The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]

by By Kim Newman

  “What does Davey say about the time he was away?”

  “He says little. He claims an almost complete loss of memory.”

  “But he draws. You think not from imagination, but from life?”

  “I don’t suppose he is representing a literal truth, no. But I am certain his pictures spring from the place he and his sister were taken—and I do believe they were taken—whether it be a literal Realm of Færie or not.”

  “You know the stories...”

  Charles caught her meaning, “...of the little people, and babies snatched from their cribs? Changelings left in their stead? Very Irish.”

  “Not in the Reed household. At least, not until the rise of Uncle Satt. But, yes, those stories.”

  “They aren’t confined to the emerald isle. Ten years ago in Sussex, a little girl named Rose Farrar was allegedly spirited away by ‘angels.’ That’s an authenticated case. We took an interest. Rose is still listed among the missing.”

  “It’s not just leprechauns. Someone is always accused of child abduction. Mysterious folk, outsiders, alien. Dark-complected, most like. Wicked to the bone. There are the stories of the Pied Piper and the Snow Queen. Robbers, imps and devils, Red Indians, the gypsies...”

  “Funny you should mention gypsies.”

  “Tinkers, in Ireland. Have they ever really stolen babies? Why on earth would they want to? Babies are bothersome, I’m given to understand. Nonsense is usually spouted about strengthening the blood-stock of a small population, but surely you’d do better taking grown-up women for that. No. it seems to me that the interest of the stories is in the people who tell them. There is a purpose, a lesson. Don’t go wandering off, children, for you might fall down a well. Don’t talk to strangers, for they might eat you.”

  Afternoon had slid into evening. One set of idlers had departed, and a fresh crowd come upon the scene. This was a park, not wild woods. Nature was trimmed and tamed, hemmed in by city streets and patrolled by wardens. Treetops were black with soot.

  A shout went up nearby, a governess calling her charge.

  “Master Timothy! Timmy!”

  Kate felt a clutch of dread. Here, in the press of people, was more danger than in all the trackless woods of England. Scattered among the bland, normal faces were blood-red, murderous hearts. She had attended enough coroners’ courts to know imps and angels were superfluous in the metropolis. Caligula could pass, unnoticed, in a celluloid collar.

  Master Timothy was found and smothered with tearful kisses. He didn’t look grateful. Catching sight of Kate, he stuck out a fat little tongue at her.

  “Beast,” she commented.

  Charles looked for a moment as if he was going to serve the ungracious little perisher as he had Merry Max. She laid a hand in the crook of his arm. She did not care to be complicit with another assault. Charles laid his hand on hers and tapped, understanding, amused.

  “The Diogenes Club has a category for everything,” he said, “no matter how outré. Maps of Atlantis—we have dozens of them, properly catalogued and folded. Hauntings, tabulated and subcategorised, with pins marked into ordnance survey charts and patterns studied by our learned consultants. Witch-Cults, ranked by the degree of unpleasantness involved in their ritual behaviour and the trouble caused in various quarters of the Empire. There’s also a category for mysteries without solution. Matters we have looked into but been unable to form a conclusion upon. Like the diplomat Benjamin Bathurst, who ‘walked around the horses’ and vanished without trace. Or little Rose Farrar.”

  “The Mary Celeste!”

  “Actually, we did fathom that. It remains under the rose for the moment. We’ve no pressing desire to go to war with the United States of America.”

  She let that pass.

  “Unsolved matters constitute a large category,” he continued. “Most of my reports are inconclusive. A strategy has formed for such cases. We tie a pale green ribbon around the file and shelve it in a windowless room behind a door that looks like a cupboard. The Ruling Cabal, which is to say you-know-who, disapproves of fussing with green ribbon files. As he says, ‘when you are unable to eliminate the impossible, don’t waste too much time worrying about it.’ The ribbons are knotted tight and difficult to unpick—though, from time to time, further information comes to light. Of course, it’s easier to work in the green ribbon room you think ofpeople as cases.”

  “And you can’t?”

  “No more than you can. No, I don’t mean that, Katie. You, more than anyone, are immune to that tendency. I am not. I concede that sometimes it helps to consider mysteries purely as puzzles. Pamela would nag me about it. She always thought of people first, last, and always.”

  Pamela’s name did not come up often between them. It did not need to.

  “So, in her memory and for fear of disappointing you, I tied the pale green ribbon loosely around Davey Harvill. I had thought the whole thing buried in Eye, a local wonder soon forgotten. However, here we are in the heart of London, before Davey’s færie recreated. There are the goblins to consider. Blenkins’s goblins. How did they creep into the picture?”

  Kate snapped her fingers. “That’s how B. Loved draws goblins, hidden as if they’ve crept in. You have to look twice, sometimes very closely, to see them, disguised against tree bark or peeping out of long grass. In the Annual, there’s a plate entitled ‘how many goblins are being naughty in this picture?’ It shows a country market in an uproar.”

