfamiliar voice.
For the first time, Gilberte saw a real expression on Elizabeth’s face. Something close to terror, with an overlay of exasperation.
‘Madame Lachaille,’ she said, recovering her usual poise, ‘permit me to present my husband, Freddy Eynsford Hill.’
‘Pleased to meet you, eh what, Madame. Did you know you had face-fluff stuck on your lip? Playin’ charades, I suppose. Anythin’ to pass the time. Rum do, this. I was just wonderin’ where the old ball and chain had got to, and up she pops, large as life and twice as bouncy. Eh what, indeed! Don’t suppose you fillies’d like to take a spin round the old gamblin’ establishment? I’ve got a feelin’ in me nose that this is my lucky night.’
Freddy was plainly an idiot. Handsome, well-mannered, mildly amusing – but an idiot nevertheless. From the cradle, Gilberte had been warned against falling in love with – let alone marrying – such a sorry specimen. Referring to his wife, Freddy had used the English colloquialism ‘ball and chain’, but she was the one shackled to a frightful encumbrance. Gilberte wondered how Elizabeth had got stuck with such a blithering disaster. Then again, her own marriage hadn’t turned out as well as expected.
Freddy made a move to kiss his wife in a proprietary manner. She applied her fingertips to his neck and the dull light in his eyes went out.
Now, Elizabeth was supporting a deadweight.
‘I saw a Tibetan mystic do that once. I don’t know how it works, but Erik does. Freddy will be asleep for an hour or so. Help me dump him somewhere he won’t get robbed or hurt.’
Gilberte took an arm. They carried Freddy through the crowds.
‘Lost the family fortune following a seven with a queen,’ explained Elizabeth to anyone who paid attention. ‘Paralysed by shock, poor fellow.’
There were tuts of sympathy.
VIII
RIMA CARRIED HER clock within her breast. Inside her rigid cocoon, she counted her heartbeats.
The gentle, arrhythmic drumming – and the other pulses of her body – were like the small, living sounds of the jungle. In her mind, all was green and warm and wet and dangerous.
She had no concept of regret, and so did not miss her native land. Bad things had happened there. Fire, death, pain. Others thought her dead. She knew not whether they were wrong. She might be a ghost. The cruel people had always called her spirit, demon, daughter of the Didi.
How she came here, to these new jungles, did not matter.
She thought of what she must do now, not what was gone.
Rima would do anything for Erik. If she were a ghost, he was Lord of Ghost-Kind. The others were the same, though they might not know it. Eliza and Gigi, from different jungles, were Rima’s heart-sisters. Mirror-selves, summoned up from still, reflecting pools.
When the Phantom played music for Rima, it was like a thunderstorm, a waterfall, a thousand birds singing in joy and terror. It was worth the crossing of a great ocean, wider than any bird could fly, to hear him play. The cruel people made thin songs, with flutes like twigs. Erik poured music through pipes tall as trees.
Twenty-five thousand heartbeats. Enough time had passed.
She stopped counting and opened her eyes. Through slits in the mask-piece she saw the room. A crowd of other statues. Paintings piled against the walls.
She flexed thin, strong shoulders and arms, straining against her second skin of wire, plaster and paint. Seams split, the shell sundered. She hatched like a chick. Her arms broke free. She pulled the plates over her chest and face apart. Wriggling out of the statue, she found the room empty of people.
Careful to make no noise, she stepped off her plinth. Her former shell was exploded and hollow.
Rima, free after confinement, danced, rejoicing as feeling returned to her limbs. She wore only her shift and a leather belt. In its pouches were tools. She had been instructed in the use of some items by the Persian. Other implements she was skilled with of old.
A thick carpet was folded away from a closed metal hatch. A heavy padlock sealed it shut. This too held a volunteer prisoner. She set to work with lock-picks. Her fingers were deft. Soon, the padlock was sprung and set to one side. Silently, she lifted the trapdoor.
She found what she expected. A thin perpendicular shaft like the inside of a hollow tree, with rungs set in its side. Twenty feet down, another hatch. Beyond that, the Bad Little Man.
Rima had experience with his kind. Cruel people, who set cunning snares that broke necks. Birds knew to fly away when they were near.
She twisted her hair out of her face and tied it in a knot, then crawled into the hole. She made her way downwards, rung by rung, gripping fast with supple toes. If needs be, she could hang by her feet. About halfway down, she heard noise. Voices, the clatter of many small objects, distorted music. She had passed through the floor, and was in a branch dangling into the great room. At the end of it was the Bad Little Man’s nest.
Stout chains hung taut around her, taking the nest’s weight. Thick, rubber-coated vines carried the magic lightning.
Rima eased through the narrowing space.
Her face hung over the second hatch, which had a glass window.
She saw the top of the Bad Little Man’s head. His thinning black hair was oiled, but white stripes of his scalp showed through. His face was pressed to one of many sets of eyepieces. His hairy hands rested on an array of keys, stops, wheels and levers. The contraption was as intricate as the Phantom’s pipe organ.
Hooking her feet on a rung, she took a bundle from her belt, and laid it quietly by the hatch.
