‘Do you know what it did to me when you left?’ she sobbed. ‘I was alone; I had to survive by myself. After the money ran out I had to go thieving on my own, I’d never done that before. I nearly got caught a few times and I even got arrested once, I only got out of it by the skin of my teeth.’
She pulled up the sheet and buried her face in it, crying. Jim pulled her towards him and took her in his arms to comfort her. After a few minutes she calmed down and her breathing had return to normal. ‘So what did you do then?’ he asked her.
She dried her eyes on the sheet. ‘I moved around from town to town barely making enough to stay in decent hotels. I don’t have your natural flair for thieving, I’m afraid. So I had to start taking up with ‘protectors’ to help me out. Eventually I ended up with Vincent Lassiter. We roamed around Europe doing business. He has his own interests and I would help him out with the occasional robbery. And so after a while we ended up in Albion.
‘And that’s my story so far, what about you?’
‘Well, after I left you I drifted around Europe for a couple of years and then decided to come back to Albion to settle. I keep my hand in but mainly I just live the life of a “Gentleman”.’
‘Are you seeing anyone?’ she asked.
‘Only when I close my eyes and concentrate,’ he replied.
She laughed, ‘Good, I’m glad.’
They held each other tightly and lay there quietly for a while. Finally Jim had to ask her the question that had been nagging at him ever since he first saw her.
‘So why are you in Londum? What are you doing with this Lassiter fellow?’
She pulled out of his arms and sat up, facing him, so she could see his face. She lit them both cigarettes while she gathered her thoughts and decided what to tell him. ‘I told you; you don’t really want to know about this. It’s best you stay out of it.’
‘Out of what? What are you into?’
She remained silent for a moment, until she reached a decision. ‘I’m here for revenge.’
‘Not on me I hope,’ said Jim.
‘No … on Vincent Lassiter.’
‘What? What’s going on, why are you travelling with the man you are out to get? It doesn’t make sense.’
She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘Do you remember the scandal last year when Lady Ralston committed suicide? It was in all the papers on the Continent so I suppose it was printed here as well.’
‘Vaguely,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t she have a lover and it came out after she died that she was being blackmailed?’
‘That’s right. Well, Vincent was the one who blackmailed her and drove her to suicide. That’s how he makes his living, travelling around with his bodyguard Bolan.’
‘Bolan?’
‘Yes. A big ugly brute of a man. Nasty piece of work, steer well clear of him. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘that’s what they do, a bit of larceny here and there, breaking into someone’s house, stealing their personal papers and from time to time it bears other fruit. If he can use what he finds to his advantage then he does. Business tips, people’s indiscretions brought to light can be quite profitable. A spot of blackmail now and again. It all brings in the money.’
‘He sounds a right scumbag, why are you with him?’
‘Lady Ralston, for all her foolish indiscretions, was a kind, gentle, woman. We became friends so I know the real story of what happened. Her marriage was one of those ‘marriages of convenience’ where the Lord has to have a wife to bear him a legitimate heir and then he goes back to his drinking, gambling and whoring, ignoring his wife who is just expected to look after the family house and appear at family functions. Apart from that she is left alone. Lorna, Lady Ralston, did her wifely duty and provided said heirs, two boys and a girl, and was promptly ignored from then on.
‘Anyway Lorna, took a lover. It was quiet and discreet. Lord Ralston either didn’t know or didn’t care so everyone was happy, until Vincent Lassiter stole some letters to Lorna from her young man and proceeded to blackmail her.
‘Well, she paid and paid until it got to the point that she couldn’t pay any more without appealing directly to her husband for funds. When she said to Lassiter that she had paid enough and surely he should let her go now, he sent her letters to a local rag and they exposed her. It became public knowledge and she killed herself out of shame.
‘He didn’t have to do that. She had paid thousands and just couldn’t pay any more. He knew he couldn’t get any more out of her, so he could have just let her go, he didn’t have to destroy her like that, it was just sheer malice.
