Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  I am a man of great intellect, he told himself, repeatedly. I am a diehard enemy of evil. How can I be such a stupid wreck of a human being?

  He would have sworn on the Bible, sincerely, that he had not slept for an instant–but he had closed his eyes in the attempt to rest, and he must also have muffled his ears, else he would surely have heard the door of his room open and close. How else could he explain the fact that he had no inkling that anything was wrong until the point of a rapier actually touched his throat?

  “Be still, Mr. Temple,” a voice advised him. “I am very anxious not to hurt you.”

  A phosphorus match spluttered then, and a flame lit up. It was applied to the candle on his night-stand, which lit in its turn.”

  “A miracle of scientific enlightenment,” John Devil commented, as he blew out the match. “So much more effective than flint and German tinder. We are living in exciting times, Mr. Temple, when anything and everything seems possible.” He looked around the room as he spoke; although he said nothing, Temple knew what he must be thinking: that this was a direly shabby apartment for a man who had once lived in a good house, with a wife and daughter and servants.

  Temple could not raise his head from his pillow without endangering his throat. “If you are so very anxious not to hurt me, John Devil,” he said, bitterly, “why do you come into my room with a naked blade?”

  “Because I am equally anxious to ensure that you do not hurt me, Mr. Temple. I did not shoot you when I held a gun to your head at Greenhithe, even when you refused to obey my instructions. I’m not so sure that you’d have done me the same courtesy, had the roles been reversed. I need you to sit quietly for a little while, so that I can explain to you why we must make a truce–and more than that, become allies for a little while.”

  “Because of the challenge of the dead-alive?” Temple said, with a sneer. “The protectors of His Majesty’s government do not need your advice to make policy on that issue.”

  “I am not even certain that this concerns the dead-alive, Mr. Temple–although it would be a bizarre coincidence if it did not. I am certain, however, that it does not concern your stupid secret police. This is personal, Mr. Temple. Will you read this letter, please?”

  John Devil, who was not wearing his Quaker hat, held out a single sheet of paper, folded in two. Temple took it. It was not until he had opened it and read the name of the addressee and the signature that the blond man withdrew the point of the rapier, allowing Temple to raise his head.

  Temple was able to look his persecutor in the face then–and was astonished to see that the handsome features were contorted by anxiety and dread. When John Devil had been James Davy, he had occasionally feigned anxiety, but dread had seemed to be beyond his emotional range, even then.

  There was a pistol in the drawer of the night-stand, but Temple made no attempt to reach for it. The letter was addressed to “My Dear Ned”, and it was signed “Suzanne”–in the context of his recent delirium, those words seemed unusually pregnant with horror and distress. Temple blinked twice to clear his eyes, and then he read the body of the letter.

  My dear Ned, the letter said. We are in desperate trouble, and we need your help. We also need my father’s help, if he is alive and sane and willing to offer it. I do not know whether you will know how to find him, or whether he will see you if you go to him, but I beg you with all my heart to try. My darling Richard–my son, that is–has been kidnapped from the garden at the Château de Belcamp, and two younger children with him: Jeanne’s son, and the son of Sarah, Countess Boehm. Since Count Boehm’s death, Sarah has returned to live at the new château, and the children very often play together; they were all playing in the garden this morning, watched over by their nurse and Pierre Louchet, when a number of armed men wearing masks came in and took them away. Pierre tried to stop them, but was struck down–he is not badly hurt, thankfully, save for his pride. One of the masked men told the nurse that we should gather gold to pay a ransom, that we would be given instructions for its delivery in due course, and that we must not contact the police. No communication has come as yet, but Jeanne and Sarah are both making efforts to assemble as much gold as they can. We do not know how large the demand will be. We dare not contact the Prefecture of Police in Paris, but we desperately need the advice of someone who knows about such matters. If you can get this letter to my father, I beg you to do so. Please try as hard as you can. Your loyal friend, Suzanne.

  Temple looked up at John Devil, feeling the wrath build inside him. “How do you come to have this letter, Monsieur de Belcamp?” he asked, seething with anger.

