Retromancer

  I put on what I considered to be a brave face. Although, I feared, one tinged with grey. I was now having considerable trouble keeping my breakfast down.

  My brave face was spied out by a rather shabby-looking individual sporting the traditional cloth cap that marked him out as one of the working class of this particular period, poor but honest and given to a cockney singalong at the drop of his, or anyone else’s, hat.

  ‘Gawd smother my loins in liniment,’ said he, ‘but that’s a brave face you’re putting on there, guv’nor. And you a toff by the look of your right-royal raiments.’

  I glanced at Mr Rune, wondering whether this fellow’s banter might cause the Perfect Master to bring his stout stick into play. But Mr Rune now appeared to be snoozing, so I just smiled at the fellow.

  ‘You couldn’t see your way clear to sparing us three ’a’pence for a pint of porter, could you, your Lordship? I’ve been bombed out of me ’ouse and ’ome an’ ’ave naught but the rags I stand up in.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but I am a bit like Twiggy at present - flat busted.’ And then I realised that I had made a joke, if naught but a feeble one. And certainly a feeble one that would have meant absolutely nothing to a fellow in nineteen forty-four. ‘I have no cash,’ I explained. In order to put the matter clearly.

  ‘A puff on your posh cigarette, then?’

  ‘Gladly so.’ And I parted with my Capstan.

  The fellow snatched it to his mouth and took great drags upon it.

  ‘So you were bombed out,’ I said to him. ‘Where are you living now?’

  ‘Right ’ere,’ he said in return. ‘Right ’ere on the top of this ’ere tram.’

  ‘And the tram company allows this?’

  ‘I won’t tell ’em if you don’t.’ And he winked a bleary eye at me.

  ‘Right.’ I watched him as he smoked my cigarette. And I wondered who he was. And, oddly, when he would die. He looked rather old and ill, which probably meant that he would not last until nineteen sixty-seven. So I would not be able to go and look him up, should I be lucky enough to return intact to that time. So in a way it was as if his days were numbered. And I somehow was doing the numbering.

  ‘That’s a queer thing you’re musing upon, guv’nor,’ said he, between great breathings-in of my Capstan Full Strength. ‘When or when not a man’s time it is to die is between that man and the God what made ’im, so it is.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. And I was shocked by this. ‘Did you just read my thoughts? I do not understand.’

  The fellow tapped at his shabby nose with an even shabbier finger. And then he beckoned me with it and I leaned over the belly of Mr Rune to hear what this wretch had to say.

  ‘Step very carefully, young Rizla,’ he whispered into my ear. And I felt his warm breath on me and smelled that breath as well. ‘Much depends upon you. And there are those who will seek to destroy you. You must take care, young Rizla, you really must. And when you see that number twenty-seven, don’t think, just run.’

  ‘But how?’ I said in much wonder and confusion. ‘And what do you mean? And who are you?’

  ‘You may know me as Diogenes. Now take care.’

  And he handed me back what remained of my cigarette and he tipped his cap to me. And I straightened up in my seat and then I went suddenly, ‘Wahh!’

  And I jumped considerably and Hugo Rune laughed.

  ‘What?’ I went. And, ‘Where?’ And, ‘Ow!’ And I looked down at the fingers of my right hand, which hurt. Considerably.

  ‘You nodded off,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘with a lit cigarette between your fingers. You must take care, young Rizla. You really must.’

  I opened my mouth, but had nothing to say.

  And so I closed it again.

  9

  We disembarked from the tram at Mornington Crescent.

  And approached the Underground station.

  I was feeling a tad wobbly about the knees of me. Something odd had happened on that tram and although ‘odd’ was the currency in which Mr Rune dealt, it still had the ability to throw me off my balance and out of my kilter.

  What had I experienced upon that top deck? A dream, a vision? Had I actually met Mr Diogenes? Had he imparted important information to me? The business regarding the number twenty-seven and the running that must be done upon the seeing of this number? I was dazed and roundly confused and this clearly showed on my face.

  ‘Perk up, young Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘A treat awaits you within.’ And he gestured with his stick towards the entrance to the Underground. ‘We are going below.’

