End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  Blank stood and crossed the floor to stand before the illustration of Podmore in the guise of Merlin, a flowing robe across his shoulders, a crooked staff in his hand. His face was seen in profile, nose prominent, beard bushy, while over his shoulder a sliver of moon lit the night sky.

  “It's a bit like the work of Beardsley, wouldn't you say?” Blank said to Miss Bonaventure. She pursed her lips and shrugged in response. Blank nodded and looked back at the picture. “Yes, I can definitely see the influence of Beardsley.”

  From behind him came the startling crash of china hitting china, as Podmore slammed his cup back onto the saucer. Blank turned to see Podmore regarding him with flashing eyes. He'd clearly hit a nerve, as he'd suspected he might. He'd a collection of The Yellow Book in his own library and knew that the name Xenophon Brade had not appeared in the indicia until after Beardsley's own name had disappeared altogether. That, and the similarities of style, was highly suggestive of a rivalry of some kind on one side or the other.

  “Xenophon hated Beardsley,” Podmore finally said, in his quiet, far-away voice. “Though he was several years Beardsley's senior, Xenophon always felt that his career was the one less developed, the one that lagged behind. He'd been incensed that Dent had hired Beardsley to illustrate his Morte Darthur and had jumped at the chance to begin illustrating The Yellow Book when Beardsley was dismissed.” Blank remembered the time well. When Oscar had been arrested, two years before, he'd been seen clutching a book with a yellow cover, or so the newspapers reported. It was assumed to be a volume of The Yellow Book, and in the resulting furor, Beardsley had been sacked. He resisted the urge to lose himself in memory and concentrated on Podmore's words. “Xenophon was sure that this latest project of his would be the one to cement his popularity and finally bring him out of Beardsley's shadow and into the light, but then.…” He glanced towards the door, and Blank realized that the intersection where Brade had been slain lay in the same direction. Podmore trailed off and lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug.

  “What project was that?” Miss Bonaventure said, as Blank walked back across the room and leaned against the back of his empty chair.

  Podmore shook his head. “I don't know, he'd never say. Only that it had suggested the idea for that”—he indicated the portrait of himself on the wall in Merlin's robe—“and nothing more.”

  Blank laced the fingers of his hands together and carefully chose his next words. “You and Brade were friends, I take it.” He paused, and then said, “More, perhaps, than mere casual acquaintances?”

  Podmore opened his mouth as if to speak, and then closed it, his lips disappearing entirely behind his thick mustache.

  Blank nodded, knowingly. It had only been a matter of short weeks since Oscar had been released from prison, having spent two years in Reading gaol for the crime of giving himself in to the love that dared not speak its name. The word from Berlin was that the newly founded Scientific-Humanitarian Committee had begun to campaign for the abolition of legal penalties for homosexuals, but Blank did not allow himself the illusion of optimism.

  “When did you see him last, Mr. Podmore?” Miss Bonaventure asked.

  Podmore shifted his gaze from Blank to Miss Bonaventure. “Two days ago,” he finally answered, after a lengthy pause. “The morning before…the morning before he died. We were to dine together that night, here in my rooms, but…” His voice choked off, and when he continued, his words were strained. “But he never arrived.”

  Miss Bonaventure leaned forward, evidently intent on asking another question, but Blank stayed her with a quick wave of his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Podmore,” he said, inclining his head to Podmore and offering his hand to Miss Bonaventure. She gave him a quizzical look, but took his hand and rose to her feet. “I think we've troubled you enough for one evening. I thank you for your hospitality and for your fine tea.”

  With Miss Bonaventure on his elbow, Blank made his way to the door. Podmore, lost in his own thoughts, followed after, absently.

  At the door, Blank paused and glanced from Podmore to the framed penand-ink drawing on the wall. “It really is a good likeness, Mr. Podmore, and the work of a clear talent. You should be honored to have it.”

  Podmore seemed to brighten fractionally, and something like a smile twitched beneath his full mustache, though his eyes remained pained and half-lidded. “Thank you,” he said, and then Blank and Miss Bonaventure left him with his pictures and books, his pains and his memories.