  “Because Ned brought it to me,” John Devil replied, “and entrusted it to me so that I might bring it to you, while he set off for the château without delay. You will understand the logic of the situation, of course–had he brought it to you first, you would not have known where to find me, even if you had consented to show it to me.”

  “So far as any of the mothers knows,” Temple said, sourly, “neither one of us is alive, else they would doubtless have written to us directly. Are you prepared to let your wife know, now, that she is not a widow after all?”

  “She is a widow,” John Devil said. “But we have learned of late that the dead can no longer be relied on to be as quiet as they used to be. Dead or not, I will help my son if I can, just as you will help your grandson. Together, Mr. Temple, we might be a force to be reckoned with. We are allies in this, whether it pleases us or not, and we must put our differences aside.”

  Temple let the sheet of paper fall on to the coverlet. He did not doubt that his own features were contorted, probably more hideously than his interlocutor’s “Is Mortdieu behind this?” he demanded, hoarsely. “Is he trying to raise funds to defend his empire of the dead-alive?”

  “It’s possible, but not likely. He cannot be everywhere at once, and he needed all his forces to destroy the Prometheus and steal my apparatus. It might well be someone else anxious to acquire the secret in a hurry, who imagines that I know even more than I do–but we must not neglect the possibility that this is the work of perfectly ordinary men possessed of a perfectly ordinary greed.”

  “Jeanne and Sarah Boehm are both rich,” Temple said, thoughtfully. “Either of their children might have been a prime target–to catch both at once would be a rare coup for any gang of kidnappers. It’s a pity, though, that my poor grandson should chance to be with them when they were seized. Suzanne and Richard haven’t a farthing, alas–I don’t know what their exact status is at the Château de Belcamp, but they must be servants in all but name. Friedrich Boehm told me once that he was mixed up with a relic of the vehmgerichte–might this be an extension of the feud that killed his brothers, and would doubtless have procured his own assassination had he not been condemned to death by tuberculosis?”

  “It’s possible,” John Devil repeated, “but again, not likely. I knew several self-styled knights of the vehm when I was studying in Germany, although I was not supposed to be privy to their secret lives. They all prided themselves on being men of strict honor, and even though there was a measure of self-delusion in their pose, I doubt they’d stoop so low as to imitate Corsican bandits.”

  “Corsican, you say? Do you suspect the Veste Nere then? It’s rumoured that a nest of them has lately taken up residence in Paris.”

  The former James Davy smiled, grimly. “I believe that it was me who whispered that rumor in your ear, in happier times,” he said. “And it was Tom Brown who whispered it in James Davy’s. Again, it’s possible–but not likely. We’re wasting time, Mr. Temple. We have plans to make, and must be under way by dawn. We have a long journey ahead of us. I did it once in less than a day, when I was Percy Balcomb, but I had to make careful preparations. We’ll be lucky to arrive in two–and I do not know whether or not to pray that nothing will happen before we do.”

  Temple caught the implication of that remark easily enough. If nothing happened until he and the late Comte de Belcamp arrived, that might
be because they were expected and awaited–in which case, the affair might be more complicated than any simple demand for ransom. He looked down at the letter again.

  John Devil anticipated his question. “The messenger who brought it came with all possible speed,” he said, “but it required 48 hours to get it into Ned Knob’s hands. There is every possibility that the man was followed, and it is not impossible that the letter itself has been read. Ned says that he was not followed when he brought it to me, and he is usually trustworthy in such matters, but your intervention might be expected. For that reason, we must make our way to Dover separately–you must take the early morning coach from the Post Office–and we must be careful aboard the packet-boat. I dared not take the risk of our being unable to obtain a seat on the mail-coach from Calais to Paris, so I instructed Ned to reserve two when he passed through, in the names of Gideon Markwick and Henri Moreau–you are, of course, Markwick, and I have taken the liberty of making up false papers in that name.”

