CHAPTER SIX
STORMCAGE, AD 5147
For most prisoners – and even guards – time is hard to track in Stormcage. Clue’s in the name: a permanent storm rages outside, violent, tumultuous, uncontrollable (rather like me, in fact). Day and night are differentiated only by the presence or absence of artificial sunlight. Our evening food pills contain a sedative that ensures the nights are quiet, but I never take them. I’d rather go to bed hungry than be subdued. In my line of business, if you don’t sleep with one eye open, you risk never waking up again. Even in maximum security.
You start to hear signs of people stirring a few minutes before the artificial dawn breaks. I time myself to wake up then too – that whole ‘child of the Time Vortex’ business, you know? I don’t want to raise anyone’s suspicions by demonstrating I’m on a different sleep schedule to everyone else. Plus I like to maximise my working day.
Awake. Stretch. I salute the fake dawn. Choose an outfit out of my extensive prison wardrobe. A touch of powder, a spritz of ‘Gallifreyan Goddess’ (‘The Scent that Regenerates to Suit Your Mood!’) – I mean, you never know who might pop in. I’d filled in the application for conjugal visits just in case my old man found himself in the general galactic area. No luck as yet, but hope springs eternal.
I wondered if Ventrian had slept. New prisoners tend to take a while to get used to the regime, and the dope in the pills. I debated whether to call out a greeting, but thought it would be kinder to let him sleep. Having said that, I had no intention of creeping around my cell. I had a deadline to keep, and those words wouldn’t write themselves. (Yes, deadlines are technically irrelevant to a time traveller. But you try telling that to my agent.)
I got out my typewriter. I was rather keen on the whole ‘authentic hard-boiled author circa 1930s’ vibe, not least because my publishers didn’t understand any form of manuscript other than a big pile of paper with words indented inkily on it, and the click-clacking of fingers hammering on keys was very satisfying, if noisy. However, I’ve heard too many horror stories – my papers blew away / the Garm ate my work / I accidentally dropped my manuscript in the Black Hole of Tartarus – to be comfortable without a back-up, so I had connected up my Vortex Manipulator. A Vortex Manipulator is a fairly crude form of time and space travel – it’s certainly no TARDIS, there aren’t even onboard snacks – but I’ve given mine a few upgrades. A fast return switch (one-touch travel back to your last destination) makes sense for the user who needs to make a quick getaway, and verbal controls were another obvious mod. Access to a good library for the boring bits between adventures. Pairing it with my typewriter was slightly trickier, but I got there in the end after a bit of trial and error. So everything I type is automatically saved on my VM.
I’d been tapping away for about an hour – Melody was just investigating a seedy hotel and I was trying to think of a name for it – when a whisper came from the air vent. ‘River? River, are you there?’
I stopped typing. ‘I’m here,’ I said.
‘Oh! It’s stopped. There was strange sound … ’
‘A sort of tapping?’ I asked. He agreed that it could be described that way, so I explained. ‘I have a sort of double life. No, strike that, a triple life. Archaeologist, convicted felon, writer. Currently I’m working on the third.’ He didn’t seem to get it, so I added, ‘I’m writing. That’s what you can hear, my typewriter.’
‘A typewriter? One of those machines that you hit to make words?’
I agreed that it was indeed such a machine.
‘Is it a replica or a real antique?’
The answer was ‘neither’; it was real but not an antique, but I wasn’t about to tell him I bought it for the princely sum of 53 dollars in 1938, especially as I’d have to explain that for me, 1938 was both four months and over three thousand years ago simultaneously. ‘Oh, I always prefer the real thing,’ I told him ambiguously. I also had to skate over the whys and wherefores of how I had a typewriter with me in prison when the induction cavity search is a thing that exists. Thankfully he went on to the rather more straightforward question of what I was writing.
‘Is it a new paper?’ he asked.
‘No, this is fiction,’ I told him. ‘An old-fashioned crime novel – but with a few bits of archaeology thrown in. Well, when you’re a criminal archaeologist, why not combine the two?’
