“Why does he call himself the Invisible Man?” Barnett asked.
“Chardino specializes in getting in and out of impossible places—often without being seen.”
Barnett made another entry in his notebook. “What sort of places?”
“Well, let me see.” Forbis referred to his card. “He was locked in the tower room of Waldbeck Castle and escaped while two companies of guardsmen were surrounding the building. They saw nothing. Another time he was locked in the vault of Bombeck Frères, in Paris, and was found to be gone the next morning when the time lock permitted the manager to open the door. The man is a great showman.”
Barnett nodded slowly. “I would very much like to meet Professor Chardino,” he said. “He sounds like just the sort of person I have been looking for.”
“Fascinating to talk to,” Forbis agreed. He flipped over a few more cards. “Then there’s the Amazing Doctor Prist—the World’s Leading Escapist. It sort of rhymes, you see.”
“He escapes from places also?”
“Oh, yes. Not as good as Chardino perhaps, but very showy, with a great many flourishes. He’s been trying to arrange an escape from the Tower of London for the past five years, but the authorities won’t let him. Naturally he plays that for all it’s worth. By now he’s gotten almost as much publicity out of the fact that the authorities refuse to allow the escape as he would have from successfully accomplishing it.”
Barnett wrote the name Prist down in his notebook. “Any others?” he asked.
“Well, if it’s escapes you’re particularly interested in, there’s Walla and Bisby,” Forbis said, pulling out another card. “You can see them at the Orion right now, as it happens. Their specialty is walking through a brick wall, which is constructed right on stage in full view of the audience.”
Barnett sighed. “I can see that I’ll need more detail about all of these people, if I’m to do my job right,” he said. “I hate to impose on you like this. Have you some free time? Perhaps we could discuss this over a drink at the Croyden?”
Forbis grabbed for his hat. “Delighted,” he said.
TWENTY-FOUR
INTERLUDE: THE EVENING
A Londoner can always be summed up by his clubs.
ARTHUR WILLIAM Á BECKETT
The purifying rain fell steadily, gently, caressingly, the drumming sound it made on the wet paving stones drowning out the casual noises of the surrounding city. He stood on the pavement on the corner of Montague Street and Upper Keating Place, awaiting his prey, his great cape wrapped around him against the rain. Not that he minded the rain; the cleansing rain, the obscuring rain, the protecting rain, the rain that washed away blood, that cleansed the hands, if not the mind. The rain that renewed everything in its wake, but could not bring forgetfulness. Memory was pain, but nepenthe would bring death, for he had nothing to keep him alive but memory. His actions now were the continuing result of the memories that went beyond pain and the mission that went beyond life. He was the wind.
He had been content for all the days since—since—the thoughts whirled as his conscious mind rejected the thought thrown up by his unconscious. That frightful image must, at any cost, be suppressed. That thing had not happened. Could not have happened. A red haze of grief and pain passed before his eyes, and then all was clear once more. He had been content, for all the timeless days that had passed since he had become the wind, to follow the same mindless progression. The details had fully occupied his conscious mind, had mercifully filled his thoughts, as he accomplished the deaths, one by one, of Those Who Must Die. He had always been very careful about details, even in his other life that had once been so important and was now so meaningless. Except that it had given him the skills he needed for his new tasks.
Like a man caught on the rim of a great wheel, fated to follow the same endless ellipse turn after turn, with only the scenery changing, he had traced, followed, located, entered, searched, killed, and silently departed.
This work, for a while, had so filled his conscious mind that further thought was unnecessary, and the attempt difficult. This cycle had served temporarily to suppress the pain, briefly dull the gnawing anguish that filled the well of his soul. But of late it had not been enough. The process was becoming too automatic, too easy; although he still took scrupulous care with each event, it no longer filled the whole of his conscious mind. Now the pain remained. The anguish grew.
Now the nameless gods that drove him demanded that he go further. He must risk himself, and yet win out. They must all die. He must track them to their lair and destroy them all. He must enter hell itself, in the guise of the devil, and terminate this corruption and all its foul, flagitious spawn.
A four-wheeler clattered and splashed down Montague Street and pulled to a stop in front of the house he watched. The jarvey jumped down from his seat and knocked on the front door. In a few seconds it opened a crack, and then closed again, and the jarvey resumed his soggy seat. Two minutes later a well-bundled-up gentleman left the house and secreted himself inside the cab, which promptly pulled away.
Lovely, lovely, thought the man who had become the wind. The horse won’t be in any hurry tonight. And the jarvey won’t be peering about and getting rain in his face. He retrieved a rubber-tired bicycle from the fence paling and set off through the rain in leisurely pursuit of the gentleman in the four-wheeler.
