The man tried to give chase but again the dog hampered his progress, finding his socks irresistible.
“But the brakes!” I reminded her.
“The brakes are fine,” Miss Pepper smirked.
“You were faking!” I was aghast.
“I’m a woman,” she shrugged. “It happens.”
We pootled away. The man and the dog shrank in the distance. We drove through the township and onto the next, where there was a railway station.
“Relax,” said Miss Pepper. “The guy’ll get his car back.”
I sulked. I didn’t want him to get his car back. I wanted to keep it.
Miss Pepper reached into a compartment in the dashboard. Handy for keeping one’s gloves in, I suppose. It was crammed with papers. She rifled through them.
“His name’s Ford,” she read. “Not only will I write him an apology, I shall jot down a few improvements for his machine. Like a roof, for example. I dread to imagine the state of my hair.”
* * *
Miss Pepper was against paying for tickets but I remained firm. The purchase ate into our funds but at least we were not running the risk of being ejected from the train by the conductor. We had a long wait. Neither of us felt disposed to converse. I could have made several insightful observations about the weather but chose to keep them to myself.
In the waiting room, Miss Pepper rummaged around in One-Eyed Helen’s skirt. She pulled out the book, the diary I had borrowed - oh, very well, purloined. I cannot pretend it came from Mr Boots’s lending library.
She pored over the pages. “It’s mainly a list of names and dates,” she reported. “Some places too.”
“Oh?” I decided I’d better show interest. She might miss some detail that could prove pertinent.
“Mexico features quite prominently.”
“That’s where the boys she sold ended up,” I reminded her.
“So, we should go to Mexico.”
“Why?”
“Think about it: if someone’s got the mummy of King Xolotl that’s where they’d take it.”
“Would they?”
“Makes sense to me. Maybe someone wants him returned to his rightful place of eternal rest.”
“Perhaps...” I was noncommittal.
“Or perhaps there’s a more sinister purpose...”
“I don’t follow.”
“Listen: I’m going to suggest something. I don’t want you getting all aereated about it. Hear me out first, right?”
I could feel my colour rising already. “Go on.”
“I say we take a detour. It’s almost in the right direction anyway.”
“Oh?”
“I know somebody. A university professor. He’s an archaeologist. He might be able to tell us more about what we’re dealing with.”
“He knows about Xolotl?”
“Maybe. What do you say?”
I had no alternative to propose. And a university professor sounded like he might actually be of help. He would certainly be better company, however short-lived our visit.
“Agreed,” I said. “Let us meet this professor.”
“Great.” She turned a few more pages. The lists gave way to densely written handwriting. One-Eyed Helen’s scrawl indicated she had something she wished to get off her chest. “Look at this. She’s written about Tommy.”
“Tommy can wait,” I got to my feet. “Our train has come.”
Chapter Ten
Perhaps I do not need to point out that the train was nothing like the Orient Express. Opulent is not the word. Basic is. And wooden. The carriages to the rear were like crates and reeked of the farmyard. Incarcerated cattle lowed in their confinement.
There was no such thing as first-class accommodation. It rankled with me most deeply. In the normal course of things, I can afford the best - especially since the publication of Water Nymph. Admittedly, I was presently in straitened circumstances, but it grieved me to see there was one standard of service. At least, I consoled myself, we were not to be lumped in with the livestock.
We found a carriage near the engine and I was gratified to see we would be afforded some measure of privacy in a compartment. This was more like it. We installed ourselves - I insisted in facing the direction of travel; I would rather see where I am going than where I have just been.
“Whatever,” said Miss Pepper, for whom the railway held no thrills, having travelled through the clouds. She pulled out One-Eyed Helen’s book again. “Listen to this,” she said.
* * *
From One-Eyed Helen’s Diary
I am worried about Tommy. He’s becoming unmanageable - and I don’t just mean his hair, which he won’t let me clip no more. It’s in your eyes, I keep telling him but he snarls and snaps. At me! The hand that feeds him. And his clothes. They could do with boiling. They must be crawling with fleas and I don’t know what. You should take more pride in your appearance, I tell him when he sits there scratching but my words fall on deaf ears. Oh, you used to be so smart, I remind him but I’m wasting my breath. You were always the best-turned out in the area but look at you now!
He’s becoming more - animal. It’s as though all those years I spent civilising him and making him presentable were all for naught. It’s like his true nature is coming out, reasserting itself despite all my efforts to make a man of him. A gentleman’s going a bit too far, but a man, just a man, was good enough for me. And for him - or so I thought.
What a cute little boy he was! Others spurned him - and those were the kind ones. There were those who hurled abuse and all manner of filth at him, like it was his fault, like he had a choice in being the way he is. Cost me more than a pretty penny to buy him from the circus but I couldn’t leave him there, not after I’d seen him, not after he’d looked at me with those big brown eyes of his. I asked who his parents were but Scratch O’Halloran had no idea. Nobody knows, he said. I said I hoped the cash I’d paid him would go some way to improve conditions for the other poor buggers in his charge but I suspect he pissed it all up the wall or tucked it in the suspender belts of many a painted whore. Oh, if I could have rescued the lot of them, I would have. But it was Tommy who looked right at me and broke my heart.
