* * *
4
The Hellfire Club
LUCIAN TOOK AN early leave of us after Die Fledermaus. The young captain's duties as the Prince of Wales's equerry required him to rise from his bed—or whomever's bed he happened to be occupying—at a relatively decent hour of the morning. Having previously assigned Dr. Enfield, my resident, to act in my stead at the office the next day, I was free to accompany the others to a late supper at Rouchard's. The ladies were sent home after that under the protective wing of our dour Guardsman. Bertie, Duncan, and I then proceeded unescorted to our favorite midnight haunt, the Hellfire Club, for a nightcap and perhaps a bit of whoring.
What good are wealth and social standing to a man unless he is free to abuse them? Dreary virtue is the chilly province of the middle classes. I have always said that an aristocrat is bred for debauchery. And in my day there was no better place than the Hellfire Club for a gentleman who wished to comport himself in a discreetly wanton fashion.
Dear old Hellfire—how I miss the place! It was without parallel in the world: the loveliest courtesans, the finest paintings, the truest billiard table, the loosest roulette wheel, the best wine, the most exotic "entertainments." I have visited the best men's establishments throughout the Continent and India and none were more than a desultory campfire next to Hellfire's perpetually blazing bacchanal. Perhaps in Turkey, Ethiopia, or some other ancient sunburnt country, where passion was elevated to the highest pinnacle of art thousands of years ago, there exists a brothel to best the Hellfire Club—yet I doubt it.
The retiring rooms of Hellfire's upper floors were scrupulously clean, the girls scrupulously healthy. This latter circumstance was due to the ministrations of a handsome young doctor who shall remain nameless. This able physician was recompensed for his duties in various unorthodox fashions, but I can assure you the payments were entirely to his liking!
To gain admission to Hellfire you had to be well-born or wealthy, preferably both. The doorman did admit the odd tycoon or rich foreign industrialist, but the vast majority of the club's patrons were at the very least knights or baronets, many were dukes, marquises, viscounts, earls, princes, and kings.
Though never mentioned in polite company, Hellfire was known to everybody who mattered—and to some who didn't. The existence of so much delicious excess in the heart of London could not but help draw the attention of the self-appointed watchdogs of public morality. Though most professional do-gooders understood well enough which side of their bread was buttered, there were a few who labored vainly to douse Hellfire. Once or twice a year one of London's scandalmongers would attempt to publish a condemnation of the club in one of the city's lesser newspapers, scribbling a tedious polemic declaring the Hellfire Club to be a chancre on the rose of the Empire. These sanctimonious eructations were easily suppressed. We knew how to keep a tight rein on the press in my day, and the world was a better place for it.
The Contessa Saint-Simon met us in the foyer and conducted us through the casino to the banquette reserved for His Majesty's use when he visited Hellfire. A round of champagne cocktails was served, and we began to critique the Strauss performance for the Contessa, who, like Captain Lucian, was an enthusiastic patron of the city's concert halls.
"I am surprised you did not enjoy Die Fledermaus, Monsieur Duncan. The reviews have been most positive."
"It was, oh, I don't know," Duncan said, rummaging his untidy artist's mind for the right words. "I suppose it was all somehow a bit unsubstantial. I kept expecting the actors to begin waltzing about the stage."
"You raise an interesting point," the Contessa mused in her French-accented English. "Can popular music be serious? Or can serious music be popular?"
Bertie sipped his cocktail with a bored expression, but I felt my enthusiasm for the discussion—and the delectable Contessa—rise.
"Duncan is quite right," I said. "The opera was a sugary confection that takes away your appetite but leaves you quickly hungry for something of substance. Mozart and Beethoven are my meat in the concert hall, and Bach, of course, in church." In music, politics, and religion, my tastes have always been soundly conservative.
"I thought you were smitten with Wagner," the Contessa said and slowly blinked her heavily lidded eyes. Her teeth, white as fine porcelain, were almost straight across the front of her upper jaw instead of following the usual convex line. Strange how a slight physical anomaly, which might even be considered a mild imperfection, can serve to make a beautiful woman even more bewitching!
