The rats were being overpowered but their nemesis remained shrouded in mystery because the sea eagle killed so swiftly that there were few sightings of the great bird in action.
By the time of The Taube's funeral, most of the Norway rat population had been dispatched, which made it a festive - as well as a solemn - occasion for the thousands of spectators who lined the streets.
Everyone loves a parade although no one knew what to make of the Wizards. Solemn, brassy, irresistible, the crowd got caught up in them, especially with their snappy drum majorette!
Punching the air with her gloved fist, Sophie strutted past the Bermondsey throngs with her knees pumping and her face tilted toward the sun.
Fireworks on the brickwork!
Did Phibes feel a spark of pride? It's hard to say: the crowd, the dirge, the collective respect were all in order. But there was something else.
Sophie's face, seen in various angles like some animated Cubist drawing, presented something – unexpected.
A tear! Yes, a tear, and it didn’t go away.
Sophie was crying – an eruption of unmistakably human emotion! But the hands of the clock were pulling Phibes in another direction. It was time for him to square things for Victoria.
***
Thirty three centuries ago Egypt was in the throes of a great building boom launched by Ramses II, that great XIXth Dynasty warrior, to memorialize his many conquests. Like Ramesseum in western Thebes and the rock temples of Abu Simbel, he covered the land from the Delta to Nubia with buildings in a way no king before had done. A man of enormous ambition (he's said to have fathered one hundred sons and daughters), his descendants strived to carry out his plans to completion.
Thousands of slaves were pressed into service to keep the program moving apace. The practice of slavery was widespread in the ancient world. Prisoners taken in battle became the property of the victors. Egypt, like later-day Rome, had a large and growing slave population thanks to their high birthrate and to the military prowess of their masters.
Slaves served at the whim of their masters. Hard work, frequent beatings, starvation rations: this was their lot in life and what all those born into slavery could look forward to, until…
Let my people go…The cry that rose up from a small group of Hebrews soon was heard all across the land, even in the royal palaces where it was met with scorn and disdain.
Pharaoh sent out orders that the slaves were to be driven even harder. Whip them into submission, was the mandate. The answer came back:
Let my people go!
Even as this freedom cry grew louder, Pharaoh turned a deaf ear. And it was his heedlessness that brought retribution.
The G’Tach, Exodus’ account of the 10 plagues of Pharaoh, became the basis for Phibes’ own retribution against the surgical team he believed killed his wife. But before he can resume his quest for reunion, Phibes is confronted by an adversary who wants to use Victoria to glean the secrets of life eternal. After dispatching this would-be usurper, Phibes joins his wife in a lavish double sarcophagus deep inside Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza.
BOOK FOUR
THE
SECOND DEATH GEOMETRY
It's only a story. The things that happened here might’ve happened. Could’ve happened. Maybe happened.
The man in the story – the Hero – is a fictional man (a real fictional man).
If this was a real story, then these things really happened.
A logician would conclude that this is a true story about a fictional man. Or a fictional story about a real man.
There are no more logicians left in this world so the reader is left to her* own amusements.
*Love stories are favored by the ladies. This is a love story.
Valor Pretorius graduated from St. Ursinus College with a BS degree in business. A stickler for details, he led the school's debating team to three regional championships. The plaques are on display in his precinct office.
Pretorius’ ancestors were contemporaries of the Van Rennselaer's, one of New York State's Founding Families. Their names populate the archives of the Rennselaer County Historical Society and their descendants remained a force in local politics well into the twentieth century.
Valor Pretorius received several offers of ‘political’ job placements when he graduated, declining them all in favor of police work – the first in his family to choose this dangerous profession. After he was accepted by the NYPD, he still refused to play upon the family name, choosing instead to come up through the ranks, which is why it took him more than a third of century to make Inspector (junior grade). He was 58 years old at the time.
Currently Valor Pretorius is filling in for the legendary Two-Gun Al Rosenthal, who was out on sick leave thanks to a popped disc suffered when he chased down one of the perps in a Times Square jewelry store heist.
