The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

by Mark Hodder

  Burton disentangled himself from her arms. “Slow down, Mother Angell. Calm yourself. I’m quite fine. I’ve been a little ill and I had a slight accident on the way here, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. The comforts of home will soon put me to rights.”

  “Oh!” she cried out. “Thank the Lord you’ve returned to us. Such a long time away and every single day of it I worried you were being eaten by giraffes or stung by poisonous monkeys.”

  “Africa wasn’t so bad,” he responded. “I’ve already encountered more danger right here in London. And to answer your earlier questions—no, I’m not hungry, and yes, fresh clothes would be most welcome. Isabel?”

  A mellow voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “Dick.”

  He looked up and saw Isabel Arundell, having obviously just emerged from his study, standing on the landing. She was tall, slender, and pretty—with large clear eyes, a straight Grecian nose, and thick, lustrous blonde hair.

  “A pot of tea, please, Mrs. Angell!” he bellowed, and shot up the staircase and into Isabel’s embrace.

  She held him tightly and sobbed onto his shoulder.

  “Isabel,” he whispered. “Isabel. Isabel.”

  He pushed her away a little, so he could lean in and kiss the side of her neck. His split lip left two small spots of blood on her jugular.

  “Blanche is here!” she gasped.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I have to kiss you. You waited.”

  “Of course I did. You’re bleeding. You look all banged-up. Have you had an accident?”

  “Yes, just a mishap.” He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the little red stains from her skin, and dabbed the square of cotton against his mouth.

  “We can marry,” he said. “I’m done with Africa.”

  “Come and say hello to her.”

  “Isabel, have your parents given their blessing?”

  “Not their blessing, but their permission. They realise I won’t accept any other man.”

  He nodded, checked his handkerchief, put it away, and followed her into the study.

  It felt strange to be back. Nothing had changed, but it all appeared dreamlike in the shifting multicoloured illumination that streamed in between the open curtains. His three desks were still piled high with books and papers; the swords and daggers still hung on the wall over the fireplace, with spears and guns in the alcoves to either side; his old boxing gloves still dangled from the corner of the mantelpiece; the bureau still stood between the two tall sash widows; the bookcases were still warped beneath the weight of his books; and his comfortable old saddlebag armchair was right where he’d left it.

  Isabel’s petite younger sister, Blanche, rose from the chair.

  He strode to her, grabbed her hand, and gave it a peck.

  “Hello, Little Bird. I’m sorry I missed your wedding. How is old Smythe Piggott?”

  “Hello, Richard. The sky has lit up to celebrate your return. I’m fine, but do emphasise the pig when you say my husband’s name. He already has two mistresses. But he’s a rich pig, so I can’t complain. There are women with worse husbands; the variety of man that remains at home in the evenings and insists on conversation, for instance. The fifth of November, Richard, the fifth of November.”

  “What about it? Do you intend to throw him onto a bonfire? I didn’t think you Catholics celebrated Guy Fawkes Night.”

  “We Catholics don’t. It’s the date my parents have set for your engagement party. They’d prefer that my sister’s marriage be founded on financial security, as mine is—I think they’re rather intimidated by such concepts as love and passion—but they’ve bowed to the inevitable. Great-Uncle Gerard has agreed to host the party at New Wardour Castle, and if you wish to bring guests, you have his leave to do so.”

  Burton looked at Isabel and arched an eyebrow. “Have you been doping your parents?”

  She laughed. “No, just driving them to the brink of madness by singing your praises at every opportunity. But I think it was the knighthood that finally swayed them.”

  “Oh. You know about that? Good grief! Was I the last to be told?”

  “I heard it from Monckton Milnes. You know what a great depository of knowledge, gossip, and secrets he is.”

  “Not so much secrets, it would appear.”

  Burton indicated that Blanche should resume her seat and Isabel take the other armchair. He dragged over a padded chair from beside one of the desks and sat facing them.

  Isabel reached for his hand and held it. She said, “You won’t object to the party, will you?”