The Bad Little Man pulled his face away from the eyepieces. He crooked an ear like a cat, but did not look up.
Rima’s breath misted the pane inches above his head.
The Bad Little Man twisted on his chair, and pulled himself to another set of eyepieces. His chair was on wheels which fit to rails within his nest. He could turn like an owl and see in any direction.
Rima unrolled her bundle, which contained a cigarette holder. She fitted it into her mouth and got a grip with her teeth. The holder was stoppered with a tiny cork. The sliver inside rattled slightly.
This time, the Bad Little Man definitely heard her.
Rima reached for the hatch-handle and aimed her holder.
The Bad Little Man looked up. His face was young but withered, eyes black like caves.
She hauled open the hatch.
The Bad Little Man reached for a magazine pistol, but could not lift it in time.
With her thumb, Rima flipped the cork stopper. She spat out a quick breath.
The dart stuck into the Bad Little Man’s neck.
Angry eyes fixed on her, but he could not move. Rima knew he was awake in his skull, but his body would not respond. The dart was tipped in venom derived from the poison frog. She had brought a supply from the jungle.
She reached dow
n and twisted the pistol out of his nerveless grip. The gun dropped to the bottom of the nest, clattering into a chamber-pot.
The Bad Little Man’s eyes glowed with hatred. His locked teeth ground.
Now came the most difficult stretch. She had to extract the Bad Little Man from his nest and take his place on the wheeled seat. There was scarcely room for one person in this space, let alone two.
Rima hauled the Bad Little Man up by his shoulders. They were closer in the shaft than seeds in a pod. She wriggled, a new-born cuckoo tipping a heavy egg out of a nest or an ant juggling a weight many times its own with its legs. She forced the Bad Little Man’s body up as hers inched down. When he was completely above her and out of his nest, he was still a weight. She lifted him into the shaft, crooking his withered legs over a rung. She took off her belt and used it to tie him there, a fly left in a spider’s web for a later snack.
The Bad Little Man was strong-willed. He fought the frog-venom, face crimson, spittle on his lips. Inside, he roared with fury. But he was helpless. If he built another nest, it would be less pregnable. With traps for unwary ghost-girls, cuckoos or daughters of Didi.
Rima left him be and settled in his seat. She rolled it this way and that, enjoying the smooth motion. It was a comfortable nest, just her size.
She flexed her fingers and touched the keys. Now, with this building as an organ, she would play her own music.
She looked through a set of eyepieces. A distant view suddenly leaped up at her, close and vivid. She had used binoculars, and knew how they worked. She was seeing down into the big room below.
The Bad Fat Man stood by a long green table. Every other gentleman in the room wore black, but he shone in white.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘place your bets…’
Piles of tokens were assembled on a baize grid. The Bad Fat Man elbowed aside a thin croupier. He would personally start off the evening’s play. He bent over a miniature carousel. Rima knew this was a roulette wheel. The Bad Fat Man set the wheel spinning. An ivory ball jumped on the whirring carousel like an insect on fire.
Pinned to the giant keyboard in the nest was a chart. It listed numbers, odds, hands of cards and precise times. Beside the chart was a large white-faced clock. As the wheel spun in the casino below, the second hand shuddered.
Rima checked the numbers and times against those she had learned. She imagined her own chart laid over this one. She would play a different tune.
The roulette wheel slowed. The insect tired, close to death.
Rima’s hand darted out over a particular key, hovered for a few ticks, then pressed down.
The ball stopped in a compartment within the wheel.
‘Trente rouge,’ said the croupier. ‘Thirteen red. La maison gagne. The house wins…’
IX
‘THE HOUSE WINS…’
Gilberte had never seen a man more unhappy with a streak of good luck than Charles Foster Kane. Only Elizabeth – and perhaps a few croupiers – shared her insight. The casino staff continued to obey orders from the Eye-Ball, though.
Everyone else in the know remembered his plan – ‘early losses to build up the pot’. The pot was swollen, and growing. A lake of money pooled in the counting cellars beneath the main salon.
Many of the Most High Order favoured the roulette wheel. Dr Quartz, Madame Sara and Baron Maupertuis had laid fortunes on the baize, and seen their chips swept away. Several initiates had gone to the foyer when their initial outlay was seemingly – indeed, actually – squandered, and returned with freshly purchased boards.
‘The house wins again,’ said the chief croupier. Chips clattered in a chute, disappearing below. Monies poured down a plughole.
Natasha, Sir Dunston and Senator Paine, preferring baccarat, sat together. An expressionless, wired-up dealer spun cards from the shoe. Gilberte understood that, in addition to the Terrorists’ funds, Natasha was gambling with the Face’s money. He could hardly be expected to show his, ahem, mask in such company, but would not want to miss out on the evening’s profit.
Carne, Gurn and General Sternwood played five-card stud with Potter – who was gloatingly raking in chips he was supposed to lose later.
In an antechamber, Perry Bennett was bent over a hazard table, rattling dice. His peculiar hand was adapted to crapauds-shooting, but the bones were not falling his way. His friend Owen was betting heavily on the losing run coming to an end, playing the Martingale System – which, under the circumstances, was a sure way to wind up broke.
