The Devil in Amber

  No, there was only one thing for it. In my adventures I’ve had to do a lot of unpleasant things–in amongst the fun and frolics–but this one is up there with the grimmest.

  The night was briefly lit up by more gunfire.

  Panting hard, I hefted Daley’s body forward until only his hand projected. Carefully, I let the carriage door creak closed, the cuff and chain that connected him to me glinting in the starlight. I took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the brass door handle and slammed the door with all my strength. It met the dead man’s wrist with a sickening splinter.

  I couldn’t see anything much so I traced the chain from my own handcuff to Daley’s. My fingers came away warm with blood. I’d felt tendons and smashed bone but it hadn’t been quite enough. I repositioned Daley’s wrist as best I could and swung the door shut again. There was a softer percussion, as though I were chopping on damp green wood. I tried to open the door again but it had fully closed. Pulling backwards, I felt the last sinews snap and suddenly I was free, the corpse’s hand–still firmly gripped by the cuff–dangling and dripping in ghastly fashion from the chain at my wrist.

  There was no time to think about this latest act of carnage. With tremendous effort, I managed to lug open the carriage door once more and pull myself back inside. In once swift movement, I picked up Aggie and threw her over my shoulder then, knees almost buckling, jumped back out onto the tracks and slammed the carriage door closed.

  Aggie was light but in my exhausted state I could hardly manage to carry her. Just as I was about to set off away from the stalled train, I almost leapt out of my skin as the carriage door flew open and a shot rang out. In the brief, flaring illumination I saw Percy Flarge framed there, his face contorted with fury. I reached for Daley’s gun to reply in kind but Flarge gave a startled cry and I heard him pitch forward out of the carriage. Evidently he’d tripped over the late Domestic’s prone form.

  Taking to my heels, I lumbered as swiftly as possible alongside the train, expecting a bullet in my back at any moment, the still-unconscious girl draped over my shoulder.

  Suddenly, I was clear of the train and crunching over the exposed tracks. A flashlight snapped into life and I was momentarily dazzled.

  ‘Mr Box, sir?’

  I staggered towards the figure, shielding my eyes with the back of my hand.

  ‘Turn that ruddy thing off, Delilah,’ I commanded. ‘What kept you?’

  The massive, squarish form of my devoted servant loomed up at me, swaddled in greatcoat and balaclava.

  ‘Motor’s just halong ’ere, sah,’ she said efficiently. ‘Sorry to take so long but you didn’t give much notice to get the obstruction set hup.’

  ‘Not to worry. Would you be a dear?’

  I set Aggie gently down on the ground and Delilah scooped her up as though she was a child. We ran swiftly towards a waiting car, engine turning over, its headlights masked by slitted baffles.

  Delilah threw open the door and settled Aggie inside. I slumped in gratefully after her, the severed hand flapping horribly against my leg.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I yelled.

  But Delilah merely peeled off the balaclava, revealing a blotchy, weathered face like Christmas-turkey giblets left to linger until New Year.

  She sniffed, miserably. ‘Begging your pardon, sah, but there’s ha gentleman ’ere what wants to see you.’

  ‘Gentleman? What gentleman?’

  As you can imagine, I’d had quite enough surprises for a while.

  Delilah shook her head, as though saddened.

  I heard two delicate coughs and a figure leant forward out of the shadows of the car’s interior.

  ‘So sorry, Mr Box,’ said the figure. ‘But there’s no time to explain.’ He seemed to be holding something in his hand. Darting forward, he pressed it to my face. I was very much surprised to find it was chloroform…

  19

  Eastwards By Monoplane

  To long-time readers, this will come as a blow to make their whole fabric shiver. Has the faithful Delilah, stout companion of the Adventure of the Palsied Alienist, the Wakefield Thumb Murders et al, turned her outsize coat? Was the ugly old thing in the pay of Mr Percy Flarge?

  By that stage in my career, my pleb of a factotum was retired from the Royal Academy’s Domestic staff and employed full time as cook, butler, valet and bottle-washer to yours truly. She had never let me down in all the years I’d known her and she wasn’t about to start doing so now.