  “I’ll concede to it,” he replied, “but we’ll keep the wedding itself a small affair, as we agreed—yes?—for a grand marriage ceremony is a barbarous and an indelicate exhibition.”

  Isabel first laughed then frowned. “Your face. What was this mishap you mentioned?”

  “Yes, brother-in-law-to-be,” Blanche added. “You look a hideous mess.”

  He dismissed the question with a wave. “Thank you, Blanche. It’s really nothing to worry about. I tripped.”

  Blanche giggled. “Months and months in dangerous Africa and as soon as you’re home, you fall flat on your face.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Was the safari very difficult?” Isabel asked. “Why did it take so much longer than predicted?”

  “The Orpheus’s engines failed,” he replied. “Some five hundred miles north of the lakes, they simply packed up. The engineers couldn’t find a thing to explain it. What little wind there was came from the west—the dirigible couldn’t even float southward—so Sadhvi, Bill, George, and I left it and continued on foot. We followed the upper Nile through a chain of swamps and lakes until we arrived at its source—waterfalls descending from the Nyanza, which is practically an inland sea. We then skirted around its western shore, past the Mountains of the Moon, until we came to the water’s southernmost point. While we were doing all that, the breeze altered direction, allowing Captain Lawless to drift the Orpheus over the eastern shores of the Nyanza then southward to an Arabic outpost called Kazeh. He set up camp there and paid natives to spread the news of the ship’s location. The information eventually reached us and we rejoined our colleagues. A few days later, we discovered that the engines had miraculously come back to life and immediately set course for Zanzibar.”

  The door opened and Mrs. Angell entered with a tea tray. She gave Blanche an approving glance, pleased to see that propriety was being observed and Isabel was correctly chaperoned, then set the tray down on a table.

  “Shall I pour?” she asked.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Angell,” Isabel said. “Leave it to me.”

  “I’ll lay clean clothes out in your bedchamber, Captain Burton,” the housekeeper said. “Oh, I’m so happy to have you home safe and sound. You’ll not be returning to Africa, I hope.”

  “No, Mother,” Burton responded. “I have no plans to go back.”

  The old woman wrung her hands in satisfaction. “You’ll have some beef broth before you go to bed. I insist upon it. You need building up. Ring when you’re ready for it. Don’t forget!” With that admonition, she left the room.

  Isabel said, “Have you satisfied your craving for danger and unexplored lands, Dick? Are you ready to settle? I have petitioned Lord Stanley. I think he’s willing to hand us Damascus.”

  Burton sighed. “I wish you hadn’t. The Orpheus gave him passage home from Vienna. He made it quite clear to me that your unsolicited recommendations were unwelcome and irritating. You may have done more damage than good.”

  “There!” Blanche interjected. “I told you not to be so bullheaded. Really, Isabel, mother is right. You are far too brazen.”

  “I was trying to help!” Isabel protested.

  Burton gave her hand a squeeze. “I appreciate that, darling, but in doing so you might have given the impression that I lack the wherewithal to advance my own career.”

  “It’s just that—that—Oh, Dick, I just want to be able to do s
omething for our future together. I so regret that I’m bringing you no money, but Papa simply won’t allow it.”

  “That’s no disadvantage as far as I’m concerned, for heiresses always expect to lord it over their lords. A man must be a man, Isabel. He must be in charge of his own destiny, and more importantly, he must be seen to be in charge.”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  “Don’t fret,” he added. “You may have riled old Stanley, but I’m confident we’ll get what we want anyway.”

  “You forgive me?”

  “I forgive you.”

  Isabel smiled, stood, and crossed to the table. While she attended to the teapot, Burton asked Blanche, “Your parents really want me to bring guests?”

  “Oh, yes!” she answered. “You should invite them for the first of the month, so we have a few days to become acquainted before the party itself. Will Styggins be among them? I so want to meet him. I hear he’s absolutely utterly!”

  “Steinhaueser? Absolutely utterly what?”