For the first twenty minutes the growler traveled vaguely northward through the empty streets, with the bicycle pedaling discreetly behind. Past Regent’s Park and Marylebone to Camden Town the four-wheeler rumbled; and then it turned east and passed the Cattle Market and Pentonville Prison. In a few minutes it had entered an area of London with which the bicyclist was entirely unfamiliar. He looked about him as he pedaled with the simple pleasure of a child surveying a new playground. Ten minutes later, on a quiet residential street with well-separated houses, the four-wheeler clopped to a halt. The bicyclist stopped a respectable distance behind and pulled his machine out of sight behind a convenient hedge.
The passenger pushed open the carriage door and, after peering out and sourly observing the still-falling rain, gingerly climbed down, pulling up his collar and wrapping his overcoat closely around him for protection. He looked about him uncertainly, as though not quite sure what to do next. Then, signaling the jarvey to remain where he was, the man walked slowly down the street, peering at the houses on both sides as though trying to make out details of their gaslit interiors through the rain-fogged windows. Halfway down the block he found the one he wanted. By what sign he identified it, the watcher was too far away to determine. The man turned and waved the four-wheeler away, and then scurried down the short path to the doorway.
The watcher hurried up the street until he was close behind, and then he silently leaped over the low wall which bordered the path leading up to the house and concealed himself by crouching behind it. He watched as his quarry yanked the bellpull and impatiently shifted from foot to foot awaiting a response.
A panel in the woodwork to the left of the door slid open, exposing a four-inch-square gap at about waist level. The man removed what appeared to be a small gold coin or medallion from his pocket and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, inserted it in the open panel for long enough for whoever was on the other side to get a good look at it. Then, as nothing happened immediately, he put the object back in his pocket and resumed his fidgeting.
A few moments later an arm extended from inside the panel, holding in its outstretched hand a piece of black cloth, which the waiting gentleman promptly snatched away. The arm was instantly withdrawn, and the panel closed. The man quickly removed his hat and pulled the black fabric over his head. It proved to be a face mask that covered the whole face down to the nose, leaving only the mouth and chin exposed.
When he had properly adjusted the mask, the man knocked a triplet on the door, and it swung open. He was surveyed and then promptly admitted to the house by a man dressed all in tight-fitting black, and wear
ing a similar mask. No sooner had the man disappeared inside and the door shut behind him than another man came up the path to the door, and the admittance process started anew. There must be a protocol, the watcher realized, discouraging one man from approaching the door before the man ahead was admitted.
The watcher remained crouched where he was while four more gentlemen donned masks and entered the house. It must, he decided, be the small medallion, the devil’s mark, that was being displayed through the open panel. He took a leather wallet from a special pocket in his cape and carefully felt around inside one of the compartments. There it was, the gold medallion he had removed from the shoe of his last victim. He had not had occasion to dispose of it yet. Now he was glad. It would be his passport. It was now time for him to imitate the ones he had just watched, to don the devil mask and enter this hell.
The house was large and richly furnished, and had many rooms. The man who was the wind, having gained admittance, wandered from room to room, cloaked behind the ubiquitous mask. He was now as one with the servants of the devil, observing the operation of this special subdivision of hell. The men, even the servants, were all masked. The women, scantily clad hussies who wandered from room to room and made themselves available to any masked man who beckoned, were bawdyhouse women. They made the best of the hand fate had dealt them, selling the only skills they had.
He was familiar with these girls; the pattern of his life had brought him into contact with many such, and he had always been impressed by their stoic good cheer. But in this house, the gaiety seemed forced; beneath the pouting lips, deep in the flirting eyes, there lurked the shadow of fear.
The rooms were dedicated to various pleasures. In one a roulette wheel spun, surrounded by masked men and by women in dishabille; in another chemin-de-fer and vingt-et-un tables were kept busy separating masked men from their coins. All transactions were conducted in cash in this house, since credit could not easily be extended to masked men who made a point of not recognizing one another.
These childish games, where men hiding behind masks felt a special illicit thrill, were not the activities the watcher had been drawn here to see. The premise of this gentlemen’s club, where the gentlemen hid behind masks and the devil peered out through the eye slits, must be that in the confines of this house, the minor vices were but a prelude to the most consummate evil.
Somewhere in this building that darker evil must exist. And he must find it. He went deeper into the building, up a flight of stairs, past several closed doors, and there he found what he had expected to find. And despite his foreknowledge, despite his own activities of the past six weeks, this once-gentle man who had become the wind was horrified.
To believe, even on the best evidence, that human beings can behave like imps from hell is an intellectual exercise; to be confronted with such behavior is a gut-wrenching truth. When the Executioner of Lille, a dedicated man, separated the head of Gilles de Rais from its slender body he was acting under orders of the court, and knew of the seigneur’s crimes only secondhand. Perhaps if he had seen the twisted, tortured bodies of more than a hundred small children, victims of the mad baron, laid out before him, his hand might have trembled, the ax might have slipped, and the job would not have been so neat.
