by G. P. Taylor
Mariah smiled, stood up, turned and walked into the room. Luger sat at his cluttered desk pretending to write on a piece of paper, his pen going over the same three words. He never spoke; Mariah waited and waited, watching him trace the words again and again. From where he was standing, he couldn’t make out what was being written and rewritten, but Luger made him wait until the last morsel of ink had dried from the tip of his old quill pen.
‘Sit!’ he shouted, his eyes fixed on the piece of paper as he read the words to himself. ‘I am a busy man and not one to be kept waiting. I said first thing this morning and now it’s after midday. What’s your excuse?’
‘I was outside,’ Mariah said quietly. ‘It must have been …’
Luger shook his head and looked at the clock and then at Mariah. He pulled a large gold fob watch from his waistcoat pocket and held it to his ear as if he checked to see if it was still working. He raised both his sprouting, grey eyebrows, a look of puzzlement crossing his face. ‘Waiting for me?’ he asked unsure of himself. ‘Outside?’
Mariah nodded and bit his lip, trying to keep a straight face and swallow the giggle that welled up inside him. ‘Sacha said that you were busy, so I waited.’
‘Waited!’ shouted Luger as he got from his seat. ‘Do you know what happens to the man who waits?’ Mariah was silent. ‘Nothing – that’s what happens, nothing. Life charges by and they wake up one morning and their life is over, that’s what happens if you wait.’
‘Sorry,’ Mariah said softly as Luger began to pace about the room looking to the floor and pummelling his fist into his hand. ‘I won’t wait again.’
‘Time waits for no one. Already the morning has gone, soon it will be the afternoon and that will die and become the evening and you know what comes then don’t you?’ he spoke frantically not giving a chance for Mariah to speak. ‘The night … dark and cold and miserable. Filthy thick, black night. And I lay a wager that you expect to sleep?’
Mariah nodded hopefully.
‘And you know what happens when people sleep? They DIE – that’s what happens. I’ve seen it a thousand times, old men get into bed, close their eyes and then they are gone. One snort and all the life vanishes. So what’s the answer, boy?’
Mariah stared back vaguely, mumbling under his breath, not knowing what to say as Luger waved his arms erratically, clutching the fob watch in his hand, the chain flailing about his head.
‘DON’T SLEEP! I haven’t slept in years, never go to bed, and all I allow myself is to close my eyes for five minutes in the hour, whenever I am indoors, whatever the place, as soon as the quarter of the hour comes I sit and close my eyes to the world for five minutes.’ Luger panted as he calmed down, his outburst ebbing away as he sheepishly walked back to his desk and sat in the worn leather chair. He looked Mariah up and down and then pulled a piece of vellum paper from a brown folder that lay on the top of his desk. ‘Says you’re a Colonial boy? Know Professor Bilton well, do you?’
‘Very well,’ Mariah replied as he fiddled with the button on his jacket sleeve.
‘You are the last in a long line of boys from that school and I have heard there will be no more. All the others have … run away, gone without a by your leave. Will you do the same, young Mister Mundi?’
‘No, I –’
‘It would be a shame to lose someone as bright as you.’ The clock struck the quarter past noon. Luger looked up and then at his fob watch, setting a small gold lever upon the side, and then sat back in the leather chair, closing his eyes.
Instantly, Luger began to snore, his broad chest heaving under his fine gold waistcoat, his head tilted back against the chair as thick black spikes of hair stuck out from his upturned nostrils.
Mariah hesitated, unsure if he should wait or disappear from the room whilst Luger slept soundly. He looked at the desk; there in the middle, by a brass smotherer, was the crisp piece of paper that Luger had scrawled upon. He edged closer, trying to make out the words, intrigued as to what the owner of such a fine place should want to write again and again. He counted the seconds with the ticking of the golden clock, whose clicks and whirring marked the slow passing of time. Luger slept on, his tongue sticking from the side of his mouth like a dozing cow in a summer meadow. Mariah could wait no longer. He reached out and turned the paper towards him as Luger slobbered and snored. It was then that he read the words – The Midas Box – scrawled in thick black ink.