‘So I vowed to get even with him, to make him pay for what he did to her. I got to know him and eventually became his lover six months ago, to get close to him. Since then I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to take him down and make him suffer, the way he made Lorna suffer.’
‘Are you after my help? Is that why you came to me?’ asked Jim.
‘No, I don’t want you to get involved. Stay out of this and leave it to me.’
‘Well, just be careful,’ he told her.
‘And what about you?’ she asked in turn. ‘I couldn’t help notice the silver flecks in your eyes. What the hell happened to you?’
It’s a long story actually … I was bitten by a werewolf.’
She gasped and drew back from him. ‘It’s okay,’ he reassured her. ‘Luckily there were a couple of very clever witches on hand and between them they caught it in time and managed to cure me.’
‘But how? Being cured of a werewolf bite, that’s unheard of!’
‘They injected me with a diluted dose of Silver Nitrate. It sort of … I don’t know how to describe it, it tracked down all the werewolf germs in me, like a vaccine, and destroyed them. That’s what cured me. A side effect was that bits of Silver Nitrate got lodged at various places in my body, although it’s only visible in my eyes. They tell me that in time it will all work its way out of my body. But for the moment, it’s rather fetching don’t you think?’
‘It’s certainly distinguished,’ she told him.
‘And what about you? Won’t Lassiter be missing you? Or doesn’t he mind you betraying him with other men?’ asked Jim.
‘No, we have a very open relationship. I have my own room in the suite at the Ritz and I come and go as I please. Vincent knows better than to question me about what I do otherwise I’ll leave him. At least that’s what he believes. He doesn’t know that I will stick around until I’ve nailed the son of a bitch.’
‘Well if that’s the case … why don’t you come over here and betray him some more?’ said Jim as he reached out for her.
***
And once again, the room starts to waver and the lights dim …
IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER FLASHBACK!
Jim Darby watched through a crack in the hut door as Tie-Pin sat eating his rice and some kind of meat. If it was the same meat that Jim got to eat it was probably rabbit or chicken. Jim could have killed for a nice juicy steak.
He swung open the door and crossed the room quickly as Tie-Pin gripped his chopsticks in a defensive manner, ready to use them as weapons. Jim forestalled any aggressive action by dropping a tael of silver onto the cloth that Tie-Pin used as a table-cloth. A tael was a measure of weight, used in Canton to quantify precious metals so that they could be used as currency, so a tael of silver was worth quite a bit of money. The bar that Jim had laid down was thin and rectangular, weighing about an ounce.
‘What is this?’ demanded Tie-Pin.
‘That is your future … and mine,’ replied Jim as he knelt down to talk to Tie-Pin. ‘I will pay you this and nine more bars of silver when you have taught me what I want to know about Gung-Ho. I don’t want to spend years here; I don’t need to learn all the fancy stuff about Crouching Mongoose and Hidden Wombat. I just want to know how to punch a man’s teeth through the back of his head.’
‘And what makes you think that I am interest
ed in your money?’ said the old man, offended.
‘Because of all the things that you can do with it. Why are you, Tie-Pin the Master of Gung-Ho, living in a rice field in the middle of nowhere? A man of your talents should open a school in Shanglow. Become famous and honoured, be the toast of society, eat in fine restaurants, drink fine rice wine, be entertained by … dancing girls.
‘If you teach me what I want to know, I will take you to Shanglow where I will pay you nine more of these,’ he indicated the bar of silver. ‘Then we go our separate ways.’
‘To do this I would need to dismiss the rest of the school and concentrate solely on your training,’ said the old man.
‘Tell them it’s the summer holidays,’ replied Jim.
Tie-Pin picked up the thin bar of silver and rubbed its expensive smoothness thoughtfully between his fingers. ‘Perhaps the Master is ready to teach after all. So, tell me more about these dancing girls.’
