The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]

by By Kim Newman

  Argument was squashed. She was proud of him, again. More than proud.

  “The missing boy is in there,” said Mist. “And his... sister?”

  “Aunt,” corrected Charles. “Maeve. Don’t be taken in by her. She’s not what she seems. The boy is Richard. Dickie. He’s the one in danger. We must get him out of the Gift.”

  “The girl too,” prompted Mr. Hay.

  Charles shook his head. “She’s long lost,” he said. “It’s the boy we want, we need...”

  “That wasn’t a suggestion,” said the Undertaker.

  Charles and Mist exchanged a look.

  “Get that door kicked in,” Mist told two hefty bobbies.

  They shouldered the waterfall, shaking the whole of the Gift.

  “It’s probably unlocked and opens outwards,” Kate suggested.

  The policemen stood back. The dented door swung slowly out, proving her point. Inside, it was darker than it should be. This was a bright afternoon. The ceiling of the Gift was mostly glass. It should be gloomy at worst.

  White powder lay on the floor, footprints trodden in.

  “Is that snow?” asked Mist.

  “Stage snow,” said Charles. “Remember, nothing in there is real. Which doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.”

  “We’ll need light. Willoughby, hand over your bull-lantern.”

  One of the bobbies unlatched a device from his belt. Mist lit the lamp. Charles took it and shone a feeble beam into the dark. Stage snow fell from a sky ceiling. It was a clever trick—reflective sparkles set into wooden walls. But Kate did not imagine the cold wind that blew from the Gift, chilling through her light blouse. She was not dressed to pay a call on the Snow Queen.

  Charles ventured into the dark.

  Kate helped Davey follow. He had stopped chanting out loud but his neck muscles worked as he subaudibly repeated his rhyme.

  In his pictures, goblins gathered.

  Mist came last, with another lamp.

  Mr. Hay and Mr. Effe remained outside, in the summer sunshine.

  This was not a part of Færie that Kate had seen yesterday, but Charles evidently knew his way. The walls were theatrical flats painted with convincing woodlands. Though the corridor was barely wide enough for two people side by side, scenery seemed to extend for miles. In the minimal light, the illusion was perfect. She reached out. Where she was sure snow fell through empty air, her fingers dimpled oiled canvas.

  They could not be more than fifty feet inside the Gift, which she knew to cover a circle barely a hundred yards across, but it seemed miles from Regent’s Park. Glancing back, she saw the Undertakers, scarecrows against an oblong of daylight. Looking forward, there was night and forest. Stars sparkled on the roof.

  The passage curved, and she couldn’t see the entrance any more.

  Of course, the Gift was a fairground maze.

  Charles, tracking clear footprints, came to a triplicate fork in the path. Three sets of prints wound into each tunnel.

  “Bugger,” said Mist, adding, “pardon me, miss.”

  She asked for light and sorted back through Davey’s pictures. She was sure she had seen this. She missed it once and had to start again. Then she hit on sketches representing this juncture. On paper, Maeve led Dickie down the left-hand path. In the next picture, goblins tottered out of the trees on stilts tipped with child-sized shoes which (horribly) had disembodied feet stuffed into them. The imps made false trails down the other paths, smirking with mean delight, cackles crawling off the paper.

  Kate was beginning to hate Davey’s goblins.

  Charles bent low to enter the left-hand tunnel, which went under two oaks whose upper branches tangled, as if the trees were frozen in a slapping argument. Disapproving faces twisted in the bark.

  Even Kate couldn’t stand up in this tunnel.

  They made slow, clumsy progress. It was hard to light the way ahead. All Charles and Mist could do was cast moon-circles on the nearest surface, infernally reflecting their own faces.

  The tunnel angled downwards.

  She wondered if this led to the dynamo room. The interior of the Gift was on several levels. Yesterday, it had been hot here. Now snowflakes wisped on her face like ice-pricks.

  “That’s not likely,” said Mist, looking at snowmelt in his palm.

  Davey stumbled over an exposed root. Kate reached out to catch him. They fell against a barbed bramble and staggered off the path, tumbling into a chilly drift. Painted walls had given way to three-dimensional scenery, the break unnoticed. The snow must be artificially generated—ice-chips sifted from a hidden device up above—but felt unpleasantly real.

  Mist and Charles played their lamps around.

  Kate assumed they were in the large, central area she had visited, but in this minimal light it seemed differently shaped. Everything was larger. She was now in proportion with trees that had been miniature.

  A vicious wind blew from somewhere, spattering her spectacles with snow-dots. The waterfall was frozen in serried waves, trapping bug-eyed, dunce-capped Silly Fish in a glacier grip.

  Charles took off his ulster and gave it to her. She gratefully accepted.

  “I never thought I’d miss my Sir Boris costume,” he said.