  “There are twenty-seven goblins in the picture. All being naughty.”

  “I found twenty-nine.”

  “Yes, well, that’s a game. This is not. Workmen have been injured. Nipped as if by tiny teeth. Rats, they say. The thing is, when it’s rats, parties involved usually say it isn’t. That’s when they talk about mischievous imps. No one who wants to draw in crowds of children likes to mention the tiniest rat problem. But here everyone says it’s rats. Except Blenkins, and he’s been told to shut up.”

  “.. .if it can hurt you...”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Just something I was thinking of earlier.”

  There was another commotion. Kate assumed Timmy had fled his governess again, but that was not the case.

  “Speak of the Devil...”

  Blenkins was running through the crowds, clearly in distress.

  He saw Charles and dashed over, out of breath.

  “Mr. B,” he said, “it’s terrible what they done...”

  Police whistles shrilled nearby.

  “I can’t credit it. ‘appened so quick, sir.”

  Cries went up. “Fire!” and “Murder!”

  “You better take us in,” said Charles.

  “Not the lady—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am—it’s too ‘orrible.”

  “She’ll be fine,” said Charles, winning her all over again—though the casual assumption of the strength of her constitution in face of the truly ‘orrible gave her some pause. “Come on, quick about it!”

  Blenkins led them back towards the Gift.

  * * * *

  v: “the scene of the occurrence”

  There was a rumble, deep in the ground, like the awakening of an angry ogre. The doors of the Gift were thrown open, and people—some in costume—poured through. Bulge, collar burst and a bruise on his forehead, was carried out by a broken-winged fairy and a soot-grimed engineer.

  Charles held Kate’s arm, holding her back.

  Bulge caught sight of her and glared as if she were personally to blame.

  Blenkins took off his cap and covered his face with it.

  Something big broke, deep inside the Gift. Cries and screams were all around.

  Quinn, beard awry and hat gone, staggered into the evening light, dazed.

  The elves stumbled into an encircling crowd of curious spectators. Kate realised she was in danger of belonging to this category of nuisance.

  A belch of smoke escaped and rose in a black ring.

  The doors clattered shut.

&
nbsp; Breaths were held. There was a moment of quiet. No more smoke, no flames or explosions. Then, everyone began talking at once.

  The police were on the scene, a troop of uniformed constables throwing up a picket around the Gift. Kate recognised Inspector Mist of Scotland Yard, a sallow man with a pendulous moustache.

  Mist caught sight of Charles and Kate. He shifted his bowler to the back of his head.

  “Again we meet in unusual circumstances, Inspector,” said Charles.

  “Unusual circumstances are an expected thing with you, Mr. Beauregard,” said the policeman. “I suppose you two’ll have the authority of a certain body to act as, shall we say, observers in this investigation.”

  Charles did not confirm or deny this, a passive sort of mendacity. She had a pang of worry. Her friend stood to lose a hard-to-define position. She had dark ideas of what form expulsion from the Diogenes Club might take.

  “We’re not sure any crime has been committed,” she said, distracting the thoughtful Mist. “It might be some kind of accident.”

  “There is usually a crime somewhere, Miss Reed.”

  Mist might look the glum plodder, but was one of the sharpest needles in the box.

  “Hullo, Quinn,” said the Inspector, spotting the publicist. “Not hawking patent medicines again, are we?”

  Quinn looked sheepish and shook his head.

  “I’m relieved to hear it. I trust you’ve found respectable employment.”

  The former leprechaun was pale and shaking. His green jacket was spotted with red.

  Mist ordered his men to disperse only the irrelevant crowds. He told the elves not to melt into the throng just yet. Questions would have to be answered. More policemen arrived, then a clanking, hissing fire engine. Mist had the Brigade stand by.

  “Let’s take a look inside this pixie pavilion, shall we?”

  Quinn shook his head, insistently.

  Mist pulled one of the book-covers open, and stepped inside. No one from Bulge’s troupe was eager to join him. Blenkins hid behind Miss Fay, whose wand was snapped and leotards laddered. Kate followed the Inspector, with Charles in her wake. In the murk of the tunnel, Mist was exasperated. He pushed the main door back open.

  “Who’s in charge?” he called out.

  Some elves moved away from Uncle Satt, who was fiddling with his collar, trying to refasten it despite the loss of a stud.

  “Mr. Bulge, if you would be so kind...”

  The Inspector beckoned. Bulge advanced, regaining some of his composure.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Bulge entered his realm, joining the little party.

  “If you would lead us to the scene of the occurrence...”

  Bulge, even in the shadows, blanched visibly.

  “Very well,” he said, lifting a flap of black velvet. A stairwell wound into the ground. Smell hung in the air, ozone and machine oil and something else foul. Arrhythmic din boomed from below. Kate felt a touch of the quease.

  Mist went first, signalling for Bulge to follow. Kate and Charles waited for them to disappear before setting foot on the wrought-iron steps.

