Sawney was the first to try to step between them, but the giant swatted him aside with a thrust of his left arm–the one that held the club. Sawney sprawled among his fellow grey men, whose alarm was increased by his flailing limbs. They began to rise to their feet.
Ned was slightly glad that he was flat on his back, in no position to intervene even had he wanted to–but his gladness vanished when he saw Jeanie Bird step between the two fighters, with her back to the ci-devant Comte. She looked up into the giant’s crazed eyes.
“No, John,” she said, speaking to him as a friend might. “That’s not your way. Leave him be.”
For one awful moment, Ned thought that the dead-alive giant might sweep Jeanie aside as dismissively as Sawney–but with the other hand, perhaps slicing her head in two if she should happen to catch her with the blade. Instead, the giant stopped, as if frozen by the sound of her voice. He looked down at the tiny woman–who did not seem as tiny as she was, now that she had struck a pose that Ned had seen a hundred times before, on the stage at Jenny Paddock’s. She looked magnificent, even in the presence of such a colossal leading man.
The giant slowly relaxed his pose, and let his head nod forward, becoming as meek as any of his peers–any, that is, except the one who stepped through the open door behind him, who held a pistol in each hand.
These pistols, Ned had to suppose, were still loaded.
“She’s right, John,” said General Mortdieu. “In life, that was never your way, and no good can come of finding a new identity while you have not yet recovered the old. I, on the other hand, know exactly what I was when I was alive, and this was my way–far more than it was ever yours, Monsieur de Belcamp.”
John Devil had recovered his balance and his poise now. “I brought you back to life,” he said. “I made you what you are.”
“So you did,” said the grey man. “But you do not own me. I am my own man, and these are my people. We are not your slaves, nor the instruments of your future glory. Our destiny is for us to discover and choose, mon ami–and if I must shoot my redeemer in order to achieve that end, I shall not hesitate. You have five seconds to decide.”
“You were a better man that that in your former life, Mortdieu,” the ci-devant Comte replied, without letting a single second go by. “You were a man of pride and principle. Let us settle this like men of honor, up on deck. Single combat, with weapons of your choice. Let us settle it once and for all, each agreeing to accept the judgment of destiny.”
“A generous offer, since I have two loaded guns and you have none.” Mortdieu replied. “Exactly what I would have expected from a gentleman of your sort. Destiny has already judged; the matter is already settled. It only remains for you to accept that judgment–or die.”
Ned Knob had clambered to his feet while this exchange was taking place, deciding that his turn had come to take center-stage and play deus ex machina. He stood beside John Devil, and said: “A few minutes ago, this man put a pistol to the head of Gregory Temple, who would not back down. Temple told Monsieur le Comte to shoot him dead. If you knew this man, you would know that he cannot possibly show more weakness than his arch-adversary, his other half. He will invite you to shoot him, just as Temple invited him–but I beg you not to do it, no matter what kind of man you were in your first life. If you’re to be the founder of a new race, you must set a better example now than you were ever able to do as a mere man.”
“Damn you, Ned!” John Devil murmured. “This is not your scene. How dare you try to steal it!”
“No,” said a new voice, speaking from behind the emperor of the grey men and over his head. This scene is mine. Give me one of those pistols, sir, and I shall shoot him dead, if only to show that I can hate longer and harder than he.”
Mortdieu had to change his position then, so that he could point the pistol in his left hand at Gregory Temple, and the one in his right at the ci-devant Comte Henri de Belcamp. Ned took note of the fact that the corridor through which all the new arrivals must have come seemed quiet now, and concluded that the fight for possession of the Outremort must have been suspended, if not concluded.
“Who the Devil are you?” Mortdieu asked Gregory Temple.
“I am English law and order,” Gregory Temple informed him. “Intolerant of grave-robbers and of brawling... although Master Knob informs me that I might soon have to change my opinion as to the ethics of grave-robbing. My forces will increase as the day wears on, and my men can have an army here by dusk if the need arises. If you shoot me, the necessity will be obvious–we’ll see then how the dead-alive will fare in the hangman’s noose.”
“It would certainly be best,” Ned Knob observed, “if no one shot anyone, whatever our habits might formerly have been.”
“Spoken like a true Republican, Ned,” said the ci-devant Comte. “Alas, you are forgetting the lessons of history. There are deep differences of opinion here, and they cannot be settled without violence.”
“I cannot believe that,” Ned said, “any more than my darling Jeanie could believe that the giant would hurt her, wounded and wrathful as he was. Monsieur le Comte, you and your men must quit the Outremort, and retire with the only prizes that you really need, and which Monsieur Mortdieu cannot steal from you unless he shoots you–your knowledge and your intelligence. You must also give your word that any other persons you might raise from the dead in future will be free, not instruments of any of your schemes. Monsieur Mortdieu, you must allow Germain Patou to choose for himself where, and in whose company, he will pursue his own researches–and Sawney too. Mr. Temple, you must leave your army unsummoned and withdraw, allowing the Outremort to depart unhindered when she is fully provisioned. All this is obvious–no good can come of any other eventuality. Why should it require a fool like me to explain something so simple?”