Where would I be without him? Nowhere.
Folks tend to be a sight more obliging when you’ve got a companion like Tommy. The jackets he’s split just by flexing his muscles! The tailor made a fortune out of us. The jackets were always too tight across his chest, and the trousers too long. We had to have his clothes made special, and Tommy loved to look good. He’d comb his face and brush his teeth, slicking his mane back with Macassar oil. He practically bathed in pomade.
But not no more. He’s become slovenly. Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since I’ve had to call up his services as a pacifier, you might say, as a placater of those who seek to oppose me, of those who obstruct my business, of those I just plain don’t like.
What he does with them afterwards, I never ask. Buries the bones, I expect. Maybe he gnaws on them a little bit - I don’t want to think about that.
But, like I say, it’s been a while since I had to sic him on anybody. And it’s like he’s lost interest in himself and in me. Like he doesn’t have to pay me back for the clothes and the food and the love. I don’t know; who can say what goes on in the mind of a dog-headed boy?
But I’ve a feeling I’m going to have to let him loose on somebody before much longer or I might lose my Tommy forever.
* * *
Miss Pepper stopped reading and closed the book.
“She set him on those people in the museum,” she said quietly.
“But why? Why those people in particular? It couldn’t just have been for the exercise.”
“I don’t know...” She placed the book on the seat beside her
rather than returning it to her pocket, as though its contents disturbed her.
The train slowed. We had reached our destination: Philadelphia. I had pointed out that there is a perfectly good university (not Oxbridge standard, of course) up in Boston and she had reminded me that she didn’t know any professors in Harvard. Oh, I had replied, resigning myself to missing the book signing once and for all.
We rode a trolleybus to the university.
“Green?” I read from the brass plaque on the administration building. “It’s not Brown, is it?”
“I never said it was Ivy League,” said Miss Pepper. “Now come on. Archaeology is this way.”
We crossed the campus. It was not unpleasant. Considerable effort and expense had been gone to in order to create the effect of importance and academia. Manicured lawns and colonnaded walkways divided and linked the various departments. It was all very nice but far too new.
“This place was founded in 1760,” said Miss Pepper, sensing my censure.
“As I say, far too new,” I replied.
We reached the Archaeology department - a redbrick building at odds with the pseudo-classical stylings of the rest of the campus.
“You seem to know your way around,” I observed.
“I grew up here,” she beamed with pride.
“I thought you were from Texas.”
“I am. I mean, I was. But then Dad got this job here, so we moved.”
“Dad? Your father works here? He is the gardener, perhaps?”
“No, you dunderhead. My father is the man we have come to see. He’s a tenured professor of Archaeology.”
Gosh. I had not been expecting that.
Chapter Eleven
“Belle!” Professor Pepper was overjoyed to be reunited with his daughter. “And so you are not dead?” It was as though he doubted the evidence of his own eyes. He hugged Miss Pepper and, reluctant to let her go, held her at arm’s length and gazed at her until tears clouded his vision.
“Hello, Dad,” said Miss Pepper.
The old man wiped his eyes. He had a pleasant countenance, reddened by the outdoor portion of his profession. His hair was sandy in places, although tufts of white sprang from his temples. He turned his attention from his long-lost offspring to me and blinked. His expression changed and he extended a hand, which I took and shook.
“So that’s the size of it, eh?” he laughed and I wondered what he meant. “This is why you’ve kept your head down, my girl. You eloped! You ran off and got yourself married to this - this butler?”
I bristled. Miss Pepper laughed like a creaking gate.
She made the introductions and brought her father up-to-date with our exploits.
“I never liked that man Trask,” said the professor.
“Trask?” I gaped. I had heard the name before. “Do you mean, the curator of the Johnsonian? That Trask?”
“Yes; that Trask,” said Miss Pepper. “It was he who funded my research.”
My mouth worked like a fish attempting speech. Had I missed something? What about the man in the field, the one who took pot-shots at us and both poisoned and kidnapped my Cuthbert?
Miss Pepper laughed. “Yes, that was Trask, cunningly disguised. At the museum the other night, he may have come across as a respectable academic - somewhat boring, in fact - but he is a seriously dangerous man. Evil to the core.”
My head was reeling. “So, where is Cuthbert now? Where has he taken him?”
Miss Pepper addressed her father. “He’s worried about his valet. They’re very close.”
“Oh...” said Professor Pepper and I did not care for his tone. He redeemed himself to some extent by offering tea.
When it was brewed, we sat on overstuffed armchairs in his office, a room crammed with books and maps and charts and bits of skeleton.
“I’d bet you a dime to a dollar, Trask will be returning to Mexico pretty damn quick,” said the professor. “There’s a time, you see, a limited time span in which certain rituals may be conducted. The alignment of the planets, the stars, you know. The ancients knew all about them. The Aztecs were no different.”