  We’d executed an existing plan (all that blether about ‘bringing Ida’ and the ‘prunes’, you understand, being code for the stopping of the train and my rescue), and as I emerged from my drugged state, I was confident she’d have an explanation for this latest turn of events.

  Awaking from fevered dreams of goatish pandemonia, I found myself looking out through a little squarish window, a bar of brilliant sunlight across my face. I was airborne, don’t you know, and could see the fuselage of the monoplane glinting like tin.

  Far, far below, snow-capped mountains glittered in the rarefied atmosphere, looking for all the world like a three-dimensional map rolled out for my benefit. I craned forward and a beautiful landscape of lush green firs sprang up, dusted magically with snow that draped every branch and trunk. I was at once overwhelmed by an odd sensation. I knew with absolute certainty that I’d seen such a landscape before.

  Before I could contemplate further, a shadow fell across me and Delilah’s ugly mug loomed into view. She gave me the dubious benefit of her smashed-tooth smile. ‘Morning, sah.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Sinking to her knees–they cracked like pistol shots–my menial began to fiddle at my wrist with a hairpin. Glancing down, I shuddered as I realized I still had ‘Twice’ Daley’s severed hand flapping from the chain. It gave off a queer smell like a butcher’s shop at closing time.

  “Ave that hoff in a jiffy, sah.’

  I looked behind Delilah at the length of the cabin. ‘Where’s the girl?’

  Delilah sighed. ‘She’s hall right.’ With a cry of satisfaction, she un-clicked the handcuff and tossed the grisly relic of my railway adventure onto the seat across the way. ‘We his honly minutes off hour destination,’ she concluded.

  ‘And where’s that?’ I steadied myself in my seat as the aeroplane gave a lurch.

  ‘Switzerland,’ said a new voice. I turned my head.

  Sitting behind me was a small man in a serge suit. He was as pale as his own hair and, rising, he gave a couple of tiny coughs behind his gloved hand. ‘It’s good to see you again, Mr Box. We have much to discuss, you and I.’

  So this was Delilah’s mysterious ‘gentleman’: Professor Reiss-Mueller of the Metropolitan Museum, the curious fellow who’d given his expert opinion on the hankie back in New York. He sat down opposite me, a chrome-bordered, blond-wood table between us.

  ‘I’m sure we do,’ I rejoined. ‘Care to start with why you’ve kidnapped me?’

  The aspirin-white expert gave a helpless shrug. ‘Time was of the essence, friend. Once I’d contacted Delilah here and came in on the plan to liberate you, it was essential we get on our way forthwith.’

  I threw an unimpressed look at Delilah. ‘Hi didn’t know what to do, Mr Box, sah!’ she shrugged helplessly. Her face brightened. ‘Hi saw your picture hin the paper!’ she cried happily, rather as though I’d been snapped opening the Chelsea Flower Show rather than caught in a flophouse bed with Sal Volatile’s naked corpse.

  ‘Hi knew something must be a bit rum,’ she continued, chewing her lip. ‘What the ’ell’s the hacademy hup to, I thinks, letting Mr Box take the drop for this? Hand then the Prof ’ere got in touch and it all started to make sense.’

  I scratched at my unshaven chin. ‘And what’s your story?’ I said to Reiss-Mueller. ‘You got in touch? How? And why drug me?’

  The Professor put his hand to his pursed lips like a coy child. ‘I had to do that! We’d only have wasted time on tedious explanations in the back of
a freezing English automobile! Whereas now we have the luxury of our Armstrong Whitworth Argosy–’ he patted the sleek upholstery of his seat–‘and can chat at our leisure.’

  ‘I happen to like tedious explanations,’ I protested. ‘What the deuce is going on? Where’s Aggie?’

  Reiss-Mueller gestured towards a royal-blue curtain that divided the cabin. ‘Through there, enjoying two boiled eggs. Three and one-quarter minutes. Just the way she likes them, apparently. She’ll join us presently.’

  ‘All right,’ I said with an exhausted sigh. ‘Explain.’

