Guns and Guano

by Andrew Knighton

CHAPTER 1: A NIGHT AT THE CLUB

  Manchester was a place of industry, and of the debris that came with it. A pounding piston driving the British economy, to the untrained observer it might look like nothing more than a noisy mass of factories. But down one inconspicuous street, past the grey smog, the red-brick walls and the urchins fighting over a game of jacks, was a door to a very different institution. Clean, sturdy and unremarkable in colour or size, the door sat in a frame of smartly cut but unadorned stone. The boot scraper was worn and the bell pull forgettable. The whole thing was so successfully executed that only the finest architects would, after careful perusal, realise how deliberately mundane it was.

  Dirk Dynamo hadn’t worked this out for himself the first time he came to the club. But when Professor Barrow, the man responsible for maintaining that door, had explained it to him, Dirk stored the information carefully away among a mountain of hard-learned facts. And as he sat in a room beyond that door, in the most impressive and exciting library he’d ever encountered, he kept heaping facts upon the pile.

  The library of the Epiphany Club was a long, narrow room with two layers of walkways accessing the higher shelves. Beneath them, piles of papers were scattered across desks, the Club’s scholarly members having abandoned their research for tea. Little sunlight was allowed to touch the books, many of which were already yellow with age. Some in the special section were unique, even their leather spines protected by thick felt drapes. That end of the room was veiled in darkness.

  The end where Dirk sat, on the other hand, was warmly lit by a crackling fire built to cope with what passed for summer in northern England. Its glow played across a Persian rug and the gilded chair he sat in, his wide shadow dancing before him by the flickering of the flames. In one hand he held a book on Russian history, its pages lit by a wall-mounted gas-lamp. His other arm was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, weight-lifting a bust of Julius Caesar.

  The door creaked open and Professor Barrow entered, beaming at Dirk from behind his half-moon glasses. The professor was pushing seventy but healthily rotund, remnants of grey hair fringing the shining dome of his head. He smiled the smile of a wise and well-travelled uncle, a smile that said he had seen many things but could think of none he would rather see than you.

  Behind him came Timothy Blaze-Simms, his eyes never rising from a leather-bound notebook. He manoeuvred safely through the door, more by luck than any apparent design, still scribbling away with a well-chewed stub of pencil.

  Dirk set aside the bust and book, and rose to his feet.

  “Professor Barrow,” he said. “Good to see you, sir.”

  “And you, Mr Dynamo.” The professor shook his hand. “It has been far too long.”

  “Dirk!” Blaze-Simms exclaimed, looking up in surprise. “How marvellous!”

  “Tim,” the American replied. “Ain’t seen you since Paris. How you doin’?”

  “Remarkably well. Yesterday, I developed a machine that uses electrical resistance to fill canapés. And the day before that, I was working on a new explosive that I think...”

  “Perhaps later?” Barrow said, resting a hand gently but firmly on Blaze-Simms’s shoulder. “For now we have business to attend to.”

  The Professor looked around.

  “Ah, Phillips,” he said as a figure in black tailcoat and white gloves emerged from the shadows. “Could you please fetch us some tea?”

  “Very good, sir,” the butler replied, gliding out of the room.

  Barrow lowered himself with a creak into a chair.

  “Damn things must be getting old,” he said, glaring at the intricately carved furniture.

  “You said something about business?” Dynamo picked up the bust and flexing his arm once more. Some folks considered it obsessive, but he’d take every chance he could to better himself.

  “Mm?” Barrow blinked uncertainly over the top of his glasses. “Oh, yes, the mission. Well, it’s a treasure hunt, really. The committee decided to use you two again, after your success in Paris. If the Dane and his criminal minions had got hold of the Blensberg Blueprints, no safe in the continent would have been, well, safe. But thanks to you, our mysterious friend is empty-handed again.”

  “We ain’t any closer to knowing who he is?” Dirk asked.