He gave an uncomfortable laugh. I admit, it does take a while before you can look at the funny side of being locked up for all eternity, and a silence stretched out between us.
‘Is … is this it?’ Ventrian asked at last. ‘Endless nothing? Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, nothing else for ever?’ His gruff voice rose slightly at the end. I’d have to tread carefully, I didn’t want him to descend into panic.
‘You’ll find ways to get through,’ I said gently.
‘But how? How do you stop the thoughts …?’
The thoughts. Something that’s plagued mankind since day one. ‘Ugh, me not stop thinking about caveman friend eaten by big tooth cat yesterday, me should have done something different oh no.’ Luckily I have my psychopath training which helps me live in the moment without regret – most of the time, anyway. Sometimes that darn conscience kicks in.
The trouble is, even as a time traveller, what’s done is done. Ventrian and I hadn’t exactly become BFFs yesterday, but we had tentatively bonded due to our shared profession. Perhaps I should try to help him get through this. Admittedly I didn’t know what crime he’d committed, but the prisoners’ code is there for a reason.
‘You said you deserve to suffer,’ I reminded him. ‘So I’m going to read you my book.’
He gave a weak chuckle, and I began to read to him through the vent. I expect it looked rather comical. We did The Ruby’s Curse Chapter One, all the way to the ‘Queen Cleopatra herself!’
And thus a proper friendship was born.
Although if I’d known where that friendship would take me …
Oh, who am I kidding? I’d have done exactly the same. I’d just have made sure my life insurance was up to date first …
CHAPTER SEVEN
NEW YORK, AD 1939
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I want to find the ruby.
I put down the London Times and reflect on curses.
You know, I really should have taken those encyclopaedias. ‘Curses’ would’ve come under AAR-CYC too. Maybe I’ve still got that salesman’s business card somewhere – it’d save on trips to the library. Heck, if this works out and I get enough of Wallace’s dough, I might splash out on Volume 2 (DAL-LEK) as well.
But I don’t need a book to tell me it wasn’t old Queen Cleo that stuck a knife in Marvin Motson’s chest, however sore she might be that some joe had run off with her rocks.
No, it was a regular, non-dead human who’d done that. And thanks to the paper I got me two suspects to start with: Mr Calvin Cuttling, collector, and Mrs Peterson-Lee (of Esher).
So I get stuck in, trying to find what I can about these guys.
Cuttling comes from Chicago. Can’t find too much dirt on him – which is not to say there ain’t none. He’s got an eye for the main chance, that’s for sure, and I wouldn’t say he’d be averse to a bit of sharp practice, but nothing screamed ‘murderer’ at me.
Then there’s Mrs Rudolph Peterson-Lee, a widow who I guess must have enough cash to stop anyone putting her in a lunatic asylum, because – get this – she insists she is the actual reincarnation of Cleopatra herself. (A British newspaper did ask her: ‘If you’re Cleopatra reborn, can’t you tell us where you were buried?’ to which the dame replied, ‘But darling, I was already dead by then.’ I liked her.) A few screws loose, maybe, but again – knifing a man? I couldn’t see it.
I leave the library and speak to a few fences I know; make sure they’re aware that it’d be real good for their health, not to mention their bank balance, to call me if a large ruby crosses their path. Because who’s to say that it’s the Cleopatra connection that’s led t
o this? It’s not unknown for thieves and conmen to work the big liners, maybe someone’s passing by Motson’s cabin, spots the sparkle and can’t resist. I pass out the word on the streets, too, anyone sees anything, get in touch. Then I head back to the Pink Tiger.
Wallace had got that overseas connection to speak to his agent, Floyd – but there was a complication. Turns out the poor sap was rubbed out a couple days ago. The ruby’s curse strikes again. Mind you, it’s a pretty resourceful curse that puts a rod in someone’s hand.