  Reiss-Mueller gave a funny little laugh that dissolved into a double cough. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been fully frank with you, Mr Box. Or, rather, my government hasn’t.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  The little man balanced his homburg on the table and moved it round in a clockwise direction, contemplating it like an indecisive shopper. ‘Well, let’s just say that the Metropolitan Museum and the Royal Academy have more in common than you might think.’

  I frowned. ‘You’re not…?’

  ‘Agents of a secretive bent, yes!’ he giggled. ‘Nothing for the FBI to get their pretty little heads worried over. But like you at the RA, we like to think we keep a more watchful eye on things than the headline-grabbers.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. We’d know!’ I felt a sudden lack of confidence in my country’s intelligence network. ‘Wouldn’t we?’

  ‘We’re very discreet, is all I can say. I’m afraid I wasn’t at that party at the “99” by coincidence. I was tailing you.’

  I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Just routine, you understand,’ he continued. ‘And then I saw the relic and couldn’t help asking. It’s not just a pose, you see. I really am an expert.’

  ‘But not enough of one to recognize the Jerusalem Prayer?’

  He sat up at that. ‘You know what it is?’

  I waved an idle hand. ‘Oh, just the most powerful occult object of all time, or some such.’

  ‘Quite.’ Reiss-Mueller took off his glasses and polished them with his colourless tie. ‘Things have changed so much since we last met. I didn’t realize the importance of it at the time. I’ve seen a lot of fakes and what-have-you so I’ve learned not to get too excited. But then I did some more research. Talked to other experts. When I realised the fragment must be genuine, I nearly had a fit.’

  He cast a glance towards the window. As the ’plane banked to the right, a little patch of sunlight climbed the curved wall of the cabin and ignited the lenses of his spectacles. ‘The prayer’s been lost for so many centuries,’ continued Reiss-Mueller, ‘that many believe it to be mere myth. I never dreamed’–cough, cough–‘I’d get to touch it…’

  His watery gaze settled on me. ‘The most powerful occult artefact in history,’ he repeated.

  The curtain was suddenly thrown back and Agnes Daye raced through. She was flanked by two well-built men in pork-pie hats who, although not laying a finger on her person, were clearly guards of some species. Each was glowingly tanned and white of teeth as though they’d stepped from the pages of a Sears-Roebuck catalogue. They didn’t try to prevent her from throwing her uninjured arm about me.

  ‘You are awake!’ Her lovely face lit up but there was real worry and exhaustion behind her eyes and egg yolk on her neat little chin.

  ‘Hello, there,’ I said chirpily. ‘You all right?’

  ‘It is not for me that you must be concerned,’ she cried, with her customary gravity, stroking my cheek. ‘My poor Lucifer. You have been through so much. When the police took me, I thought I would never see you again. And then that terrible man put me to sleep. Now there is this fellow with the spectacles. What is happening? Will you tell me what is to become of me?’

  ‘I think that rather depends on the Professor here,’ I mused, turning to the little fellow. ‘Perhaps you could explain more fully to Aggie and me–any Scotch on the go?–why this Prayer thing’s so powerful?’

  Reiss-Mueller nodded vaguely to one of his pork-pie hatted chaps, who scurried off behind the curtain, reappearing moments later with a decanter. Delilah, whose department this was, gave a low growl and took it off him. The fella didn’t argue.

  The Professor took off his glasses and rubbed at heavily bagged eyes.

  ‘There’s a legend,’ he began at last, leaning forward, ‘old as Mankind but long forgotten. In the time after the Flood, Satan’s power on Earth grew so strong that God was forced to rejoin battle. The Devil was eventually defeated and God imprisoned him in a kind of living death, trapped like a fly in amber…’

  Delilah handed Reiss-Mueller a tumbler and I mixed one for myself and Aggie.

  The little man downed his in one. ‘Such was Satan’s malign power that not even this could keep Evil from the world, but so long as the Dark One himself remains thus bound, Mankind is safe from ultimate destruction.’

  ‘I have heard this story,’ Aggie piped up, wincing a little as she moved her shoulder. ‘The sisters taught it to me when I was small.’