  As Blank and Miss Bonaventure made their way back to York Place, she regarded him curiously. “You know, Blank, I think we might have discovered something if you'd let me question Podmore a bit more.”

  Blank took a deep breath and sighed, before turning to face her. “No,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “We wouldn't have. Or rather, we would, but what we would have uncovered would not be germane to our investigations, I suspect. That Podmore was keeping something concealed, I have no doubt, but to expose him wouldn't benefit anyone.”

  Miss Bonaventure cocked her eyebrow at him, quizzically.

  “What we did learn from Podmore, and what is germane,” he continued, “is that Brade was on his way to Podmore's rooms that evening and never arrived. Whatever else he is keeping hidden, I am convinced that Podmore is sincere when he says that he did not see Brade that evening. The most likely conclusion, then, giving the proximity of the murder to Podmore's rooms, is that the murderer interrupted Brade en route.”

  With a slight nod, Miss Bonaventure said, “Fair enough. So we shall eliminate further questioning of Podmore from our agenda.” She paused, thoughtfully. “Still, I find myself curious about this mystery project of Brade's that Podmore mentions. Could that have any bearing on the case, do you suppose?”

  Blank considered it. “It certainly seems possible. Shall we dig a little deeper into the matter in the morning?”

  “Certainly,” Miss Bonaventure said, stifling a yawn with her hand. “But in the meantime, I could use a meal, a bath, and a bed, in that order.”

  “I can stand you to dinner,” Blank said, “but for the rest of your list, I'm afraid you're on your own.”

  Miss Bonaventure said with a smile, “Don't worry, Blank. I know that in your bath, as well as in your bed, there's only room for one.”

  Blank managed a game smile in response. Since they'd known one another, Miss Bonaventure was quite right to point out that he'd been consistently and exclusively solitary in his habits, bordering on the monastic, at least as regarded matters domestic. That he'd had a life before they met, and a long one at that, was a factor that she seemed not to consider, and Blank was in no mood, at the moment, to disabuse her misconceptions.

  IN MOVIES AND BOOKS, Alice had always come across characters who went from stinking drunk to stone-cold sober in a matter of moments when faced with life-threatening crises. That kind of thing might happen, she supposed, but only if they weren't really that drunk to start with. For her part, having twice found herself in serious peril while three sheets to the wind, she didn't find that she got sober any faster. It just made being drunk that much more of a pain in the ass.

  Stillman Waters was dragging Alice through the streets of London with the white dogs following close behind. They didn't bark like regular dogs, Alice noticed, but sounded instead like a bunch of migrating birds. But their fangs, dyed red or not, still looked damned sharp. And they seemed to have a serious mad on for Alice and the old man.

  “Where are we going?” Alice panted, breathless.

  They rounded a corner, and Stillman stopped to point his weird-looking pistol back the way they'd come, leaning against the wall and sighting along the barrel. He pulled the trigger and instead of a bang there was a little popping sound, like a paintball gun firing or a damp firework petering out, and something shot out of the barrel and struck the foreleg of the nearest of the dogs.

  The dog was trying to dislodge the raven that had sunk its claws into its back and was now busily engaged in attempting—un
successfully, as luck would have it—to peck the dog's eyes out with its beak. The other four dogs were surging forward, each fending off a raven or two of its own.

  Stillman fired his strange pistol again, and this next shot kicked up little bits of shrapnel from the pavement just in front of another dog's paws. Whatever the gun was firing wasn't bullets, but it was getting the job done.

  “What is that?”

  “Webley Hotspur fletcher,” Stillman said, matter-of-factly. “Flechette pistol.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slender sliverlike dart. “Not exactly standard issue, you understand.”

  Alice took the dart out of his hand and looked at it. It looked something like an overfed sewing needle with little ridges on one end.

  “Oh, for the love of…” Stillman pulled back around the corner, slamming up flat against the wall.