“There is nothing obvious about it,” said Gregory Temple and John Devil, speaking in unison, as if they really were two halves of the same paradoxical person.
“I have won the battle,” General Mortdieu pointed out, “and I hold the loaded guns. It is for me to make the terms.”
“We are not talking about a battle,” Ned insisted, “or even a war. There should never have been a battle, and there is nothing to be gained by a war. We are talking about how best to make progress, how best to move into the future with intelligent purpose and good heart. That is surely the one cause and the one course to which we can all commit ourselves, and the only one that intelligent men need consider.”
Mortdieu had already hesitated far longer than the five seconds he had originally conceded his adversary, and Ned no longer feared that he was about to blast anyone’s face away, but he went on regardless. “What you must see,” he said “is that things are different now. The future will unfold more rapidly if you do the sensible thing–which is to make a record of all your discoveries and experiments, sending copies to Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday in England, and to the heirs of Benjamin Franklin in America and Antoine Lavoisier in France, so that a thousand men might take up your work of raising and educating the recently-dead–but it will not matter in the long run how long, or how successfully, you try to hoard your secret away for your use alone. The thing can be done, and will be done, even if the thousand have to labor long and hard to figure out the first steps for themselves. I have no idea what each of you hopes or plans to do, but I do know that your achievements will be dissolved soon enough by the tide of history, and that if you desire to be remembered fondly for what you have achieved so far, you will all put away your weapons, now and forever, and return to your real work.”
He was speaking to everyone, but Mortdieu was the one who had the guns, at present, and it was into his remarkable eyes that Ned had looked while he delivered his speech. There, despite their alien quality, he read the record of his success.
Mortdieu lowered his hands, and pointed both his pistols at the floor.
“If we ever have occasion to play this scene on the stage, Ned,” Sam Hopkey put i
n, “I shall be proud to speak those lines.”
Ned was still anxious lest anyone take advantage of Mortdieu’s inaction to start the fight all over again, but no one did.
“It is a compromise I can accept,” the grey general said, “for the sake of peace–provided that you will both agree to it.”
“I will if Temple will,” the ci-devant Comte was quick to say. “Ned’s right–if a fool like him can see it, so should we all.”
“There is a matter of my duty to the Crown...” Gregory Temple began–but then he stopped, perhaps remembering the head on which the Crown of England was resting just at present, and what he had suffered at the whim of the former Prince Regent. “And England, I suppose,” he resumed, “will be grateful to me for helping to remove the grey men from its shores, at least for a little while. I’ll give you 24 hours. Go, all of you, and good riddance–but woe betide any of you who are still here on Wednesday.”
Ned observed, though, that Temple shot a venomous glance at the ci-devant Comte, which said as clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud: especially you. It was impossible to tell whether the policeman was more regretful of not having had a pistol to shoot his arch-adversary dead, or of being contemptuously spared by his arch-adversary when the pistol had been in the other hand.
Jeanie Bird took Ned’s left hand in hers, and squeezed it gratefully. Ned looked around–not at her, but at the restless dead-alive who were as yet unknown to themselves. Their agitation had calmed somewhat while everyone was standing still. Their black-pointed eyes were very intent, and their ears were pricked. Ned felt free to be hopeful that they were all a little closer to finding the power of intelligence and motive for a second time.
Ned reached out to Sawney with his right hand, and Sawney clasped it. “Thank you for coming to see us, Sawney,” he said. “I wish I had been there when you came back last night, so that we could all have made a proper farewell–but Sam and Jeanie have a performance tonight, and you always told us that the audience must not be disappointed.” He remembered, as he said that, that Sawney had always told him something else–that if a playwright puts a gun into a scene, the gun must eventually go off–but he decided that it would be best to disregard that maxim at this particular juncture.
He made as if to go, taking his protégés with him–for his first duty was, after all, to them. Someone had to set an example. The others seemed grateful for his lead, and he was confident that they would follow him into the wings.
“We’ll meet again, mon ami,” said the ci-devant Comte, his posture suggesting that he was speaking to Ned, although his heavy-lidded eyes were fixed on Gregory Temple.
That was yet another thing that Sawney had always said, Ned remembered, in the days when he had played the puppet judge in the mock tribunal. On the stage, where everything is pretense and everything is possible, old friends and old enemies alike must always meet again, until their differences were settled for good and all.