  John Devil took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and threw them on to the coverlet beside the abandoned letter, but he did not pause in his discourse longer than was needed to draw breath. “If you are followed,” he went on, “they are bound to suspect that we are traveling together, even if we do not speak to one another–but that will not matter, provided that we are discreet. In Paris, we will separate. I will slip away from anyone who follows me, while you need take no such precaution in going on to Miremont. What you do when you get there will depend on the situation you find; I will contact you as and when I can, but you may be sure that I shall be busy. Given your status, you might be tempted to make contact with the Prefecture of Police in Paris, but I assure you that such a move can only make matters worse–Monsieur Vidocq’s so-called Sûreté would be far more interested in the gold than the children, and we undoubtedly have enough enemies to deal with already.”

  “By what right do you expect me to follow your orders meekly?” Temple demanded.

  “We have set that game aside, Mr. Temple. We are united now, while we have a common purpose. I have had a little time to think about this; you have not. I have applied the same reasoning to the problem as you would yourself, and we must both follow its dictates. You must get dressed now, and pack in haste. You must be at the Post Office in time to catch that coach–and if you must travel on top, at the risk of freezing to death, you must do it. I must go now, to complete my own arrangements. I shall see you on the packet-boat, but if we find an opportunity to talk during the crossing, we must be very careful.”

  John Devil did not prolong his farewell. He opened and closed Temple’s bedroom door as quietly as he must have done when he came in, and Temple could not help envying the steadiness and delicacy of his enemy’s hand. He got dressed as rapidly as he could, and then packed a bag. The first thing he put in it was his revolver. He hesitated over his makeup kit, but left it aside; his own face was no longer as recognizable as it had been four years ago, and no one in Calais was likely to challenge the supposition that he was Gideon Markwick, provided that the papers made out in that name were in order.

  He checked the sheets of paper that John Devil had casually thrown on the bed, and found them to be as expertly forged as the stock of false identities he maintained on his own behalf. He tried to find some consolation in the thought that this was one name John Devil would never have the opportunity to adopt for himself.

  He managed to find a cab to take him to the Post Office, and got there in time to buy a ticket for the coach. Had it been high summer, he would not have been able to obtain a seat so shortly before departure even on the rotunda, but it was November, and he was able to secure an inside berth. Fortunately, the roads had not yet been so badly churned-up by autumnal rains as to cause any substantial delay en route; he was reasonably confident that he would arrive in time to catch the packet-boat.

  It was during the few minutes that he had to wait before the coach’s departure that it struck Temple, with forceful impact, that he would be forced to confront his daughter, and all the bitterness that had somehow accumulated between them. He not only had an excuse for doing so, but a golden opportunity to make amends. Compared with that, the necessity of calling a truce in his eternal feud with John Devil seemed far less important than it might have.

  But what if I fail? Temple thought, as the vehicle drew away, its harness jangling. What if I fail?

  It was not warm, even inside the vehicle, and Temple kept his overcoat buttoned to the neck and his scarf wound tight. He pulled his old felt hat down so that the lining protected the tips of his ears while the scarf warmed the lobes, even though he knew that the combination must make him look as furtive and sinister as any chapbook villain. None of the other passengers did anything different, even though two of them appeared to be the kind of dandy who would normally place the priorities of appearance far above those of comfort. The others were all men of business–as might be expected given the season.

  By the time they had reached Dartford, Temple had ascertained that the apparent dandies were, in fact, literary men rather than true gentlemen, following the sartorial example of Lord Byron as best they could on a meager budget. They were speaking in low tones because there appeared to be some dispute between them, regarding an item of fiction one of them–or perhaps his wife–had published anonymously, based on a manuscript provided by the other. There was mention of the North-West Passage and a ship becalmed in ice, and some unusually-vituperative discussion of the necessity of providing an aesthetically-satisfactory ending in a published story, even if it required some bending of the truth. Temple tried as hard as he could not to listen, so that he could concentrate on more urgent matters.

