City of Brass

by Edward D. Hoch

  “A secret love potion,” she murmured with a grin; “let’s have a little music.”

  “I’m a married man, you know,” I told her, trying unsuccessfully to keep it sounding light.

  She came to me then, with the radio behind her playing something soft by Mantovani, and the clatter of passing traffic drifting in from the street. And it was as I’d feared it would be since I first met her.

  I tried to think about Shelly, and our little house in Westchester; but gradually the memories faded from my brain, and I was just a man of flesh and desire …

  Later, too long later, as night drifted slowly in from the east, we left the house and started out for the address in Crashaw Place. In the night’s already deepening shadows, an occasional bird glided down from above, and it might have been a bat or a gull. I only knew it was a moving, living creature up there in the dark, and maybe I wished I was up there too.

  “It’s not too far,” Rain told me, in a voice that made even a casual remark into a hint of intimacy. “We can follow the river all the way.”

  The Thames was winding on its never-ending journey to the sea, and as we followed along its banks, the whole of London seemed to sleep, even at this early hour. It was as if we were alone in the city, alone without the cluster of crowds and the rumble of civilization.

  I paused a moment to light a cigarette, and it was then I saw two men moving in on us. “Rain!” I shouted. “Lookout!”

  She whirled quickly and a blow from the first man’s blackjack caught her on the shoulder. I hurled myself at him, and we went down in a heap. I tried to see where our second attacker was, but the first one was keeping me busy.

  Finally I broke free and grabbed up Rain’s hand. “Come on,” I managed to shout, dragging her with me down a flight of stone steps that led to the water’s edge.

  I could feel them behind us as we hurtled down the stairs, and at the bottom step I felt strong fingers of steel tear at my throat. I lost my grip on Rain and went tumbling backwards, the hulking attacker on top of me. I struggled to free myself from those murderous fingers, but already I saw one hand leave my throat and come up with a glistening knife.

  “Die, damn you,” the raspy voice squeaked, and in that instant I thought I had reached the end of everything. But suddenly a roar split the air and his face seemed to fly apart before me. His dying grip relaxed on my neck, and I saw the little smoking Derringer in Rain’s steady hand.

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” she sobbed; “but there was no time for a good shot.”

  “Don’t worry. Where’s the other one now?”

  “Up there!” She pointed to the top of the steps, where the second assassin stood outlined against the dark sky.

  “Duck! He’s got a gun!” I pulled her down just as the man fired.

  “It’s a .45,” she told me between gasps. “And my gun is empty.”

  I glanced fearfully at the dim river a few feet away. “Can you swim?”

  “A little, but we’d never make it to the water.”

  “We’ll have to try, Come on.” He saw us the instant we made our move, and I saw his gun hand move around for a second shot at us.

  Then suddenly he seemed to falter, and for the first time I saw the dim figure in the darkness behind him. The .45 slipped from his hand and clattered to the concrete below; then he followed it, diving over in a graceful arc that thudded his body against the very edge of the bank and then hurled it into the black river.

  We stood rooted to the spot, looking up at the dim figure who moved down the steps toward us. And then I recognized the tall, heavy-set features of Simon Ark …

  –3–

  “Simon! You certainly arrived just in time. How did you ever find us?”

  He smiled slightly, as he always did, and replied, “There are ways. I see you already disposed of one of them.”

  We looked down at the bloody face of the man Rain’s bullets had killed. “Luckily for me,” I said. “This is Rain Richards, a most unusual girl, and a crack shot with a pistol.”

  Simon Ark grunted a greeting and bent to examine the body. “Do you think this is connected in any way with the death of Hugo Carrier last night?” he asked us.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, “but Rain received a letter from Carrier this noon. He told us of a pub where something was hidden, and we were on our way there now.”

  “Hidden,” he repeated, suddenly interested. “What is it you seek?”

  “A book,” I told him. “A book called ‘The Worship Of Satan,’ written during the 17th century, but banned by the government, which destroyed all copies. The book supposedly gives the solution to the 1548 murder of Sir James Butler and the mysterious death two years later of Sir Francis Bryan.”

  “Sir Francis Bryan,” Simon Ark muttered: “The Vicar of Hell …”

  “You’ve heard of him,” Rain said, sounding surprised.

  “I’ve heard of him …”

  Simon Ark was the same as when I’d last seen him, back in the States a few months earlier. He still had the mysterious quality about him that sometimes made you wonder at the things he said. In that moment, I felt certain he’d known Francis Bryan personally, somehow in the dark past.

  “Your old friend Inspector Ashly is working on the case,” I told him.

  “I saw his name in the papers; he’s a brilliant man. I’ll call him now and tell him what happened here. Then we can be on our way to this pub you mentioned.”

  “You’re coming with us?” Rain asked.

  “Certainly. ‘The Worship Of Satan’ is a most unusual book. If there is a copy still remaining, I would like to see it.”

  We had climbed the steps from the river now, and in the distance I could see a police car, apparently called by some alert neighbor, bearing down upon us.

  “Simon, do you really think this devil worship business is tied in with Carrier’s murder?”

