City of Brass (12 page)

Ashly struck the table with his fist. “I believe you’re right. And if so, we can build up a newspaper story that’s sure to attract Simon Ark if he’s anywhere around.”

After that, we left the buildings of New Scotland Yard, and walked through the chill December air toward Westminster Abbey. Whitehall was buzzing with midday activity, and before we’d gone two blocks there was already a newsboy shouting about the “weird murder in Kensington.”

We walked on, aimlessly, until at last Rain asked, “Who is this Simon Ark you both seemed to know, anyway? Is he a detective?”

“No,” I replied, searching for the right words to explain the fantastic story. “He’s perhaps the wisest man in the world, a man with a past that may date back to the beginning of the Christian era. He’s been searching the world for a long time, perhaps for centuries, in hopes of meeting the devil in combat.”

“But … are you trying to kid me? Is he some sort of crazy man, or what?”

A double-decked bus rumbled by us, and we turned west on Victoria Street. Behind us, Big Ben was just tolling the hour of one o’clock.

“Whatever he is, he’s not crazy,” I told her. “Actually, the Comte de Saint-Germain claimed to have lived for four thousand years, and it’s possible that he did. And the German physician, Paracelsus, is once supposed to have fought bodily with Satan. Certainly Simon Ark’s story is no more fantastic than theirs.”

“But who is he? Where did he come from?”

“That’s something nobody knows. My own guess is that he was once a Coptic priest, back in the early centuries after Christ; but he never says much about it. He told me once, though, that he knew Saint Augustine, personally—which would make him well over 1500 years old.”

Rain laughed at that and gripped my arm with hers. “I was beginning to think you were serious, but you’re just having some fun with me.”

“Believe me, I
am
serious.”

“Well, then you’ll have to show me this man and let me judge for myself. I saw many unusual things in India, but never a man who claimed to be over 1500 years old.”

A breeze somewhat cooler than the rest hit us then, and she pushed closer to me. “Let’s get inside somewhere, out of this confounded cold air.”

“What we should be doing is trying to find that book Carrier had for us,” I told her. “If the book was the cause of his murder, it must be certainly worth having.”

She was excited now, with the hint of intrigue in the air. “You mean that you really think there might be a connection between the book and his murder?”

“It’s certainly possible; we should have searched the place for it.”

“Oh, the police would have found it if it were there,” she replied. “It’s a folio, you know. Hardly the thing you hide behind a picture or anything.”

“It does seem odd, though, that if all the copies were destroyed three hundred years ago, Carrier should come up with one now. Maybe the whole thing was a swindle of some sort.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “He seemed only interested in receiving payment for the book.”

We’d reached Victoria Station by this time, and we decided to hail a cab for the long trip back to Rain’s place, rather than return for the MG. Even the taxi trip across London was slow at this time of day, and it was nearly two when we reached her house.

“Let me bring in the mail,” she said. “Not that there’s ever …” She paused and ripped open an envelope that had been addressed in a quick, almost illegible scrawl.

“Look!” she exclaimed, “It’s from Carrier.”

“What? Let me see that!” I took it away from her shaking hands and read:
I may not be alive tomorrow when you come. If they get me first, I will at least have cheated them of their secret. The book you seek is titled ‘The Worship Of Satan,
’
and together with accounts of diverse crimes of the 16th and 17th centuries’ it also includes the forbidden rituals of devil worship. The only copy still in existence in London is in an ancient dwelling at 65 Crashaw Place, behind the
Blue Pig Pub.
You will find a room there which was once a priest’s hole, during the Elizabethan persecution of the Catholics. The book is in this room, though to insure payment of the agreed sum, I cannot tell you more as to its location. I sincerely hope that my fears will prove groundless. Hugo Carrier.”

She had been reading it over my shoulder, and she said, “What’s all this about devil worship? What has that got to do with Sir Francis Bryan?”

“I don’t know, Rain; I don’t know. I just hope that we succeed in contacting Simon Ark.”

“Maybe you were right about this all being some sort of gigantic swindle.”

