I nodded and shrugged as though cursing my own stupidity. ‘The signal! Of course!’
I rubbed my hands together and laughed lightly. What signal?
The impressive shape shifted on its feet. I patted my pockets as though the solution might be found in there. Why hadn’t I observed more closely when Charlie had stood in this position? Had he given a password of some kind? No, the doorman would have said so. It was a signal he was after.
The shape began to move towards me with some menace. I knew I would be put out on the wrong side of the door within seconds. A signal? Something to do with the Vesuvius Club. Something simple and recognizable.
Then a notion popped into my head. I took a chance and thrust my fingers up before his nose in a ‘V’ shape.
He stopped his inexorable progress. I curved my hand and formed a ‘C’ that I slapped against my palm as I had seen Charlie do. The creature stepped aside. ‘Have a very good evening, sir,’ he growled.
‘Thank you. I intend to.’ I breathed with relief, moving swiftly past him and into the heaving chamber beyond.
The room was still what you might call a pornucopia.
My ragged appearance excited no comment and I proceeded to a couch, occupied solely by a mournful-looking youth with terrible acne. I sat down as far from him as possible and stuck out my long legs before me. He began at once to cast shy glances at my loveliness but I studiously ignored the hideous bugger, content instead to watch the activities of two splendidly naked ladies who were cavorting on the floor with their bums in the air.
A rough-looking waiter sauntered past with a tray of drinks and I grabbed him by his skinny wrist. He thrust a shot glass into my hand and moved off into the crowd. I turned back and discovered I was still under the scrutiny of the grisly youth perched at the other end of the sofa. I raised my glass and toasted him. His cheeks, angry with blemishes, burned redder still.
‘I am Ricardo,’ he mumbled.
‘And I’m…’ I threw him a pitying look. ‘I’m afraid you’re terribly ugly.’
His whole frame sank with shame.
‘Buonasera, Venus!’
I turned at the cry. It had come from a thickset fellow far to my left who was wiping beer from the wet stalactites of his moustache.
Venus! She had fetched up more respectably this time in a dress of dazzling crimson, one hand on her shapely hip, in the approved style, the other clutching a long amber cigarette-holder. She was exchanging gossip and laughter with her clientele, her kohl-rimmed eyes shining with mirth. Charlie had said she was the paramour of the villain who owned this place. Had she been complicit in lighting the lamp with its strange mauve poison or was she merely an unwilling pawn?
Either way, I had to hide. Without a second thought, I reached across the sofa, grabbed the spotted Dick by his tweedy lapels and pulled him to me.
‘On the other hand,’ I said, moving him round to screen me, ‘I’ve always had a penchant for ugly boys.’
Master Ricardo set to with a vengeance, his pinkish lips slapping against my mouth in a squid-like action that was most disagreeable. To my astonishment, an albino in a beret then toddled towards us as though the kiss had been some general call to arms. He began fiddling with my fly-button as my eyes goggled above the pitted curve of acne-boy’s cheek. As soon as Venus had moved away, I repelled all boarders with a disgusted cry, pushing young Ricardo to the filthy floor and kicking the albino in the solar plexus.
He flopped like a bag of wet washing and I stooped at once as though to help him, all the time keeping an eye on Venus as she made her halting progress through the chamber, wreathed in the bluish smoke of her cheroot.
At the end of the long, mirrored bar was a door inset with a frosted pane. Venus glided towards the door and then, glancing swiftly around, passed through into the darkness beyond.
I rolled the albino into a corner and then swiftly followed Venus, threading through knotted limbs conjoined in shameless excess. Turning the handle, I opened the door and slipped silently through.
The sudden quiet startled me. Torches sputtered in gold stanchions, revealing the curve of a broad corridor disappearing into gloom. I smiled to myself. Now this really was a secret tunnel!
I could hear the tat-tat of Venus’s elegant heels on the stone floor ahead. Pulling off my boots as quietly as I could and, clutching them to my chest, I followed her.
Padding along, I kept myself snug to the wall until I came to a branch in the tunnel. It continued to my left. To my right I could make out the top of a spiral stairwell. Only the first three of the worn stone steps were visible as they descended into darkness.