  He gazed out across the river, as if looking at something far away which only he could see, and then he answered. “In the year 1100, King William the Second was slain by an arrow in the New Forest. His death was part of a human sacrifice of a cult of devil worshippers. Today they still worship, and kill, in much the same way.”

  His words sent a chill through me, and I put my arm around Rain’s slim shoulders. Then the police joined us, and Simon spoke quickly to them, in that old manner of his which could somehow convince anyone of anything. He wrote a brief message to Chief Inspector Ashly and then we departed.

  “I believe this pub should be our first stop,” he said. “Do you know the way?”

  Rain nodded and led us down a dark alley, away from the river. “I feel better now with you two strong men to protect me,” she said.

  “I doubt if they’ll bother us further,” Simon Ark comforted her. “They must have learned from Hugo Carrier that he’d sent you the letter.”

  A slight mist was beginning to gather in the streets, and I suspected we were in for more fog. “Doesn’t the fog ever lift around here?” I mumbled.

  “This is the season for it,” Simon Ark said. “London has been foggy in December for as long as I can remember. The Fall is the worst time for it.”

  Presently, we reached Crashaw Place and ahead of us we could make out the weather-beaten sign of the Blue Pig, “By Appointment To His Majesty King George V.” It was a run-down place that might have looked better thirty years earlier, under George’s reign. Now it was badly in need of a paint job, and I couldn’t help thinking that a bit of good old American neon would have pepped up the swaying sign.

  Inside, a few obviously regular customers lined the bar, and turned as we entered, in mild expectation of seeing some of their nightly drinking companions. Rain was the only girl in the place, but none of them seemed to mind. We ordered three beers because that seemed to be the thing everyone was drinking, and carried them to a table.

  Presently, when Simon Ark was certain he’d identified a stout, balding gentleman as the owner, he rose and walked
over to him. “Pardon me, sir, but I’m a visitor in your country …”

  “Oh,” the stout man said. “Well, we’re always happy to entertain foreigners at the Blue Pig, sir. My name is George Kerrigan. I’m the owner of this here place.”

  “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kerrigan. I’m Simon Ark, and these are my friends. We’ve been told that the rear of this building dates back to the 17th century, and we’re very anxious to examine it further.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Kerrigan smiled at us. “Yes, sir, this here’s just about the only old building like it still standing. You know, there was that God-awful fire back in 1666, and it just about burned down the whole damned town.” He spoke as if he’d witnessed it personally, with just the right degree of awe.

  “We understand,” Simon Ark continued, “that you even have a room where Catholic priests hid during the persecutions.”

  “That we have, sir—or at least them’s the stories what goes with the old place. Come on back this way and I’ll show you.”

  We followed him down a musty corridor which led into the rear of the pub. Here, in a house that was obviously much older than the front, he paused to unlock a door and throw it open before us. “Haven’t been in here myself in a good many months,” he told us. “Wait a minute while I get some candles.”

  “No electricity?” Rain asked, somewhat startled.

  “Not in this room, miss; we never use it, so we never bothered to wire it.”

  He returned in a moment with a multi-branched candlestick held high, and led us into the room. It was no more, really, than an enclosed space some twenty feet square, without windows, and with only the one door through which we’d entered. An ancient, musty smell hung over the place, suggesting that even the air we were now breathing might have been several hundred years old. The walls were covered with a fantastic blaze of colored wallpaper, which even now was just beginning to fade. The only bit of furniture in the room was a huge old carved table, some ten feet long, which stood against the opposite wall. Its top had been covered with newspapers, apparently to preserve the finish.

  Kerrigan was busy telling us the history of the room, from its priest hole days through the reigns of various kings and queens, but I noticed that Simon Ark was far more concerned with the ancient table. He brushed aside the dusty newspapers, which I noticed were some four weeks old, and smiled slightly when he came upon a shallow drawer in the table’s side. But the smile faded when he found the drawer empty.

  I, meanwhile, had strolled over to one of the walls and was trying to decipher some patterns from the faded rainbows of color. But the paper seemed to be designed without any purpose, a weird reminder of 17th century England.

  Simon Ark was on his knees, examining the bottom of the long table now; but if Kerrigan thought this odd, he made no comment. He had trapped Rain in a corner and was continuing his brief history of England. “You know, miss, George III himself once visited this very pub, near the end of his reign. Of course there are those who say he was crazy at the time, but he was certainly a friendly one. My great-grandfather used to tell me about those days when I was very small …”

  “Pardon me,” Simon Ark interrupted, resuming an upright position. “But if this room was once a hiding place for priests, I’m sure it has more than one exit. Suppose you show us the secret way out.”

  Kerrigan never blinked an eye, but simply led us to one of the room’s corners as if he’d intended to show it to us all along. “Here it is,” he said, and gave a yank to an almost invisible metal ring set flush with the floor. A well-oiled trap door rose out of the floor and we peered down into the darkness below.

  “It simply leads to the cellar,” Kerrigan explained. “I don’t even store anything down there any more. Too many rats.” He lowered the candles a bit so we could see that the cellar was truly empty.

  “Well, thank you very much for the tour,” Simon told him. “I think that’s about all we wanted to see.”