I frowned and shook my head. “He sounds like an educated man, which doesn’t mean he might not have been planning a swindle—but the fact of his murder seems to bear out his honesty. In fact, he’s one of those men I sort of wish I’d met during his life.”

She lit a cigarette and dropped the letter on a table. “Are you sorta glad you met me?”

I raised my eyebrows to look at her, but she’d already gone into the kitchen in search of drinks for us. I ignored the question and said, “We should probably go to this place he mentions and look around. We might be able to turn up the book.”

She returned with two tall frosted glasses. “I’m beginning to think it’s not worth all the trouble. After all, we might end up with arrows in us, too.”

“It’s certainly a weird business,” I agreed as I sipped my drink. “Say, these are pretty good. What’s in them?”

“A secret love potion,” she murmured with a grin; “let’s have a little music.”

“I’m a married man, you know,” I told her, trying unsuccessfully to keep it sounding light.

She came to me then, with the radio behind her playing something soft by Mantovani, and the clatter of passing traffic drifting in from the street. And it was as I’d feared it would be since I first met her.

I tried to think about Shelly, and our little house in Westchester; but gradually the memories faded from my brain, and I was just a man of flesh and desire …

Later, too long later, as night drifted slowly in from the east, we left the house and started out for the address in Crashaw Place. In the night’s already deepening shadows, an occasional bird glided down from above, and it might have been a bat or a gull. I only knew it was a moving, living creature up there in the dark, and maybe I wished I was up there too.

“It’s not too far,” Rain told me, in a voice that made even a casual remark into a hint of intimacy. “We can follow the river all the way.”

The Thames was winding on its never-ending journey to the sea, and as we followed along its banks, the whole of London seemed to sleep, even at this early hour. It was as if we were alone in the city, alone without the cluster of crowds and the rumble of civilization.

I paused a moment to light a cigarette, and it was then I saw two men moving in on us. “Rain!” I shouted. “Lookout!”

She whirled quickly and a blow from the first man’s blackjack caught her on the shoulder. I hurled myself at him, and we went down in a heap. I tried to see where our second attacker was, but the first one was keeping me busy.

Finally I broke free and grabbed up Rain’s hand. “Come on,” I managed to shout, dragging her with me down a flight of stone steps that led to the water’s edge.

I could feel them behind us as we hurtled down the stairs, and at the bottom step I felt strong fingers of steel tear at my throat. I lost my grip on Rain and went tumbling backwards, the hulking attacker on top of me. I struggled to free myself from those murderous fingers, but already I saw one hand leave my throat and come up with a glistening knife.

“Die, damn you,” the raspy voice squeaked, and in that instant I thought I had reached the end of everything. But suddenly a roar split the air and his face seemed to fly apart before me. His dying grip relaxed on my neck, and I saw the little smoking Derringer in Rain’s steady hand.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” she sobbed; “but there was no time for a good shot.”

“Don’t worry. Where’s the other one now?”

“Up there!” She pointed to the top of the steps, where the second assassin stood outlined against the dark sky.

“Duck! He’s got a gun!” I pulled her down just as the man fired.

“It’s a .45,” she told me between gasps. “And my gun is empty.”

I glanced fearfully at the dim river a few feet away. “Can you swim?”

“A little, but we’d never make it to the water.”

“We’ll have to try, Come on.” He saw us the instant we made our move, and I saw his gun hand move around for a second shot at us.

Then suddenly he seemed to falter, and for the first time I saw the dim figure in the darkness behind him. The .45 slipped from his hand and clattered to the concrete below; then he followed it, diving over in a graceful arc that thudded his body against the very edge of the bank and then hurled it into the black river.

We stood rooted to the spot, looking up at the dim figure who moved down the steps toward us. And then I recognized the tall, heavy-set features of Simon Ark …

“Simon! You certainly arrived just in time. How did you ever find us?”

He smiled slightly, as he always did, and replied, “There are ways. I see you already disposed of one of them.”

We looked down at the bloody face of the man Rain’s bullets had killed. “Luckily for me,” I said. “This is Rain Richards, a most unusual girl, and a crack shot with a pistol.”

