"Owen must have forgotten to turn off the bloody lights again," Professor Einstein complained. "Damned gas bills are going to bankrupt me. William Owen is a bright student and a good lad, but he has no sense of propriety."
"Indeed?"
"Well, he's Welsh, you know," the professor added, as if that explained the matter.
Looking over the museum, Carstairs dumbly nodded in agreement. The building was a single colossal room that stretched the length and breath of the property. The entire Explorers Club could have easily fit inside the cavernous structure!
Everywhere were rows of exhibit cases and display racks of a thousand different types. Rainbow-colored tapestries lined the walls. Precious Ming vases stood secure inside a row of gleaming glass pyramids. Dominating the entire west wing was the elaborately carved skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, poised as if ready to attack. Next to the dinosaur stood a squad of brightly lacquered Oriental armor in proud formation, guarding a gilt-edged sarcophagus, its glass top displaying a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy inside.
In the east wing was a completely restored Viking long boat, a Roman galley, and an Imperial Chinese barge, each resting in stout mahogany dry docks sporting delicately engraved brass plates that detailed their histories and attributes.
Adorning the ceiling was a painted panorama of the Milky Way, with round glass skylights depicting the eight known planets, plus two theoretical worlds. Directly below the panorama hung a huge pair of feathered wings joined together by an ancient leather body harness. Even the floor seemed to be an exhibit: the black-flecked marble being underlain with strange runes and geometric patterns. In somber deference, Lord Carstairs removed his hat.
"I am speechless, sir," he finally managed to croak, throat tight with professional admiration. "It is totally unlike any museum I have ever seen before!"
Busily tying the curtains closed, Einstein glanced up at that statement. "What, this rubbish? Bah. Mere baubles to amuse the idle tourist. The real museum starts on the other side of that brass door."
Lord Carstairs turned. The door in question was located alongside the mammoth Tyrannosaurus, set into a hinged section of the wall that obviously served as an access portal for the larger exhibits.
"Might we take a moment?" Carstairs asked eagerly.
The professor gave a bow. "Certainly. It's on the way to my office."
"Splendid!"
Walking side by side, the two men briskly strode across the museum. Professor Einstein noted that the cases had been properly cleaned, while Lord Carstairs observed the bewildering assortment of material, which included stacks of ancient coins, jeweled hairpins and golden whips, plus an array of highly ornamental crowns from as many countries as centuries. The riches of a hundred kingdoms were on display with no apparent guards or protection of any sort.
"Professor, do you have much trouble with thieves?" the lord finally asked.
"Not at all," Einstein remarked. "The glass in every exhibit case is specially tempered and veined with hair-thin steel wires, so it's quite invulnerable to anything short of a sledgehammer. Plus, at night the grounds are patrolled by Hans, Dolf, and Inga."
Carstairs nodded sagely. "Ah, pit bulls no doubt, or perhaps you use mastiffs. Nasty dogs. My gilly makes use of them for my country estate."
"Dogs?" Professor Einstein said as if he had never heard the word before. "Nonsense, lad. Even the most vicious Canis Familiaris are far too gentle to serve as protectors of my establishment. I use the much more brutal and bloodthirsty Felis Tigris ."
"B-Bengal tigers?" Lord Carstairs gasped, coming to a halt.
"The biggest you have ever seen," the professor added with a touch of pride.
Suddenly staring into the darkness, for a split second Lord Carstairs was back in wild bush of Africa, with the thunderous purring of the huge killer cats coming from every side at once.
"Is this prudent, Professor?" the lord asked nervously, fingering the area on his chest where a bandoleer of shells would be if he was on a safari. "Bengal tigers are notorious mankillers!"
"Oh, they quite happily eat ladies, too," Einstein grinned, "although, that is pure conjecture on my part. Occasionally, I find the gnawed bones of some burglar strewn across the floor when I open shop in the morning. No way in Heaven of ever telling the gender of the would-be thief by then."
"Egad. Whatever do you do?"
"Notify the cleaning staff and don't feed the cats any lunch that day. By Gadfrey, there's nothing lazier than a fat tiger."
