“What do you make of this?” he asked.
“Leopards right enough,” I said. The pawprints were nowhere near large enough to have been produced by tigers, and tigers were far more solitary creatures. Groups of leopards were not unheard-of the way a group of tigers would have been.
“Leopards indeed, Mr. Williams. But it is their singular interest in these cart-tracks that I would like to hear your thoughts upon.”
“I have no thoughts on the matter, Sir. Unless it is to say that the creatures may be following wagons which are carrying something with an attractive scent.”
“Meat.”
“They are carnivores.”
Dr. Mystère nodded slowly. “And even a cargo of fruit is pulled and driven by beings of meat.” I could not help but shiver. “Let us get ready,” he said.
The slums petered out to small fields, and there were trees dotted both among the fields and even between the smaller shacks and shanty buildings. As the Moon was near the full, Dr. Mystère and I determined to sit up in trees at night, and sent Cigale on to our lodgings to make the necessary preparations.
Cigale quickly and efficiently engaged some local men to erect two platforms in trees about half a mile apart. Round these nests we had hides formed of boughs with soft leaves, this to prevent any rustling or noise. Cigale brought two goats, which were tied with strong ropes some 15 yards from our hiding-places, in such positions that, as the full Moon reached its high point, they would remain clear of the shade. My tree was on the cart-road, that of Dr. Mystère was nearer the slum, both in open cultivated ground, but clear of crops.
The Lumières set up their cameras on the roof of a nearby temple building. I had no idea whether their cameras would even work in this kind of moonlight, but they themselves were too excited to be troubled by the issue.
It was about ten o’clock when I saw the first leopard come out from a tumbledown shack and stand in the clear moonlight not more than 100 yards from my tree. I was certain that he would come along the road and I should get a good shot right down his throat, when suddenly, another leopard came skylarking at him, and, with a playful growl, they both ran across and disappeared behind a rising ground. Dr. Mystère fired at once, and one of the leopards came bolting back towards my hide. I shot it between the eyes.
Nothing more happened for an hour, but neither of us descended from our positions, as I had discerned the tracks of many leopards in the area, not just a pair.
We had almost decided the night’s work was over, when suddenly, a black swarm poured out of the shanty huts and the ditches in the field. They were leopards, dozens of them!
I began to fire immediately. They were so densely packed that it was almost unnecessary to aim; any shot was bound to hit one. I fired and reloaded as quickly as I could, the barrel of the rifle becoming red hot in my hands. I could hear and see the shots from Dr. Mystère’s hide, matching mine in speed and accuracy.
Suddenly, something slammed into my back, throwing me to the floor of the hide. Damn me, it was another leopard. It had climbed up behind me and leapt into the hide! The strangest thing of all was that it seemed to be standing on its hind legs, upright like a half-cat half-man thing. Then its jaws were at my throat. I jammed the rifle into its mouth and fired.
I was now out of ammunition, but there were still two or three leopards trying to ascend to me. I hard more shots, and saw Cigale, with a rifle, potting leopards. Behind him, Dr. Mystère’s hide burst into bright flame, lighting up the ground below. Cigale turned to look at it, and a leopard leaped at him. I could only vault over the edge of my hide, and crashed into the beast’s powerful shoulders. I had no bullets left, but used my rifle as a club to crush its skull while it was stunned.
The sounds around us were terrifying–growls and roars, like those of a feral cat magnified to cyclopean proportions. Leopards were everywhere, and I was sure we were finished.
Then Dr. Mystère’s Colt Navys boomed rapidly. He too had run out of rifle ammunition, but the Colt Navy’s bullets were heavy enough to kill a leopard. He ran to cover us, spinning this way and that, shooting the ravenous creatures left and right until there was only one left.
And that was when that terrible silence impacted upon us.
The Leopard circled warily, its tail straight out behind it. Dr. Mystère carefully replaced his Colt Navys in their holsters, while Cigale reversed his rifle, ready to use it as a club as I had. Even with three of us, I had no desire to face such a creature as this leopard. Eventually, it reared, standing on two legs.