"I was mad about Wagner for a time," I confessed, remembering how I had gone on at great length to her about Der Ring des Nibelungen earlier in the season. "My love proved to be nothing but a passing infatuation. With Wagner everything is too loud and too long."
"Hear hear!" Bertie said. He abhorred operas that went on for very long. "I have had enough music for tonight."
"But not of the theatre, I hope, Your Majesty. We have a special entertainment planned for tonight."
"What is it going to be?" Duncan asked the Contessa. "I heard the Swedish milk maids are in town."
"That is next week, monsieur. Tonight we have something new for you. It is something unusual, something daring and different. I dare say that you may even find it shocking."
"We can always hope!" I said.
"Certainly you have heard the stories about the London vampire?"
I exchanged a look with Bertie.
"What the deuce is a vampire?" Duncan asked. "Lady Gray was saying something about a vampire earlier this evening."
"She's always rattling on about some thing or the other," Bertie said with a roll of the eyes. He was growing tired of Lady Gray; Lord Shaftbury might get her back in his bed yet, I thought.
"If you have not heard about the vampire, you are all in for a surprise," the Contessa said. "You do like surprises, don't you?"
"Oh, Blackley lives for them," Bertie said. "Tell the Contessa about that night at Lord Allyn's country house in Wales."
"The rooster story?"
"That's the one."
"Do amuse us, old boy," Duncan said. "We have time."
I paused for a sip of champagne cocktail before I began.
"As we all know, country houses can be the stage for elaborate dramas of clandestine romance. For the sake of this story, let us imagine that a certain rakish young doctor wanted to arrange an assignation with the beautiful wife of a certain member of Parliament, who was himself at the time off at another country house, with one of his several mistresses. Let us assume he found an obliging hostess and arranged for her to invite him and the lady to her country house on the same weekend. In the evening, after dinner, music, conversation, a few hands of cards, and all the other social niceties, the guests retired to their bedchambers. Following a suitable interval to preserve decency and discretion, our amorous hero tiptoed down the darkened hall to open both the unlocked bedroom door and the charms of his awaiting paramour."
"It sounds as if this is a routine you have practiced once or twice yourself, Dr. Blackley."
"With distinction, I dare say, Contessa. Yet on this particular night my overly gracious host compelled me to drink one too many glasses of port before retiring. As the clock approached midnight, I made my way to the darkened west wing, carefully counting the knobs on the bedroom doors.
"One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Seven."
This was Bertie's favorite part of the story. I paused while he laughed, then repeated the pregnant line without any special inflection, which is how the story is properly told.
"One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Seven.
"I silently opened the door. My thoughtful hostess had instructed her servants to keep the door hinges well oiled. I whispered my lady's name, but no response came back. Either she had dozed off while awaiting her beau or else she was playing a game of opossum in order to tantalize me.
"The door was expertly closed without making the slightest sound. A little moonlight spilled in thro
ugh the window, enough light for me to easily make my way to the bed without barking my shin, tripping over the rug, or falling victim to any of the other pitfalls that embarrass and humiliate less accomplished seducers. I stood there a moment, holding my breath. And then I leaped into the bed and cried out, 'Cock-a-doodle-do!' "
I paused to let the image sink into my listeners' minds. Life may not be a comedy, but it is usually best to think it so.
"The Bishop of York and his prune-faced wife both sat bolt upright and began shrieking, as if the Devil himself had jumped into their bed."
"Maybe they thought you were the vampire," the Contessa said, laughing merrily but less raucously than Bertie and Duncan, who seemed on the verge of apoplexy at the thought of me leaping into bed with the pious old bishop and his wife. I did not respond to the Contessa's remark about the vampire except to nod. I still had no idea what the blazes a vampire was, though I was about to find out.
"But—the end," Bertie said. "That's not—the end."
"Unfortunately not," I said. "A strange smell assaulted my nose. I say strange, and yet the aroma was entirely familiar. I felt a warm dampness wetting my hands and knees. One, maybe both, of the frightened old fools had wet themselves."
"Mon Dieu!" the Contessa said, clapping her hands with delight at the concert of embarrassments in my tale.
