Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  “Find anything?”

  I nearly jumped as I found Kritchna waiting beside me. So intent had I been on my examination, I hadn’t even heard him approach. I also noted he had had the presence of mind to pull on a pair of pants and shoes before joining me. As well as having brought an electric torch. I felt rather like kicking myself.

  “Appleby’s upstairs trying to find a hatbox or something for Colleen,” he said. “What have you discovered?”

  “Nothing yet,” I admitted reluctantly. “But, here, shine that torch here a moment. I want to see something.”

  Kritchna complied. As the beam flashed over the broken flowers, his face screwed up in distaste. “What on Earth is that mess?”

  That mess was a concoction the like of which I had never seen in any chemistry laboratory; a clear, sticky, pus-like substance dribbling slowly down the stalks and petals like slow, cold treacle. The bushes were saturated with it, like those I tossed my water-filled paper bags upon out the windows of my brownstone as a boy in New York. It pooled slowly at the base of the plants, steadily soaking down into the ground. Wait–no, it wasn’t! It was drawing into itself, shriveling into smaller blobs, evaporating into the air.

  “Hmph. What does this thing do, melt?” Kritchna snorted. “I’ve never seen anything so disgusting.”

  “Says the fellow who sits through Little Neddy pictures,” I grunted, kneeling to carefully swab a bit up, rubbing it between my fingers. Cool to the touch. Odorless, as well. I found myself wishing I had brought a specimen jar. Peculiarly, I could find no trace of the same substance on the grass itself. Just upon the crushed rosebushes and directly beneath.

  “Funny, though,” Kritchna was continuing absently, having also taken up a bit to examine. “I could almost swear I have seen something like this before. If only I could remember where...”

  With a sigh, I stood and wiped my hand on my shirt. “Well, whatever it is, it evaporates quickly. Look, it’s almost all gone already. I don’t know what it is, but it’s clear we’re not going to learn anything else tonight. We might as well go back inside.”

  We must have made a sorry sight as we tramped back upstairs, half-dressed, disheveled, scratched in several places on our arms and legs. Appleby certainly wasn’t impressed. “Darshan, your blankets and sheets are simply soaked with blood. They’re completely ruined!”

  “Better them than us, Mr. Appleby,” Kritchna stated wryly.

  “Well…yes,” the butler sighed, looking down at the bed. Resting on what remained of the mattress was a plain brown hatbox, lid closed. It didn’t take a detective to guess what was inside. “Mrs. Mulligan shall not be pleased. Did you find out what it was?” I shook my head. “Well, perhaps it was an owl, then.” Somehow I sincerely doubted that, but as I had no better theory, I did not contradict him. Gently he made a little “cross” over the box with his fingers, then picked it up.

  “Well, I’d best get this somewhere for the night.” He ran his gaze over us. “And get you some iodine and bandages. You’re cut all over. Probably bleeding all over the carpets, too, like as not. Heaven knows where I’m going to put you, Darshan, but you can’t sleep here tonight. You might as well take my room. I’ll sleep on a divan in the hall.” Pleased and more than a little surprised at this generosity, we thanked him gratefully. He coughed. “Yes–well. I’d best be getting that iodine. Wait here.” He quickly darted downstairs.

  “Told you he was all right. Just comes on strong,” Darshan said.

  “You were right.”

  We moved to sit side-by-side on the steps, shaking the glass from our clothing. “Do you think it was an owl?” Darshan asked at last, shuffling over to give me more room.

  I shook my head. “I can’t think of what else it could have been. Although I’ve never seen an owl do anything like that before. The only other creature it could be is a dog or a fox, and neither of those could’ve gotten up to the roof. Could they?”

  Now it was Kritchna’s turn to shake. “No. Colleen could climb just about anywhere she wanted, but nothing else. Still, that had to be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I smiled, wryly. “Says the man who watches Little Neddy pictures.”

  “Hm?” Kritchna glanced at me puzzled. “What are you talking about? I hate Little Neddy.”