  “I’m afraid not. He’s been playing his games for almost twenty years, stealing treasures and inventions from under our noses. But whether he’s a collector or just a career criminal, we still have nothing on him but a codename.”

  The Professor sat scowling into the depths of the library, lost in his memories.

  “So where are we off to this time?” Dirk asked at last.

  “Mm?” Barrow wiggled a finger in his ear, then peered at Dirk across his glasses. “Sorry, something in the way. What were you saying, my boy?”

  “I said, where are we going?”

  “There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf, you know. In fact, these keen senses saw me through a number of scrapes when I was your age. I remember this one time in Egypt...”

  The professor began a rambling tale of desert adventure, filled with camels, pyramids and a woman named Heidi who seemed to have been more than an assistant. There were cursed artefacts, daring chases and on one occasion a ghost. If nothing else it was certainly varied.

  Dirk had heard this sort of thing before. He admired the professor’s wisdom, trusted his judgement, but was worried about his memory. His recent tales sounded like a jumble of half-remembered youth and broken fragments of dime-store novels. If they weren’t then he’d kept quiet about some damn fine adventures for years, and was revealing more than he should now.

  “Was that where you got the idea for your book?” Blaze-Simms said, interrupting a digression on the ever-expanding tombs of the pharaohs.

  “That’s right.” Barrow leaned forward. “The one on pyramids as a sign of civilisation. You’ve read it?”

  “Oh yes, but it made me wonder about something. If the pyramidal form is one of the signs of a true civilisation, then why do we not see them in Britain? Surely the most civilised of nations should have the greatest pyramids.”

  The two academics leaned in closer, off on their excitable tangent. Dirk listened with interest even as he kept lifting the statue. He would have liked to get to the point of the mission, but he didn’t mind waiting if it gave him a chance to learn.

  “We have gone beyond the simple, obvious pyramids, my boy,” Barrow said. “Now, the pyramid is manifested in the very structures of our society. The monument itself has not been needed on these shores in centuries.”

  Phillips reappeared, emerging from the shadows of the doorway, a laden tea-tray balanced on one hand. He leant over and whispered in Barrow’s ear.

  “Oh, excellent,” the professor said. “Bring her in.”

  Phillips vanished once more.

  “The last of our little party is here,” Barrow explained

  The library door swung open, silhouetting a petite female figure.

  The men rose carefully to their feet and Barrow approached the woman, drawing her into the room. She was elegantly dressed in deep blues, her dark curls gathered above the nape of her neck.

  “Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms, Mr Dirk Dynamo, might I introduce Mrs Isabelle McNair.”

  “Good to meet you, ma’am,” Dirk said.

  “Mr Dynamo.” She returned Dirk’s firm handshake, brown eyes locked on his. “Surely that isn’t a real surname, even in America?”

  Dirk stood for a moment with his mouth open, trying to work out what to say. Somewhere inside him, the kid who had laboured in a dark Kentucky mine longed to have his story told. But it wasn’t a story that came easy, or that Dirk often shared.

  “I’m sorry.” Even Isabelle McNair’s frown was charming, without the stiff demeanour so many society ladies wore. “I was just teasing. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No need to apologise.” Dirk realised that her hand was still in his and hurriedly let it go. “And no, it ain’t
a real name, but it’s the one I go by.”

  Blaze-Simms lowered his head and raised her delicately gloved fingers gently to his lips.

  “Enchanted,” he murmured.

  “And some say chivalry is dead.” She smiled warmly. “Professor, so good of you to invite me here. This place is an absolute delight.”

  “Mm? Yes, well, do take a seat,” Barrow lowered himself back into a chair. One finger tugged at his red silk cravat. “Where was I?”

  “Egypt?” Dirk suggested, settling back down into a chair.

  “Civilisation?” Blaze-Simms enquired, leading Mrs. McNair to the sofa.

  “Sugar?” she asked, reaching forwards to pour the tea.