At that moment a Russian giant dressed as a jinni rang the brass gong that signaled the entertainment was about to begin. As we joined the others moving down the hall, the Contessa put her arm through mine and pulled my head toward hers.
"Tell me, Dr. Blackley: Did you ever find door number seven?"
"Are you joking? After all that trouble, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury himself would have been able to keep me from completing my assignation."
"And it was worth the trouble?"
"She wasn't as delightful as you, my dear, but, yes, it was well worth it. It always is."
Hellfire's theatre was made over to suit whatever fashion imagination demanded for the productions: a dungeon in the Spanish Inquisition, a hospital room, a women's prison, a barn, a Roman bath, a crofter's shack, a nunnery. On the night we went to Hellfire after Die Fledermaus, the theatre had been done up as the bedchamber of a fashionable London house. I was a little disappointed, though ordinary settings were sometimes the scenes of the club's more depraved entertainments. The theatre quickly filled to capacity, late arrivals lining up along the back wall. A Polynesian girl in a grass skirt came onto the stage carrying a placard above her head. I lifted my eyes from the brown nipples of her small but well-shaped breasts to read the play's title—The Vampire—lettered in bloodred ink. The house lights went down and a lone pianist began to play in the orchestra pit—the music Debussy, I think, judging from the bizarre melody.
A woman strode onto the stage. She was an impressive specimen—tall and striking, with magnificent breasts, a wasp waist, and brick-red hair piled high upon her head. She came to the edge of the stage and turned in profile with a sweep of the skirt, looking out over the audience as if we were the ones on display. I was undressing the bold hussy with my eyes when I noticed a mist swirling onto the stage from the wing. Miss Red reacted to this with alarm, as if the fog harbored a menace within its impenetrable folds. Her hands flew to the high collar of her dress in a gesture of distress as she took several halting steps backward. The mist began to recede, leaving in its wake the lone figure of a man. He was turned away from us at first, the collar of his cape pulled high, his face concealed. He seemed to have floated in upon the fog, a rather disconcerting impression.
The figure extended his arm and pointed a long index finger at the woman. She stopped backing away and stood frozen in place, as if impaled upon an invisible shaft of energy flowing from the tip of the man's bony finger.
He walked to a side table and removed his top hat and cape, his back still to us. The woman continued to stand where she had been, her eyes wide and unblinking, apparently mesmerized. When he turned toward us, I saw he was an ordinary sort of fellow, with a face most women would regard as handsome, though there was something cold, even cruel, about his expression. His eyes were his most pronounced feature: They were dark and mesmeric. The man who had floated onto the stage on a puff of fog had put the redhead into a hypnotic trance.
"A chair," the mesmerist commanded. He was Hungarian, judging from his voice.
The redhead dragged a cane-bottom chair before the man and stood there, staring blankly ahead, as he sat.
"Take off all your clothing," he commanded.
The woman began to undress, her stare straight ahead, her fingers blindly working the buttons and hooks of her garments. By degrees her lovely body was revealed to us—neck, shoulders, arms, legs. Her breasts were full and milky white, with large pink areoles. Her delta of Venus was thatched in brick-red hair.
The mesmerist stood then and indicated with a gesture of his hand that the woman should take his place in the chair. He was grinning now, a crooked half sneer that gave his face a distinctly lupine appearance. It took me a moment to notice the unusually prominent canines. Indeed, his teeth were like the fangs on a wolf. Small details reveal much: Those two incisors, simple stagecraft, implied the inner beast within the man. It was at this point that I began to understand. A vampire was a demon disguised as a man, an incubus imbued with mesmeric powers to prey upon women.
He snapped his fingers and the woman's sinews became unstrung. She slumped backward in the chair, her arms hanging limp, her legs spread wide, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The vampire made himself free with the redhead, his hands roaming her body, caressing and exploring its most intimate places. His tongue, which was unusually long and pointed, flicked the woman's ear. She did not show even the smallest reaction to these assaults, so completely had she been taken into the vampire's spell. The vampire kissed her full on the lips, forcing her mouth open, his tongue disappearing inside like a serpent slithering down a dark damp hole. He kissed her cheek, then nibbled it, then began to lick, the eel of a tongue moving slowly to her jaw and down her neck, pausing when he reached the soft skin in the hollow between her neck and shoulder.