Two-Gun Al hit the front pages for the collar like he usually did – decked out in a snappy 3-piece suit with his hands shoved into his vest pockets just above the twin .45s stuck in his waist.
A long time ago someone told Al Rosenthal that he looked like Lepke. That gave the young hot shot all the swagger he needed: a fine double-breasted tweed topcoat over his 3-piece (always with a rose boutonniere stuck in his lapel) and a fawn skin Homburg tilted on his noggin. Al parted his hair in the middle just like the gangsters of yore – the man looked like an Inspector even if he wasn’t quite ready for the promotion.
But young Rosenthal was an enterprising sort. He knew every crime reporter in the city. Whoever got to the crime scene first, called the other – first!
That's how Two Gun Al Rosenthal got the big cases. But how he broke them was no fluke, just good hard police work. Because of his foot-slogging, a lot of bad guys (and ladies, too) went to jail – and most of them deserved to be there.
Al Rosenthal had another edge, thanks to his special way of conducting an interrogation (this was before Miranda). He’d go soft and go hard, leaving the room frequently and mixing things up so that the suspects never knew what they were going to get.
Often, thanks to the confusion, they would spill the beans on some unrelated crime so that even if Rosenthal couldn’t make the current charge stick, he could nail the perp for the previous crime.
Al Rosenthal made full Inspector before he reached 30 – a record. Four decades later, thanks to several pay increases, he was one of the highest paid officers in the NYPD and certainly, next to the Chief, the most visible.
Valor Pretorius bore him no ill will. He could have leaped over Al Rosenthal any time he wanted thanks to his family connections. He often imagined how he would look in a deputy chief's uniform, with those scrambled eggs over his breast pocket and that high-brimmed parade hat supplying the longitude that Pretorius, never a tall man, secretly hoped for.
Infrequent winter holidays were spent at his Uncle Jakob's estate on Bannerman Island, an ellipsoidal strip of land that sits in the middle of the Hudson opposite West Point. Bannerman Island's virgin forests give it the same look it had when Henry Hudson first sailed up the river four centuries earlier.
The Pretorius clan had lived in the manse since the 1700's, a subject Uncle Jakob liked to elaborate on at their family gatherings. After today's feast the men retired to the billiard room where Jakob pursued the narrative he’d begun at the supper table:
Our great, great Uncle Baldwin served with Meade in the Civil War. His squad was stationed on Culp's Hill on July 2nd, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The firing was so heavy you couldn’t see fifty feet in front of you. But Baldwin and them other New Yorkers were all that stood between Richard Ewell's advance and the Union supply line.
Baldwin's unit had been issued Enfield's a few months’ earlier. They’d just stuck themselves in some rocks halfway up the ridge when the Rebs came running at them from down below, coming on the run uphill and that's not easy to do, and running like they owned the place - until the New Yorkers opened fire. It wasn’t very orderly, the riflemen pi
cking their targets and putting them down, going right on to another target like they were trained to do.
The Rebs’ colonel kept hollering at his men to hurry up. Baldwin recalled that ‘the man had a red sash tied around his waist and was waving his saber when I shot him.’ But his troops just kept coming, shouting and hollering like they always did but not accomplishing very much except dying, which a lot of them did.
The billiard room had quieted down and all eyes were on the shooter, who had demolished his last three opponents and had made a few of the onlookers quite rich in the process (betting was allowed). A skinny 17-year-old, Doobie – that was his name – was a local kid. He was also a ringer, a fact known only to the host. It was Uncle Jakob's way of getting back at his family members, most of whom he regarded as a bunch of free-loaders.
So far this evening Doobie had cleared about $3000 and was playing this game double-up. There was plenty of side betting because Doobie's backers were riding this wave of prosperity down to the hilt, when all of a sudden a scuffle broke out near the sideboard where the beer and the peanuts were lined up along with a big jar of kielbasa.