  That’s strange, I thought. I had very definitely heard him tell Appleby he had slipped away from his duties to see a motion picture in Wolfsbridge, only now to hear him say he couldn’t stand the very star of the same. So why would he have bothered to go to it in the first place? And if he hadn’t been at the cinema, where had he been? The questions must have been plainly visible on my face, for no sooner had they crossed my mind than Kritchna quickly changed the subject: “So. How did you get into detective work, may I ask? Did you always want to be one?”

  The sudden switch did nothing to ease my suspicions, but I was willing to go along with it for now. “Pretty much. I’d always admired great American detectives like Nick Carter and King Brady, and my father knew this old actor who used to be a Secret Service agent. He’d tell me and my sister all these old stories; I think he made half of them up, but I didn’t care. So I decided to become one myself. When Father sent me here for my education, I made a point of seeking other detectives out. That way I met my mentor, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. Runs in the blood, I suppose. My father helped on a few cases himself, with a master thief, of all things, and my sister even married a very influential detective, back in the States. Let’s see, little Franklin should be going on two by now. And you? Your family?”

  “Ah.” Darshan shifted uneasily in his seat and for a moment it looked as if he’d almost rather talk about Little Neddy. “Well, my family’s a bit difficult to talk about.”

  “Oh? You’re not an Untouchable or anything like that, are you?”

  “No!” Kritchna shook his head violently. “No. No, no, no. Nothing like that. We’re Brahmins.”

  “Brahmins?” My astonishment only grew. “Then why on Earth are you in...”

  “Service? For my own reasons, Dickson. But, back to my family–as I said, it’s a bit difficult to explain them. We’re not just of the Brahmin caste, you see–at least, so my family claims. What we are, what we’ve always traditionally been, is–well, I guess you would have to call us wizards.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Wizards?”

  “You know–Indian wizards. Fakirs and yogis and all that rot. We’re supposed to come from a long line of them; Protectors of the Ancient Secrets and so on. It’s all rubbish, of course. What we are is a bunch of street magicians–you can find thousands of them in any Indian city. Snake charmers, fire-walkers, things like that. We’re just higher-caste than most.”

  I nodded, smiling, beginning to understand. “Yes, I know. My father’s a magician; he taught me half those tricks himself.”

  “I’m sure. But to listen to my family, it was all real, at least once. We’ve just fallen on hard times, according to them. Once, we were supposed to be court magicians to Chandragupta himself, or so the stories go. The power’s still in our blood, my great-uncle Nadir used to say–it’s just waiting to be rediscovered. But my father was having none of it. He’d seen the signs–the English ruled India now, and it was their ways, not ours, that was going to shape the future. So he turned his back on it. My great-uncle was none too happy about his decision, for he wanted my sister and I to be his apprentices, but Father refused and that was that. My uncle’s in the Philippines now, trying to re-find the magic, or so I’ve heard.”

  “You have a sister, then?”

  “Had. She’s gone now.” The young Indian fell silent. Part of me wanted to ask more, but Kritchna’s face had gone cold and stony. So I decided to refrain. Besides, Appleby was just coming back up with the iodine. Neither of us felt like playing Ishmael and Queequeeg now, so after retiring to Appleby’s room, I slumped into a chair while Darshan collapsed into the bed. As I was just about to drop off, I heard Kritchna mur
mur something softly that should have shot me straight up if I wasn’t so exhausted. I forgot about it almost immediately.

  “Y’know, I do remember where I’ve seen that stuff before. My great-uncle showed me some once.”

  “Really?” I yawned, not able to stay awake a moment longer. “What was it?”

  “Oh, just something he said was used in his work. Ectoplasm, I think he called it.”

  Mrs. Mulligan was indeed not pleased upon learning the fate of her beloved Colleen the next morning, and spent most of breakfast sobbing inconsolably.

  Mr. Appleby tried to comfort her the best he could, but to little avail. As for Kritchna and myself, we blinked, and yawned, and looked guiltily into our eggs, but said nothing. I could tell both of us were feeling we should have done more, but really, what else could we have done? The poor thing had been dead even before she had landed on our bed. Things only became worse when Appleby admitted Sir Henry had told him to just toss the body into the incinerator. He was such an unempathic individual.