The woman's muscles contracted suddenly as if from a powerful jolt of electricity, the sudden motion startling the audience. She would have flung herself out of the chair if the vampire hadn't held her body firmly in place, like a specimen pinned to a dissecting table. A trickle of scarlet ran down her neck and between the perfect whiteness of her breasts.
The vampire had sunk his teeth into her jugular!
"Doctor" the Contessa whispered, her hand gripping mine the moment I started to stand. I saw her smile and relaxed. I had been gulled. The action on stage was, after all, mere action on a stage. This was not real.
Down toward the front of the theatre a man got up and hurried up the aisle. The entertainment, so unexpectedly violent, was more than he could take.
"Mr. Raphael," the Contessa whispered. "You would not know him. He is a wealthy American and not very sophisticated, it seems."
On stage, the dramatics were about to rise to a new level of sophistication. The vampire carried the naked redhead's limp body toward the bed. Her neck, like his mouth, was smeared with blood. She pretended to be dead. But the vampire, judging from his trousers, was very much alive.
"This is based on accounts of the London vampire," the Contessa whispered.
"Do you mean there really is such a fiend at large in the city?" I asked in amazement.
"Shhh!" Bertie commanded. He did not like being distracted from the action on stage, which was building toward a predictable sort of climax.
* * *
5
A Summons to Downing Street
A FORTNIGHT AFTER our trip to the Hellfire Club, Algernon Tumor, the least fun of Dizzy's three secretaries (none of whom were particularly fun), came to collect me at my Harley Street office, insisting I accompany him to the Prime Minister's residence without delay.
"Whatever is the rus
h, Algae? The Prime Minister's asthma acting up again?"
"No, sir."
"A touch of dropsy?"
He shook his head.
"Now listen here, Algae," I said, "I just left Lord Salisbury sitting in my examining room in his knickers, mad as blazes. I trust this is more than some piffling trifle."
"The matter is of the utmost urgency, sir, but I am not at liberty to say more. The Chief will take care of that himself."
"The Chief," I puffed, not particularly caring for the nickname Dizzy's political underlings used to denote the Prime Minister. I grabbed my coat and medical bag, assuming the problem was medical, perhaps something uncomfortable, embarrassing, and potentially scandalous. Like most men who achieve old age, the old lion was paying for the excesses of a colorful life. Disraeli's asthma made him susceptible to bronchitis. I had recommended to him a half hour of brisk walking daily, but the P.M. was steadfastly opposed to exercise. If he took a constitutional, it was only because he had a beautiful young woman or an interesting conversationalist to accompany him.
Algae said something about the weather as we went out of doors—some complaint about the wind, if memory serves, that caused him to be even more of an irritant than usual to me. I make it a practice to ignore the weather, and in recompense it ignores me. I sat with my bag on my lap and listened to the clip-clop of the horse pulling us along the busy street, wondering if the malady at hand was of a nonmedical nature, as was sometimes the case.
The Aylesford Affair was fresh in my mind as we trotted toward No. 10 Downing Street. I had helped Dizzy untie that particular Gordian knot, though it had been no easy task. Lord Randolph Churchill had gone so far as to threaten to expose Lady Aylesford's love letters to Lord Blandford, unless the Prince of Wales intervened to prevent Lord Aylesford from divorcing his wife. A few years earlier and such a thing would have ended in a duel and one of the antagonists dead. As it was, the contretemps resulted instead in a complicated and vexing row that tore London society in two. Dragging poor Bertie into the mess had been particularly unconscionable, but matters of the heart have a way of disregarding the rules, and the consequences be damned. Dizzy had rather enjoyed playing peacemaker, with my assistance as go-between among the warring factions. I have provided this sort of service on more than a few such occasions. My family's ancient name has always made me welcome in the best places, while the fact that I am a physician makes most people willing to discuss with me the most personal sort of problems.
The London Vampire Panic Page 2
