by G. P. Taylor
‘Go back!’ Felix shouted. ‘Come again tonight. Ixion’s always tethered at night, Monica sees to that. Find the pearl of great price, ’tis all you need to live.’
Sacha got to the gantry and looked back at the pitiful face that stared at her. Felix pushed his starved wrist through the metal door grate as if to wave farewell and then it slipped away back into the darkness like the hand of a drowning man.
‘Go, find the pearl!’
‘We can’t leave him,’ she said as Mariah dragged her away.
‘Nor can we stay. The creature would kill us if we tried to help Felix escape,’ he said as they ran along the platform, jumping from gantry to gantry as they quickly made their way to an entrance high up in the cavern roof. Far below, a metal door clunked open. The sound of voices flooded the lagoon. Ixion slithered from his perch on the stairway and grunted hungrily across the cave floor.
‘Come to Daddy,’ Luger shouted, holding out a mutton joint in one hand whilst wafting a sabre in the other. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said to Grimm and Grendel, who cowered behind him. ‘I didn’t buy this beast for its timidity.’
Mariah looked down through the lattice of rusting metal braced thickly with cables that criss-crossed at every angle. He could see Luger feeding Ixion with the meat as the two detectives huddled against the wall. The sound of the crunching of bone skimmed like a bouncing stone from the water and rose up on high to where he was hiding in the dim light of the vaulted roof.
‘Doesn’t look like they are here,’ Grimm said as the crocodile snapped greedily at yet another piece of meat.
‘Doesn’t mean they didn’t try,’ Luger retorted cynically, his voice tense and dry. ‘Only way they could have come was this way. We checked every other entrance and they had to be here.’
‘But they’re not here now,’ Grendel snapped in his caustic voice, not sure that he liked being in the presence of so fierce a beast as the crocodile.
‘Then we should wait and see if they arrive. I can always allow you to feed Ixion,’ Luger said, quite pleased by a thought that fleeted momentarily and then evaporated like a mist.
‘I am not fond of crocodiles, Mister Luger, not fond at all,’ Grendel chattered as the spectacles on the end of his nose vibrated from side to side.
‘Crocodile?’ Luger asked, as if Grendel had made some tedious mistake. ‘This is no crocodile but a crocogon, a changeling of two strange creatures. Varanus komodoensis from a small island in the Ocean of Sumbawa. A real dragon and a crocodile brought together by selective breeding.’
‘It is like a creature I once saw in one of my convulsions and not something I would like to pass the time of day feeding,’ Grendel said, stepping back.
‘From that fragment of cloth it would appear that it has already eaten,’ Grimm said slyly as he pointed to a ripped piece of black calico on the shingle path by the side of the lagoon.
Luger threw the meat into the pool and watched as Ixion slithered away. He took several steps, then picked the ripped cloth from the ground and looked intently, searching each neat weave for the identity of the wearer. Mariah listened from high above as the words echoed up to the great rock ceiling. Sacha looked to the hem of her torn garment, where a single crocogon tooth had torn through the cloth.
‘Could I help you?’ Grimm asked as he took the spectacles from his pocket and slipped the frames over his fat ears.
Luger handed him the torn cloth and said nothing. He looked about him and listened. Sabre in hand, he walked to the door of the cell and peered in through the grating. ‘All is well,’ he muttered to himself. ‘None of you been seeing things? Not even you, Felix?’
No one among the huddled group of small bodies in the dark corner of the cell answered.
‘It’s very straightforward, Mister Luger. For a price, Grendel and I could follow them and have them done away with. Obviously whoever left this behind had a close call with your pet … I would think they have not gone far and with these spectacles they should be easily found. Now that we have this piece of their garment I can track them for days and they will never escape.’
Luger thought earnestly as he rummaged in his pockets for a trinket to bargain with. ‘I would give you seven of my finest pearls.’
‘It should be twenty at least, Mister Luger. I can see eleven at least in the shingle about my feet. And that is twenty each.’ Grimm couldn’t hold the chortle that came into his voice. ‘Payment strictly on completion of the task?’