  “Just utterly! Isabel tells me you’ve known him forever.”

  “Since India,” Burton corrected. “Utterly, hey?”

  “You must admit,” Isabel said, returning with a filled cup and saucer in each hand, “that he is rather handsome and charming.”

  “I can’t say I’ve noticed,” Burton said. “But, yes, I’ll invite Styggins, if only to make my Little Bird’s pet pig jealous.”

  Blanche giggled and reddened.

  “I’ll ask Monckton Milnes, too,” he added.

  Isabel fetched the third cup and sat down. “But none of your wretched Cannibal Club, if you please. They are far too louche.”

  “Agreed.”

  A short silence fell over them as they sipped their tea. Blanche stared at her sister and wrinkled her forehead meaningfully. Isabel put her cup down and frowned at her sibling.

  “What is it?” Burton asked. “Why are you two looking daggers at each other?”

  “My sister has something to tell you,” Blanche said.

  “Blanche!” Isabel hissed.

  “Well?” Burton asked.

  Isabel fiddled with the edge of her shawl, examined her fingernails, brushed her hands over her skirts, and said, “I met Hagar Burton again.”

  “Hagar Burton?”

  “You remember? The Gypsy who used to camp on the family estate when I was a girl.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  Burton recalled that his fiancée, when fifteen years old, had befriended the Gypsy woman, who’d predicted that she’d one day fall in love with a man who bore the Burton surname.

  Isabel continued, “Last June, Blanche and I went to Ascot. She was there.”

  “And?”

  “And she read my palm.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked if I’d married a Burton yet. I said no, not yet. She said, Don’t.”

  “Don’t?”

  “She predicted that, if I put on a wedding dress for a Burton, he would—would—”

  “He would what?”

  “He would kill me while I was still wearing it.”

  THE BAKER STREET DETECTIVE

  Macallister Fogg’s Own Paper!

  Issue 245. Every Thursday. Consolidated Press.

  One Penny.

  This Week: Macallister Fogg and his

  lady assistant, Mrs. Boswell, investigate:

  THE HORRIBLE HAUNTING OF HOWLING HOUSE!

  Plus the latest installments of:

  DOCTOR TZU VERSUS THE BRAIN REMOVERS

  by Cecil Barry

  FATTY CAKEHOLE AND THE PHANTOM PIE-MAKER

  by Norman Pounder

  Friday didn’t dawn but merely replaced the shifting colours of the aurora with the pale yellow of a late-summer’s day. Unaccustomed to his own bed, Burton awoke early and lay staring at the rectangle of his curtained window. His room was at the back of the house, overlooking the yard and mews, but the rumble of early-morning traffic—mostly delivery wagons—was noisy enough to reach him. It sounded alien and strange. No more waking to coughing lions and rumbling elephants. No quiet thrum of the Orpheus’s engines.

  He was in London now.

  But not for long, he hoped.

  The Empire’s capital made him uneasy. Few of the people who dwelt in its club rooms and debating chambers approved of him. He’d spent his childhood being hauled around Europe by a restless father and long-suffering mother and had, in consequence, acquired “foreign ways.” He’d little patience with the complex and subtle rituals of English society, and was, in consequence, looked upon as too blunt, too challenging, too aggressive, and far too interested in matters that were better left unacknowledged.

  Blackguard Burton. Ruffian Dick.

  So, Damascus.

  He would endure London until he was married, then he and Isabel would flee to the wide-open spaces and rather more transparent etiquettes of Arabia.

  Burton pushed himself upright, let loose a deep, shuddering sigh, and reached up to touch his right eye. It was swollen and sore. What in God’s name had that business in the alley been about? The Assassination of Victoria? It was two decades ago!

  Giving up on further sleep, he left his bed, shaved, washed, dressed, and went down to his study. For two hours, he made inroads into his backlog of newspapers, then—when he heard Mrs. Angell moving about downstairs—rang for breakfast. By nine o’clock, he’d caught up on much of the past year’s news and had consumed two kippers, two boiled eggs, four rashers of bacon, a chunk of cold ham, three slices of toast with marmalade, and two cups of coffee.

