“I managed to knife him between the shoulder-blades while his back was still turned, but it wasn’t a mortal blow. Actually, he made quite a fight of it—he was a wiry little chap, and he certainly didn’t have muscles like a priest—but I turned the tables on him after he’d chased me up on deck and eventually managed to throw him overboard. Not a moment too soon, either, seeing that his brother, having delivered his punch line, immediately came at me with a saber. The baron was a much bigger fellow than the priest, with quite some reach, but I’d had the presence of mind to secrete one of my hunting-rifles in the scuppers, just in case, and I got to it before he sliced me up. I let him have both barrels, and he went over the side too. He was probably dead before he hit the water, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he wasn’t. The sharks were all around us by then, having been attracted by the younger one, who was bleeding like a stuck pig from the wound in his back.
“We went through their luggage of course—that’s how we discovered who they really were—but we didn’t find a single diamond. Even the stones that Brother Benedict had snatched from the loaded suit must have gone over the side with him. The sharks must have scoffed the lot—but at least the third young lady was saved from becoming a vampire’s victim, much to her relief. She was very grateful to me, but as she was much the ugliest of the three, I didn’t take advantage of the poor child.”
“Ayesha wasn’t with you on that trip, I presume?” Captain Rowland asked.
“No, she wasn’t. This is her first time out of Africa. It’s all a great adventure for her.”
“Actually, my dear,” the young woman drawled, “it’s been a bit of a drag so far. No disrespect to your marvelous ship, captain, but I’ll be glad to get back on dry land, where I can be myself again.”
“Meaning no disrespect myself, young lady,” the captain said, “but I’ll be very glad to have four more days of your company before you do.”
“You don’t suppose we’re in danger, do you, Mr. Edison?” the former Mrs. Langtry said to her neighbor.
“I doubt that I am,” Edison replied, a trifle ungraciously. “These ancient monsters never attack men of science.”
Andrew Carnegie, meanwhile, leaned over to whisper in John D. Rockefeller’s ear: “Didn’t believe a damned word of it myself,” he said. “Made the whole thing up, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I don’t know,” said Rockefeller. “If he were making it up, he’d surely have painted his fighting skills in a kinder light—and he’d have added a love interest too. You can be sure that’s what Mr. Chambers would have done—or even that Twain fellow. Didn’t I read that he was dead, by the way?”
“I read that too,” Hearst put in, “in one of my own papers—so it must be true. We won’t have far to look for our vampire, if any more poor folk turn up dead, will we?”
* * * *
Captain Rowland was woken again shortly before dawn on the twenty-eighth, this time by Mr. Black. Rowland had been dreaming about chasing a sea serpent, desperate to be hailed as a hero by Mr. Hearst’s New York Sun and to win the love of the fair Ayesha.
“What is it now?” he demanded.
“Five more dead, sir,” Black reported. “Three young men, two young women. Only one Irishwoman this time, though, and two Americans on their way home.”
“Americans? Not....”
“No sir—steerage, like the others. Mormons, I believe.”
“That’s all right, then. Can’t imagine Hearst getting excited about that. More rumors, I suppose?”
“Yes sir. They’re not going to be fobbed off by a speech this time. And there’s been a leak.”
“A leak! Which compartment? How bad is it?”
“Not in the hull sir—I mean that someone in the crew’s been letting out information about the cargo.”
“You mean...”
“No sir, not that. The sarcophagi in the secure hold.”
“Damn! That will make Hearst excited, for all the wrong reasons. He’s very secretive, for a newspaperman. Still, I suppose it’s not every day one gets a chance to pick up the contents of a freshly-looted tomb on the cheap while passing through Cairo. You can’t blame the man, given that he has the money to spare. So the steerage mob has got the idea that we’ve got a gang of Egyptian vampire mummies aboard, has it?”
“Yes sir.”
“Very well. You know the drill. Meeting on the bridge. Send for Quatermain—and Hearst too, I suppose.”