‘Done,’ said Luger, as the chiming clock rang in his pocket. ‘I have to sleep and sleep here. It is something I must do and must do now …’ He climbed the steps of the gantry and, propping himself on the corner of the rusted metal bridge, fell into a deep yet fitful sleep.
‘Come, Mister Grendel, we have feet to follow and pearls to collect,’ Grimm said through his billowing jowls that hung like the flaps of a bloodhound. Taking the spectacles from his nose, he pushed the cloth into a small phylactery that hung from a short strap. He then twisted a tuning knob by the side of the blue lens, placed the spectacles back on his face and stared about him. ‘There!’ he said quickly. ‘And there, and there!’ He pointed to different places along the path. ‘Quick, Grendel, they are not long gone and I think they are just ahead of us.’
‘What shall we do with Mister Luger?’ Grendel enquired as he strutted over the comatose body blocking the gantry.
‘Feed him to Ixion?’ Grimm replied.
[ 21 ]
Aria Ceroplastica
MARIAH placed his hand over Sacha’s mouth as she sobbed to herself, trying to dry the trickle of blood that ran down her leg and into her ankle boot. She picked the small crocogon tooth from her flesh. The realisation that she had been bitten by the creature slowly came to her mind and overwhelmed her with grief.
‘Grimm has a device that can track our footsteps,’ Mariah whispered. ‘We have to be ahead of them.’
Far below, Mister Grimm sauntered along a narrow gantry, his head bowed low as he looked at the footprints that only he could see. Grendel followed, looking back to the snoring Otto Luger, who lay against the metal bars, his heaving chest labouring under its great weight.
Mariah sneakily peered over the balustrade as his pursuers followed their every step from platform to platform. He looked into the long dark tunnel that lay ahead of them, pulled Sacha to her feet and dragged her into the darkness.
‘What of Felix?’ she asked as they were engulfed in the muffling black of the passage.
‘If we can escape the Prince Regent we will get help and come back for him,’ Mariah replied, convinced they shouldn’t stay a moment longer.
‘But who can we ask?’ Sacha said quietly as they stumbled up a stone stairway in pitch darkness.
‘Captain Charity, anyone,’ he said reluctantly and feeling quite alone. ‘I wish my father was here, he’d know what to do.’
‘The one who left you at the Colonial School to pursue his own ends?’ She said without thinking, the words tripping from wits to tongue so easily.
‘They had to go,’ he blurted back. ‘It’s not that easy. Choices have to be made all the time. They would have come back … They would.’ Mariah hit the wall with his fist.
‘At least my father brought us with him.’
‘At least my father wouldn’t have been a drunk and a thief,’ he parried.
They went on in a seething silence, unable to shake off each other’s company. Mariah hoped she would fall from some hidden precipice and be eaten by the crocogon that stood below and watched.
‘Who would do all these things?’ he muttered to himself not wanting a reply. ‘I’ll go for Jack Charity and you can stay here.’
‘On your own life – I’m coming with you,’ Sacha snorted as she tugged on to his coat-tail. ‘Leave me with Old Scratty and Monica?’
‘You’d be in good company,’ he said as they turned a corner in the passageway. It led on to a landing that was dimly lit by a wickless light encased within a glass orb.
Below was a narrow door with a lattice of metal that formed a flexible iron grid. To one side was an illuminated red button glowing brightly against the black painted rock in which it was set. Instinctively, Sacha pressed the button. From far above came the rumbling of a steam elevator.
‘I thought there was only one in the building?’ Mariah asked.
‘This is no ordinary one,’ she said. ‘Listen to the sound it’s making.’
The steam elevator gushed hot mist as it approached at high speed. It forced the air down the tunnel like wind from a whistle. It then suddenly stopped and the metal cage opened by itself as a green light lit their feet.
Mariah stepped inside, followed by Sacha. There were two buttons set in a brass plate. The first was etched with the word Laboratory, the lower one with Office inscribed in bold black lettering.