END OF PART ONE
(To Be Continued in Volume 3)
Credits
Ex Calce Liberatus
Starring:
Charles Folenfant
Arsène Lupin
Philippe Guerande
Oscar Mazamette
Kogoro Akechi
The Vampires
Lancelot (a.k.a. Père Dulac)
Introducing:
Nora Fuset (a.k.a. the Black Lizard)
Also Starring:
The Correspondents:
Justin Ganimard
D.A. Kasamori
The Statues:
Cyrano de Bergerac
Bussy d’Amboise
Comte d’Artagnan
Henri de Lagardère
Agnes de Chastillon
Jirel de Joiry
Zatoichi
Prince Hugrakkur
André-Louis Moreau
Created by:
Maurice Leblanc
Maurice Leblanc
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Edogawa Rampo
Louis Feuillade
Chrétien de Troyes
Edogawa Rampo
Maurice Leblanc
Edogawa Rampo
Edmond Rostand
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas
Paul Féval
Robert E. Howard
Catherine L. Moore
Kan Shimozawa
& Minoru Inuzuka
Hal Foster
Rafael Sabatini
Written by:
Matthew BAUGH is a 43-year-old ordained minister who lives and works in Sedona, Arizona, with his wife Mary and two cats. He is a longtime fan of pulp fiction, cliffhanger serials, old time radio, and is the proud owner of the silent Judex serial on DVD. He has written a number of articles on lesser known pop-culture characters like Dr. Syn, Jules de Grandin and Sailor Steve Costigan for the Wold-Newton Universe Internet website. His article on Zorro was published in Myths for the Modern Age. This is his second contribution to Tales of the Shadowmen.
Trauma
Starring:
The Boy (Britt Reid, a.k.a. The Green Hornet)
His Father (Dan Reid, Jr.)
Jules Maigret
Prince Vladimir
Fantômas
Created by:
George W. Trendle
George W. Trendle
Georges Simenon
Marcel Allain
& Pierre Souvestre
Marcel Allain
& Pierre Souvestre
Written by:
Bill CUNNINGHAM is a pulp screenwriter-producer specializing in the DVD market and contributed the story “Cadavres Exquis” to the first volume in this series. A recognized authority and speaker on low budget filmmaking, his website, www.D2DVD.blogspot.com , offers screenwriters and filmmakers useful tips and insight into the DVD industry. His media empire, The Lab, launched from his Echo Park, CA kitchen table is preparing several pulp cinema and literary properties for release in 2006.
The Eye of Oran
Starring:
Lieutenant Aristide
SNIF
Doctor Natas (a.k.a.
Li Chang Yen,
Hanoi Shan,
Fu Manchu)
Huan Tsung Chao
Pao Tcheou
Fen-Chu
The Korean (a.k.a. OddJob)
Doctor Rieux
The Diogenes Club
Raymond Rambert
Magistrate Othon
Inspector Fabre
Inspector Fauchet
Doc Ardan
James Bond
Also Starring:
Adelaïde Johnston
Violet Holmes
And:
The Silver Eye of Dagon
Created by:
Vladimir Volkoff
Vladimir Volkoff
Guy d’Armen
Agatha Christie
H. Ashton Wolfe
Sax Rohmer
Sax Rohmer
Edward Brooker
George Fronval
Ian Fleming
Albert Camus
Arthur Conan Doyle
Albert Camus,
Marcel Allain
& Pierre Souvestre
Albert Camus
Leo Malet
John Pearson
Guy d’Armen,
Lester Dent
Ian Fleming
Win Scott Eckert
Matthew Baugh
& Win Scott Eckert
Roy Thomas
based on Robert E. Howard
& H.P. Lovecraft
Written by:
Win Scott ECKERT graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology and thereafter received his Juris Doctorate, enabling him to practice law. In 1997, he posted the first site on the Internet devoted to expanding Philip José Farmer’s original premise of a Wold Newton Family to encompass a whole Wold Newton Universe. He is the editor of and a contributor to Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer
’s Wold Newton Universe. Win lives near Denver with his family and four felines, in a house crammed to the rafters with books, comics and Star Trek action figures. This is his second contribution to Tales of the Shadowmen.
The Werewolf of Rutherford Grange
Starring:
Harry Dickson
The Westenras
The Rutherfords
Sâr Dubnotal
John Roxton
Gianetti Annunciata
Created by:
Anonymous
Bram Stoker
Philip José Farmer
Anonymous
Arthur Conan Doyle
Anonymous
Written by:
G.L. GICK lives in Indiana and has been a pulp fan since he first picked up a Doc Savage paperback. His other interests include old-time radio, Golden and Silver Age comics, cryptozoology, classic animation, British SF TV and C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. He is, in other words, a nerd and damn proud of it. This is his second contribution to Tales of the Shadowmen.
Dr. Cerral’s Patient
Starring:
Dr. Cerral
Victor Chupin
Irene Chupin
Victoire
Raoul d’Andresy (a.k.a. Arsène Lupin)
Henriette d’Andresy
Théophraste Lupin
Mathilde Grévin
Teresa Grévin
Created by:
Maurice Renard
Emile Gaboriau
Narciso Ibáñez-Serrador
& Juan Tébar
Maurice Leblanc
Maurice Leblanc
Maurice Leblanc
Maurice Leblanc
Narciso Ibáñez-Serrador
& Juan Tébar
Narciso Ibáñez-Serrador
& Juan Tébar
Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night Page 40