Wallace found out a few things, though. One thing the newspaper man failed to report was a bit of a scuffle at the beginning of the auction. Guy storms in, saying the ruby’s his by rights, being as he’s George Badger’s son. But Bothesy’s got the law on their side and the auction continues, getting into the hundreds, then the thousands, then the hundred thousands, and it goes on to get real near the millions, which is something else. Finally the hammer comes down and Horace P. Wallace has a ruby of his very own. The son comes and does a bit of a begging act to Floyd, but Floyd sends him off with a flea in his ear. Once the stone’s been handed over to Floyd, he hands it over to trusted courier, Marvin Morton – not, at that point, dead – who hops on board the RMS Tithonia and sails off to the Land of the Free, unfortunately to arrive as a stiff. Which is, of course, where I come in.
Badger’s son’s gonna be a Badger too. I check down that list of passengers again. No Badger, no young single men at all. Disguise? Could be.
‘Any description of the son?’ I ask.
Floyd had taken note. Six one, slim, carrot top.
And that’s where my investigator brain put two and two and two together and came up with one giant ruby. Sometimes I leap the wrong way, not gonna deny it, but four times out of five the connection’s the right one, and I had a real feeling this time.
I knew who’d taken the ruby.
Maybe you got there before me. Maybe you worked it out like I did.
Because the thing was, I’d been given the list of passengers on the ship – but passengers weren’t the only ones aboard the Tithonia.
It’s pretty common for sons to be named after their fathers, and I’d heard the purser call out for someone called ‘George’ – and said George was nowhere to be found.
That cute steward could sure as heck have been called a carrot top. Plus he’d been wearing gloves. White ones, sure, and they hadn’t been bloodstained, but what I’m thinking is he wore one pair to avoid leaving fingerprints, chucked them out the porthole, wiped his hands – bloody hankie joining the gloves over the side – and he puts on a clean pair of gloves, which would kill two birds with one stone in hiding any smears he missed on his hands.
Now, I could explain my suspicions to the police. I’m not anti-cop, all that stuff I fed Wallace about keeping evidence and dirty cops was just moonshine so he’d hire me. And that’s what I currently care about most – getting my hands on the goods first so I get a paycheck. Trouble is, if I tell Wallace what I’ve figured out, and don’t tell the cops, there could be another dead guy by morning. Wallace don’t like being taken for a fool and he’ll be after the guy’s head – like, you don’t mess with Wallace, is the message he wants to get out there.
I think I can track down this Badger guy, I tell Wallace, and I can do it clean. He’ll get his stuff back and no one’ll be any the worse off. Yeah, he could have the guy rubbed out, but why get his hands dirty? He sniffs and scowls for a minute, and then he agrees. He also agrees to a pretty damn generous finder’s fee on top of what’s already in my name, so back I go to the Tithonia.
‘Hey, remember me?’ I say to the purser, and it turns out he does. ‘I got a question. The name “George Badger” mean anything to you?’
‘Sure,’ he says, sounding a bit confused. ‘You met him.’
‘The steward? Redhead?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Oh yeah. Bullseye.
‘Right. Just checking. I was hoping to verify a couple things with him,’ I say.
So I’m invited on to the ship, and we set off on a Badger hunt. The guy ain’t nowhere to be seen.
‘I don’t understand,’ says the purser. ‘He’s supposed to be clearing up the cabins.’
‘He’s not clearing up – he’s cleared off,’ I tell him. ‘Guess you’ll have to put up a “Help Wanted” sign for the journey back. Talking of which – this guy, Badger, he was new, I’m guessing?’
‘He signed on just before we left England,’ the purser says. ‘But he picked up the job straight away. He seemed a good kid. Hey – you don’t reckon he knows anything about the murder, do you?’
Whoa. Get this guy an NYPD application stat. ‘He’s probably just weirded out by all this,’ I say. After all, I don’t have any proof. And I still have my eyes on the prize. That ruby and that finder’s fee? They’re going to be mine, no question. Don’t want anyone jumping my claim.
I leave the ship and get to work. I know the right people to ask and the right questions to ask them, and I can find just about anyone in NYC. Which means that by the time the morning rolls around, I got a pretty good idea where George Junior is at.
So early the next morning, I’m knocking on the door of room number eight on the second floor of a seedy little hotel called the Liberty Crown.