  He relocked the room behind us and led the way back to the pub’s main room. “Have a beer on me before you go,” he told us. “And stop by again sometime.”

  “Thanks,” Rain replied. “We will.”

  Soon afterwards, we departed and headed back through the gathering fog to Rain’s house. When we were a safe distance away from the Blue Pig I asked Simon, “What do you think about it? Any idea where the book might be hidden?”

  “I have ideas about many things,” he told us; “I even have ideas about the odd-looking stains on that tabletop.”

  “Stains?” I wondered. “I didn’t notice any.”

  Simon Ark grunted. “In any event, we have much more here than simply the mystery of the Vicar of Hell. Although certainly the death of Carrier suggests that the missing book is involved.”

  By the time we reached Rain’s place, the fog had closed in completely, and visibility was down to some fifty yards. We followed her in, on her invitation to make some coffee, and settled down around the fireplace.

  I tossed a couple of logs on, and before long the room was alive with the glow of leaping flames. Simon Ark settled back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began to talk.

  “Although most history books merely imply that the one-eyed Sir Francis Bryan earned the title of ‘Vicar of Hell’ by deserting his cousin, Anne Boleyn, when she needed him most, it seems probably there were further reasons. And in a period when witch cults and black magic were running wild throughout England, perhaps it is not too fantastic to suspect that Bryan himself was involved in one of these cults. Certainly that, more than anything else, would have earned him the odd title.”

  Rain arrived with the steaming coffee and passed it to us. “But what about the murder of James Butler in 1548? And Bryan’s own mysterious death two years later?”

  “There are two possible solutions which immediately present themselves. Bryan himself could have poisoned James Butler in order to marry his wife, Joan. Then, when Joan discovered this, she herself killed her husband’s murderer.”

  Rain sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette. “And I suppose you’ll say the other possibility is that Joan killed both of her husbands.”

  Simon Ark smiled and nodded. “I admit that was my thought.” And then, half to himself, he added, “I only regret that I never had the honor of meeting the Vicar of Hell …”

  Rain shot me a glance at that, but I was used to such remarks from Simon’s lips. I ignored it and asked instead, “Do you really think this book, ‘The Worship Of Satan,’ has something in it about Bryan?”

  “Very possible, or else there would have been no reason for the government to ban it at the time; books on devil worship and the like were quite common. From the size of it, I would say it must also have included several large illustrations.”

  We talked further on the subject, but presently, as midnight drew near, Simon Ark departed, promising to call us in the morning. “It might be a good idea to get some sleep,” he cautioned me. “Tomorrow might be a long day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there will be a full moon tomorrow night,” he said, and then he was gone, into the fog.

  I came back into Rain’s living room, puzzling over these words. I looked at a calendar and saw that there would indeed be a full moon on the following night. “What do you suppose he meant by that?” Rain asked me.

  “I don’t know. But let’s forget about all that for now.” I walked over and sat next to her on the couch.

  “Should we forget about your wife back in New York, too?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  Instead, my hand went out and found hers, and I drew her close to me in the flickering light from the fireplace …

  -4-

  Simon Ark was at my hotel room before noon on the following morning, and I was surprised to see that Inspector Ashly was with him. “Good morning,” I greeted them. “What’s up?”

  “Everything, from what Simon’s been telling me,” Ashly said. “You fellows must have had a pre
tty busy night, shooting up would-be killers and such.”

  “We’re lucky we’re even alive,” I said; “Simon arrived just in time last night.”

  “He told me. He also had me check on the two dead men, and I find they both frequented the Blue Pig pub.”

  “That figures,” I said, lighting a before-breakfast cigarette. “There’s something funny about that place.”

  Simon Ark chuckled. “The understatement of the year, certainly. If you had been a little more observant, I’m sure you would have come to the same conclusions that I did about the Blue Pig, and its mysterious back room.”

  “And just what are your conclusions?” I asked, aware that he’d already outlined his ideas to Inspector Ashly.

  “I’m convinced that a Black Mass, and various other ceremonies of Satanism, are being carried on at the Blue Pig, in that very room. And I’m further convinced that there’s another meeting of the group being held this evening.”

  “I’ll admit that I suspected something funny, but I think now you’re going a little overboard, aren’t you, Simon?”

  “He’s got me convinced,” Ashly boomed out in that deep voice which still amazed me. “Wait until you’ve heard the whole thing.”

  I settled back and sighed. “OK, Simon. Go ahead and convince me.”

  “Well,” he began, “the arrow murder of Hugo Carrier hinted at some sort of ritual crime; and, as I already told you, this type of slaying has been used before by devil worshippers. The attack on you and Rain proved that Carrier’s murder was caused by his knowledge of the book, ‘The Worship Of Satan.’ The people who killed him did so because they feared he would reveal the location of the book. Therefore the book itself, or its location, or both, are dangerous to them.”

  “All right so far,” I admitted. “But why does that make it the Blue Pig?”

  “First, the men who attacked you were from the Blue Pig. Second, Carrier gave that as the location of the book. Third, George Kerrigan lied to us when we visited him last night.”