"I shall take your word on it, sir," Lord Carstairs replied, surveying the labyrinthine museum. Loosening his collar, the man started to walk forward once more, this time with renewed vigor. Bengal tigers as house cats? Interesting idea, actually. He wondered if they might like the English countryside.
Reaching the brass door, Professor Einstein strolled on through, while Lord Carstairs was forced to duck to achieve passage. Fumbling on the wall to his left, Einstein threw a large switch. and there was an audible clunk as electric lights in the ceiling crashed into life. Lord Carstairs was braced for anything, but despite the grandeur of the artificial illumination, in contrast to the glitter and polish of the show place they had just left, this room seemed drab - almost utilitarian. It was a plain square brick room with a concrete floor. Several large marble tables were covered with a mishmash of old junk, and dusty objects lined the wall shelves.
However, catching the lord's attention was a massive stone slab, slightly cracked and covered with several lines of deeply carved figures in some kind of a flowery script.
"Fascinating," Lord Carstairs mused, studying the stone with great interest.
"Ah, we're particularly fond of this exhibit. Can you read any of it?" Professor Einstein asked, with a hint of teasing in his voice.
Sensing a friendly test, Carstairs applied himself with fervor, struggling to dredge up the most obscure languages at his command, until at last the cryptic symbols began to make sense, and sentences slowly unraveled. Why, it was a modified form of Hellenic! "Contribute? No, deposit, your money…in the Bank of…Atlantis! We are…as firm…as the…ground…you stand on. Good Lord!" the explorer cried, rocking back on his heels.
"It was probably true once," Professor Einstein sighed, sadly running a finger across the proud facade of the bank's lintel. "Behold how the mighty have fallen."
"Pity about the crack," Lord Carstairs added after an appropriate moment of silence.
Einstein shrugged. "Yes. Well, nothing's perfect."
Turning about, hoping for more artifacts from the lost continent of Atlantis, the British lord slowly arched an expressive eyebrow as he drank in what else was on display. Over in the corner was a shimmering steel sword thrust into an anvil atop a moss-covered boulder. No, impossible. Suspended from the ceiling was the skeleton of a winged human infant still clutching a tiny bow and quiver of pink arrows. In a small alcove was a crimson book positioned under a weighty glass bell jar, its fluttering pages held closed with an iron C-clamp. Beyond that was a five-yard-tall copper coin, embossed with the face of a recently assassinated American president and an impossible date. Then came another glass jar holding two fig leaves marked 'His' and 'Hers' in ancient Hebrew. This was followed by a pillar of salt in the shape of a woman sticking her tongue out at somebody. Next was a battered sailor's sea chest. The name D. Jones on its lid was barely visible beneath a coating of barnacles. There was an iron pot of gold coins that shone with a rainbow effect, and many more items, ad infinitum.
Soon, Lord Carstairs felt his head begin to swim, and he was forced to call a halt. Taking the big man by the arm, the professor courteously escorted him towards a second door partially hidden behind a coat of many faded colors.
"Forgive me, Carstairs, but I've had a lifetime to ponder the revelations this room represents," Professor Einstein said. "To ask anyone to try and comprehend it all in a single viewing was sheer foolishness on my part."
Pushing aside an Oriental screen, Einstein ushered Carstairs into a narr
ow room pungent with the tangy smell of carbolic acid.
"My workshop," the professor announced, guiding the British lord to sit on what appeared to be some sort of weird porcelain throne.
Strangely, the place felt like home to Carstairs. It was nearly identical to the workroom at his estate. The floor was strewn with excelsior packing, and stacks of wooden crates shipped from around the world stood about waiting to be opened. In the center was a battered table covered with bits of an alabaster urn lying on a white linen cloth, along with a dozen brushes, two notebooks, a magnifying glass mounted on a brass stand, and a glue pot that looked infinitely older than the urn itself. The walls were lined with shelves crammed to bursting with ancient bric-a-brac, rusty lumps of metal, books, and loose papers. Across the workshop was a chemical laboratory occupying a granite-topped bench. To Carstairs' surprise, there was no mysterious bubbling experiment in progress.
Going to a locked cabinet, the professor returned with a pair of laboratory beakers containing an inch of swirling, caramel-colored liquid.