Black hurried off and Rowland got dressed, cursing his luck. By the time he arrived on the bridge, Hearst was already berating Hodgson, Black and Kitchener. “When I say absolute secrecy, I mean absolute secrecy,” the newspaper magnate was shouting, at the top of his voice. “If I wanted people to know my business, I’d print it. I want an armed guard placed on the hold with my treasure in it—a dozen men, the very best you have. If anyone comes near it, they shoot to kill.”
“We’ll do everything necessary to protect your property, sir,” Rowland assured him. “And yours too, sir, of course,” he added, turning to Allan Quatermain.”
“Oh, don’t worry about my luggage,” Quatermain said. “I don’t have any precious stones stashed away in my boxes—just some interesting fossils I picked up in Olduvai Gorge.”
“Precious stones!” howled Hearst. “Who told you I had gems? Do you think I’m some kind of smuggler? Why, I’ll bet that Carnegie’s bullion is worth five times as much as my few trinkets—and as for Rockefeller’s suitcase full of bonds....”
“Excuse me, Mr. Hearst,” Rowland said, soothingly, “but none of us is supposed to know about any of that. I don’t think Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller....”
“Don’t be an idiot, man, I’m not going to print it. I’ve got real news to print, about preachers’ love-nests and actresses’ bastards.” “Guards with guns aren’t going to quiet rumors, sir,” Hodgson said. “If anything, they’ll just inflame them further. Will you try to talk to the people in steerage again, captain?”
“If you’ll pardon the suggestion,” Quatermain put in, “I think it might be a good idea to change our tactics. Instead of going down to the steps of the third-class deck to talk to anyone who cares to listen, perhaps we might invite a few of the ringleaders up to your stateroom—sit them down, offer them a cigar and a few bottles of champagne, talk about the situation like civilized men. I’m sure we can make them see sense and convert them into ambassadors of reason. Especially if Mr. Hearst can promise to give due acknowledgement to their contribution in the Sun. Perhaps Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller might offer their services in finding the anxious gentlemen employment, when they reach New York.”
“That’s exactly what I was about to suggest,” said Rowland. “A capital plan, worthy of a true naval strategist. Organize it, Hodgson. Put the extra armed guards on the hold anyway, though. Can you see to that, Black? As soon you’ve arranged for the disposal of the bodies.”
“Yes sir,” said the two mates, in unison.
“Have you really got fossils in those boxes of yours, Quatermain?” Hearst asked, in the meantime, having evidently calmed down. “Dinosaurs, do you mean?”
“Not dinosaurs, Mr. Hearst,” Quatermain said. “I’ve seen a few dinosaurs in my time, but I never managed to bag one, worse luck. These are humanoid bones. I intend to make a gift of them to the New York Museum of Natural History?”
“Who told you about that, damn it?” said Rowland, whose attention had only just returned to his passengers’ conversation.
“I didn’t know it was a secret,” Quatermain said, equably. “Surely everyone knows that New York has the second best Natural History Museum in the world?”
“Not for long,” Hearst assured him. “It’ll be the best soon enough.”
“It certainly will,” Rowland agreed, in spite of being an Englishman.
“It would be if we could catch one of these vampires for its exhibition halls,” Quatermain said. “Especially if it turned out to be a mummy. Two attractions for the price of
one!”
“If anyone touches one of my sarcophagi,” Hearst said, darkly, “they’ll end up wrapped in bandages themselves.”
* * * *
By mid-afternoon on the twenty-eighth, Allan Quatermain’s plan seemed to have worked like a charm. Harmony had been restored to the lower decks, and everything was running smoothly on the Titan, in spite of the worsening weather. The vessel was sailing into the teeth of a force nine gale from noon till six o’clock, and the rain was torrential, but the wind slackened in the evening and the deluge relented. As the crew were about to go into dinner, Black reported that a good proportion of the steerage passengers were dreadfully seasick, and that more than one had expressed the thought that exsanguination by a vampire would be a mercy.
There were a few absentees from the first-class dining-room too, but the writers’ table was full. Several of the faces on display were a trifle green, but these were men with nibs of steel, and they were not about to let a little nausea prevent them from enjoying a meal whose price had been included in their tickets. The fish was only cod, but the main course was roast lamb with mint sauce, with prune flan to follow.