***
Jim helped Racine down from the carriage. She stood on the pavement and looked around her as Jim paid off the cabbie.
‘Why are we here?’ she asked him as he returned to her. ‘This is the British Museum according to the sign. What could possibly be of interest here?’
‘There’s something I want to have a look at,’ he told her ‘There’s a new exhibition on, you may have read about it in the papers … Tuten Kha-Hawn, The Boy Faraoh. Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll have lunch after in the café here, it’s quite good.’
‘Very well, if it will keep you happy,’ she conceded.
Fortunately it was a quiet day in the museum, so although they took their time, checking out display cases along the way, it wasn’t long before they arrived at the Great Hall with the main exhibition inside.
They wandered around the smaller display cases, with Racine becoming increasingly bored although she did perk up slightly when she saw the gold and jewelled necklaces. But, as she couldn’t pick them up and play with them, even they soon lost their attraction and she turned around to look for Jim to give him the ‘I’m fed up’ stare again, hoping he’d take the hint and that they could get out of there and then she saw him, transfixed in front of one of the cases. Intrigued, she watched him carefully. His eyes had lit up and he had a slight smile on his mouth.
As she watched him he seemed to become aware of her gaze as he turned and looked directly at her. He winked at her, held a finger to his lips and then crooked his finger, beckoning her over. As she stood beside him he spoke to her, ‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’
She looked at the golden statue of a snake, approximately one foot tall and her breath caught in her throat. It was indeed beautiful, the head of a cobra with its hood flared out as if to strike. Its eyes were pure rubies, “Snake Eyes” she thought to herself. It called to her, she wanted to reach through the glass of the display case and run her hands over the fluted hood of cobra.
It was a magnificent sculpture but it wasn’t just its beauty that spoke to her, it was the lure of the gold and rubies that appealed to the larcenous side of her nature. She realised why Jim had been captivated by it.
‘What do you think?’ Jim asked her.
‘I want one. Can you get it for me?’
‘I might be able to.’
‘I’ll be extra, especially nice to you if you do,’ she told him.
Jim looked around the room to make sure that no one was near them. ‘One of these days I’m going to steal it.’
She gasped, ‘You’re what?’ and also looked around quickly to make sure no one had heard her. ‘You’re what?’ she whispered.
‘I’m going to steal it,’ he said, with a smile on his face. ‘Just a little project that I’ve been working on. I do these things to amuse myself,’ he explained, ‘figure out how to break into places or to steal things and I’ve worked out how to steal that,’ he pointed at the statue.
‘So when are you going to steal it?’
‘Oh not for a while yet, certain things have to fall into place before I’m in a position to do it, after that, I just have to pick my moment. I just wanted you to see how beautiful it was.’
‘It is beautiful,’ she agreed. ‘I can’t wait until I can get my hands on it.’
‘Er … don’t you mean, my hands?’
‘Yes of course. Now, what about that lunch you promised me?’
***
Jim and Racine were out at dinner. He hadn’t seen her since their visit to the British Museum some days earlier and then he received a note from her inviting him to dinner at a good restaurant.
Jim and Racine gave their orders to the waiter and sipped champagne while they waited for their starters.
‘So, what have you been up to?’ she asked him?
‘Oh, you know, keeping busy, trying not to miss you.’
Racine glanced at him and then coyly looked away. ‘Please, you’re embarrassing me.’
‘That’s not all I’d like to do to you,’ he said.
‘Umm, me too darling but you’ll have to wait until after dessert. I have a need for chocolate mousse.’
‘You said you wanted to talk to me. What about?’
‘Later, let’s have a nice meal, drink some champagne and then go back to your place. I’ll explain it all to you then.’
***
Jim topped up their glasses and then leaned over and upended the empty bottle in the wine cooler, standing at the side of his bed.
Racine lay back against the headboard and sipped her champagne.
‘So,’ asked Jim, ‘what’s the big mystery that you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘Oh, it’s no big mystery, I want your help, that’s all.’
