Tales of the Shadowmen 1: The Modern Babylon

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  “Right,” said Captain Rowland. “I’ll just take a little nip of whisky, and then we can go below and pour oil on the troubled waters. Meanwhile, Hodgson, better get those burials organized. Don’t want dead bodies cluttering up the Titan, do we.”

  “Can’t you store them in the refrigeration hold?” Quatermain asked. “They are, after all, the prima facie evidence of five heinous crimes.”

  Rowland exchanged a furtive glance with Hodgson and Black before saying: “No, we can’t. All the available space is taken up by provisions for the voyage. We can’t put dead bodies in with the food, can we? The Titan’s famous for her standards of hygiene. Anyway, if we keep the bodies on ice, we’ll only feed anxieties about them rising from the dead.”

  With that, the Captain led Allan Quatermain away, thanking him profusely for his kindness in offering support and protection.

  Quatermain stood silently by Rowland’s side, posing impressively, while the Captain made his speech to “the rabble in steerage.” The Captain’s judgment was proved correct; thanks to the weight of his authority and Quatermain’s reputation, the mob’s leaders were cowed into submission, and were, in the end, meekly delighted to be reassured that there were no vampires aboard the Titan.

  At dinner that evening, there was a certain gloom at the writers’ table, in spite of the fact that there was Dover sole fried in butter for the fish course, venison pie with roast potatoes for the main course, and spotted dick for dessert. “Three Irish and two cockneys,” the man from the Daily Mail complained. “Where’s the news value in that?”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” said his colleague from the Telegraph. “What vampire worth his salt would go after scum like that when there’s flesh of the highest quality on offer.” He was staring across the room at the count’s three daughters, who were looking even lovelier tonight than they had the previous evening.

  “Do vampires take salt with their blood?” Monsieur Apollinaire inquired.

  “Sir Edward always had a taste for serving-wenches,” Miss Lee pointed out. “If he’d only stuck to them, he wouldn’t have been hanged nearly as many times as he was.”

  “In any case,” said Mr. Vane, “we’re all sailing to judgment–what does it matter if some of us get there a day or two ahead of the rest.”

  “If I were a vampire,” Monsieur Lorrain observed, “I wouldn’t bother with the likes of the count’s daughters.”

  “Nor would I,” said Monsieur Jarry. “I’d take out Rockefeller, Carnegie and Quatermain. Three vast fortunes to be redistributed at one fell swoop! If they’ve only had the decency to make substantial bequests to the Arts in their wills...”

  “Not likely,” said Mr. Huneker, mournfully. “Rockefeller and Carnegie have heirs avid to inherit, who won’t let a penny get away if they can help it. Hearst would be a better bet. I don’t know about Quatermain, though–does anyone know if this Ayesha’s in line for Solomon’s diamonds if the old braggart croaks?”

  “If there are five vampires aboard,” Mr. Twain pointed out, “they could dispose of her too, and the Duke of Buccleuch to boot–and that’s just for starters. If the other gossip is reliable, though, they’d all be back again the day after tomorrow to lodge their complaints via Tom Edison’s machine.”

  “It’ll never work,” Mr. Henley opined. “I knew a man once that tried to sell me a time machine, but it turned out just to be a bicycle with knobs on.”

  “That Ayesha’s a queer one, though,” Mr. Chambers said. “Came up to me while I was playing deck quoits this afternoon and asked me if I had a copy of the King in Yellow I could lend her. Said she’d always wanted to read it.”

  “Can I have it after her?” Monsieur Apollinaire put in, swiftly.

  “There’s no such book, damn it!” Chambers said. “I made it up.”

  “That’s what Dad used to say about vampires,” said Monsieur Féval fils. “But the bodies keep turning up, don’t they?”

  “It was probably a fight, a suicide pact and an overdose of laudanum, not necessarily in that order,” Mr. Henley opined. “It all happened in steerage, after all.”

  “I’m astonished that the Captain decided not to preserve the bodies until we reach New York, though,” said Mr. Robertson. “Dereliction of duty, in my opinion. One way or another, those five people were murdered. There ought to be an investigation.”