“You don’t suppose that Hearst’s mummies are really rising from their coffins by night to steep their bandages in blood, do you?” said the man from the Telegraph to the man from the Mail.
“Who cares?” said the man from the Mail. “It’d be a great story if we were ever able to print it, but your editor wouldn’t wear it any more than mine would. We could try hawking it to Pulitzer, I suppose.”
“He wouldn’t touch it either,” said the Telegraph man. “The good old days are long gone; it’s all one big cartel now. These other chaps might make something of it, though—benefits of poetic license and all.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Twain. “The trouble with being an honest liar is that you have to maintain plausibility. A Yankee at King Arthur’s Court is one thing—vampire mummies on a transatlantic liner is another.”
“Perhaps so,” said M. Feval fils, regretfully. “Although....”
“I do hope there isn’t going to be a mutiny,” said Mr. Henley.
“Really?” said M. Apollinaire. “Why?”
“A mutiny might be quite amusing,” M. Jarry agreed.
“There isn’t going to be a mutiny,” Mr. Huneker said, “unless the vampires start picking on the crew. The passengers might let off a little steam, but nobody with an ounce of common sense goes in for serious rioting on a ship in mid-Atlantic, especially in the dead of winter.”
“We shall meet our fate soon enough,” opined Mr. Vane.
“You talk like a one-book writer, Mr. Vane,” said Mr. Chambers, a trifle snappishly. “Think of the delights awaiting us in New York. Think of the romance of America, and the new-born century!”
“We’ve got to get to New York first,” Miss Lee pointed out. “Have you been out on the promenade deck today?”
“Certainly not,” said M. Lorrain.
“We’ll get to New York all right,” said Mr. Robertson. “A little late, perhaps, but we’ll get there. I trust this ship implicitly.”
“Everyone trusts his ship implicitly, until it starts to sink,” M. Jarry observed.
“An allegory of life,” said M. Apollinaire, with a sigh. “I must mention it to Mallarme when I get back.”
“Didn’t I read that he was dead?” Mr. Henley put in.
“Probably an exaggerated report,” said Mr. Twain.
“Happens all the time,” fifteen voices chorused, before Mr. Twain could draw breath.
“The deaths in steerage weren’t exaggerated, though,” said Mr. Chambers, pensively. “We’ve another four nights at sea yet—maybe five if the storm sets us back a long way. That’s twenty or twenty-five more bodies, at the present rate.”
“Enough to devastate the whole of our table,” Mr. Huneker agreed, “if the vampires get tired of slumming. Except, of course, that we all have ink in our veins instead of blood.”
“There might be worse things aboard than vampires,” said Mr. Twain, who had recovered quickly enough from his momentary embarrassment. “I talked to your friend Rocambole today, M. Feval, and he dropped a few dark hints about secret lockers in the refrigeration hold. Now, it happens that I was also talking to the crewman who’s in charge of the refrigeration unit—that Kitchener fellow— and he jumped like a jackrabbit when I asked him what he had in his secret locker. Denied everything, of course—just ice, he said—but one of his kitchen staff muttered something about monsters of the deep that never really died, even if they were cut to pieces.”
“Sea serpents, you man?” said the man from the Mail.
“Not likely,” said the man from the Telegraph. “I heard a rumor about that ship that went down in the channel last week—the Dunlin, I think it was, or maybe the Sandwich. There was talk of that being sunk by a monster that should have been dead but wasn’t.”
“There can’t be any sea serpents in the Solent,” Mr. Henley put in. “they’d never get away unobserved in Cowes week.”
“That’s just the point,” said the man from the Telegraph. “This was something tinged with a far more sinister superstition than any mere sea serpent.”
“Like vampire mummies, you mean?” asked Mr. Chambers. “Something of the same order, I suppose,” the man from the Telegraph admitted, “but there was talk of Madeira....”
“Rowland’s favorite tipple seems to be Scotch,” M. Jarry put in. “Mine’s absinthe,” M. Apollinaire added.
“I heard a rumor that these sarcophagi in the hold don’t actually have mummies in them at all,” the man from the Mail told his colleague, competitively. “They’re actually stuffed full of gems, bullion and bonds. All shady, of course—but that’s how these millionaires stay ahead of the pack, isn’t it?”