Sacha reached out her finger to press the lower button. Mariah stubbornly pushed her hand to one side and with a satisfied look upon his face pressed for the laboratory. The door slammed shut as two steel bolts shot from a hidden enclosure like sharp bayonets and held it fast. The elevator trembled and then with a hiss of steam shot upwards at such a speed that they both fell to the floor. Within the second they had arrived at the laboratory. The door opened and they rolled out.
Inside the laboratory was a large wooden desk and a vast copper kettle covered in cold wax. The room appeared to be on two levels, with a split wooden floor that looked like the stage of some amateur theatre. A thick velvet curtain divided the room, and leading up to it was a small flight of wooden steps. They were held in place next to the wall by a handrail of rough-cut wood that looked as if it had been smoothed by centuries of floating in the rolling sea.
Mariah got to his knees and sniffed the pungent smell of cooling wax. Around the walls were splatters and drips that hung like oversized bogies. Hanging from drying rails were various outfits: trousers with patches to cover torn knees, dresses and smocks. In the corner, draped over a manikin, was a long black dress covered in sequins and a pair of the finest opera gloves that glinted as if studded with diamonds.
Sacha had seen these before. They were the same as those worn by Miss Monica. They covered her long thin arms to the fingertips. Sacha walked across the room and slid a glove upon her hand. It was soft and warm, glinting in the glow from the light-holders that adorned the ceiling.
‘Do you think he’s made a waxwork of Monica and will have her in the cavern for knowing too much?’ she joked with Mariah, who still sulked as he walked about, head downcast and miserable.
‘And one of you for being so cheerful?’ he replied as he walked up the wooden steps and peeped behind the curtain. ‘That’s if there’s not one already,’ he said in his muffled voice. He pulled his head quickly from behind the blood-red drape and called her over. ‘You’re in for a surprise, Sacha – look!’
Sacha disappeared behind the curtain and all was quiet. Mariah could hear her muffled footsteps walking on the wooden boards. Suddenly she appeared again, clutching a wax head in her arms.
‘Does this really look like me?’ she said as she clutched the wax image of herself, her hair tied back in a horsehair bun.
‘Ceroplastica,’ Mariah said as he gently touched the waxen nose. ‘The art of taking a human image and creating it in wax. Once read a penny dreadful that told all about it. Never thought I would see one of you.’ He laughed.
‘That’s not all,’ she said as she pulled back the draped curtain. ‘You’re there as well and it looks as if you’ve been hung for your troubles.’
Mariah pushed his way beyond the drapes. There above him, filling the entire roof of the wooden platform, were several wax manikins hanging from long steel hooks. In the corner was a boy of his age with deep brown curls that spiralled this way and that. Beneath was its thin face and wide bright eyes. Hanging from the sleeve of the black jacket in which it was clad was a vellum label. He walked to the manikin and read the words: Mariah Mundi – next week.
‘He planned to have me gone by next week?’ Mariah squealed in anger. ‘We’ll see who’ll be gone by then.’
Sacha laughed to herself as she turned the label and showed him the date. ‘It was done on the day you arrived. This is now next week.’
‘Then he’ll have all on to catch me. I’ll not work for him in his oyster lagoon – and what happens when you get to be old? Does he feed you to that old crocodile?’ He angrily snapped a hand from his waxwork. ‘He shan’t have the joy of packing me off to France, that’s the last place I’d want to go.’
Mariah pulled at the legs of the dangling wax corpse, heaving it from the hook and letting it smash to the floor. He took two paces back, then ran and kicked the head as hard as he could, sending it through the air and smashing against the wall. ‘That’s for Nelson – king of the sea,’ he shouted triumphantly as his wax head splinted into tiny pieces and scattered about the floor.
‘Look, Mariah! Pearls!’ Sacha shouted as a cascade of pearls burst from the skull and spilt across the floor. ‘You were right.’
‘And this hand is all we need to prove his guilt,’ he said as he pressed the hand into his coat and looked for the door.
The elevator that had brought them to the laboratory burst into life as the door jangled shut. The compartment was sucked far below with a single breath of steam.