All around, takers were being took.
Elizabeth, calm again after the Freddy incident, steered Gilberte around the room. They were themselves this evening – Edda Van Heemstra and Irma Vep were mysteriously detained. At the moment, none of their co-conspirators minded the absences – more in the pot for everyone else. Later, when smoke cleared, their no-show act would be remembered. By then, the real Edda would be loose and likely in trouble. As for Irma, Gilberte assumed she’d dance away from blame as she had slipped out of every other trap set for her.
The influx of big money was, as Kane had said, ‘blood in the water’.
The salon stank with a hubbub of greed, fear, excitement and desperation. Usually, a casino came alive when a lucky or ingenious soul began to beat the house. Tonight was contrary. Gamblers rarely considered or cared about streaks if the house benefited. After all, odds were always with the house. But, tonight, a record might be set – the biggest single haul in a casino in an evening’s play.
Next year, revues and songs would commemorate ‘The Bank Who Broke the Men at Royale-les-Eaux’.
Elizabeth and Gilberte repaired to a side bar, to drink champagne and take the edge off all the excitement. This was where the professional gamblers, who knew by instinct that something was more amiss than usual, had retreated. Colonel Sebastian Moran, of London and India, and Bret Maverick, of Natchez and New Orleans, debated the presently standing record for a house win, and whether it was about to fall. The inveterate gaming fiends also remembered a macabre record for the number of casino-related suicides in a single night. The cynical Moran was willing to bet the death toll set at Mother Gin Sling’s in Shanghai on Chinese New Year’s in ’98 would be exceeded by dawn. The more optimistic Maverick considered taking the wager. Both were probably thinking of ways to put a ‘fix’ in.
Maverick caught Gilberte looking at them and raised a glass to her. She turned away from his alarmingly appealing smile, and thought of cool green beds of money.
Engineer Hattison, inventor of the cheating machine, was also at the bar, nursing ginger ale and radiating smugness. He also overheard Maverick and Moran, and offered stakes against the professional gamblers, claiming that at the end of the evening the house would be the loser, rattling off spurious mathematical piffle to justify his position. Gilberte saw Hattison was making a novice mistake by offering an apparent sucker bet. A more experienced confidence man set out bait and let the mark raise the notion of a wager. The Colonel withdrew from the conversation and returned to play. If there was a setup, he was determined to get in on the game and snare a portion of the free money he now believed was on offer. Maverick, however, had an acute sense of the way things were going and mildly took the engineer’s bet. Somehow, the Western gambler tumbled that a fix was supposed to be in but was actually off. Hattison threw a sheaf of his patents in to bulk up his meagre cash roll.
Elizabeth and Gilberte finished their drinks and returned to the salon.
Kane, on his podium with the small orchestra, was perspiring badly, and trying to catch Boltyn’s attention. His fellow millionaire wasn’t supposed to be in this phase of the game, but couldn’t resist trying to get one up. He sat by Natasha, matching the Queen of Terror’s bets and often laying a meaty hand over her delicate fingers in a manner which might well earn him a cut throat before the end of the night. Unless the girl was one of those queer ducks who rattle about revolution all day but secretly wish to spend the night being grossly pleasured by
a bloated plutocrat on silk sheets.
Gilberte looked up at the Eye-Ball. She tapped Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Faint cracks appeared in the plaster, damaging a 14th-century cathedral ceiling Kane had stuck up to add class to his gaming hell. Fine dust sifted through the cracks. The Eye-Ball’s moorings were precisely calibrated. Adding even Riolama’s meagre weight was a stress not calculated for in Hattison’s plans.
Lights on the globe flashed on and off.
Gilberte whistled silently in admiration. Riolama had mastered the system and was playing it like a virtuoso.
All around the room were cries of exasperation, complaint, despair.
Some of the Most High Order grew irritable, feeling they had fed the pot a little too much. It was time for the great Kane’s munificence to be made manifest. Others simply ached for their money back, and their promised money on top of it.
Kane could not make a scene without it becoming generally known that this whole casino was a giant trick. But he knew, even before Bret Maverick, that his crooked path had twisted against him. Finally, he slipped from the podium and waddled with an unaccustomed hurry towards the foyer. The staircase which led to the secure gallery above the Eye-Ball was still guarded. Voltaire stood at his position, suitably resolute, invisibly well-armed. Ironically, Riolama could not have got upstairs without his strength.
Casually, Gilberte and Elizabeth followed the magnate.
In the foyer, just as Kane was about to call out to Voltaire, they caught up with him and, with practised ease, took an arm apiece.
‘Oh, Mr Kane…’ said Elizabeth, musically.
‘Ladies,’ he said, not recognising them but not too far gone in panic to miss their appeal, ‘ordinarily, I’d be happy to escort you, but…’
‘We shan’t take refusal kindly,’ purred Gilberte. ‘This is a special occasion, and we claim you as our prize.’
‘We could dance all night,’ said Elizabeth, tugging on one arm.
‘Or drink champagne as if it had just been invented,’ said Gilberte, tugging on the other.