  “There’s some chap in second class pretending to be a detective,” the man from the Mail chipped in. “One of your lot, I believe.” He was looking at Monsieur Lorrain.

  “What do you mean, my lot?” Lorrain demanded.

  “French, of course,” supplied the man from the Telegraph. Name of Rocambole.”

  “Isn’t he dead?” asked Mr. Huneker.

  “The report was probably exaggerated,” Mr. Twain put in. “Happens all the time.”

  “He’s the first Monsieur Rocambole’s grandson, Edward,” Féval fils supplied. “Not a bad chap, really. He’s been asking questions in the refrigeration hold.”

  “Probably after some food,” said the man from the Mail. “If we’re only getting venison pie on the second evening out, they must be getting sausages–and what that leaves for steerage, I can’t imagine.”

  “Faggots,” said the man from the Telegraph.

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” demanded M. Lorrain.

  Miss Lee put a soothing hand on Monsieur Lorrain’s arm. “It’s a form of English cuisine,” she explained.

  “There’s a phrase to make the blood run cold,” Monsieur Jarry observed. “English cuisine.”

  “I rather like venison pie,” M. Apollinaire confessed.

  “It could have been worse,” Miss Lee explained to her neighbor. “It might have been black pudding.”

  “I thought Britain had put an end to the slave trade,” Mr. Chambers said, with ill-disguised irony.

  “If we hadn’t,” Mr. Henley said, dryly, “there might have been a different result to your Civil War.

  Meanwhile, at the Captain’s table, John Rowland was beaming at Ayesha with eyes softened by a delicate whisky glaze. “You really are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Miss Ayesha,” he murmured. “Do you have another name, by the way?”

  “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” the coquette said, seeming to misunderstand his question. “But I’m a bit of an old dragon, I fear, beside Mrs. de Bathe and Count Lugard’s daughters. Now they really are lovely. I could almost fancy them myself.”

  “Not as lovely as you, my dear,” Rowland insisted.

  “Damn it, Quatermain,” John D. Rockefeller said to the great white hunter, “I’d rather listen to one of your blessed stories than watch Rowland make love. No lions, though. Ever encountered a vampire, by any chance?”

  “As it happens,” Quatermain said, “I have.” He had not spoken loudly, but such was the authoritative tone of his voice that the other murmurous conversations ongoing around the table immediately died. All eyes turned to the alleged paragon of gallantry.

  “It wasn’t reported in any of my newspapers,” Hearst said, skeptically.

  “Ran into Varney, did you?” asked the Duke of Buccleuch, effortlessly exceeding the American’s skepticism.

  “No,” said Quatermain. “I encountered the Brothers Ténèbre. The younger one is a vampire, you know.”

  “I thought the younger of the two so-called Ténèbres was a thief named Bobby Bobson,” said Buccleuch. “Teamed up with William something-or-other. Weren’t they hunted down in Hungary way back in the 1820s?”

  “They have been hunted down many times,” Count Lugard put in, “but they always return, with new names befitting every new era. Always different, and yet always the same: one tall and manly, the other short and gentle. They are English, as you say, but also French, German and... let us say cosmopolitan.”

  “Not American, though,” Carnegie put in.

  “We’d soon put a stop to their antics,” Rockefeller agreed, “if they actually existed, and weren’t just phantoms of
the Old World’s imagination.”

  “Wouldn’t last five minutes in the land of the free,” Edison agreed.

  “Wouldn’t last two in your electric chair, Tom,” Hearst added.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Captain Rowland, banging his glass on the table to call his guests to order. “I want to hear Mr. Quatermain’s story. If he says that he’s met these two characters, I’m inclined to take his word for it. Was it in Africa, Mr. Quatermain?”