  I sipped my Scotch. ‘And the Jerusalem Prayer…?’

  Reiss-Mueller shrugged. ‘Is the key to unlocking the enchantment that chains the Devil. Almighty God, it is said, granted us free will and so the means of releasing this horror have always been available. The Prayer was separated into fragments and hidden around the world. That square of silk is one of the fragments.’

  I turned to the window and allowed myself a moment to contemplate the beautiful and serene landscape below. ‘And it could really happen? It’s not just all purple robes, black candles and how-d’you-do?’

  ‘I know it might be hard to believe—’

  ‘Not so hard as you might think, my friend,’ I sighed, thinking back to the horrible visions I’d endured on the Stiffkey and the Norfolk marsh. ‘You don’t know what I’d give to believe Mons was using it all as an excuse to seduce a lot of nubile Swiss serving girls. But I’ve seen things in the past few days that make me doubt every one of those cosy little certainties that make life tolerable.’

  Reiss-Mueller nodded slowly, then brightened. ‘Luckily Mons had only the fragment. And he doesn’t even have that any more. My orders are to take him…um…out of the picture, as it were, and return the relic to the US.’

  I thought for a moment. I knew a few things that the Professor evidently did not.

  ‘And you’ve not involved the Royal Academy? They don’t know anything about this?’

  Delilah shook her head determinedly. ‘The Prof ’ere don’t want ’em to know. ’E don’t trust ’em. That’s why I took ’im in on hour little scheme.’

  Reiss-Mueller picked a thread from his sleeve. ‘This is an entirely independent operation. You’ve nothing to fear.’

  ‘So why all the hoo-hah? Why not just take the relic off me?’

  Reiss-Mueller looked hurt. ‘Take it off you? We’re not thieves, Mr Box. You and I are partners. Once we’re safe, you can fully debrief me.’

  I grimaced inwardly, a horrible picture of a naked Reiss-Mueller popping into my overheated brain. I’d much rather de-brief Aggie. ‘Where exactly are we heading, by the way?’

  ‘One of the Met’s safe houses. On the Franco-Swiss border. We’ll hole up there and keep an eye on Mons’s activities.’

  ‘Is he in Switzerland?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Our sources tell us he’s returned to his schloss within the last day or so.’ Reiss-Mueller’s mouth turned down. ‘I suspect he thinks he’s found the Tomb of Satan but the exact location is contained in your fragment so he’s digging in the dark, as it were.’

  I took out the silken object and smoothed it over the arm of my chair. ‘I think I have a surprise for you too, Professor Reiss-Mueller,’ I said, choosing my words with care for maximum dramatic impact. ‘You see, it’s not just a question of arresting a deluded fascist bully and hiding away this little rag in our communal attic. Olympus Mons has the rest of the prayer. Every last fragment. And he intends to use it.’

 
Reiss-Mueller’s milk-white face turned paler still. He leant across the table and pawed at my sleeve. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’

  ‘I rarely kid. Brings me out in hives.’

  His plump hand shot to his mouth. ‘But do you know…do they know…what power the prayer possesses?’

  ‘I think I have some notion.’

  Reiss-Mueller straightened up in his seat. ‘If the Prayer is performed, the Dark Powers invoked and the Horned One released from his bonds, then chaos will engulf us all as surely as night follows day.’

  With perfect timing, the ’plane suddenly began to descend. It was as though the bottom had fallen out of the world.

  20

  Memento Mori

  We dropped in wide, looping arcs, the plane’s engines groaning, and I gripped the arms of the seat to steady myself. As the craft finally thumped down, my stomach gave a great lurch and only settled itself as, with a last shudder, we slowed to a halt.

  I sank back as the machine taxied along, sun-glinted snow already settling wetly on the glass of the portholes, the flickering shadows of the slowing propellers crisscrossing my face.

  Aggie was gazing thoughtfully at the relic, her dark brows drawn tightly together. ‘Why do we not just destroy it?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Destroy this thing, then the Prayer can never be complete and the…evil…will never be released!’

  Reiss-Mueller shook his head. ‘It’s not so simple.’