There was a sudden and shrill clanging as the bell in the fob watch rattled in Luger’s hand. He leapt from the chair, dropping the watch and grabbing the front of the desk with both hands as if to steady himself for some great surprise. He looked about the room and then fixed his glare on Mariah.
‘Yes?’ he asked madly, as if he had never seen the boy before. ‘Do you want something?’
[ 6 ]
Anamorphosis
AN hour later, Otto Luger released Mariah. His fob watch had jangled in his pocket to remind him it was time to sleep again, and Mariah was despatched with a quick grunt and told to make his way to see his master, Bizmillah the Great. In his hand Mariah clutched a guide to the Prince Regent, a fine brochure etched in silver and giving him a plan to every floor. It was like an exquisite little book, marked in several different colours, showing him where he was allowed to go and what places were just for guests. Luger had warned him severely about breaking the purple code, which was the colour of the rooms for guests only. ‘Instantly,’ Luger had said as he twitched his nose to hold the monocular in his eye, ‘instantly you will be thrown from the building with your chattels behind you if you break the purple code.’
As Mariah walked along the fine corridor which led from the grand office to the theatre, the words rattled through his head. He came to a pair of tall oak doors and saw hanging by the side a small sign painted in gold lettering with the words Theatre Closed … He flicked through the pages of the brochure, his eyes searching for the colour purple. Near the back of the small booklet he found a page with a drawing of the swimming pool and the room that contained the Galvanised Bathing Machine. He looked at the hand-painted edges of the page and saw that they were distinctly coloured in finest purple. Beside the page was a drawing of an attendant’s jacket with an introductory note: Here in the spa you will be attended by our finest staff, who can always be identified by their type of dress – gold-braided jackets edged in a purple stripe. We are always on hand for your every need … Try the Galvanised Bathing Machine, the only one in Europe, guaranteed to invigorate the most enervated of bodies …
Mariah took in a sharp breath. He had been but one night in the Prince Regent and if Luger found out what had happened to the bathing machine, he knew he would be on the train to London with his first-class suit and a Third Class ticket and nowhere to go and no one to help him. He looked at his drab black suit with its patched elbows and double-sewn lapels. Suddenly it felt as if it belonged to someone else, who now wanted it back. It began to itch the back of his neck, rubbing against the skin like a colony of fire ants creeping around the collar. He shook himself as if to rid his spine from the cold tingle that shuddered up and down like an icicle hand.
Mariah looked up. Towering above him on a dividing wall that held the two sides of the passageway together was a gigantic portrait of a medieval prince sat on the back of a large white horse. It stared down at him, the eyes of the face following his every step. He stopped and walked backwards. The eyes followed him. Mariah took a quick step to the side; the eyes followed him again. Everywhere he walked it was as if the painting looked at him, its stare gaze burning into his head. He stopped … The passageway was empty. A little further away he could hear the rattle and hiss of the steam lift. Back towards Luger’s office was a pair of carved oak doors that shuddered gently with the vibration of the steam generator many floors below. Mariah wondered if someone would walk this way – he thought he would wait and see if the picture followed them as it had sought after him.
There was a small alcove recessed in th
e oak panelling that clad the wall of the dark passageway to head height. Set on a tall wooden stand was an aspidistra in a brass pot, its long green leaves darting from the black earth like a dragon’s teeth. Mariah looked to the painting, convinced that some force moved the eyes and that he was being watched. It was then that he realised that the face of the prince was that of Luger, his crooked smile staring from behind the thick black-dyed moustache.
Mariah checked the floor plan, hoping there would be no purple lining to the page or colour of any kind other than his meagre black. Tracing his hand along the corridor in the book he came to the margin – it was empty. Suddenly the oak doors rattled as if about to be thrown open.