  It was even easier to ignore the desultory conversation of the businessmen, who felt compelled to maintain near-silence apart from a desultory flow of conventional inquiries, acknowledgements and apologies, even though some of them clearly knew one another by sight. Thirty years before, it was rumored, mail-coaches had been rich sources of wit and gossip, but that was before the etiquette of English travel had been brought to its full maturity. Things might have been different had there been one or more ladies aboard, but there was no cause for effusive gallantry here, and Temple judged that he was not the only one grateful for the fact.

  Temple did not even attempt to sleep, in spite of his success in shutting out his surroundings because he needed to catch up with the reasoning that had put him on the coach. By the time he reached Dover, he had to be sure that John Devil was no longer one step ahead of him in matters of calculation.

  In his days as a detective at Scotland Yard, Temple had been involved in more than a dozen kidnapping cases, and had been the senior officer on more than half of them. The tactics of handling such cases were always the same; the first priority was to secure the release of the victim, even if that meant paying a ransom–but every effort was made to follow the kidnappers from the point at which they collected the ransom, with a view to recovering it as soon as possible and apprehending the guilty parties. Sometimes, the bandits were captured; sometimes they got away. More often than not the victim was returned unharmed, but in the minority of cases...

  This case would not be an easy one to manage, Temple knew, because it would be on foreign ground. Although he had played the part of Comte Henri de Belcamp more assiduously than any other, John Devil had probably spent less time at the château than Temple had, as a guest of the late Marquis, so it was unfamiliar territory to him too. On the other hand, John Devil might have forces to draw upon in Paris, and it appeared that Pierre Louchet, who had lived most of his life in the forest near Miremont, was now part of the Comtesse de Belcamp’s household staff. Then, there was Ned Knob, who seemed to have grown devilishly clever as well as devilishly bold since he had been recruited to Tom Brown’s gang four years before, and Richard Thompson, who had shown promise as a detective when he had been in Scotland Yard’s employ. When he arrived at the château, he would not be entirely without resou
rces–but everything would depend on the timing of the ransom demand and the instructions it contained.

  If the kidnap had taken place three days ago, Temple reasoned, then the mysterious General Mortdieu, the would-be emperor of the dead-alive, could not possibly have been directly involved. He had been in London, planning and executing a very different criminal project. Nor could the masked men who had carried out the abduction have been grey men, else their condition would have been noticed by Louchet or the nurse. On the other hand, the coincidence of timing was so striking that it was difficult to believe that there was no connection at all between the parallel events in Miremont and London. How long, he wondered, had John Devil and Germain Patou been in London? More to the point, how long had they been working in Portugal before that? How had the two of them acquired the secret of resurrecting the dead? How many other people knew that secret, or knew that there was a secret?

  The last question, he decided, was the vital one. Mortdieu had known that Patou and John Devil could resurrect the dead because they had resurrected him. At the house in Purfleet and aboard the Prometheus, they must have had at least 40 hirelings, many of whom must have known what their business was and all of whom would have been able to find out without taking overmuch trouble–and to that number would have to be added Jack Hanrahan and the other body-snatchers who supplied their raw materials.

  Even if Patou and John Devil were the only two who knew what the secret was, there must be dozens, if not hundreds, of people who knew that they possessed it. One of the reasons that Mortdieu had been so desperate to make his own play was he knew full well that time was of the essence. There might be only a handful of men apart from Patou and John Devil who knew how to bring the dead back to life, but there must be many more who were determined to possess the secret with all possible speed.

  On the other hand, Temple thought, anyone who believed that kidnapping the Comtesse de Belcamp’s son might provide a way to acquire the secret of resurrection would have to know that the man who had it was, in fact, the Comte de Belcamp–and even Jeanne de Belcamp did not know that her husband was alive, let alone that he had somehow acquired the secret of a strange immortality. Was it not far more likely that Jeanne’s own fortune, which was no secret at all, had been a lure attracting common criminals? Would not that natural magnetism have been redoubled by the fact that Sarah Boehm, whose inheritance must also be common knowledge, had recently moved into the new château, literally next door, with a child of almost exactly the same age as Jeanne’s?