  ‘I have travelled on the Tube before,’ I said. ‘I will find little of the treat in that.’

  ‘We are not going a-travelling. We have arrived. At the Ministry of Serendipity.’

  Now Mr Rune had spoken to me before of this mysterious Ministry and there had been at least two cases in The Brightonomicon in which their involvement had been apparent. What knowledge regarding this Ministry that I had gleaned from Hugo Rune was that it was ‘the power behind many thrones’. That ‘those who control the controllers of our nation’ were to be found within. Precisely what Mr Rune’s relationship with this literally underground organisation was, I had not been told. And so I asked to be now.

  ‘They are presently covering my expenses,’ was the reply. And Mr Rune tapped his stout stick on the pavement. ‘They require my skills and knowledge. I am engaged, as it were, in furthering the War Effort.’

  ‘We are clearly here because of the phone call you received,’ I said. ‘The tarot card I picked is therefore surely irrelevant.’

  Mr Rune composed his eyebrows into a Gothic arch. ‘Shame on you, Rizla,’ he said. ‘The Ministry might pay my bills, but I work for a greater good. I will say this to you. It is the Ministry of Serendipity that controls the waging of the war against Germany. When Mr McMurdo sneezes, Winston Churchill offers his handkerchief. But Rune is immune to such snifflings. Rune is above and beyond. Now pacy-pacy and follow me. The squamulose square-rigger squats not for squaw-man, squash nor squirrel-fish. Especially not for the latter!’

  ‘There is no doubting that,’ I said and I followed Mr Rune.

  We passed by the ticket window and entered the lift.

  It was a Magnathy and Pericule front-lattice cage-lift, with brass quadroon-filibasters and wibbly-wobbly faybill tremblers. Rather posh by anyone’s standards.

  Mr Rune did not press a floor button; rather he fished into his tweedy waistcoat and drew out a key that was affixed to his watch fob by a golden chain. He flipped aside one of the floor buttons, inserted the key and gave it a little twist.

  ‘Hold on tightly,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘Hold on tightly? Why?’

  But that was altogether a foolish question upon my part, as the lift now gathered speed and plunged in the downwards direction.

  I went, ‘Ooooh!’ as my ears went ‘pop’ and my bladder nearly went ‘wee’. And down and down and down we went.

  And down and down some more.

  Although greatly afeared and clinging desperately to a curlicue stanchion double-racked handrail, I watched Mr Rune as we descended at break-your-neck speed surely down into the very bowels of the Earth. The guru’s guru stood at the centre of the plummeting lift, his brogued feet four-square upon the floor, his stout stick going tap-tap-tap. And a great big smile on his face.

  And then the lift just suddenly stopped.

  And I all but sank in anguish to my knees.

  And Hugo Rune said, ‘Didn’t you just love that bit?’

  And I said, ‘No, I did not.’

  Hugo Rune flung the lift doors open and we found ourselves in what looked for all the wide world to me to be the entrance hall of a stately home.

  It was richly floored in the Churrigueresque fashion, but with sufficient renderings of Chuvash chyle-coloured chryoprase as to engender surprise. The ceiling was arched in that style known as Orphean-retro, so appropriate to the atmosphere of this chthonian scene. Fram
ed portraits, framed I should add after the manner of Dalbatto, hung the length of this hall, each illuminated by an electric torchère.

  I paused to admire an Annibale Carracci.

  But Mr Rune urged me on. ‘Not one of his finest canvasses,’ he said, sniffily. ‘I feel that his best work is to be found in the stateroom of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.’

  ‘I’m sure you are right,’ I said. ‘But then I would not know a José de Churriguera from a Constantin Meunier.’

  Mr Rune raised his stout stick to me. But he heartily grinned as he did so. ‘Ah,’ said he. ‘We are here at last.’ And he rapped on a big brass door.

  For big and brassy was this door, from its top to its very bottom, and well buffed and polished and burnished as gold with many a brazen rivet.

  ‘Why is this door all made out of brass?’ I asked, as the door swung open. But then suddenly I no longer craved an answer to this question, but felt another, far more urgent, forming in my mind and eager to take shape at my lips.