‘Luger?’ Sacha asked as she threw her wax head to the floor than stamped on it several times to reveal a cache of fine wild pearls. ‘Then these are for my sisters,’ she said as she grasped at the pearls, pushing them into her pockets as they rolled about the floor. ‘If he’s in the business of killin’, then I’m in the business of takin’.’
‘And not a moment too soon,’ Mariah said as the sound of the approaching steam elevator came again with a whistle of hot air that sang like a phantom aria. ‘We have to get back to the Prince Regent.’
It was Sacha who found the door hidden behind a small drape at the side of the room. She twisted the key and pulled back the wooden gate that opened into the tunnel by the entrance to the beach. She knew this place well. To the right would be the theatrical store where Old Scratty lived, and further along would be the staircase that led to the first steam elevator and the Prince Regent.
In the laboratory the elevator ground to a sudden halt, the sound of its sliding gate echoing about the room. The voice of Grimm shouting to Grendel and Luger was the last thing they heard as they slammed the door. They turned the key to lock the door from the outside, then Mariah threw it down the steps and on to the tide-washed beach below.
In two minutes they had sneaked through the corridors and summoned the elevator. Now they stood holding the brass rail, feet fixed into the safety rings as they hurtled, double-speed, towards the dining room of the hotel.
The gate slid open and they were bathed in sunlight. Mariah held a hand to his face as a waiter pushed quickly by with a silver tray stacked with dirty pots from the tables. Sacha pointed to the kitchen door that swung back and forth. The service for the morning was completed and the staff had gathered for second breakfasts.
‘Not eating?’ shouted the steward as he pulled a cloth from a window table, scattering crumbs into the air. A seagull crashed into the plate glass and slid, stunned, down the window. ‘We serve theatre staff,’ he said joyfully. ‘Bizmillah has left the building with a guest so he won’t be here to chide you for being lazy.’
Sacha smiled and turned away, pulling Mariah by the sleeve.
‘Come on,’ he said as the steward swept the table with a small bristled brush. ‘Rhamses has eggs and salt beef, just go and ask.’
Mariah pulled against her and smiled at the steward as the man disappeared into the kitchen. His stomach twisted with the words and he remembered how hungry he had become. The smell of salt beef, eggs and smoked haddock filled the room. The bustle of waiters clad in their tight jackets and bow ties swirled the air in a mixture of intoxicated confusion.
‘Just one sandwich at least …’ Ma
riah pleaded as Sacha pulled away from him.
‘One, and then we go. Luger won’t be locked in the laboratory forever. They could take the elevator to his office and then come and find us,’ she whispered.
‘But Grimm would have to go all the way into the cellar and retrace our steps. Just enough time to eat – please?’
Sacha had no time to speak. The door to the kitchen swung open and out stepped the chef, robed in white, a kitchen blade pushed into the belt of his trousers. He searched about the room with steely blue eyes, the wrinkles on his forehead creasing with anticipation as he looked for a straggling guest to harangue to tears before he threw them from the restaurant.
‘You!’ he shouted at Mariah, pointing a finger of one hand as the other grasped the blade in his belt. ‘They tell me you don’t want to eat my food. Not good enough?’ He screamed, the spikes of his blond hair bouncing sweatily like a freshly preened parrot. ‘No one dare refuse my food. I am the chef – Rhamses. Understand?’ The man’s voice blistered around the room, hot enough to strip the paper from the wall and turn his face crimson red.
Mariah didn’t move, frozen like a startled hare by the ferocity and venom of the man’s northern accent. He began to sidle closer to Sacha as together they edged nearer to the doors that would take them through the Great Hall and into the street.
‘Don’t think of walking out of here without tasting even the merest morsel of my food! That is not allowed …’ he sang angrily as he took the kitchen blade from his belt and waved it back and forth. He pointed the tip to a small table in a dark corner of the restaurant, commanding them to sit there. ‘You will eat my food, both of you, and then you can go about your business.’ Rhamses pulled an enormous gurgling frog from his pocket and, with one quick slice through the air, removed the legs from the rest of its juddering body. ‘And I’ll decide what you’ll eat – none of this picking from a menu. Breakfasts are of my choosing.’