Dr. Mystère kicked it in the belly at once, and it curled up. We beat it to death. It is a terrible thing to do to such a magnificent animal, but it was our only true chance of survival. We all caught our breath, and Dr. Mystère eventually managed a savage grin. “Only one beast left, Williams. The worst of them.”
He led us through the shanty town, following the densest sets of leopard packs back to their source, which proved to be a boarded-up Christian church. We stepped into the shadows. “Cigale, if you please?” Cigale nodded, and produced, of all things, a stick of dynamite from his pocket. He affixed it to the door and lit it.
The door was blown in with a loud bang, and we piled through. I had no idea what I expected to find, and could only hope that Dr. Mystère did. I most certainly did not expect to find a blood-slicked statue of Kali, festooned with the leopards’ table-leavings, and the rough-looking man from the wedding holding a sword. Dutt attacked at once, and Cigale and I tried to fend him off with our rifle-butts. Dr. Mystère had no such weapon, and, I suspect, had no real need of one. Using some form of Eastern Boxing, he neatly disarmed the man, and ran him through with his own sword. Only then did he relax, and let the mix of elation and despair that comes with the end of battle wash over him.
“I suspected as much when I saw this man Dutt at the wedding,” he said. “He had trained the beasts to attack people, and starved them to make them more vicious.”
“But why the wedding party?” I asked. Wagons I could understand; there have been robbers as long as there have been people.
“Politics. The groom and his family are friendly to France and hostile to Russia. Foreigners hire these old survivors of the Thuggee cult to do their dirty work in India. Believe me,” he said. “I know.”
And that’s about the size of it, old chap. The Lumières and Dr. Mystère have continued on their world tour, and I wish them all well. I can’t help wondering whether the brothers indeed managed to make a moving picture of our adventure. If so, the people who fled the moving image of a train will probably want to lynch them. I cannot for the life of me imagine that people would want to see such things for mere entertainment, especially here in India. Never in a million years.
Like Win Scott Eckert, Brad Mengel (our first Australian author!) chose 1946 Paris as his stage; a post-war Paris transformed by the Cold War into a shadowy world of espionage, a city of Folies Bergères and murderous back alleys where East meets West, a theater of femmes fatales, secret agents and desperate interlopers. Smell the Gauloises and hear the sound of the blues as we enter the smoke-filled rooms of one of the City of Light’s best-known cabarets…
Brad Mengel: All’s Fair...
Paris, 1946
Pigalle sang like an angel and had a body to match. Admirers flocked to the backstage of the Picratt’s in Montmartre where she sang to mostly male audiences. No one in Paris could compare to her beauty. Some admirers were there to just be a little closer to the raven-haired siren. Others, if they were lucky enough to catch the eye of this goddess, were granted an audience.
James was lucky enough to catch her eye this night. Pigalle didn’t know what it was that caught her eye; the Naval Commander was certainly handsome but so were many other of her admirers. Perhaps it was the cruelty she saw in his eyes, or the scar on his cheek which lent him the air of a pirate. Whatever it was, many had fallen for it before and most likely many more would fall for it in the future.
Pigalle dispa
tched her current “husband,” Maurice Champot, a.k.a. La Grammaire, to invite the dashing Commander to dinner with her. La Grammaire was currently trafficking in information, often blurted out on his wife’s satin sheets, and looked upon Commander Bond merely as a juicy morsel. He returned with the news that the dashing Englishman would be delighted to join his wife for supper–and a reminder that she had already made other plans...
Frédéric-Jean Orth was waiting in the bar where he had arranged to meet Pigalle the night before. As L’Ombre, he had recently been all too busy avoiding the attentions of Commissaire Voisin and a night on the town with a pretty companion was a welcome diversion.