  Mist directed his lamp straight up. Its throw didn’t reach any ceiling. He pointed it down, and found grass, earth, and snow—no floorboards, no paving, no matting. In the wind, trees shifted and creaked.

  “Bloody good trick,” said the policeman.

  Davey hunched in a huddle, making tinier and tinier pictures.

  There was movement in the dark. Charles turned, pointing his light at rustles. Wherever the lantern shone, all was stark and still. Outside the beam, things were evilly active. The originals of Davey’s goblins, whatever they might be, were in the trees. The illustrations, satirical cartoons, were tinged with grotesque humour. Kate feared there would be nothing funny about the live models.

  “Dickie,” shouted Charles.

  His echo came back, many times. Charles’s breath plumed. His shout dissipated in the open night. Kate could have sworn mocking, imitative voices replaced the echo.

  “There’s a castle,” she said, looking at Davey’s latest drawings. “No, a palace. Maeve is leading “Dickie up steps, to meet... I don’t know, a prince?”

  Davey was still working. His arm was in the way of a completed picture. Gently, she shifted his wrist.

  In a palatial hall, Dickie was presented to a mirror, looking at himself. Only, his reflection was different. The boy in the glass had thinner eyes, pointier ears, a nastier mouth.

  Davey went on to another book.

  Kate showed Charles and Mist the new sequence.

  “We have to find this place, quickly,” said Charles. “The boy is in immediate danger.”

  * * * *

  viii: “the game is up”

  Maeve had turned her ankle. Dickie’s aunt did not usually act so like a girl. After helping as best he could, he left her wrapped up by the path. She kept their candle. When the mystery was solved, he could find his way back to her light. Bravely, Maeve urged him on, to follow the clues.

  In the middle of the Gift, she said, was a palace.

  Inside the palace was theculprit.

  Steeled, Dickie made his way from clue to clue.

  Moonbeam pools picked them out. A dagger with the very tip sheared away, a half-burned page of cipher, a cigarette end with three distinctive bands, a cameo brooch that opened to a picture of a hairy-faced little girl, an empty blue glass bottle marked with skull and crossbones, a bloodied grape-stem, a dish of butter with a sprig of parsley sunk into it, a dead canary bleached white, a worm unknown to science, a squat jade idol with its eyegems prised out, a necklace crushed to show its gems were paste, a false beard with cardboard nose attached.

  Excellent clues, leading to his destination.

  When he first glimpsed the palace through the trees, Dickie thought it a doll’s house, much too small for him. When, at
last, he found the front door, spires rose above him. It was clever, like one of Maeve’s conjuring tricks.

  Who was the culprit?

  Mr. Satterthwaite Bulge (he had known the dead man best, and could have been blackmailed or have something to gain from a will)... Uncle Davey (surely not, though some said he was “touched”; he might have another person living in his head, not a nice one)... the clever gent and the Irish lady who had called this afternoon (Dickie had liked them straight off, which should not blind him to sorry possibilities)... Greedy Sid Silcock (too obvious and convenient, though he could well be in it as a minion of the true mastermind)... Miss Mac Andrew (another vengeance-plotter?)... Bitty, the rosy-cheeked maid (hmmmn, something was stirring about her complexion)... Ma and Da (no!)...

  He would find out.

  The palace disappointed. It was a wooden façade, propped up by rough timbers. There were no rooms, just hollow space. The exterior was painted to look like stone. Inside was bare board, nailed without much care.

  He could not see much. Even through his magnifying glass.

  “Hello,” he called.

  “‘lo?” came back at him, in his own voice.

  Or something very like.

  “You are found out.”

  “Out!”

  The culprit was here.

  But Dickie was still in the dark. He must remember to include a box of lucifers in his detective apparatus, with long tapers. Perhaps even a small lantern. Having left his candle with Maeve, so she wouldn’t be lonely, he was at a disadvantage.

  “The game is up,” he announced, sounding braver than he felt.

  “Up?”

  “This palace is surrounded byspecial detectives. You are under arrest.”

  “Arrest?”

  The culprit was an echo.

  The dark in front of his face gathered, solidified into coherence. He made out human shape.

  Dickie’s hand fell on the culprit’s shoulder.

  “Ah hah!”

  A hand gripped his own shoulder.

  “Hah,” came back, a gust of hot breath into his face.

  He squeezed and was squeezed.

  His shoulder hurt, his knees weakened. He was pushed down, as if shrinking.

  The hand on his shoulder grew, fingers like hard twigs poking into him. His feet sank into earth, which swarmed around his ankles. His socks would get muddied, which would displease Ma.

  Shapes moved all around.

  The culprit was not alone. He had minions.

  He imagined them—Greedy Sid, Miss MacAndrew, Uncle Satt, an ape, a mathematics tutor, a defrocked curate. The low folk who were part of the mystery.