  Because before us, on the threshold of the room that lay beyond, there stood a man. A well-turned-out and dapperly done-up fellow this, in an impeccable pinstriped suit. A veritable poem in praise of understated dandification.

  His shoes were black and shone like silk,

  As did his Brylcreemed napper.

  And pince-nez specs clung to his nose

  With a ’tache below, well dapper.

  His eyes were blue,

  His tie was too,

  His schmutter

  Was utterly

  Dash-cutter-do!

  But it was not the sartorial elegance of this fellow that caused an urgent question to come springing to my mouth.

  It was his height and overall dimensions.

  For he was a tiny man. No dwarf or midget was this man, being much smaller indeed than either. He could surely not have been more than eighteen inches in height, yet he was perfectly formed and carried himself in a manner that was aloof and pompous and very very angry.

  ‘What time do you call this?’ he bawled up at Mr Rune, who towered above him in every sense of the word.

  ‘Time for a gin and tonic, methinks.’ And Mr Rune stepped over this man and entered the room beyond.

  The tiny man coughed and spluttered with rage. ‘And who do you think you are?’ he asked me.

  ‘I am with Mr Rune,’ I said, as I too entered the room. And if I had been impressed by the entrance hall, and I had, then I was more than impressed by this room. It was all a-glitter and a-twinkle with nautical fol-de-rollery, its fixtures and furnishings redolent of quinqueremes (of Nineveh, obviously), brigantines, schooners, feluccas and gallivants.

  Corsairs and showboats,

  Galleons, rowboats,

  Three-masted barques

  With mainsails and spankers,

  Clippers and crumsters

  With outboards and anchors

  And so forth . . .

  Mr Rune stood before a cocktail cabinet that resembled the prow of a Pomeranian galliot, pouring gin into a cut-crystal tumbler. ‘Same for you, Rizla?’ he called out to me. ‘And what about you, McMurdo?’

  The little man huffed and puffed in fury and grew most red in the face.

  ‘Oh, come come,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The sun is over the yardarm and the cabin boys are restless. A drink will calm those nerves of yours. Would you care for a short?’

  ‘A short?’ The little man, now purple in the face, jumped up and down. ‘I blame you for this,’ he cried.

  ‘For what?’ asked Hugo Rune.

  ‘For what? For what?’ The small man all but fainted dead away.

  Hugo Rune smiled and passed me a G & T. And then he took himself over to one of several comfy-looking chairs which had much of the quilted tramp steamer about them and settled himself into it.

  The tiny man threw up his hands, stalked to the cocktail cabinet, swarmed up it in an appropriately sailor-up-the-rigging manner and struggled with a whisky bottle all but as tall as himself.

  I just stood and sipped at my drink. I did not know what to say.

  ‘Formal introductions are in order,’ said Mr Hugo Rune. ‘Norris McMurdo, High Honcho to the Ministry of Serendipity, be upstanding for Rizla, my trusted acolyte, assistant and amanuensis. I can personally vouch for his honesty, dedication and loyalty to King and country. All that you might say to me, you might say to him.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr McMurdo,’ I managed to say. ‘Could I give you a hand with that bottle?’

  ‘I can manage. I can manage.’ And the diddy fellow wrestled with the bottle cap.

  ‘You are probably wondering something, aren’t you, Rizla?’ asked Mr Rune.

  ‘Wondering something? Me?’ I did toothy grinnings. Clearly the relationship between Mr Rune and Mr McMurdo was not one of mutual support and admiration. And this man, diminutive as he was, was apparently one of the most powerful men in the world. So I really did not want to get on his wrong side by asking embarrassing questions regarding his height.

  ‘I am surprised,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I thought you might have some questions regarding short-arse here.’

  ‘What did you say?’ shrieked Mr McMurdo, giving up the unequal battle against the whisky-bottle top. ‘What did you call me, you rotter?’

  ‘I asked my companion whether he might have some questions regarding the shot-glass here,’ said Mr Rune, and he raised his glass to his foreshortened employer. And toasted him with it.

  ‘I know what you said . . . you . . . you—’

  ‘Come come,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Enough of this, please. I am doing everything I can to rectify the situation. Why, only this morning when you telephoned, I was in the middle of subtle chemical experimentation seeking to formulate a restorative to return you to your former dimensions.’