Unsure as to which route Venus had taken, my attention was momentarily caught by a heavy tapestry that was fixed to the brickwork. In the flickering torchlight, its threads leapt out in golds, reds and purples. It was clearly very old and seemed to show the broad sweep of a harbour, dominated by the great hulk of a black mountain. I moved closer. The weave was disintegrating but I could just make out that a pillar of smoke was escaping from the embroidered summit. Vesuvius!
XV
INTO THE CRIMSON CHAMBER
THERE were footsteps in the tunnel. Caught in the open corridor, I rapidly rifled through my options. Only one. Lifting the edge of the tapestry, I tucked myself in behind it, and pressed myself flat against the wall which had a distinct curve I had not previously noted. I listened attentively as several pairs of feet passed by and began to descend the spiral stair, accompanied by a rustling sound.
As I stood with my back to the wall, I noticed a point of bright yellow light emerging just above my left shoulder. As soon as I was sure the passers-by had gone I turned around and put my eye to the hole in the crumbling mortar.
What I saw was a strange, circular room that, like everywhere else in that place, was the colour of flame. This time, however, the decoration actually imitated the pit of Hell or, more probably, the crater of a boiling volcano. Painted fire licked the round room, twisting into orange shapes like barley-sugar canes and merging into patterns of deep crimson lava.
The room was dominated by a massive round table with four ornately carved chairs set about it. In them had been placed straw figures, exactly like the one I had found in Professor Verdigris’s coffin.
The air seemed heavy with oily incense. Its foggy weight hung under the ceiling, swirling like a nest of serpents as it was disturbed by draughts from the crumbling walls.
Images are removed here
As I watched, a yellow door opened and an extraordinary procession came in: three figures, resplendent in red velvet robes, decorated all over in blazes of gold and silver sunbursts. All three wore what looked like masks from the Venice Carnival, exquisitely rendered in similar hues, the cruel, snarling features picked out in white. Not for the first time in that bizarre place, I wished I’d had my sketchbook. Though this was, perhaps, a rare occasion where the Duce Tiepolo’s photographic apparatus might have been handier! Without it, who would believe such a sight? My thoughts dwelled on the Duce for a moment. Could he be the paramour of Venus? The organizing brain behind this whole enterprise?
One of the robed figures, slight in build, took up a gavel that lay at his right hand and rapped it on the table.
‘I, Vesuvius, summon thee,’ he said.
The next figure, altogether more imposing, bowed his head saying, ‘I, Stromboli, answer.’ This could be Tiepolo. His build was similar.
The third, tall and thin, bowed too. ‘Etna answers thee,’ he squeaked.
My eye widened as I pressed closer to the spy-hole.
Now I’ve been around a bit, as you can imagine, and I knew at once that this was more than a knocking shop’s AGM. Few go about their business in motley and even fewer adopt names stranger than ‘Mister Chairman’ as their monikers.
No, this was rummer than a baba.
More torches had been lit and now I could see that there were maps and what appeared to be charts pinned to the walls. I looked more closely
at the four chairs. Bizarrely, the straw figures had been shackled to their seats, as though to prevent their escape.
Vesuvius set aside the gavel and spread his hands wide, looking for all the world like a sinister masked version of the Messiah from Da Vinci’s Last Supper. A queer, piercing note began to rise in his throat. After a moment the sound was taken up by his two fellow volcanoes who moved swiftly to apparently pre-appointed positions around the circular chamber.
I narrowed my eye in an effort to see more. Now I realized that the place was littered with curious paraphernalia, scattered about like grave goods in a plundered tomb. There were great brass bowls filled with what looked like spice standing on piles of glittering rock. Red candles were held in tightly bound bundles atop a mahogany rail that ran right around the room.
Still the shrill note continued. As I watched, they picked up the brass bowls and carried them over to the centre of the table. Stromboli’s robed chest rose and fell visibly as he began to scoop out handfuls of mauve-coloured powder – a colour that was beginning to make me uneasy.