“Let’s hope it’s all still there when we reach New York,” said the Telegraph man. “I’d hate to think of those French bandits who robbed Asprey’s and the palace making off with it, wouldn’t you?”
* * * *
Meanwhile, Allan Quatermain was responding to a query from the Duke of Buccleuch as to whether he’d ever encountered a mummy.”
“Several,” Quatermain answered. “But only one that was given to wandering around.”
“And was it a vampire, too?” inquired Hearst, sarcastically.
“Not at all. He was a rather plaintive chap, actually, animated by the desire to be reunited with his long-lost love, Queen Nefertiti. He choked a few people to death, but only because they got in his way. I had to do something about it, though—the business was getting out of hand.”
“Blew him away with your elephant-gun, I suppose,” Carnegie observed.
“I did try that,” Quatermain admitted, “but the bullets went clean through him, and the dust they blew out simply spiraled around for a few minutes before getting sucked back into his body. I could have been in a sticky situation myself then, but he wasn’t much of a runner.”
“How fortunate,” murmured Mrs. de Bathe.
“I had to set a trap for him instead,” Quatermain went on. “Happily, he was none too bright—the ancient Egyptians used to take a mummy’s brain out through the nostrils with a kind of hook, you know, and put it in its own canopic jar—so he fell right in. I’d filled the pit with oil, and laid a gunpowder fuse, so it seemed like a mere matter of striking a match and retiring to a safe distance.” “Seemed?” said Rockefeller. “You mean that it didn’t work?” “Oh, he went up like a Roman candle. The resin Egyptian mummifiers use to stick the bandages together is very flammable, and what was left of his body was as dry as a stick. If anything, the operation was a little too successful. It turned him into a cloud of thick black smoke in a matter of seconds. The trouble was that the trick he had of sucking back his dust after bullets went through him worked just as well on smoke. One minute there was nothing but a cloud settling slowly to ground-level, the next he was reformulating, a little larger than before and in a far darker mood.”
“How terrible, my dear fellow!” said the count. “What on Earth did you do next?”
“Ran like hell, old man. He was a little nippier on his pins now, but I still had the legs of him. I needed to rethink the whole problem, but once I’d figured out what was what, it wasn’t too hard to come up with a new plan. Given that fire hadn’t worked, the logical thing to try seemed to be water, for which he seemed to have something of an aversion—but transporting water from the Nile is a tricky business, and he wasn’t about to be lured into the stream.”
“So you buried him, did you?” Hearst suggested. “Got him back into his pyramid and slammed the door behind him.”
“That might have worked, I suppose,” Quatermain said, judiciously, “but it didn’t seem to me to qualify as a final solution. Besides which, I already knew that he was a sucker for pitfall traps— so it was just a matter of figuring out what kind of filling might work better than oil.” He paused for dramatic effect “What did you use?” Rowland asked, impatiently.
“Molasses,” Quatermain said. “Nice, thick, sticky molasses. After a couple of days of impotent struggling, he’d virtually dissolved in the stuff. After two days more it had set rock hard. We broke up the mass and sold the pieces in the souk as dark candy. I didn’t eat any myself, but those who did said it was delicious. I think I’ve got a few pieces left in my cabin, if anyone wants to try some.”
“Doesn’t that qualify as cannibalism?” Edison asked.
“No more so than enjoying this delightful repast,” Quatermain said, indicating the lamb shoulder on his plate. “Or, for that matter, breathing. Where do you think the carbon in our bodies goes when it’s recycled? Julius Caesar’s atoms have been redistributed so widely by now that there’s one in every mouthful we eat, another in every breath we take. And Attila the Hun’s too, of course, not to mention Cain and Solomon, Herod and Apollonius of Tyana. There’s a little of everything human in every one of us, gentlemen— and a little of everything unhuman too. Cats and bats, mice and elephants, snakes and dragons. Everything circulates—except wealth, of course. Wealth always flows uphill, from the pockets of the poor to the coffers of the rich. Isn’t that so, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Carnegie?”
The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels Page 18