The man who had become the wind hardened his heart, and determined to keep his work professional, regardless of what he saw. He saw rooms dedicated to strange and terrible variants of the sexual appetites of man. He saw rooms equipped for bondage, and for torture. He saw instruments of pain of such delicate design and exquisite manufacture that it was clear that the artisans who made them regarded them as works of art. And he saw these rooms and these instruments in use.
A servant came down the halls, whispering, “An auction, an auction,” to all whom he encountered. The man who was the wind drifted behind the others and followed them into the auction room. He had seen enough. He knew what he must do. He would pause in this room, surrounded by Those Who Must Die, long enough to see what they did here. Then he would leave and prepare. Then he would return.
The childish masks these imps of Satan hid behind to practice their perversions made it all too easy for this spy in their midst. But a spy would have to have the device—the gold medallion—to enter this house of the damned; this was their positive protection from the outside world. The medallions, in the hands of their owners, were carefully protected. The watcher smiled grimly at this thought. So was life itself carefully protected—and he took the one as easily as the other.
A short man climbed up on the low table in the center of the room, stepping up from a small stool that had been placed by one end for that purpose. He was garbed entirely in black like most of the others, and masked; but his cuffs were edged with crimson cord and his mask was crimson silk.
“Quiet!” a pudgy man standing near the watcher whispered to a companion. “It’s the Master Incarnate!”
The watcher grimaced and his hands tightened involuntarily into fists. This then was the man! Here was the chief of the devilish clan. He must learn to recognize this man. Perhaps the so-called “Master” did not always wear the crimson; in pure black, surrounded by his vermin, he would be harder to single out. The watcher moved closer so that he could study the ears, and memorize the shape of the lobe. By this would he know the Devil Incarnate when next they met, no matter how he might be attired.
“Welcome,” the Master Incarnate said, in a deep, commanding voice. “There are three items today.” He gestured, and three servants, each a giant man, entered the room. Each of them carried a woman over his broad shoulders. The three women were bound and gagged with silken cords, and each wore a white shift and, as far as the watcher could tell, nothing else. Two of the women were passive, and the third was twisting and kicking vigorously, but completely ineffectually, in the arms of the giant who carried her.
After an “examination” of the women that was as degrading as it was offensive, the auction began. There was an atmosphere of obscene gaiety in the room as the bidding on each of the handsome, terrified women in bondage progressed. The bidding remained spirited in this carnival of depravity, and the offers quickly ran up into hundreds of pounds for each of the women. The dearest was the spirited one, who kept up the fight, even while wrapped in the massive arms of the impassive servant. Bidding for her closed out at six hundred and twenty-five pounds. And so, the watcher thought, my Annie must have been sold to one of these swine, in a room very much like this one. And then he decided not to think about that anymore.
The three winners of this unholy auction did not carry a large enough purse with them to redeem their prizes. The understanding was that they were to return the next evening with the required cash. In order to identify the right masked gentleman, and ensure that he got the girl he had bought, each of them ripped a pound note in half and gave one half to the Master Incarnate to match up the next evening.
“Tomorrow,” the Master Incarnate said, indicating the three terrified women with a wave of his hands.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, the watcher thought.
“Tomorrow you three fortunate men will claim your rewards!” The Master Incarnate clapped his hands, and the three trophies were carried off. “Tomorrow evening,” he said. “You have much to look forward to.”
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death, the watcher said to himself as he took his leave. He had a day now to think, and to plan. Dusty death.
TWENTY-FIVE
AGONY
How then was the Devil dressed?
O, he was in his Sunday’s best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.
ROBERT SOUTHEY
Sherlock Holmes was not grateful. He awoke from his encounter with the poultry cart with a severe headache, a bruised hip and left leg, and a foul temper.
“How do you feel?” asked the portly man who was bending over him as he opened his eyes.
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Holmes took a minute to focus on the man’s face. “Rotten,” he said. “Who the devil are you?”
“I am Dr. Breckstone,” the man told him, enunciating carefully. “Professor Moriarty sent for me. You’ve been in a most serious accident. Do you remember anything about what happened?”
Holmes looked blurrily about, gathering his thoughts and his energy. Then he focused back on Breckstone. “Thank you, Doctor, for whatever you’ve done for me. I do remember what happened. I am fine now. I must be on my way.”
“My dear man!” Dr. Breckstone said. “You must remain where you are for some hours at least. I’m not altogether sure yet that you’ve escaped serious internal injuries. And the head, my good man, is not the preferential site for internal injuries! You’re lucky to be alive, and no more gravely injured than you appear to be. But I must really insist that you remain lying down here for a few more hours at least. Perhaps overnight.”
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