  “What? No, no, that’s not the point at all.” Barrow pulled a notebook from his pocket, mumbling to himself as he flicked through. The cheap, wrinkled pages were a perfect match for his age-rumpled skin. “Ah, yes.” He looked up and smiled. “A mission most suited to our present setting. Gentlemen, Mrs McNair, I want you to find the lost Library of Alexandria.”

  Dirk and Timothy exchanged glances, wondering who should bring the old man back to reality.

  “That’s an awful nice scheme, Professor,” Dirk began, “but ain’t there, well...”

  “...practical difficulties,” Timothy offered. “It has been lost for a terribly long time.”

  “And there might not be much to find, seein’ as how it was burnt down.”

  “There might be some frightfully nice foundations, somewhere under the sand...”

  They drifted into awkward silence, hiding behind their tea cups.

  “Honestly, professor, you are awful.” Mrs McNair helped herself to a macaroon. “Leaving these poor gentlemen dangling while you giggle to yourself. What would Mrs Barrow say?”

  “She would say they shouldn’t treat me as if I’m senile.” The professor rose and approached one of the nearby shelves with slow, deliberate steps. He pulled down a small, leather-bound volume with a faded spine, returned to his seat and opened the book on the table by the tea-tray. The paper was dry and brittle, cracking at the edges, the print heavy and old-fashioned. The pages were too small for the cover in which they had been rebound, and which was itself now worn with age.

  “Plutarch’s ’Parallel Lives’,” Barrow explained. “An alternative edition, lost until two years ago. Dicky Torrington-Smythe found it in the collection of a Scottish earl, while looking for old Shakespeare folios. He’s determined to crack the bard’s code before that Donnelly chap.”

  He turned a few pages, nodding and smiling to himself.

  “The bard is always such a pleasure to read,” he said. “Such verve, such poetry.”

  His smile widened as he scanned the ancient tome.

  “You were sayin’ something about Plutarch?” Dirk asked, eager to get them back to the point.

  “What? Oh, yes.” Professor Barrow looked up. “This volume contains an early edition of ’Pericles’, but also some Plutarch. Most importantly for us, it contains his account of Caesar’s burning of Alexandria. There’s a section that isn’t in the common text.”

  Dirk leaned forward. The print was archaic, the text certainly not English. He thought he could make out half the letters, but looking for familiar words mired him in confusion, a mass of lines dancing out of focus across the page. Timothy, nodding and making soft, appreciative noises next to him, just made his frustration worse.

  “Someone gimme a clue here,” Dirk said. “What does any of it mean?”

  “Short version,” Timothy said, “all the books thought lost in the fire were carted off into the desert, hidden away in case of future danger. The chap who did it was a scholar, and he didn’t trust the political types not to wreck everything again. So he kept the new location secret, only sharing it with other learned men. Men such as Plutarch.”

  “This tells us where to find it?”

  A thrill ran through Dirk. The Library of Alexandria, its contents untouched for centuries. The untapped knowledge of antiquity’s greatest minds, preserved somewhere beneath Egypt’s shifting sands, and he would be there when it was revealed. Even after all these years of studying and listening to men like the Professor, some folks still treated him like that ignorant kid fresh out of the mines. That would have to change if he learned things no-one else on earth knew.

  “Um, not exactly.” Blaze-Simms took the book and flicked eagerly through. “Plutarch shared the scholar’s concerns, so didn’t write down the location. But there is a commentary at the back by an Arab scholar, ninth century I think. He claims that the location was encrypted on three stone tablets, in case it should be forgotten, but that...”

  A hint of noise made Dirk look behind him, expecting to see Phillips approaching with fresh tea. No-one was there, but a movement caught his eye, a shifting of the darkness at the back of the room. He stared at the shadows. Was it a rat? Maybe a loose page falling from a shelf?

  “...third tablet was found in the Seine, according to this thirteenth century report, and handed to the royal family...” The professor had more books open now and was expounding upon them with the energy of a man half his age.

  Another movement, in the recesses around a ceiling beam. A flutter of black, maybe the wing of a bat that had flown in out of the city smog.