  ‘Another restorative, is it?’ Mr McMurdo did a kind of manic dance upon the cocktail cabinet that sent glasses tumbling and cocktail stirrers tinkling to the carpet. ‘Of the nature of the one you formulated for me last week that had me rushing to the toilet all night long?’

  Last week? I thought to myself. Had Mr Rune been here in this time, last week, which was to say—But I soon gave it up as far too confusing and supped at my gin instead. And very nice gin it was too.

  ‘We will speak further of these matters anon,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But for now there are more pressing causes for concern - the disappearance of Professor James Stigmata Campbell, for one. What have you to tell me of this?’

  ‘I’m telling you to find him!’ Mr McMurdo ceased his dance and knotted his doll-like fists. ‘And find him today. He must deliver his paper tonight. Our future depends on it.’

  ‘Our future?’ And Mr Rune nodded at me.

  And I nodded back to him.

  ‘Tell me then,’ said he to Mr McMurdo, ‘all that you are authorised to tell me. Omit nothing. Speak your piece. And kindly couch your words in such a manner that they might be understood by my acolyte here. His help in solving this case, and indeed finding a solution to the curse that presently afflicts your person, will, I promise, prove invaluable.’

  And Mr Rune nodded once more at me.

  So I nodded once more at him.

  And Mr McMurdo took in as deep a breath as his miniature frame allowed, sat wearily down upon the top of the cocktail cabinet and regarded Mr Rune with a most bitter expression.

  And then he told a curious tale that fair put the wind up me.

  10

  ‘You must know,’ said Mr McMurdo, addressing, it seemed, his words to myself, ‘that the Ministry of Serendipity is at the very spearhead of the War Effort. It is here that plans are formulated and campaigns organised. And these are not wholly of a military nature. There is great evil abroad upon the face of the planet and it is the Ministry’s duty to stamp out the malignant pestilence and restore peace and decency and Britishness.’

  ‘Here here,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ And he rose from his chair, took himself over to where Mr McMurdo sat a
nd poured himself another drink. And if not necessarily out of kindness, but rather perhaps decency and Britishness, he uncapped the whisky bottle and splashed spirit into a vacant glass for Mr McMurdo.

  ‘Mine too for a top-up,’ I put in. For I had no idea how long Mr McMurdo’s talk might last and I had already developed a taste for his gin.

  When all was done in the drinks department and Mr Rune reseated, Mr McMurdo continued. ‘We at the Ministry have studied the rise of Germany’s National Socialist Workers’ Party. Hitler did not ascend to his lofty position, which is one of almost messianic proportions, through opportunism and corrupt dealings alone. Although these did play their part.

  ‘He became the right man in the right place at the right time through the exercise of occult power. The Nazi Party is founded upon the principles of the blackest of the black arts. Ancient magic has been reactivated, ancient symbols brought once more into prominence. Dark forces revived. Let me make it clear, I am not talking about Satanism. Mr Hitler does not worship the devil of Christian theology. His master predates this. The Nazi hierarchy consider themselves to be true Aryans, the present-day heirs to the Teutonic heritage of Odinism.

  ‘The swastika is the symbol of Thor. Hitler believes the swastika to be a sacred Aryan symbol derived from the Feuerquirl. Literally, the protean fire-whisk with which the universe was created by the Supreme God of Germanic mythology. Hitler’s God is Wotan.

  ‘The revival of such ancient magic, I regret to say, has caught the West somewhat on the hop. There are few in this country with sufficient knowledge of the esoteric arts to counter such a situation. The knowledge has mostly been lost to us.’

  Mr Rune did clearings of his throat.

  ‘Present company excepted,’ said Mr McMurdo, in a grudging yet resigned tone of voice.

  ‘Please continue,’ said Mr Hugo Rune.

  ‘Mr Rune is presently employed by the Ministry of Serendipity to aid us in our countermeasures against whatever occult weaponry the enemy might aim towards us. And also to formulate such weaponry that we might use against them. Which brings me once more to the matter of—’ And Mr McMurdo rose once more to his feet and took once more to some demented jigging about.