  “Into the underworld,” said Charles.

  “I didn’t realise Noggart’s Nook harboured circles of damned souls.”

  “Children who don’t wash their hands before and after meals, maids who sweep dust under the carpets.

  Beneath the Gift were large, stone-walled rooms, hot and damp. Electric lamps flickered in heavily grilled alcoves.

  “Good God,” exclaimed Inspector Mist.

  The dynamos were still in motion, though slowed and erratic. Huge cast-iron engines, set in concrete foundations, spat sparks and water-droplets as great belts kept the drums in motion. Wheels and pistons whirled and pounded, ball valves spun, and somewhere below a hungry furnace roared. The central dynamo was grinding irregularly, works impeded by a limp suit of clothes filled with loose meat.

  Kate gasped and covered her mouth and nose with her hand, determined not to be overcome.

  Flopping from the suit-collar was a deflated ball with a bloody smear for a face.

  “Sackham,” cried Bulge.

  She could not recognise this rag as the clerkish elf she had seen earlier, scurrying after his master.

  “What’s been done to you?!” howled Bulge, with a shocking, undeniable grief.

  The human tangle was twisted into the wheels of the machine, boneless legs caught in cogs. A ball valve whined to a halt and shook off its spindle. With a mighty straining and gouts of fire, the central dynamo died. Its fellows flipped over inhibitors and shut down in more orderly fashion. The lamps faded.

  In the dark there was only thestench.

  Kate felt Charles’s arm around her.

  * * * *

  ACT III: FÆRIE

  i: “events have eventuated”

  After a day as Sir Boris and a night at a police station, Charles needed to sleep. The situation was escalating, but he was no use in his present state. He had told Inspector Mist as much as he could and done his best to spare Kate further distress.

  He was greeted at the door of his house in Cheyne Walk.

  “Visitors, sir,” said his man, Bairstow. “I have them in the reception room. Funereal gentlemen.”

  He considered himself in the hall-mirror. Unshaven, the grey that Kate—clever girl!—had deftly intuited was evident about his gills.

  These visitors would not care about his appearance.

  “Send in tea, Bairstow. Strong and green.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Charles stepped into his reception room, as if he were the intruder and the others at home.

  The two men were dressed like undertakers, in long black coats and gloves, crepe-brimmed hats, and smoked glasses.

  “Beauregard,” said the senior, Mr. Hay.

  “Gentlemen,” he acknowledged.

  Mr. Hay took his ease in the best armchair, looking over the latest number of the Pall Mall Gazette, open to an article by Kate. Not a coincidence.

  Mr. Effe, younger and leaner, stood by a book-case, reading spines.

  Charles, not caring to be treated like a schoolboy summoned before the beak for a thrashing, slipped into a chair of his own and stretched out, fingers interlaced on his waistcoat as if settling down for a nap.

  (Which would be a good idea.)

  Two sets of hidden eyes fixed on him.

  “Must you wear those things?” Charles asked.

  Mr. Hay lowered his spectacles, disclosing very light-coloured, surprisingly humorous eyes. Mr. Effe did not follow suit. Charles amused himself by imagining a severe case of the cross-eyed squints.

  At this hour in the morning, a maid would have opened the curtains. The visitors had drawn them again, which should make protective goggles superfluous. He wondered what his visitors could actually see. It was no wonder Mr. Effe had to get so close to the shelves to identify books.

  “The salacious items are under lock and key in the hidden room,” said Charles. “Have you read My Nine Nights in a Harem? I’ve a rare Vermis Mysteriis, illustrated with brass-rubbings that’d curl your hair.”

  “That’s a giggle,” snarled Mr. Effe. “Of course, rooms.”

  “Three. And secret passages. Don’t you?”

  He couldn’t imagine Mr. Hay or Mr. Effe—or any of their fellows, Mr. Bee, Mr. Sea, and Mr. Dee, all the way to Mr. Eggs, Miss Why, and Mr. Zed—having homes, even haunted lairs. He assumed they slept in rows of coffins under the Houses of Parliament.

  Mr. Effe wiped a line down a mediocre edition of The Collected Poems of Jeffrey Aspern and pretended to find dust on his gloved finger.

  Charles knew Mrs. Hammond, his housekeeper, better than that.

  “You’ve been acting on your own initiative,” said Mr. Hay. “That’s out of character for an active member of the Diogenes Club. Not that there are enough of you to make general assumptions. Sedentary bunch, as a rule.”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” sniped Mr
. Effe.

  Mr. Hay raised a hand, silencing his junior.

  “We’re not here for recriminations.”

  Millie, the second-prettiest maid, brought in the tray. He approved; Lucy, the household stunner, was in reserve for special occasions. After thanking the by no means unappealing Millie, he let her escape. Mr. Effe’s attempt at a charming smile had thrown a fright into the girl. Charles poured a measure of Mrs. Hammond’s potent brew into a giant’s teacup, but did not offer hospitality.