  “...while a Venetian chronicle indicates the second was taken along the silk road...”

  Dirk took a step away from the table, and another, watching the shadows that shifted with his viewpoint, watching more closely for those that didn’t.

  “...which was where Mrs. McNair found it earlier this year...”

  There. A deeper shadow, like a black stain. And another, on the opposite side of the room, drifting towards them. The shadow of a man.

  Dirk opened his mouth, but before he could call out something flickered in the darkness. A bright, glittering point came hurtling towards him.

  He flung himself clear, rolling forward and back to his feet. Three razor-edged disks embedded themselves in the armchair behind him.

  Mrs McNair shouted in alarm as black-clad figures dropped soundlessly from the rafters, long straight blades extended. Dirk intercepted one, ducking beneath a sword and punching his opponent in the gut. He grabbed the man’s sword even before he’d fallen to the floor, spinning and rising to block the next one’s blow. Steel clanged against steel.

  With hurried footsteps and cries for help, Mrs McNair and the professor ran out into the hallway. Three assailants followed on their heels, silent even while running.

  Blaze-Simms was fending off another of the attackers with a bust of Shakespeare. He swung the bard’s head with as much speed and grace as could be managed, but it gave him no reach with which to counter-attack.

  Dirk parried two low blows and a third aimed for his head. His opponent was fast and agile, attacks coming so quickly he barely had time to think, let alone take the offensive. He backed towards the fire, pulling an armchair between them. But the attacker somersaulted over it, blade extended.

  There was another flurry of blows, sparks flashing from the oil-darkened blades. Dirk knew he was out-matched. He could shoot pretty well and brawl with the best of them, but fencing wasn’t his style.

  In desperation he flung his sword at his opponent’s face. Even as it was batted aside he leapt, slamming into the black-clad figure. They crashed to the ground, Dirk wrapping one arm around the guy while punching him repeatedly. Fists beat hard against Dirk’s back, and he knew there’d be hell to pay. But after a moment his opponent fell limp, pounded into unconsciousness.

  “I say!” Timothy exclaimed, slithers of marble bard flying from his assailant’s blows.

  Free of attackers, Dirk stood and went to his friend’s aid. He tapped the black-clad figure on the shoulder and, as he turned, punched him with such force that he slumped straight to the ground.

  “Jolly good show.” Blaze-Simms dropped the remains of the statue and scooped up two of the abandoned blades. Passing one to Dirk, he nodded tow
ards the door. “Shall we?”

  Sounds of commotion echoed down the hall. Dirk and Timothy dashed towards them, past maps and murals, stags’ heads and statues, the souvenirs of the club’s long and adventurous history.

  They burst through the games room door and straight into a shower of white sparks. In the centre of the room, the hilt of an oriental sword protruded from an automated billiards table, steam spewing and balls careening wildly as the table’s broken workings ground against the embedded blade.

  On the far side of the room, a black-clad attacker stood over the unconscious Professor Barrow. With his deadly blade, the invader held back the club members in the opposite doorway, while one of his colleagues fought bare-handed against Lord Roger Harcourt-Phipps. In a corner, Isabelle McNair was backing slowly away from the final assailant’s raised blade.

  “The stone,” the attacker said. “Give to us.”

  Dirk dashed forwards and grabbed the hilt protruding from the table. He leapt, pivoting in a wide arc around the sword, kicking Harcourt-Phipps’s opponent and hurtling into the man by the door. The club members cheered as the black-clad figure hit the ground, sword sliding away across polished floorboards. Dirk stamped on the man’s back for good measure.

  The final attacker now had Mrs McNair in his grasp, sword raised across her throat.

  “No move.” The voice from beneath the black cloth was soft and exotic as silk.

  Everybody froze.

  “Drop swords.”

  “There’s really no need,” Mrs McNair said. “I have this under control.”

  “Drop swords!” the attacker said again.

  They obeyed.