Whilst waiting for his date, he had struck up a conversation with a wealthy Louisiana planter, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath. Orth liked Americans; they were always full of energy and filled with hope. Young Hubert was no different. They spent a pleasant hour discussing President de Gaulle’s resignation and the first meeting of the U.N. Then, Hubert explained he had a previous engagement and insisted on paying for the drinks.
Orth smiled as he watched the young American leave. It was then that Maurice arrived and advised him that Pigalle sent her regrets.
Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath was under no illusions about Maurice La Grammaire. He knew the man pimped out his wife to compromise wealthy Americans who, later, could be blackmailed by his Soviet paymasters. His own boss at the OSS had briefed him adequately, before sending him into Pigalle’s arms. After all, two could play the game...
OSS 117 knocked eight times, then once, then three times at the discreet metal door in the alley behind the cabaret. Maurice opened the door.
“I’m here to see P’Gell,” the young American said.
“Of course you are,” said Maurice. “This way, please.”
Hubert’s sense of alarm alerted him a bit too late; he had already stepped halfway into the broom closet when he was shoved inside and he heard the door locked behind him.
L’Ombre laughed as he pulled off the wig, tore off the latex and wiped off the makeup that had enabled him to impersonate Maurice so convincingly. “Now à nous deux, my dear Pigalle,” he thought.
Orth crossed a small courtyard and stepped through the sortie des artistes door and into the bustling backstage area of the Picratt’s. But suddenly, he stopped. At the other end of the cabaret, he had just spotted his nemesis, Commissaire Voisin, accompanied by two Inspectors and the Manager.
“Our anonymous tipster said L’Ombre is here,” said the Policeman. “I want the place searched from top to bottom.”
Orth decided to forego the pleasures of a night with Pigalle and, almost blending in with the darkness, disappeared in the darkened alley.
James Bond smiled as he saw the adventurer beat a hasty retreat. L’Ombre was well-known to MI6, of course, and as soon as he had spotted him, he had taken steps to eliminate the competition. A quick phone call to the Police Judiciaire had produced the anticipated visit by the uniformed men which had sent the mysterious Mr. Orth (not even M knew his real name) packing.
The Commander proceeded towards Pigalle’s dressing room, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin under his arm, when he saw La Grammaire, rubbing a pronounced bump on the back of his head, amble towards him.
“Is Mademoiselle Pigalle in, Monsieur Champot?” asked Bond.
“Mais non, Commander Bond,” replied the Frenchman with a forlorn air. “She just left with the other gentleman, the one with the Jewel of Gizeh.”
Swearing under his breath, Bond burst through the door.
He was greeted by a note written in lipstick on the mirror of Pigalle’s dresser.
“All’s fair in love and war,” and it was signed with a haloed stick figure.
Writing something pithy about Michael Moorcock is like facing the Everest: a daunting challenge, to say the least. Philip José Farmer coined the Wold Newton concept, but Moorcock gave us the Multiverse. His signature character, Elric, has met his eternal counterparts, Erekose and Corum, at the Vanishing Tower, Conan the Barbarian in the pages of Marvel Comics, and even Roland, the hero of the Chanson de Geste, in Stormbringer. Jerry Cornelius and the fantastic Una Persson have crossed literary boundaries, meeting other characters from comics and pulp fiction. It was the gifted Chris Roberson who happily suggested that Moorcock grace Tales of the Shadowmen with a story, and he has done so in a yarn in which a well-known albino crosses the path of several notorious French villains...
Michael Moorcock: The Affair of the Bassin des Hivers
Paris, 2006
I. Le Bassin des Hivers
Until the late part of the last century, the area known as Les Hivers, was notorious for its poverty, its narrow, filthy streets and the extraordinary number of crimes of passion recorded there. This district lay directly behind the famous Cirque d’Hiver, the winter circus, home to performing troupes who generally toured through the spring and summer months. Residents complained of the roaring of lions and tigers or the trumpeting of elephants at night, but the authorities were slow to act, given the nature of this part of the 11th arrondissement, whose inhabitants were not exactly influential.