Don’t get no answer, so I knock again. Still no answer, but the door’s suddenly flung open and a wild-eyed joe’s staring at me. It’s the steward from the ship, all right, but he’s barely recognisable, and he don’t recognise me neither – not straight away, any case. But finally it clicks, and when I say, ‘Gonna let me in?’ he lets me past.
Ain’t no question this is the man I’m after. There’s a cheap little wooden dresser next to the bed and on it’s a wash bowl and jug, a Gideons Bible, a couple of pieces of paper, and, biggest clue of all, a giant ruby. There was red inside the wash bowl too: a hankie and a pair of gloves were floating on the surface and swirls of red made patterns in the water as they soaked clean. Guess he hadn’t had the wherewithal to dump them after all. But even though he’s acting pretty crazy, even though I know he’s a murderer, I don’t feel frightened of the guy.
‘You wanna tell me about it?’ I ask him, all quiet-like.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him!’ the kid cries – heck, he might be over 21, but he’s sure acting like a kid right now, and a panicking kid at that.
‘I know you didn’t,’ I say, calm as calm. ‘You just got mad, I get it. Because that ruby took your father and split you from your mother, and you didn’t even get one single penny piece from it. Anyone’d be sore.’
‘It wasn’t the money,’ he says. ‘The papers said that, said I had gambling debts, it wasn’t true.’
‘So what was it, then?’ I ask. ‘You saying you killed a guy and took the ruby, but you didn’t want it?’
‘I just wanted people to know about my father,’ he says. ‘He should’ve been in the history books.’
I don’t get it. Murdering the courier and stealing the stone wouldn’t help with any of that.
‘If I could find the tomb myself … That’s what I wanted to do. My mother wouldn’t show me anything. She thought people would try to steal it. So she threw me out – and then my sister did that stupid auction, all she cared about was the money … ’
‘So you found out who bought the stone, and tracked Motson to the ship?’ I’m still piecing it together.
‘He caught me in his cabin. And when I explained … ’
‘Let me guess,’ I say, because I’m reckoning anyone employed by Horace P. Wallace would not be a master of tact and diplomacy – myself excepted. ‘You explained, and he laughed at you? Told you to take a running jump?’
He nods. He’s calmed down a bit now.
‘And you saw red?’ I look over at the gem as I say that. Red. There’s an old English detective story called A Warning in Red, where the peculiar sensation of seeing red leads a man to discover a murder. And let’s not forget the master ’tec, Sherlock himself, and his A Study In
Scarlet – the scarlet in question being the thread of murder that he had to unravel. Here’s this ruby, red as blood, bringing death with it, from Africa, to Europe, to North America. Here’s this redheaded kid, probably never done anything worse than put on a scarlet coat and chase down a fox, and suddenly he’s a murderer. And here’s me in a crimson frock, with his life in my hands.
No. Not my business. I was hired to get the ruby, no more, no less.
‘Look, I ain’t going to turn you over to the cops,’ I say. ‘What you’ve done – that’s between your conscience and your god, if you got one. But I need that ruby, mister. I’m telling you, you don’t wanna get on the wrong side of the guy who bought it.’
He picks it up, looks at it hard.
‘Take your punishment, or go on the run,’ I say. ‘Up to you. Not my decision.’
But he’s not looking at me any longer. Suddenly, I realise he’s not listening to me any more either. He’s somewhere else, and it’s not anyplace nice.
He lifts the ruby to his eyes and stares into its crimson depths. ‘It’s the ruby’s curse,’ he says. ‘No man can rest easy once the ruby’s got a hold of them.’ He reaches into the dresser drawer. No wonder he’d had to take out the Bible – the revolver took up all the space. ‘Got it for protection,’ he says.
Now I’m really annoyed. My sources should’ve told me he’d picked up a piece. Still, I reckon I can disarm him before he can get off a shot at me – he’s handling the gun like it’s something gross he found at the bottom of a trashcan.
Which is why I’m not entirely sure if he meant to shoot himself or if he just didn’t realise what he was doing, the poor sap.
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