Vesuvius turned his masked head and, just for a moment, I had the curious sensation that his fixed features were moving, glowering. The painted mask gave him a strange pagan appearance and behind the diamond-shaped slits, his eyes were merely black hollows.
Stromboli handed him a brass goblet, into which the mauve powders were rapidly poured, then placed two of the black rocks into his outstretched hands. I saw now that they were chunks of raw flint.
‘O Vulcan!’ bellowed Stromboli. ‘Son of Jupiter and Juno! Forger of Creation! Labourer beneath the slopes of great Etna. Smith of the Gods!’
‘Vulcan!’ cried the assembly.
I strained to hear.
The intonation rose ever higher. ‘Builder of the brass houses,’ thundered Stromboli. ‘Shoer of the golden shoes with which the gods trod on wind or water.’
Something about wind?
‘Ye who shod the mighty steeds of Jove’s chariot! We honour thee!’
What was that? Cobblers?
‘Vulcan! We honour thee!’
Stromboli brought his hands together with a great crack as he smashed the flints against themselves. At once, they sparked and in the blink of an eye, the ruddy powder that lay piled high in the goblet caught and flared up with a glorious purple flame. Yet the smoke did not seem to choke the assembly as it had with Charlie and me. Rather they seem to relish it, swaying gently as though in the grip of some powerful drug.
The hem of his velvet robes rustling over the flagged floor, Stromboli strode towards the wall.
‘Now! In honour of the mighty volcano of Vesuvius, we offer our sacrifice!’
With great precision he took hold of one of the torch-sconces and pulled it toward him.
At once unseen gears began to clatter into life. Then, to my astonishment, the great round table began to hinge open like the lid of some titanic coffee-pot revealing, beneath it, the top of a stone-faced well. A waft of dank air came flooding towards me. It reminded me of the bottom-of-the-vase stink of Tom Bowler’s office. Then, with the sound of further machinery, the whole roof began to open, as though some baleful eye was set there. What I first took for a puppet began to droop downwards. In the guttering torch-light I could see bare feet and legs, then, with a crunch of gears, a whole body flopped into view, suspended by its arms above the hole in the floor.
It was Charlie Jackpot!
He had been beaten, manacled at the wrists and hung from chains, clad only in a pair of grisly grey undergarments.
‘Oh Christ!’ he groaned. ‘What do you want with me? Let me go!’
Stromboli was standing with hands on hips, surveying his nefarious handiwork. With a great clank like the moving hand of a town-hall clock, Charlie fell another few inches.
‘Please!’ he begged. ‘Don’t hurt me!’
‘Our gift to Neptune!’ For the first time, the pomposity of the ceremony was broken as Stromboli burst into throaty laughter.
Clunk!
Charlie’s chained form descended a foot further towards the well. The boy cried out but the figures remained unmoved.
‘So much for traitors,’ hissed Vesuvius.
Then, with a snap of his fingers, he turned on his heel and marched out with Stromboli, Etna scurrying behind them. The yellow door slammed shut.
Footfalls on the spiral stair told me that these strange apostles of the volcano, were passing right by my hiding place. I waited until their steps had receded and then, taking a chance, I slipped out from behind the tapestry and dashed down the spiral stair towards the door of the round chamber.
With a quick look around, I pulled it open and nipped inside.
The air was still thick and unhealthy. Above me, Charlie, eyes closed, was groaning softly to himself. The strange system of cogs and pulleys that suspended him juddered again and his bound body descended another inch.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said, leaning against the edge of the well.
His eyes flicked open and he stared wildly down at me.
‘Oh thank God! Mr Box!’
I, in turn, looked down into the dark water below. It was moving – either a sewer or an underground river of some sort. Either way it would be enough to dunk Charlie to death like a human madeleine cake.
‘Glad to see you hale and hearty. Now where were we? You were, I believe, about to tell me something rather important.’
‘Mr Box! Please. You got to get me out of here!’
I shrugged casually, jumped up on to the lip of the well and grabbed at one of the boy’s shoulders but only succeeded in setting him swaying to and fro in a fashion that endangered us both. The mechanism dropped again; it seemed to have increased its speed. Charlie groaned pitiably.