Darting quickly, Mariah hid behind the large plant, out of sight of the picture with its prying eyes. The aspidistra shaded him from the light of the gas chandelier, which even in the brightness of the day was in full glow. It glistened and shimmered from the high ceiling as it dangled from an ornamental ceiling rose of sprites and elves wrapped in garlands of moribund ivy. The distant thud of feet upon the tiled floor echoed along the corridor. One tapped, the other clattered, as two people walked hurriedly towards him, a babble of chatter following on behind their heels.
‘They can’t stay here, they’ll have to go on the first ship next week.’ The woman’s voice spoke in time with the tap, tap, tap of her high heels against the cold tile floor. ‘That last one nearly got away. If I hadn’t seen what he was doing, he’d have been long gone and the Peelers would have been in on us. Bizmillah’s a blind old bat. You’re going to have to do something about that man – what does he have on you, Otto, that you keep him on, anyway?’ She crowed relentlessly as the man walked on silently at her side, his heavy feet tapping against the floor with a metal plate in the heel of each shoe scraping as he paced on. ‘Let him go back to wherever he’s from and entertain some old lady on a station platform in Transaldovia. You want this to be the finest show in Europe, don’t you? Get rid of the guy.’ The woman spoke without taking breath.
‘He knows too much, Monica,’ the man’s voice replied as it blew out a huge breath of cigar smoke. ‘It’s better to keep him here where we can see him than to let him go around the world looking for those stupid cards.’
‘Yeah, just like your stupid box. I remember when I believed in you, Otto. Now I just think you’re a fool. Who’d believe anyone would look for a box that would turn anything it touches to gold? Tell that to the girls in the Bronx and they’d have you in Mister Putnam’s mental institution.’
‘It’s not just any old box, Monica, it’s the Midas Box, and it really exists …’
‘Then show me – let me see it for myself and then I’ll believe.’ She groaned angrily as she slipped and stumbled to the floor. ‘Just look at you,’ she said as she glared at the painting of the prince regally staring at her from its golden frame. ‘Every picture in the place has your face on it, everywhere I go there’s your gawping face …’
‘It’s my hotel, I can do what I want,’ he replied as he kept on walking, letting her struggle to her feet like a drunken cat skating on thin ice. ‘Come on, Monica,’ he drawled impatiently as he pounded on along the corridor past Mariah’s hiding place. ‘There’s been a problem with the Galvanised Bathing Machine. Someone has been messing with the controls, some one who shouldn’t even be down there.’
Mariah listened from behind the aspidistra, knowing that what had gone on with Sacha had been discovered. Peering from his dark hide in the shadows, he saw Monica grumbling to herself as she clattered on behind Mister Luger, and it was as if he had discovered a new-found creature never before seen by human eyes. More cat-like than human, Monica was from an unknown world.
Clattering on a pair of the finest patent leather high heels was the thinnest, most elegant thing his eye had ever fallen upon. Every inch of her was covered and festooned in black and green ostrich feathers that reached to the floor like two giant wings trailing behind her. Her hands were embalmed in long silk gloves that glistened to her fingertips with innumerable silver and green snake-eyed jewels. The tip of every finger was pierced by a long red fingernail that jagged out through the glove like a claw. Upon her head was a crown of bright peacock feathers tied in a silver band that twisted around her fine, shimmering white hair.
Monica stopped, turned and looked at the aspidistra. For the briefest moment Mariah thought she had seen him as he stood deathly still in the blackness of the deep alcove, trying to keep himself hidden behind the oak plant stand. He dared to peek out, realising that she was preening her bright red lipstick and powdering her ghostly white cheeks in the shine of the brass plant pot. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she were real or if a haunting stood before him. She puffed her face in a blizzard of white powder that fell like a gust of winter snow. From her tiny snakeskin bag she took a bottle of deep brown perfume and pressed the squirter, firing a sudden breath of dank musk on to her long, thin, translucent neck.
Mariah held his breath as the thick perfume filled the air around him and clung to his skin. Monica smiled and raised an eyebrow, as if pleased with what she saw, and turned and strutted off like a broody hen chasing the cockerel.
‘Hey, wait for me,’ she crowed as she sped after Mister Luger. ‘I wanna be there when you sort out Bizmillah. This time Otto, give him what for.’