  He left the house, hailed a cab, and went to Scotland Yard.

  Pushing through the crowded and noisy lobby, Burton stepped up to a desk upon which a small plaque bore the name J. D. Pepperwick. The individual sitting behind it was the same he’d chatted with last night.

  “Is Mr. Macallister Fogg available?”

  “Hello there!” Pepperwick enthused. “Good morning! I hardly recognised you. What happened to the beard?”

  Burton touched his drooping moustache and the small tuft of hair he’d left in the cleft of his chin. “It had to go. There were things living in it.”

  The clerk chuckled. “It looks like they fought to stay. That’s quite a shiner you’ve got, Mr. Living—er—”

  “Captain.”

  “Pardon me. Captain. Who?”

  “Burton.”

  “No, Captain Burton, I meant, who was it you said you wanted to see?”

  “Macallister Fogg.”

  Pepperwick removed his spectacles and blew dust from the lenses. “Hmm! Macallister Fogg. Macallister Fogg. Macallister Fogg. No, sir, I’m quite certain there’s no one here by that name.”

  “He was standing among your people last night, watching the aurora. A shortish and bulky fellow with a large moustache.”

  Pepperwick replaced his eyewear and scratched his right ear. “There are plenty working here who match such a description, Captain, but no Foggs. Perhaps he was just passing by and got mixed up with us.”

  “Yes,” Burton replied. “I suppose so. Well, it was worth a try.”

  “Would you like to speak with a detective?”

  “About what?”

  “About whatever it is you wanted to discuss with this Fogg chap.”

  “I didn’t want to discuss anything with him. I wanted to punch him in the eye.”

  Pepperwick blinked rapidly. “Oh. Ha ha! Tit for tat, is it? Not quite the thing to do in Scotland Yard, sir.”

  “No,” Burton agreed. “I expect not. Much obliged, Mr. Pepperwick. Good day to you.”

  The explorer recrossed the lobby and stepped out into the morning haze. The pall was much less dense today and the streets were seething with people, animals, and traffic. He hailed another cab and headed home, stopping briefly at Brundleweed’s, which he again found closed.

  As the carriage bumped and swayed along, Burton dozed. His bones felt cold and his flesh too warm. The crisis might have
passed but he was by no means fully recovered.

  A knock on the roof jerked him back to alertness. A small hatch hinged upward and the cabbie looked down at him.

  “Montagu Place, boss.”

  “Already?”

  “Yup. You’ve been catching forty winks. I could hear yer snoring.”

  Burton pushed the door open and stepped down onto the road. He passed the fare up to the man and said, “There’s a little extra, for the damage to your ears.”

  The cabbie grinned. “Much obliged!”

  He drove off.

  Burton took a couple of steps then stopped. A street Arab was hawking newspapers outside his door.

  “Read all about it! Sky lit up around the world! Read all about it!”

  The explorer had an idea. He approached the youngster.

  “I say, nipper, are you a Whisperer?”

  The boy—he was no more than twelve years old, dressed in rags with a battered stovepipe hat on his tousle-haired head—pushed his chest out, stood proudly, and in a soft Irish accent declared, “Aye, sir, that I am. Any message you want to send or information you want to find, I can do it—for a small fee.”

  Burton fished a shilling from his pocket. “Then I have a job for you. I need to trace the whereabouts of a man named Macallister Fogg. I want to know who he is and what he does.”

  The boy received the coin with a broad grin and said, “Go on with ye! Macallister Fogg, is it? Are ye certain about that? You’ll not be pullin’ me leg?”

  “I’m certain.”

  The boy slapped his thigh, rocked back on his heels, and roared with laughter.

  “’Tis the easiest shillin’ I’ve ever earned, so it is!”

  “How so?” Burton asked.

  “Would ye be willin’ to invest a further penny? If ye do, I’ll place Macallister Fogg in your hands in less than a minute.”