  Alice peeked around, to see what had given Stillman such a stricken look.

  There was a tall, slender figure approaching, following the dogs. He was more than a block away, and in the faint light of the streetlamps it was hard to make out too much in the way of detail, but the guy looked to be completely bald and wore big wraparound sunglasses.

  “Friend of yours?” Alice asked, pulling her head back around the corner.

  “I don't know who you are or what your game is, love,” Stillman said, his mouth drawn into a tight, thin line. “But I'll not leave anyone to his tender mercies.” With a minute jerk of his head, he indicated the guy approaching around the corner. “So come along; you're coming with me.”

  Stillman grabbed Alice's hand and took off running.

  Alice kept up as best she could, tugged along behind like a skier fallen behind a boat and skipping across the water, arms and legs flailing.

  “What are those things, anyway?” Alice asked.

  “Gabriel Hounds,” Stillman answered, then he shook his head. “Doesn't matter.” He stood at the intersection, looking left and right.

  “Looking for something?”

  “We could use a big bunch of water. Slows them down a bit.”

  Alice pointed through the nearest buildings, at the dark ribbon of the Thames. “Isn't that enough for you?”

  Stillman shook his head. “It slows them down. It doesn't stop them. They'd still catch up.” He looked around again, looking like someone who'd already realized what the correct answer was, but was still afraid to admit it.

  Stillman looked at Alice and narrowed his ice-chip eyes.

  “Listen, love, can you keep a secret?”

  Alice was still for a long moment before it occurred to her to answer. She heard the migrating-birds baying of the dogs growing closer. Then she nodded, vigorously. “Yes. Yes. Yes, I can keep a secret.”

  Stillman bit his lower lip, resisting the answer still.

  “All right,” he said, and started moving again, dragging Alice behind. “You're coming home with me, then. But listen. Don't touch anything. Got it?”

  The Tower of London was just up ahead. Alice and Stillman were across the street and a short way up. The dogs were out of sight but couldn't be far behind them. In the middle of the sidewalk was an old metal railing, surrounding what appeared to be steps leading underground. There was a rusted iron chain strung across the gate.

  Stillman lifted the chain and hustled Alice beneath, then followed.

  “Come on, in here.”

  It was dark as the pit down there, and smelled twice as bad. “What is this?”

  “Victorian public convenience,” Stillman said, and hurried deeper into the narrow room. There were stalls along the left wall, a kind of trough along the other. Stillman kicked one of the stalls open. It took Alice a second to recognize the blackened stump of porcelain within. This was a men's room.

  Stillman dragged her into the stall behind him.

  “Um, seriously?” Alice sneered. “The dogs are bad enough, but if it means getting groped in a grungy old toilet, I'd just as soon take my chances.”

  Stillman flashed her a smile that glinted in the moonlight filtering through the grates overhead. “I already told you, love. You're just not my type.”

  With that, Stillman slammed the stall door shut and lashed out his foot, kicking at a brick above the toilet. With a rusty groan, the whole section of wall swung inwards, toilet and all.

  As gloomy and dark as it was in the underground restroom, seemingly abandoned for decades, it was pitch black in the space beyond the wall. Alice found herself dragged bodily through the gap, and then, when the wall swung back into place, was surrounded by an inky darkness.

  Alice wasn't sure if her eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, or if lights were coming on somewhere in the distance. But the ink black darkness was slowly tinged with gray, and shapes and forms gradually resolved out of the shadows.

  “What…?” Alice began, but found herself silenced when Stillman slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Shhh,” he hissed. In the gray twilight she could see him point at his ear. “Listen.”

  Somewhere above them the sound of migrating birds grew louder, and louder, and louder. Then, just when it seemed that they could grow no louder, the sounds began to fade, gradually at first and then faster and faster. It was like some slow motion Doppler effect, like an ambulance driving by very, very slowly.

  “I think we shook them,” Stillman said, lowering his hand from her mouth. “If the dogs didn't enter the loo, then he probably didn't either. Which means we're safe. For now.”