‘Can you move your hands at all?’ I cried.
‘No,’ he gasped.
With a great creaking shudder, he dropped a whole foot into the well and gave a little yell.
I shook my head. ‘If I can’t stop this infernal device of theirs then you’ll drown for sure.’
‘Thanks a million.’
Again, Charlie’s chained form dropped alarmingly. Now his head, hair stiff with sweat and grime, was level with the lip of the hole. Rushing to the wall, I scrabbled about amongst the maps and charts that littered the wooden rail. One, its colours gleaming darkly in the torch-light, was some kind of tough paper stretched between two cream-coloured tubes of metal. Snapping the thing together I moved quickly to the lip of the well and thrust it up towards the mechanism. On cue, the great cogs turned again and Charlie disappeared into the hole. Only his manacled arms projected now.
I strained on tip-toe but finally managed to shove the tube into the gears. At once the cogs seized, although it was obvious I hadn’t bought Charlie much time. The oily teeth of the machine were already squeezing and crushing the thin metal of the map-tube.
Throwing myself over the stones of the well I pulled Charlie’s arms towards me with one hand and tore the knife from my watch-chain with the other.
Feverishly, I pierced the lock of the manacles with the thin blade and rattled it about inside.
‘Quickly, sir!’ squealed Charlie, his voice a hollow echo. ‘Oh, quickly!’
The lock snapped open. I slipped the blade between my teeth and, forcing the metal cuffs apart, I dragged Charlie from the hole just as the map tube was ground into pieces and the cogs resumed their inexorable round.
Little pieces of the destroyed chart fluttered like dead leaves all about us. Panting for breath, I found myself on the floor with my arms around Charlie as the now-empty manacles continued their descent into the depths.
‘Well, Mr Box,’ grinned Charlie. ‘It seems you can’t keep your hands off me after all.’
‘You are very impudent, young man,’ I replied. ‘It will get you a long way. Now, let’s get out of here.’
Just at that moment the yellow door was flung open, crashing back against the painted brick. Our hearts, I feel sure, stopped at
the same moment.
Stromboli stormed in. The mask still disguised his eyes but it seemed a fair guess that he was staring down at Charlie and me as we lay in an undignified heap on the floor.
‘What’s this?’ he thundered in Italian. ‘The club has increased its membership somewhat unexpectedly, ah?’ His masked head inclined a fraction as he looked at me.
I’m pretty nifty at thinking on my feet, even when I’m actually sitting down with a renter in my embrace, but this fellow’s sudden appearance had me more than a little stumped.
With as much dignity as I could muster, I extricated myself from Charlie and got up.
‘Do forgive the intrusion,’ I said, twiddling with my cuff-link. In one swift terribly well-rehearsed movement I had my revolver out and levelled squarely at Stromboli. ‘But please don’t move.’
The tall man held up his hands but seemed quite calm. ‘What is your business here, signor? Are you a…customer?’
‘This boy,’ I said, indicating Charlie, ‘is…my valet. I received word that he was being held here against his will.’
‘So you came here to bring him home?’
‘Correct. My laundry, you see, is in a frightful state.’
Stromboli shrugged. ‘Well, my dear sir. We need detain you no longer. There has evidently been some…misunderstanding. Your valet has been employed in this establishment and it appears that one of our gentlemen’s…er…games…’ He pointed to the chains hanging from the ceiling. ‘Took on a logic of its own. If you were to let this little matter blow over, I’m sure no more need be said.’ He indicated my revolver with a casual swing of his arm. ‘There is really no need for these…histrionics.’
I glanced quickly about. Could we really get out of here without the alarm being raised? I was armed, of course, but these people were evidently fanatics and knew that Charlie had betrayed them. What punishment had they meant for me, I wondered?
‘Well, this is all most irregular, sir,’ I said, reaching down and hauling Charlie to his feet. ‘I am not in the habit of rescuing my servants from dens of unnatural vice and then letting the matter pass.’