  “Who are you?”

  “You!”

  * * * *

  ix: “two jumps behind”

  There was light ahead. A candle-flame.

  Charles pointed it out.

  The light moved, behind a tree, into hiding.

  Charles played his lantern over the area, wobbling the beam to indicate where the others should look, then directing it elsewhere, hoping to fool the candle-holder into believing she was overlooked.

  Charles was sure it was a she.

  He handed his lantern to Kate, who took it smoothly and continued the “search.”

  Charles stepped off the track.

  Whatever was passing itself off as snow was doing a good job. His shins were frozen as he waded. He crouched low and his bare hands sunk into the stuff.

  He crept towards the tree where the light had been.

  “Pretty princess,” he breathed to himself, “sit tight...”

  He had picked up night-skills in warmer climes, crawling over rocky hills with his face stained, dressed like an untouchable. He could cross open country under a full moon without being seen. In this dark, with so many things to hide behind, it should be easy.

  But it wasn’t. The going was treacherous. The snow lay lightly over brambles that could snare like barbed wire.

  Within a couple of yards of the tree, he saw the guarded, flickering spill of light. He flexed his fingers into the snow, numbing his joints. Sometimes, he had pains in his knuckles—which he had never mentioned to anyone. He stood, slowly.

  He held his breath.

  In a single, smooth movement, he stepped around the tree and laid a hand on...

  ...bark!

  He summoned the others.

  The candle perched in a nook, wax dribbling.

  Clear little footprints radiated from a hollow in the roots. They spiralled and multiplied, haring off in all directions as if a dozen princesses had sprung into being and bolted.

  Kate showed Charles a new-drawn picture of Maeve skipping away, tittering to herself.

  “Have you noticed he never draws us?” he said.

  “Maybe we’re not in the story yet.”

  “We’re here all right,” said Mist. “Two jumps behind.”

  Mist supported Davey now. The lad was running out of paper. His pictures were smaller, crowded together—two or three to a page—and harder to make out.

  “Let me try something,” said Kate.

  She laid her fingers on Davey’s hand, halting his pencil. He shook, the beginnings of a fit. She took his chin and forced him to look at her.

  “Davey, where’s the palace?”

  He was close to tears, frustrated at not being able to draw, to channel what he knew.

  “Not in pictures,” she said. “Words. Tell me in words.”

  Davey shook his head and shut his eyes. Squeaks came from the back of his throat.

  “.. .mother said... never should...”

  “Dickie’s in the woods,” said Kate.

  “With the gypsies?”

  “Yes, the naughty, naughty gypsies. That bad girl is taking Dickie to them. We can help him, but you have to help us. Please, Davey. For Dickie. These are your woods. You mapped them and made them. Where in the woods...”

  Davey opened his eyes.

  He turned, breaking Kate’s hold, and waded off, snow slushing around his feet. He pressed point to paper and made three strokes, then snapped the pencil and dropped the notebook.

  “This way,” he said.

  Davey walked with some confidence towards a stand of trees. He reached up and touched a low-hanging branch, pushing a bird’s nest, sending a ripple through branch, tree and sky. He took out his penknife, opened the blade and stuck it into the backdrop. With a tearing sound, the knife parted canvas and sank to the hilt. Davey drew his knife in a straight line, across the branch and into the air. He made a corner and cut downwards, as if hacking a door into a tent. The fabric ripped, noisily.

  Charles thought he could see for hundreds of yards, through the woods. Even as Davey cut his door, Charles could swear the lad stood in a real landscape.

  Davey slashed the cam as, methodically.

  There was a doorway in the wood.

  Beyond was gloom but not dark. It looked like the quarter where backstage people worked, where Sir Boris had got dressed and prepared or took his infrequent meal and rest-breaks.

  “Through here,” said Dickie.

  They followed. Beyond the door, it wasn’t cold any more. It was close, stifling.

  Dickie cut a door in an opposite wall.

  “I know where you’re hiding,” he said, to someone beyond.

  A screech filled the passage. A small person with wild hair tore between their legs, launching a punch at Davey’s chest, clawing at Kate’s face, sinking a shoulder into Mist’s stomach.

  Charles blocked her.

  The screech died. The girl’s face was in shadow, but could no longer be mistaken. This was not—had never been—Maeve Harvill. This was Princess Cuckoo, of Pixieland. Rather, of the shadow realm Davey recreated in his pictures, which Satterthwaite Bulge had named Færie and built in the real world. That was what she had wanted all along.

  “Where is he?” Charles asked. “Dickie?”

  The little face shut tight, lip buttoned, chin and cheeks set. Th
is close, she seemed a genuine child. No Thuggee strangler or Scots preacher could be as iron-willed as a little girl determined not to own up.

  “I know,” said Davey. “It’s where she took me, where I got away from.”