  But like him or not, it was still my duty to assist with the conference, so I dismissed Colleen and turned my mind to the matter at hand. The rest of the security should be arriving that afternoon, and Sir Henry would no doubt have a completely incompetent plan about what to do and when. I’d have to see if I could rearrange that without his knowledge. And then there was–

  I almost didn’t notice Old Jack slipping a paper next to my plate. “This just came for ye,” he said in the longest sentence I had heard from him yet and turned away. Curiously, I tore it open. It was the response to the telegram I had sent to Joseph, answering the query I had about Miss Annunciata’s mysterious employer the Sâr Dubnotal. It was short and sweet and simply read:

  Harry: Trust him. Joseph.

  I sat looking bemusedly at the words. Trust him? Trust an obvious fraud, a man who preyed on the lonely and gullible, who espoused occult nonsense for a quick sou? I wondered what was wrong with Joseph. He was usually much more reliable.

  “What’s that, Dickson?”

  “Oh,” I crumpled the telegram in my hand. “Nothing, Kritchna. Just an answer to a query I had about the Rutherfords. I had the pleasure of meeting them yesterday.”

  “The Rutherfords,” Mrs. Mulligan paused from her tears long enough to sigh. “Poor people. They’re such dears. It’s a shame, all the tragedy in their life.”

  “That reminds me. There’s something Old Jack said to me yesterday I didn’t understand. I mentioned Miss Christina and he asked ‘Did she howl?’ What does that mean?”

  Mrs. Mulligan and Appleby exchanged glances. “I’ll talk to him,” the butler rumbled and rose from the table. Mrs. Mulligan rubbed her forehead and sighed again. “Well, we’re really not supposed to discuss it. The Rutherfords are fine Christian people–now. It’s just that… well… once they weren’t.”

  “Eh?”

  “Old stories, Dickson,” Kritchna put in. “Nobody really believes them anymore.”

  “No, go on.”

  “Oh… well, just this once.” Mrs. Mulligan looked very much like she didn’t want to be there. “You need to understand that, in the old days, the Rutherfords were just as important around here as the Master’s family. They weren’t as rich as the Westenras, but old family, you know? In fact, this area used to called Rutherford’s Green. But that got changed about the 17th century or so.”

  “How?”

  Mrs. Mulligan took a deep breath. “The Rutherfords were rather... eccentric. They were friendly with a lot of people most folk would rather not associate with back then. Like Jews. And Catholics. And Gypsies. Especially Gypsies. There was a small clan of them that would come around every few years, and old Roger Rutherford would always go out and stay with them a few days. He just said he liked them, but rumor got around that he was learning things from them. Things like black magic and spells. He denied it, but there it was. And then, the sheep started being killed. Everyone thought it was just some dog at first. But then one of the farmers actually got to see the thing. It was big, bigger than any dog had a right to be, and it looked right at him. And then, it laughed.”

  “It laughed?”

  “Yes. Laughed. Like ‘ha, ha.’ It stood there and it laughed at him, and then it ran away. No one had ever seen anything like it. So Christopher Westenra, he was the one who owned the House then, got a bunch of men together to go and hunt the thing. One night, they finally found it, and shot at it–but it got away. But not before Mr. Westenra had wounded it in the leg. And the story goes, they followed it, they followed the trail of blood it left, through the woods and over the fields–until it led right to Rutherford Grange. And inside, they found Roger Rutherford, with his wife and the Gypsy chief, with a wound to the leg

  “I suppose you can guess what happened after that. Real dogs don’t laugh at people, and how could they shoot it in the leg and find a man right after with a wound in the same leg? Roger Rutherford claimed that he had been out looking for the beast, too; that it was something brought by the Gypsies that had gotten away. He said it had attacked him and bit him in the leg. Nobody believed him. They accused him of being a werewolf; that the Gypsies had taught him how to change his shape, and dragged him and his wife and the old Gypsy chief out of the building and down to the town. They hauled them right to the bridge and without a trial or anything, they…”

  “Hung them,” I finished for her. “Hence the name Wolfsbridge”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “And the killings stopped right after that. Of course, the story is that Roger Rutherford swore one day he’d be back for revenge; that his ghost would return and haunt those responsible. But nothing ever happened. And it got to be a joke around town that whenever you said something about a Rutherford, you had to say ‘And did he howl?’ I think it’s awful. Anyway, after that, the Rutherfords–Roger’s son was away at school–kind of fell on bad times. But they’re good people, now. I hate to think that story’s still following them after all these years.”