“Rituals?” said Miss Pepper. “What’s he up to?”
The professor sat back in his chair, settling in to tell us a tale. “My guess would be the ritual of resurrection. Trask is maniac enough to attempt it.”
“Resurrection?” said Miss Pepper. “Whose?”
“My dear,” Professor Pepper smiled indulgently at his daughter. “Why, the god Xolotl himself!”
Outside, as if on cue, a bolt of lightning slashed through the sky. I jumped. The Peppers laughed.
“The bringer of lightning!” said Professor Pepper. “Perhaps we should not mention his name.”
“Oh, stuff and rot!” I scoffed. “I’m sure it’s all very fascinating, historically and anthropologically speaking, but don’t expect me to buy into any mumbo-jumbo, thank you very much.”
The Peppers exchanged amused glances. I sipped my tea. It was revolting. Oh, to be in England!
“But without the mummy - how can he perform the ritual?”
Miss Pepper’s question added to my confusion. Her father explained, in a rather patronising tone, that mummified remains, moistened by the blood of innocents, was to be imbibed during the ceremony. The god would then take possession of the leader, thereby returning to Earth in human form, and endowing the host with unimaginable power.
“Trask wants to take over the world!” I was shocked to realise.
“I may have mentioned he is a maniac,” said Professor Pepper.
“And where does Cuthbert enter into this? He’s not what you might call an innocent, not by a long stretch.”
“Trask requires minions to carry out his bidding. He recruits young men, strapping young men with no particular attachments to the world, and, using some kind of toxin he discovered in South America, he enslaves them to his will. They become mindless automatons. That way, Trask is assured of their loyalty. They will not go running to the authorities to expose his nefarious doings.”
I still didn’t see what this had to do with Cuthbert. He had, I can aver, a very particular attachment.
“Cuthbert’s bait,” said Miss Pepper. “Trask wants the mummy and he wants us to bring it to him.”
“Well, it seems straightforward enough,” I stood, putting my cup and saucer on a pile of newspapers. “The hocus pocus won’t work. We give him the mummy and I get my valet back.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen,” Professor Pepper pulled a pistol on us. “The body of the king is to stay with me.”
Miss Pepper and I raised our hands aloft.
“Dad! What are you saying? You have the remains of King Xolotl?”
“Damn!” Professor Pepper looked displeased with himself. “I have said too much. Yes, I have the damned remains. Don’t you see? That mummy will make my name. If I may be permitted to study it properly. Don’t you understand?”
I saw then where Miss Pepper got her thirst for fame and notoriety. Was the whole Pepper family driven to it? And if so, why didn’t they take the easy route and merely write a bestselling novel?
Professor Pepper explained how he had snuck into the Johnsonian and pilfered the body, replacing the mummy with a young man - one of Trask’s brainwashed henchmen. He had not thought the boy would suffocate in the sarcophagus and he regretted Bobby’s passing most deeply, although, in his opinion, there was nothing of Bobby left as soon as Trask had enslaved him.
Which did not bode well for Cuthbert!
I saw what I must do. I had to get that mummy and deliver it unto evil. Let Trask play his silly games as long as he restored Cuthbert to me. In the field, Trask had mentioned an antidote; I had to hope such a thing existed.
“Sir,” I lowered my arms
very slowly, “You shall have no argument from me. Perhaps, with my connections in publishing, I shall be able to open a few strings for you, pull a few doors, that sort of thing. What do you say?”
Professor Pepper considered this. He put his pistol away. His daughter expressed the relief we were all feeling.
“I am sorry,” the professor took my hands in his. “This is not quite the impression I would have liked to make. Yes, yes; we must talk of my book. Why, I shall write more than one!”
“We shall make a great team,” I announced. “With your archaeological expertise and my literary skills.”
Miss Pepper stifled a laugh. Everyone’s a critic.
“We shall see,” said the professor. “Perhaps you’ll get a mention in the acknowledgments, eh?”
He laughed. He clapped me on the arm. He saw in me an ally, a helping hand on his road to renown. I continued in flattering vein for some length of time until I judged the moment had come to pose the question.
“Why, of course you may!” our host beamed. “Of course you may see the mummy.”
Miss Pepper and I exchanged the briefest of glances. I knew then that I could count on her to be in cahoots with me against her own father. It seemed her own lust for fame eclipsed any familial affection or duty by which she may have been constrained.
We followed him from the office and through a classroom, descending a flight of stairs to a basement in which more books and papers were stored, along with boxes, chests and cabinets containing fragments of stone and pottery, scrolls of parchment and vellum, and bulbous-headed creatures pickled in glass jars.
“Here,” he said, indicating an unprepossessing trunk in front of the buckling shelves of an overladen bookcase. “Here are the mortal remains of the Aztec king Xolotl.”
“Coo,” I said. “Truly?”
“Sure as I’m standing here,” said the professor proudly. “Nobody would think of looking for him in here.”
Xolotl Strikes! Page 10