Simon Ark grunted a greeting and bent to examine the body. “Do you think this is connected in any way with the death of Hugo Carrier last night?” he asked us.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “but Rain received a letter from Carrier this noon. He told us of a pub where something was hidden, and we were on our way there now.”

“Hidden,” he repeated, suddenly interested. “What is it you seek?”

“A book,” I told him. “A book called ‘The Worship Of Satan,’ written during the 17th century, but banned by the government, which destroyed all copies. The book supposedly gives the solution to the 1548 murder of Sir James Butler and the mysterious death two years later of Sir Francis Bryan.”

“Sir Francis Bryan,” Simon Ark muttered: “The Vicar of Hell …”

“You’ve heard of him,” Rain said, sounding surprised.

“I’ve heard of him …”

Simon Ark was the same as when I’d last seen him, back in the States a few months earlier. He still had the mysterious quality about him that sometimes made you wonder at the things he said. In that moment, I felt certain he’d known Francis Bryan personally, somehow in the dark past.

“Your old friend Inspector Ashly is working on the case,” I told him.

“I saw his name in the papers; he’s a brilliant man. I’ll call him now and tell him what happened here. Then we can be on our way to this pub you mentioned.”

“You’re coming with us?” Rain asked.

“Certainly. ‘The Worship Of Satan’ is a most unusual book. If there is a copy still remaining, I would like to see it.”

We had climbed the steps from the river now, and in the distance I could see a police car, apparently called by some alert neighbor, bearing down upon us.

“Simon, do you really think this devil worship business is tied in with Carrier’s murder?”

He gazed out across the river, as if looking at something far away which only he could see, and then he answered. “In the year 1100, King William the Second was slain by an arrow in the New Forest. His death was part of a human sacrifice of a cult of devil worshippers. Today they still worship, and kill, in much the same way.”

His words sent a chill through me, and I put my arm around Rain’s slim shoulders. Then the police joined us, and Simon spoke quickly to them, in that old manner of his which could somehow convince anyone of anything. He wrote a brief message to Chief Inspector Ashly and then we departed.

“I believe this pub should be our first stop,” he said. “Do you know the way?”

Rain nodded and led us down a dark alley, away from the river. “I feel better now with you two strong men to protect me,” she said.

“I doubt if they’ll bother us further,” Simon Ark comforted her. “They must have learned from Hugo Carrier that he’d sent you the letter.”

A slight mist was beginning to gather in the streets, and I suspected we were in for more fog. “Doesn’t the fog ever lift around here?” I mumbled.

“This is the season for it,” Simon Ark said. “London has been foggy in December for as long as I can remember. The Fall is the worst time for it.”

Presently, we reached Crashaw Place and ahead of us we could make out the weather-beaten sign of the
Blue Pig,
“By Appointment To His Majesty King George V.” It was a run-down place that might have looked better thirty years earlier, under George’s reign. Now it was badly in need of a paint job, and I couldn’t help thinking that a bit of good old American neon would have pepped up the swaying sign.

Inside, a few obviously regular customers lined the bar, and turned as we entered, in mild expectation of seeing some of their nightly drinking companions. Rain was the only girl in the place, but none of them seemed to mind. We ordered three beers because that seemed to be the thing everyone was drinking, and carried them to a table.

Presently, when Simon Ark was certain he’d identified a stout, balding gentleman as the owner, he rose and walked over to him. “Pardon me, sir, but I’m a visitor in your country …”

“Oh,” the stout man said. “Well, we’re always happy to entertain foreigners at the Blue Pig, sir. My name is George Kerrigan. I’m the owner of this here place.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kerrigan. I’m Simon Ark, and these are my friends. We’ve been told that the rear of this building dates back to the 17th century, and we’re very anxious to examine it further.”

“Glad to be of service,” Kerrigan smiled at us. “Yes, sir, this here’s just about the only old building like it still standing. You know, there was that God-awful fire back in 1666, and it just about burned down the whole damned town.” He spoke as if he’d witnessed it personally, with just the right degree of awe.

“We understand,” Simon Ark continued, “that you even have a room where Catholic priests hid during the persecutions.”