‘Get in the steam elevator, Monica,’ Luger replied coldly as the thundering came closer from the elevator shaft and the hissing of steam filled the passageway. ‘First we sort out the sabotage and then we sort out Bizmillah. He’s already agreed for you to do the Saw Trick. Hey,’ he said as if he’d almost forgotten the morning, ‘I found you a new kid. Kind of gawky-looking, with crazy piercing eyes and swirly curly hair, but he’s a Colonial boy – not a care in the world or a relative to know if he ever went missing.’ Luger laughed menacingly as he slid the door to the lift and pressed the button. There was a sudden whooshing as the steam piston sucked the elevator far below.
Mariah slumped to the floor behind the plant stand, his heart pounding in his chest from being so close to the most incredible creature he had ever seen. He closed his eyes to stop the vision from disappearing, but like any ghost it slowly faded. He tried and tried to bring back the memory of the feathers and her face but all he could see were the thin gloved hands and jewelled fingers that quickly disappeared in the mist of his remembrance.
Slowly he looked around the edge of the alcove and into the long hallway. The painting of the prince with Luger’s face stared down, the eyes following Mariah’s every movement as he got to his feet, his hands touching the oak panelling. He could hear the distant panting of the steam elevator as it waited patiently like a sleeping leviathan far below. Mariah stepped cautiously into the passageway and followed the way of Luger and Monica. He stopped by the lift and looked into the cavernous, black depths. Wisps of sulphurous smoke swirled in the gaslight and the sun’s rays that broke in through the row of coloured glass panes running as a cornice the length of the passage.
Without thinking he pressed the button to call the elevator. A jarring of metal and a spurt of steam billowed up the shaft as the steam piston began to expand, forcing the cage higher. Mariah smiled to himself, hoping he had bought himself a fraction of time and that Mister Luger was still many floors below and not in the summoned elevator.
Quickly he rushed back to his hiding place and listened for the steam elevator to arrive. There was a clatter as the cage stopped at the floor. Mariah waited; there was no familiar sound of the gate sliding along its metal runner. He looked out; the passageway was empty. In ten paces he was at the gate. Mariah unhooked the latch and slid the gate open, forcing it back as far as it would go and then, taking the chain that hung loosely inside the cage, hooked it back. He knew that the elevator wouldn’t move until the gate was shut. Luger and Monica would have to use the stairs – all three hundred and sixty-six.
Mariah then took the folded silver-edged brochure from his pocket and looked at the grou
nd floor plan. He held it before him and turned it so that the map pointed in the way he faced. At the end of the passageway was a double door with large golden handles: the theatre … He looked up once more to the painting of the prince to see if the eyes were staring directly down upon him.
It was then that he saw something that he thought must be from his imagination. The horse on which Luger rode so proudly had a strange fetlock that had suddenly doubled in thickness and now resembled a long thin hand pointing back towards the aspidistra. Mariah stepped back, wondering why he had not seen this before. By anamorphosis it changed back into the front leg of the horse, just above the black hoof.
He looked to the aspidistra, wondering if it were just by some coincidence that the strange hand pointed directly towards it. Mariah looked at the plan and for the first time noticed a small golden lion painted in the margin just where the plant stood on its fine wooden stand.
Taking a step forward he looked up again, and as he moved nearer to the painting he saw the fetlock change back into a hand – it could only be seen from that angle and from no other place in the corridor. Mariah wondered if it had been seen by anyone before and why it should be there. If Mister Luger had commissioned the picture, then surely he would know about the hand, hidden in such a way. He ran the several paces to the huge aspidistra and turned and looked to the painting. All he could see was Luger staring down from the horse, clutching the reins as the beast rose up on its hind legs as if to leap from the ground. Around his shoulders was an ermine cloak that flowed out over the horse, blown by a winter wind. On his belt was a long fine sword with a jewelled hilt glinting brightly in the falling sun that cast deep shadows across the canvas to a distant castle set upon high cliffs.