  “Where are we?” Alice said in a harsh whisper. “Who are you? What's going on?”

  Stillman smiled.

  “You said you could keep a secret, right?”

  The space behind the wall turned out to be a landing at the top of a long flight of steps. At the bottom of the steps was a door. And behind the door?

  “My home,” Stillman said, hitting the Frankenstein's lab switch on the wall, turning on the lights.

  They had to be hundreds of feet underground.

  Stillman tucked the Hostpur pistol into the pocket of his slacks, and then shucked off his trench coat and suit jacket.

  “I'd offer you something to drink, but you look like you've had enough, love.”

  The walls and ceiling were an unbroken curve, with the floor flat, the large space like a long cylinder with one side cut off. It was just like the Underground stations Alice had gone through. Had it only been that morning?

  “This is a subway station, isn't it?”

  Stillman nodded. “For a few minutes, at least. On the Metropolitan Line. Opened in 1882, and closed two years after that.” He pointed over Alice's head, and she looked up to see the sign.

  TOWER OF LONDON.

  “They built Mark Lane, later Tower Hill, just a little ways off, and shut this one down. It was just an empty hole until the Second World War. Lots of the old stations got used for the effort. Churchill and his War Time Cabinet used Down Street Station in a pinch, when they couldn't use the War Rooms in Whitehall and Paddock was still being built. The SOE used this one for sensitive records storage. Then after the war, it ended up MI8’s patch, and that was that.”

  Alice was sure she must look as confused as she felt. “What?”

  Stillman quirked her a smile. “Can you keep a secret, love?” He winked. “I'm a spy.”

  Stillman's home was a kind of H shape, two long tunnels connected by a narrow hallway. The first tunnel, the one behind the door at the bottom of the stairs, was like some kind of insane subterranean yard sale, all sorts of furniture and filing cabinets and desks and chairs strewn across the floor in no discernible order. In one corner was an elephants’ graveyard of ancient computers, typewriters, telex machines, and telephones. There was a world map on the right-hand wall, enormous, like something from a NASA control room, or maybe a mad scientist's lair, only partially obscured by the towers of junk before it. The map was decades out of date, as near as Alice could tell, with pushpins marking positions in the USSR and other nations forgotten to h
istory.

  Opposite the map was some kind of crest, a black raven atop a castle tower, that on second glance looked more like a chess piece, with the initials S.I.D. and a Latin motto in a scroll. PERICULA OCCULTA, DEFENSOR ARCANUS. Something like “hidden dangers, secret defender.”

  “S.I.D.?” Alice read aloud.

  “Signals Intelligence Directorate, originally.” Stillman had his jacket and trench coat draped over his arm. “Special Intelligence Directorate, eventually.” He smiled. “Don't know what they call it, nowadays, but it hardly matters. It was always MI8 when anyone came calling.”

  The man started toward the narrow hallway that opened off of the middle of the tunnel. Alice didn't know where the tunnel went yet and wasn't sure she wanted to.

  “Come along, girl. Let's get some coffee in you, sober you up a bit. Then maybe you can tell me why the Huntsman and his Gabriel Hounds are after you.”

  Huntsman? Alice nodded absently and followed along behind.

  On the other end of the hallway was another tunnel, which must have originally been the same size and shape as the first—and both of them, she realized, must have had trains running through at some point, the tracks buried somewhere under the floor—but where the first tunnel had been a big unbroken space, this second tunnel had been sectioned up into smaller rooms. The center section was probably the largest, with carpet on the floor, a large sofa flanked by recliners on either side, an ancient television atop a stand, and a big coffee table. On the wall was a smaller version of the crest from the other room, with the raven atop the tower and the Latin motto scrolling beneath. Opening off this large room was a kitchen, and opposite it a bathroom. Doors on either wall, one to the left of the kitchen and one to the right of the bathroom, led to a narrow hallway that seemed to run the length of the tunnel. At one end, Alice would later learn, was a bedroom, at the other a library.