"Napoleon Brandy," Einstein said, handing the lord a glass. Then the professor took a seat in an overstuffed chair. "My own private stock."
"How interesting," Lord Carstairs said, looking at the liquor dubiously. "I was of the opinion that every drop had been lost in The Troubles."
"Not every bottle. I managed to save a few."
After a first hesitant sip, Carstairs nodded in full approval. "Exemplary, sir! Well, sir, after seeing this museum, if you were to tell me that the mythical Realms of Fairy were about to invade Scotland, my only question would be…when?"
"Tomorrow at noon," the professor snapped.
Caught in the middle of a swallow, Lord Carstairs gagged at the news and sprayed brandy into the air.
Feeling a bit sheepish, Einstein handed the dripping lord a handkerchief. "Sorry, lad, I couldn't resist. Besides, I need your mind at its sharpest, not befogged with awe. Feeling better?"
"Ah, yes, thank you," the lord murmured demurely.
Securing the bottle of brandy once more, Einstein refilled the lord's beaker to the very brim this time, in apology.
Lord Carstairs took a fresh sip and carefully swallowed before speaking. "Now tell me more about this Dutarian god."
"I'll be brief," the professor said in a somber voice, setting the bottle aside. "Sometime around 3000 BC, the priests of the city of Dutar summoned forth a magical protector to aid them in their battles against the local hill people who were constantly stealing their goats. The monster responded as requested by eating the hill folk and the goats, but then it refused to depart. Indeed, it threatened to consume the people of Dutar unless other food - human food - was provided. Obtaining these, ahem, 'provisions' was the reason behind Dutar's 200 years of conquest and expansion. The forging of the Empire was a mere side effect."
While Lord Carstairs chewed that over, the professor took a sip from his own beaker. He would need a drink for the next part. "Eventually, the population grew tired of endless battles and tried to destroy the demon. However, even with the entire military might of a warrior empire to draw upon, the fight went badly for them. Their doom seemed certain until the descendants of the very magicians who had summoned the monster in the first place cast a spell that they had been working on for the last two hundred years."
"And?" Carstairs prompted, swirling the brandy in his glass beaker to savor the lush bouquet.
Leaning forward, Einstein spoke rapidly. "And it damn well worked, after a fashion. A volcano erupted directly under the Squid God's temple, shattering it to pieces and destroying the city of Dutar. This marked the end of the Dutarian people as a force to be reckoned with, and the end of the Squid God. Or so it was thought. At the height of the eruption, the Squid God and its temple vanished. The priests were trapped inside, and everybody assumed that they had also been killed. But, some ten years later, one of them reappeared. He was quite mad, but coherent enough to reveal that the Squid God was still alive, though horribly burned. Yet even more terrifying was the information that the monster was undergoing a bizarre regeneration, leaving its damaged old body for a fresh new one: a body supposedly even more powerful than the first. The priest was a bit vague on when this miracle would occur, but he swore that the unmistakable warning sign would be given by a new face on the moon."
The ticking of the clock on the mantle was the only sound as the professor took a long pull of the brandy and emptied the beaker. "It seems to have taken a bit longer than anybody had expected," he said placing it aside. "But to a demon, what's a few thousand years, more or less, eh?"
In wry rumination, Lord Carstairs mulled over the story. "And this is the foundation for your belief that the world is about to be destroyed?"
"In a nutshell, yes."
Still holding his beaker, Lord Carstairs rose and began pacing about the room. "A truly fascinating story, sir. But if apocryphal stories are what you want, then the procreation myths of the Uldon lizard tribes would keep a man happy for years. Surely, there is some material proof to back this theory."
Hesitantly, Einstein stood. Here we go . "Only circumstantial evidence, at best, I must admit," he said, going to a shelf containing numerous papyrus scrolls. Choosing a specific scroll, the professor unrolled it with a crackle.
"Read this," Einstein instructed, "third section down."
Placing aside his beaker, the lord peered at the scroll. "A thousand armies of a thousand men each were naught but toys to the dire squid," he read slowly. "Interesting. Hyperbole by a fanatic priest?"
Moving closer, Professor Einstein pointed to a purple seal at the bottom of the page. "Military report from an enemy general."