  I nodded. Something had come to my mind. “Would you excuse me?” I quickly left the table.

  In a moment, I found myself back in the library. Glancing quickly about to see if anyone was present, I swiftly ran my eyes along the shelf, searching for the volume I had snuck a look at the afternoon before. Ah, there it was. Yes: The Journal of Christopher Westenra. Flipping quickly through the pages, I located the paragraph I had left off and hurriedly scanned the rest. This is what I read:

  “I have buried the body under the bridge where no one will think to look for it. As soon as we have a good flood, the grave will be smoothed out. I dare not let anyone know what I have discovered. If it should be learned, I would be the one hanging off the edge of the bridge, not the Rutherfords. Damn them and their wretched Gypsies! If they had just remembered their place, this never would have happened. Not that I’m sorry Rutherford is dead, but I will forevermore be looking over my shoulder. And damn the beast for not dying when first I shot it. It probably did attack Rutherford, just like he said. But the chance was too good to pass up. Now I am rid of an enemy. But the cost!

  “Still, at least the beast is truly dead now. I blew its head apart myself. I still have no idea what it is–it certainly is neither dog nor wolf–but I am well rid of it. But if anyone should learn the truth, my life would be forfeit. May that never be. As for Rutherford’s curse before he went over; well–I should be king if I had a penny for the times anyone has damned me. Still, the look on his face–but no. Once again my fears run away with me–”

  “Reading something interesting?” came a mild voice.

  I whipped around, terrified I was going to find Sir Henry or Alexander about to pounce upon me for reading their private histories. But instead, it proved to be a slight, fair-haired, sallow figure, good-looking in a weak way, who smiled gently at me and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” He stuck out his hand. “You’re the detective, aren’t you? Harry Dickson? I’m Peter Westenra.”

  So this was the son I
had not yet met, but had heard so much about. Peter Westenra. I had to admit he looked bloody awful. He had obviously been on the town the night before and had yet to recover. His eyes were red and bleary and his breath still smelled like a keg. And from what I had gleaned of his preferences, I was a bit leery of shaking his hand. But the grip was firm enough and he smiled self-depreciatingly as he said:

  “I know it doesn’t look it, but I really do hate gin. It’s just that when it calls, I must answer.” He laughed shortly. “I was just going along to the kitchen to get a glass of tomato juice. Care to come along?”

  I must have mumbled something affirmative, trying to turn his attention from the fact I had just violated his family’s privacy, but he seemed to take no offense at it. He kept up a patter to small talk as we returned to the kitchen and said:

  “Ah, Mrs. Mulligan. I heard what happened last night. I’m so sorry. Where are you going to bury the body? What, the incinerator? That won’t do; that won’t do at all. Look, there’s a little corner of my garden that’s rather secluded, why don’t you bury her there? What Father doesn’t know… no, no, that’s all right, Mrs. Mulligan. I had a dog once as a boy, myself.” Taking his glass of tomato juice, he sat across from Darshan and I. “So, Dickson, what do you think of Westenra House so far?”

  I harrumphed. “It’s, well, certainly unique,” I began.

  “It’s the bloody ugliest house in the county,” Peter smiled. “Not that I’d ever tell Father that, of course.” Despite myself, I smiled back. No, Peter certainly was not like the other Westenras. Beside me, I was aware of Kritchna seeming to relax more. He may have despised the rest of his employers, but he didn’t seem to mind Peter. “To be perfectly frank,” the young man continued, “I’m not looking forward to this conference at all. It’s just another meeting to see what we can get from the Far East without putting anything back. Not that we should just let the Russians have it, of course, but there it is. And I was never good at this diplomacy thing, anyway. Wanted to be a writer, but Father wouldn’t hear of it.”