  The figure moved towards the corridor, dragging a calm looking Mrs McNair with him.

  “And how do you intend to get me out of here?” she asked. “I won’t come quietly.”

  “Knock out.” He raised his sword, pommel above her head.

  Mrs McNair twisted from his grip and pushed him back into the corridor.

  “Now!” she snapped.

  There was a clang. The attacker staggered, but before the others could act he shook himself, turned, and raced away down the corridor.

  Phillips stood in the doorway, gazing sadly at a head-shaped dent in his tea-tray.

  “Thank you, Phillips.” Mrs McNair smiled. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “I do apologise, sir,” the butler said as Dirk stared down the empty corridor. “Household silverware is never as effective as a good cosh.”

  “Don’t worry.” Dirk grinned. “A cosh ain’t flat enough to serve sandwiches. And we got most of...”

  His mouth hung open as he looked back into the room. The black-clad bodies were gone, and with them any chance to question their attackers. Whoever it had been, whatever their reasons for attacking the club, they’d gotten away.

  The library was far brighter lit than before, the fire stoked high, gas lamps banishing every last shadow. A thorough search of the club had found no lingering intruders, but no-one was taking chances. Dirk sat with a fire iron in his lap, his gaze roaming the room for any lingering threats.

  Professor Barrow clutched a cold, damp cloth to the back of his head.

  “The Epiphany Club hasn’t been infiltrated in over sixty years,” he said. “I suppose it is to our credit that, when it happened, it was ninjas.”

  Seeing Dirk’s blank face he continued. “Japanese assassins. Reputedly among the deadliest warriors on earth.”

  He took a sip of tea and looked at Blaze-Simms, who was squinting through a magnifying glass at a stone tablet. It was about a foot long and half that wide, covered in letters that Dirk already knew he’d never make sense of.

  “What do make you of it, my boy?” Barrow asked.

  “It’s part of a set of directions.” Blaze-Simms didn’t look up, but pulled a notebook from his pocket and started scribbling with a stub of pencil. “Early Arabic, which fits. Not a lot of sense in itself, but if we can find the others...”

  “This is one of those stones to lead us to the library?” Dirk asked.

  “That’s right.” Mrs McNair sipped her tea, a spark of excitement in her eyes. “Imagine it. All that knowledge, lost to humanity for centuries, and it could be hours. It’s enough to give one quite a thrill, isn’t it?”

  “Where’d you get it from, Mrs McNair?” Dirk said.

  “Please, we’ve fought ninjas together, you can call me Isabelle.” She set her cup aside. “My husband inherited the stone from another missionary. A chap named Davidson who had bought it from a Cairo junk dealer. Apparently it came there by way of the Orient, although more than that I don’t know. The Reverend Davidson was an enthusiastic antiquarian, but not always very thorough.”

  “No hope of findin’ the other two in his collection, huh?”

  “I’m afraid not. But I’ve been looking into this for the past year, and I have a lead on the next one. Supposedly lost in a shipwreck somewhere off an obscure African island, and lying at the bottom of the ocean. The island’s a British colony, but the Governor has a reputation for liking the quiet life, and has blocked archaeological expeditions in the past. That means I need help from a private organisation, one that can help me retrieve the stone quietly.”

  “And quickly.” Barrow looked at them all with great seriousness. “If word has got out that something of such value is out there, then you can be sure that our friend the Dane will be looking to get his larcenous little hands on it.”

  “What makes you think anyone else knows about this?” Blaze-Simms looked up from his scribblings.

  “Because today is when we brought this stone to the Club.” Barrow frowned into his tea. “It can be no coincidence that today we were attacked, here in this very library. Knowledge is worth more than gold, and some people will kill for tin.”

  Dirk grinned. Lost treasures, unknown enemies, forgotten islands, adventures across land and sea - now they were talking his language. And at the end of it all, intellectual wealth beyond imagining.

  He reached out for a tea-cup and raised it in a toast. “Great Library, here we come.”