  “It was on a ship,” Quatermain said. “Not such a fine vessel as this one, of course, but a neat enough rig in her way–the Pride of Kimberley, a cargo vessel with two dozen passenger cabins. I came up from Cape Town to Lisbon in her a few years back. First night out, a body turned up, in much the same condition as those we buried at sea today. Just one, mind–a young woman. No one suspected a vampire, at first, until a second body turned up in much the same condition, when the crew started muttering. That was three nights later, mind–if it was a vampire, it wasn’t so very hungry. Probably on rations, given that we only had eight women aboard, only three of which could be reasonably described as young. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Like Captain Rowland, the skipper turned to me for help as soon as the first body was found, and I promised to look into the matter.”

  As he paused to chew a mouthful of spotted dick, Carnegie whispered to Rockefeller: “Fellow can’t even get his plot in the right order.”

  “Unlike Rowland, who can’t get his hors d’oeuvres in the right plot,” murmured Rockefeller. “He’d do better to set his cap for one of the Count’s daughters–at least they wouldn’t understand what he’s saying.”

  “Not suspecting a vampire at first,” Quatermain went on, “I figured that any skullduggery aboard a ship like the Pride of Kimberley was bound to concern diamonds. On a ship like the Titan there must be rich and various pickings for any thief clever enough and bold enough to try his luck, but the Kimberley was outward bound from Cape Town. I wasn’t the only passenger carrying a few stones to cover my traveling expenses–in fact, it would have been hard for a flying fish to skim the deck without hitting someone with a few sparklers stashed away in his luggage.

  “At first, when I began asking my fellow passengers to check up on their hidden goods, they all reported that everything was in its place–but within 24 hours of my asking, they began coming back to me to say that they’d checked again, with much less happy results. Nearly half of them had lost their secret savings, and most of the losers were in no position to complain to any authorities in the Cape or England, because the stones were being smuggled. They’d never have confessed it to me if I hadn’t shown them my own stones, and explained to them that I reckoned that old King Solomon had probably imposed his duty at source, so I didn’t see why Queen Victoria should get a second cut.

  “Then, the second body turned up, and the third chap who had a daughter in tow started worrying about losing more than his half-dozen second-rate gems. Even the men who only had wives got a little distracted, by hope if not anxiety. The blood-sucking seemed to me to be a strange business, because I couldn’t see why a vampire would get on a boat where he’d be out at sea for days on end, and where his predations would stick out like a sore thumb. You could see why one might get on a great ship like this, I suppose, where there are three thousand potential victims at sea for less than a week, but the Kimberley was another kettle of fish. I decided soon enough that the guilty party couldn’t have come aboard in search of blood, and that taking the blood he needed to sustain him was just a matter of necessity while he carried out his intended plunder–which meant, I figured, that whoever had taken the diamonds must also be taking the blood.

  “Now, one of the first passengers to complain that the secret compartment in his trunk had been emptied was a tall German fellow who clamed to be the Baron von Altenheimer, who was traveling with his brother Benedict, a Catholic priest–a Monsignor, no less. I was suspicious of the Baron from the very beginning, because he claimed to have been at Heidelberg, although he didn’t have a single duelling scar and never mentioned G. W. F. Hegel in casual conversation. I set myself to keep a very close watch on the pair of them. He fancied himself a storyteller, but I noticed that his brother kept slipping away when he was telling his tales, protesting that he had heard them all before. I followed the Monsignor the very next evening, and caught him rifling the lining of a three-piece suit hanging up in one of the cabins–which turned out to have seven rough-cut stones sewn under the collar.

  “I managed to knife him between the shoulder-blades while his back was still turned, but it wasn’t a mortal blow. Actually, he made quite a fight of it–he was a wiry little chap, and he certainly didn’t have muscles like a priest–but I turned the tables on him after he’d chased me up on deck and eventually managed to throw him overboard. Not a moment too soon, either, seeing that his brother, having delivered his punch line, immediately came at me with a saber. The Baron was a much bigger fellow than the priest, with quite some reach, but I’d had the presence of mind to secrete one of my hunting-rifles in the scuppers, just in case, and I got to it before he sliced me up. I let him have both barrels, and he went over the side too. He was probably dead before he hit the water, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he weren’t. The sharks were all around us by then, having been attracted by the younger one, who was bleeding like a stuck pig from the wound in his back.