Mixing it up were Jakob's three sons, burly louts the bunch of them and each of middling height just like their father. Gernst, the oldest of the trio, had just hefted the kielbasa jug and was about to throw it at his brothers when their father grabbed a pool cue from one of the players and charged at him.
Put it down, he growled, snapping the pool cue in two and poking the splintered butt at Gernst.
This big fellow wasn’t stupid. He did a quick calculation of the geometry. Could he toss the kielbasa and get out quick? The old man was between him and the door and he’d seen his father use the pool cue before!
The kielbasa jug went back on the sideboard and the pool game started up again. Jakob herded his sons into a corner for a family pow-wow. The brothers looked pretty roughed up, torn shirts, ripped collars and some blood, most of it on the youngest.
You could tell from their fumblings that none of them were smokers but they lit up anyway, huffing and puffing great billows of blue smoke and shooting jets of flame from the tips of their stogies.
At dusk, Jakob walked Valor down to the ferry landing. Along the way he confided that he’d been in the Boy Scouts. Every year his troop used to march up to Oakwood Cemetery – that's in Troy, NY – to honor the Union dead. They got a whole section there and that's where Baldwin Pretorius was laid to rest along with some cousins whose names Jakob couldn’t remember.
I got to carry the flag a few times and that made me proud. Here, Jakob paused to take a long draw on his mug. He liked his beer a lot, even serving it at supper along with a few bottles of wine for the highfalutin’ folks.
So you see Valor, he continued, you’ve got a very patriotic family. Pretorius's served in both World Wars and yours truly fought at Inchon. I know you were in ‘Nam, although we thought we’d lost you when we didn’t hear from you in over a year. But thank God you're here to listen to all this stuff about what a great family you got, but I’m sure you know that.
They had reached the ferry landing. A single bulb lit up the ramp that led to the tiny pier. They could hear the ferry chugging in the distance. Jakob paused under the bare bulb and looked square at his nephew, his voice low and serious.
Just say the word and I call the chief. Him and me go way back. You’ll make Inspector the next day and you won’t have to put up with any more bull corn from that Rosenthal no more…
So how about it lad, what's it gonna be? Uncle looked at Valor hard and took another gulp of beer. Just then the ferry cut its engine and rode the current into the pier with a soft bump touchdown.
Ok, ok. I know you wanna do this on your own. And I tip my hat to you for that! Uncle Jakob shoved out his hand for the goodbye.
The handshake was quick and tough, the way men who count for something do. Then Valor started up the ramp, glad to have gotten through one more holiday. This was the ferry's last crossing of the day and he had the boat all to himself, it being the holiday with folks staying home to spend time with family.
He waved a goodbye to his uncle who was standing right under the light bulb almost lost in the dimness. The mists were rising up from the water and the air was very damp. Far off down river, Valor imagined that he could see the city lights.
TWO-GUN AL ROSENTHAL
STRIKES AGAIN!
Rosenthal had returned to duty during Valor's absence but quickly reinjured himself in another spectacular collar that garnered the usual splash of headlines for the precinct powerhouse, plus several weeks’ worth of his temporary promotion for Valor Pretorius.
There was a form on Pretorius’ desk notifying him of this personnel action. He was busy clearing away the pile of ‘Most Wanted’ circulars and case summaries from other agencies when the captain came into his office.
You heard about Rosenthal? The captain's shoes squeaked when he talked.
Yeah. Too bad.
Stuck his nose where he shouldn’t.
Bad collar?
No. Righteous collar. But he almost got himself killed for it!
Zat so?!
We got a complaint. Bad smell around one of them jewelry marts down on 7th.
Fire department stuff.
We thought so too…until the alligators, a whole raft of ‘em.
Alligators? Here?
Yeah. People buy ‘em on 42nd St. They're right outta the eggs. Cute little things. Just babies, and then they grow. Well, you got the picture. Down the drain they go!
