“What on Earth does that mean?”
“It means they’ve been drained of all their blood, sir. Each of them has a ragged wound in the throat, in the vicinity of the jugular vein and carotid artery. There’s talk of vampires, sir.”
“Bats?” said the befuddled Rowland.
“No sir—human vampires, like Sir Edward Varney, who was said to have been hanged several times over, or that Hungarian countess who cut a swathe through Paris when Napoleon was first consul.”
“Five bodies, you say?” Rowland repeated, pensively. “Do they think we have five vampires aboard?”
“Yes sir, that’s the theory,” Hodgson confirmed. “There are vigilantes roaming the lower decks already, sir, saying that if the vampires can’t be caught, staked through the heart and beheaded today there’ll be five more bodies tonight, and five more every night till we reach New York.”
“Staked through the heart and beheaded? What kind of barbarians are these people?”
“Mostly Irish, sir. In fact, that’s the moderate view. Some are saying that the five victims will rise from the dead to become vampires themselves, so that there’ll be ten victims tonight, twenty tomorrow, forty on the twenty-ninth, eighty on the thirtieth, and a further hundred and sixty on New Year’s Eve. If we were to be delayed at sea until the second—which isn’t so very improbable, if the weather report is to be trusted....”
“Nonsense,” said Rowland. “Storms in the Atlantic are water off a duck’s back to the Titan. We’ll be in New York shortly after dawn on New Year’s Day, come hell or high water!
“Well sir, even if that’s so, the total casualty figures calculated by the alarmist faction would take a fair bite out of the number of steerage passengers, even though we’re riding full. Even if the numbers turn out to be a wild overestimate, there’s another kind of alarmist wondering what might happen if the monsters were to turn their attention to the upper decks—in which case there might be a real tragedy, if, in fact, there really were any vampires aboard.”
“Which there aren’t, of course,” said Rowland, confidently. “What have you done so far to quell the panic?”
“Mr. Black tried to reassure the frightened emigrants by pointing out that we’ll be burying the five bodies at sea, and that it’d take a damnnably clever vampire to find its way back to the Titan from the bottom of the Atlantic,” Hodgson reported. “That might have been a mistake, in retrospect, because it seemed to concede the possibility that there might actually be vampires involved, which it might have been wiser to deny point blank. Sorry about that, sir.” “That’s all right, Hodgson,” Rowland said, as he pulled on his uniform. “Black was only doing what he thought best, although they’re hardly likely to take such assurances seriously from a second mate. It needs a captain’s authority to make such things clear. Hand me that bottle of Scotch, would you? I need a nip to clear my head. Tell Mr. Black and the purser to meet me on the bridge—and find that fellow Quatermain. We may need help on this one, and he’s a heroic sort, if what they say is true.”
Mr. Hodgson hurried off to execute these orders. Rowland finished off the bottle and then made his way forward, lurching slightly in spite of the state-of-the-art stabilizers with which the luxury liner was fitted. Hodgson was already on the bridge, with the second officer and the purser, young Kitchener—but it was to Allan Quatermain that Rowland turned first.
“There’s trouble afoot, Quatermain,” he said. “Five people dead—steerage people, but paid for their passage nevertheless—and wild talk about vampires. It needs to be nipped in the bud. I’d like you beside me when I go down there to address the mob, if you’re willing. It’ll give them extra confidence, you see, you being a big game hunter and all. I’ll tell them you’ll look into the matter personally, if I may.”
“You certainly may,” Quatermain said. “I’ll do everything I can to help, of course.”
At that moment, the door burst open. A young man pushed his way past the sailors stationed beside it, muttering what Rowland assumed at first to be “murder,” before he realized that this was one of the French contingent who had come over from Cherbourg on the Deliverance to meet the Titan at Southampton.
“Monsieur,” said the Frenchman, “I am Edward Rocambole, the grandson and heir of the Rocambole, and I have come to offer my services as a detective!”
“I never heard of anyone called Rocambole,” said Rowland. “Did you, Hodgson?”
“No sir,” said Hodgson.
“Nor have I,” Black chipped in.
“Nor I,” added Kitchener.
“Damn cheek, in any case!” said the captain. “This is a British ship and I’ve already recruited the best possible assistance in Mr. Quatermain here.” He leaned over to whisper in Quatermain’s ear: “We don’t need any help from some jumped-up Frog who thinks he’s Paris’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, do we Mr. Quatermain?”
“I think we can handle the matter between the two of us,” Quatermain murmured. “Bud-nipping’s a job best left to expert fingers, in my experience. Too many hunters frighten the game, you know.” “Exactly,” said Rowland. Then he raised his voice again to say: “Won’t be necessary, thanks all the same, Monsieur Cricketball.” “But I am the grandson of Rocambole!” Edward Rocambole protested.
“And I’m very probably the bastard grandson of King George IV, as is every dissatisfied soul in England,” Rowland countered. “Not that it matters, given that we’re in mid-Atlantic. On the Titan, I’m master regardless of my ancestry, grand or humble.”
“If I might be so bold as to ask, Mr. Rocambole,” Quatermain chipped in, “Are you by any chance a second class passenger?”
Edward Rocambole’s face went scarlet—a sight that would surely have stirred the spirit of any vampire—as he seemed to realize, belatedly, what he was up against. He muttered what might have been an apology, despite featuring the words sang, cochon, and chien, and hurried away.
“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 is famous for her standards of hygiene. Anyway, if we keep the bodies on ice we’ll only feed anxieties about their 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?” M. Apollinaire enquired.
“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 M. 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,” M. Lorrain observed, “I wouldn’t bother with the likes of the count’s daughters.”
“Nor would I,” said 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 one 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 his 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?” M. 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 M. Feval 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,” 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 M. 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 M. Rocambole’s grandson, Edward,” Feval 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 M. Lorrain’s arm. “It’s a form of English cuisine,” she explained.
“There’s a phrase to make the blood run cold,” M. 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 Tenebre. The younger one is a vampire, you know.”
“I thought the younger of the two so-called Tenebres 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 is 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 twenty-four 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 halfdozen 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 didn’t have a single dueling 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 story-teller, 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.
The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels Page 17