‘With what?’
‘Taking down Vincent Lassiter. I can’t do it on my own, I realise that now, I’m not good enough. I just don’t have the experience, I need your help.’
‘Whoa, hold on, he’s done nothing against me or mine. Why should I get involved?’
‘But I told you about the things he’s done, the sort of man he is, about Lady Ralston.’
‘Yes but he did them to Lady Ralston, not me. Why should that put any responsibility on me?’
‘Well, he’s an evil man and unless someone stops him he will ruin many other lives.’
‘Yes,’ said Jim, patiently. ‘I understand that, but it’s not my responsibility to go around putting all the bad guys out of business. If I did that I’d be taking on half of Londum and then I suppose you’d expect me to clean up the rest of Albion? I think you give me a little too much credit for my abilities.’
‘So you won’t help me?’ she asked.
Jim sipped his champagne and thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t say that, I’d need to know a few more things before I make my mind up, like exactly what sort of revenge are you looking for? I’m no murderer, you know.’
‘No, I know that, pity … it would be handy if you were. What I’m after is some little adventure or caper that would lead to Vincent and Bolan getting into trouble, big trouble. Killed would be nice but failing that, going to jail for a very long time. And of course, none of it leading back to us. Waddya say Jim? It would be like the old days, you and me together again.’
Jim took her glass and put it and his down on the side table. Pulling her over to him he said, ‘I’ll make my mind up later, in the meantime why don’t you persuade me some more?’
***
Jim returned to The Golden Gryphon. He’d arranged to meet one of his associates there. As Jim strode across the room to his usual table, he noticed Big Mick McGarry and his cronies at the bar but they studiously ignored each other. He’d said that McGarry could use the Gryphon as long as he stayed out of his way.
One of the serving girls came over and took Jim’s order. Jim made sure the kitchens were stocked with good food and his meals were cooked to order, separately from the rest of the customers.
As Jim sipped the drink that the barman had brought over, he mulled over the situation with Lassiter. Jim still w
asn’t sure about whether to help Racine or not. He needed more information on Lassiter. He needed someone to do a bit of digging for him, someone who could have a ferret around and ask a few questions. He’d put the word out on the street that he wanted a word with Willy Templeton.
Willy Templeton was a small time thief that Jim used to run errands for him. He was a harmless little soul who wouldn’t hurt a fly but he was an excellent pickpocket. He could walk through a crowded room with his hands in his pockets and come out at the other end with his pockets bulging. Jim often used him to gather information or deliver messages, as he trusted him completely.
Willy for his part would have done anything for Jim Darby. It all stemmed from a few years earlier when Willy had got into trouble with a new gang in town.
Jim normally didn’t pay much attention to which gangs were running the East End of Londum. Turf wars led to gangs coming and going, one rising above the crowd only to be knocked down again by another newer, tougher mob. Jim was above it all and didn’t much care who was in charge, as long as they left him and his people alone.
At that time, the latest contenders for rulers of the underworld were some gang from the South Coast who fancied they could do the job of running Londum better than the present incumbents. They started off by taking over all the lower grade criminals such as pimps, thieves, fences etc. and then worked their way up the food chain.
Jim had started to notice that Willy was not always available when he needed someone to run an errand for him, and when he did see him he was often sporting a bruised face or a black eye, which he always put down to an argument with ‘some bloke in a pub’. Knowing that Willy was not the type to get into pub fights, Jim finally cornered Willy and made him explain what was going on.
It seemed that the new guys in town had been leaning on Willy to do jobs for them, as well as having to give them a cut of his takings. When he had been reluctant to, they had roughed him up.
That did it for Jim, they were messing with his people and they had gone too far. He found out where they hung out, they had installed themselves in an office above a warehouse by the docks, then he took Willy to their place.
The Londum Omnibus Volume Two (The Londum Series Book 12) Page 6