Here the captain looked at his shoes as if to stop them from squeaking, his face showing the futility of it all.
Anyway, he continued, a bunch of ‘em, three- four-foot buggers, turned up dead in the drain under this jewelry mart.
Coulda been anything down in the sewer.
It was sulfuric acid! Howzzat grab you?
Sulfuric acid! Who’d wanna poison an alligator?
They use it to clean the diamonds. Mix it with nitric. Dumping it's a felony. So Rosenthal goes down to talk to the people after Building Inspection tips him off.
The guy makes him soon as he comes in the door. Grabs his briefcase and runs right past our boy, Al right after him and you know he knows how to run!
Down the stairs they go two at a time and them stairs are marble! Three, four landings down the guy spins on Al and pulls a Uzi out of his briefcase.
Al don’t take no shit, specially not now! He yanks the artillery from his belt and caps the bad guy quicker than you can say ‘You're under arrest!’
Just like that?!
Got his picture taken, too. Local hero. Lump in his backbone the size of a golf ball. Anyway, he’ll be out a couple weeks so you stay put till he gets back.
Thanks, Captain.
The Captain ambled out the door, his shoes squeaking all the way down the hallway. Pretorius returned to the mail stacked on his desk and was making quick work of it when a thick blue envelope slid out from the bottom of the pile. It was addressed to him - Detective Inspector Pretorius (Acting) - in a fine Palmer Method hand with a ‘Personal & Confidential’ down in the lower left corner.
He stuck the envelope in his coat pocket and, tossing the last stack of mail in the round file, locked up and headed for home.
Later that night he was finishing his liverwurst sandwich with a glass of Double Dark, chuckling how Merry liked to call it ‘Liver's worth.” He and Merry had been seeing one another for about seven years. Merry was a country girl and to this day, the bedroom smelled of freshly mowed hay when they were in there making love even though she had moved into town ten years ago and, except for an occasional trip to Oneonta to see her folks, was as citified as they come.
Pulling on his Double Dark, he lifted the envelope from his pocket and slit it open. Inside was a wad of news clippings. The cover letter was addressed to him:
Dear Inspector:
I believe that you will find the attached material to be of interest and look forward
to meeting with you to discuss.
Sincerely,
Willow Weeps, Reporter
It was the same Palmer Method only bolder. The clippings, published under Willow Weeps’ byline, were the beginning of a correspondence between this resourceful ninth-grader and Valor Pretorius, a correspondence which brought fame and fortune to these two unlikely partners in crime-solving, and which forms the basis for the remainder of our story.
TO
THE LISTS
Chivalry, long given up for dead, is alive and well when the Renaissance Faire comes to town every autumn and the public parks are filled with cries of Avaunt, Faretheewell, En Garde etc. These events, modeled on the jousting tournaments of yore, attract tens of thousands of spectators come to watch the contestants have at one another.
The teams are mostly made up of professionals although anyone who can afford a suit of armor can join. These events can go on for several days; a month or longer in the larger cities. Wrestling and crossbow, madrigals and jesters, the fields are busy from dawn to dusk with jousting being the most popular competition by far.
A fatality marred this year's Faire in New York's Central Park, a death most curious and largely overlooked save by a few enterprising reporters, among them Willow Weeps, who filed this report.
MURDER BY LANCE IN CENTRAL PARK,
by Willow Weeps, Reporter
“Death by jousting is a silly way to die, but this is the 21st century, not the 14th. This reporter means no disrespect but for a grown man to allow himself to get shivved in front of thousands of spectators – by a lance, no less - does raise the question!
Jousting, a popular sport in the Middle Ages is a contest between two mounted adversaries in full armor. The object is to unseat your opponent after going at him full speed with your lance, its fifteen foot pole blunted at the tip for sport, aimed dead center at his shield. His lance is aimed at your shield and both of you are atop your Percherons galloping headlong down the lists.
Dr. Phibes in The Beginning Page 12