The great canal, which brought produce to most of Paris, branched off from the Canal Saint Martin just below the Circus itself, to begin its journey underground. For many bargees, what they termed Le Bassin des Hivers was the end of their voyage and here they would rest before returning to their home ports with whatever goods they had purchased or traded. Surrounding the great basin leaned a number of wooden quays and jetties, together with warehouses and high-ceilinged halls where business had aways been done in gaslight or the semi-darkness created by huge arches and locks dividing the upper and the lower canal systems. The banks rose 30 meters or more, made of ancient stone, much of it re-used from Roman times, backing onto tall, windowless depositories built of tottering brick and timber. The Sun could gain no access here and, at night, the quays and markets were lit by gas or naphtha and only occasionally by electricity. Beside the cobbled canal paths flourished the cafés, brothels and cheap rooming houses, as well as the famous Bargees’ Mission and Church of Our Lady of the Waterways, operated since the 9th century by the pious and incorruptible White Friars. Like Alsatia, that area of London also administered by the Carmelites, it formed a secure sanctuary for all but habitual murderers.
The bargees not continuing under the city to the coast, and even to Britain, concluded their voyages here, having brought their cargoes from Nantes, Lyon or Marseille. Others came from the Low Countries, Scandinavia and Prussia, while those barge-folk regarded as the cream of their race had sailed waterways connecting the French capital with Moscow, Istanbul or the Italian Republics. The English bargees, with their heavy, red-sailed, ocean-going boats, came to sell their own goods, mostly Sheffield steel and pottery, and buy French wine and cheese for which there was always a healthy market in their chilly nation, chronically starved of food and drink fit for human consumption. It was common for altercations and fights to break out between the various nationalities and more than one would end with a mortal knife wound.
And so, for centuries, few respectable Parisians ever ventured into Les Hivers and those who did so rarely returned in their original condition. Even the Police patrolled the serpentine streets by wagon or, armed with carbines, in threes and fours. They dared not venture far into the system of underground waterways known collectively as the Styx. Taxi drivers, unless offered a substantial commission, would not go into Les Hivers at all, but would drop passengers off in the Boulevard du Temple, close to the permanent hippodrome, always covered in vivid posters, in summer or winter. The drivers claimed that their automobile’s batteries could not be recharged in that primitive place.
Only as the barge trade slowly gave way to more rapid commercial traffic, such as the electric railways and mighty aerial freighters, which began to cross the whole of Europe and even as far as America, Africa and the Orient, did the area become settled by the sons and daughters of the middle classes, by writer
s and artists, by well-to-do North Africans, Vietnamese, homosexuals and others who found the rest of Paris either too expensive or too unwelcoming. And, as these things will go, the friends of the pioneering bohemians came quickly to realize that the district was no longer as dangerous as its reputation suggested. They could sell their apartments in more expensive districts and buy something much cheaper in Les Hivers. Warehouses were converted into homes and shops and the quays and jetties began to house quaint restaurants and coffee houses. Some of the least stable buildings were torn down to admit a certain amount of sunlight.
By the 1990s, the transformation was complete and few of the original inhabitants could afford to live there any longer. The district became positively fashionable until it is the place we know today, full of bookshops, little cinemas, art-suppliers, expensive bistros, cafes and exclusive hotels. The animals are now housed where they will not disturb the residents and customers.
By the time Michel Houlebecq moved there in 1996, the transformation was complete. He declared the area “a meeting place of deep realities and metaphysical resonances.” Though a few barge people still brought their goods to Les Hivers, these were unloaded onto trucks or supplied a marché biologique to rival that of Boulevard Raspail and only the very desperate still plied the dark, subterranean waterways for which no adequate maps had ever existed. The barge folk continued to be as clannish as always. Their secrets were passed down from one family member to another.
Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre Page 20