Lord Carstairs gave a slow nod. "A good start. Anything else?"
"Yes, but brace yourself, lad." Reaching under a worktable, the professor brought forth a large object wrapped in linen cloth.
Carefully, Professor Einstein placed it on top of the table and folded back the covering. As the stone tablet was unwrapped, Lord Carstairs went pale and dropped his beaker. The laboratory glass shattered on the floor.
Covering the upper part of the tablet, Professor Einstein said, "There is an inscription under the, ahem, picture."
Summoning his pluck, the lord forced himself to look once more, and read aloud. "The mighty Squid God at its noon feeding, consisting of…blind orphans. Souvenir of Dutar City." Carstairs swallowed with difficulty. "Don't miss the b-baby d-d-decapitating festival in the spring."
Slowly, Einstein started to fold back the next cloth to reveal the next section.
"Enough!" Lord Carstairs cried, averting his eyes. "This is an abomination against man and nature!"
"Absolutely," Professor Einstein agreed, quickly wrapping the tablet again and tucking the artifact away. "And we must do everything within our power to see that such a hideous occurrence is never repeated."
"Yes, yes, we must," Carstairs said with growing resolution, straightening his shoulders. "Sir, I must confess that I am not wholly convinced of this danger. As you said, there's only circumstantial evidence at best. But to protect the world fromthat!" He gestured at the empty table where the tablet had just been. "I will gladly join you on any expedition, even if it be a fool's quest."
"Thank you," the professor gushed in relief, his voice shaking with emotion. "I can ask for nothing more."
"So what is our first step?" Carstairs asked, reclaiming his throne. "If this creature is as powerful as believed, then even a modern battleship might mean nothing to it."
"Well spoken, lad," Einstein grinned. "But the monster has an Achilles' heel. It has yet to be born!"
"I beg your pardon?" Carstairs asked with a profound frown. "What was that again, please?
"Not born yet," Professor Einstein repeated slowly. "The Squid God will not be reborn until the new face of the moon looks upon the earth. I estimate that we have slightly more than two weeks in which to find and destroy the temple in which the creature rests."
"Which
will spoil the magical spell and prevent the creature from regenerating," Lord Carstairs finished in a rush of excitement. "But that is simplicity itself!" Defiling sacred relics was something British explorers were especially good at doing. "I'm surprised that you asked for assistance on such a trivial matter. So where is the temple anyway? Ceylon? Tibet? The South Pole?"
Under the lord's honest gaze, Professor Einstein squirmed uncomfortably. "Ah, well, that is the hitch, lad. Because, you see, I have absolutely no idea."
Chapter Three
"But I do know how it can be found," Professor Einstein said quickly, before any possible denouncements could be voiced.
Lord Carstairs made a temple of his fingers. "Meaning that you have a map, which has a piece missing?" he ventured for a guess.
"Very close, lad," Einstein acknowledged. "The map is a cryptic puzzle, but I possess the key: a copper bracelet in the shape of an engorged squid. On the inner side, there are hidden markings that only become discernible under a solar eclipse, or the artificial light of an electric lamp. I purchased it thirty-six years ago at a flea market in Amsterdam. I had always planned to solve the puzzle, but there always seemed something more important to do."
"Of course, I understand fully," Carstairs agreed. "Merciful Heavens, you should see some of the things I have gathering dust in my workshops." The lord loosened his Oxford school tie. "So let us begin. Have your boy, Owen, fetch us a pot of black coffee, bring out the documents, and let's get cracking."
Walking to the doorway, Einstein and tugged on a bell-pull hanging over his desk. Going to the shelves, he then removed a small wooden box. "The map itself is in the vaults, but the bracelet is here. You'll see why I first purchased it." Lifting the lid, he frowned. "Odd - this box is empty."
Replacing the box on the shelf, the professor drew another. "This must be it." But, as he opened the container, a large blue beetle attempted to fly out. Frantically, Einstein snapped the lid shut, successfully trapping the insect inside. With an angry gesture, he shoved the box onto the shelf and reached for another. In short order, several other boxes were examined, but the bracelet was in none of them. By now, the professor was visibly annoyed.
THAT DARN SQUID GOD Page 3