  “We went through their luggage of course–that’s how we discovered who they really were–but we didn’t find a single diamond. Even the stones that brother Benedict had snatched from the loaded suit must have gone over the side with him. The sharks must have scoffed the lot–but at least the third young lady was saved from becoming a vampire’s victim, much to her relief. She was very grateful to me, but as she was much the ugliest of the three, I didn’t take advantage of the poor child.”

  “Ayesha wasn’t with you on that trip, I presume?” Captain Rowland asked.

  “No, she wasn’t. This is her first time out of Africa. It’s all a great adventure for her.”

  “Actually, my dear,” the young woman drawled, “it’s been a bit of a drag so far. No disrespect to your marvelous ship, Captain, but I’ll be glad to get back on dry land, where I can be myself again.”

  “Meaning no disrespect myself, young lady,” the Captain said, “but I’ll be very glad to have four more days of your company before you do.”

  “You don’t suppose we’re in danger, do you, Mr. Edison?” the former Mrs. Langtry said to her neighbor.

  “I doubt that I am,” Edison replied, a trifle ungraciously. “These ancient monsters never attack men of science.”

  Andrew Carnegie, meanwhile, leaned over to whisper in John D. Rockefeller’s ear: “Didn’t believe a damned word of it myself,” he said. “Made the whole thing up, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rockefeller. “If he were making it up, he’d surely have painted his fighting skills in a kinder light–and he’d have added a love interest too. You can be sure that’s what Mr. Chambers would have done–or even that Twain fellow. Didn’t I read that he was dead, by the way?”

  “I read that too,” Hearst put in, “in one of my own papers–so it must be true. We won’t have far to look for our vampire, if any more poor folk turn up dead, will we?”

  Captain Rowland was woken again shortly before dawn on the 28th, this time by Mr. Black. Rowland had been dreaming about chasing a sea serpent, desperate to be hailed as a hero by Mr. Hearst’s New York Sun and to win the love of the fair Ayesha.

  “What is it now?” he demanded.

  “Five more dead, sir,” Black reported. “Three young men, two young women. Only one Irishwoman this time, though, and two Americans on their way home.”

  “Americans? Not....”

  “No sir–steerage, like the others. Mormons, I believe.”

  “That’s all right, then. Can’t imagine Hearst getting excited about that. More rumors, I suppose?”

  “
Yes sir. They’re not going to be fobbed off by a speech this time. And there’s been a leak.”

  “A leak! Which compartment? How bad is it?”

  “Not in the hull sir–I mean that someone in the crew’s been letting out information about the cargo.”

  “You mean...”

  “No sir, not that. The sarcophagi in the secure hold.”

  “Damn! That will make Hearst excited, for all the wrong reasons. He’s very secretive, for a newspaperman. Still, I suppose it’s not every day one gets a chance to pick up the contents of a freshly-looted tomb on the cheap while passing through Cairo. You can’t blame the man, given that he has the money to spare. So the steerage mob has got the idea that we’ve got a gang of Egyptian vampire mummies aboard, has it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. You know the drill. Meeting on the bridge. Send for Quatermain–and Hearst too, I suppose.”

  Black hurried off and Rowland got dressed, cursing his luck. By the time he arrived on the bridge, Hearst was already berating Hodgson, Black and Kitchener. “When I say absolute secrecy, I mean absolute secrecy,” the newspaper magnate was shouting, at the top of his voice. “If I wanted people to know my business, I’d print it. I want an armed guard placed on the hold with my treasure in it–a dozen men, the very best you have. If anyone comes near it, they shoot to kill.”

  “We’ll do everything necessary to protect your property, sir,” Rowland assured him. “And yours too, sir, of course,” he added, turning to Allan Quatermain.

  “Oh, don’t worry about my luggage,” Quatermain said. “I don’t have any precious stones stashed away in my boxes–just some interesting fossils I picked up in Olduvai Gorge.”

  “Precious stones!” howled Hearst. “Who told you I had gems? Do you think I’m some kind of smuggler? Why, I’ll bet that Carnegie’s bullion is worth five times as much as my few trinkets–and as for Rockefeller’s suitcase full of bonds...”