by Alan K Baker
Blackwood found his mind drifting from the tightrope walk of diplomacy to the motives an assassin might have for killing R’ondd. Was it because he was the Ambassador... or was it because he was a Martian? The alternatives were equally unpalatable; each presented its own problems and pointed towards divergent lines of enquiry, but the latter possibility made Blackwood feel far more uncomfortable.
The vast majority of people went through their lives without ever seeing a denizen of the Red Planet in the flesh: the difference in atmospheric conditions on the two worlds made it impossible for Martians simply to stroll around on Earth without elaborate and cumbersome breathing apparatus (and, of course, the same was true of human beings on Mars). As a result, most of the people of Earth gleaned their information on Mars and Martians from newspaper articles and popular magazines, and, regrettably, from the lurid pages of the penny dreadfuls. In those dire publications, supernatural ne’er-do-wells such as Spring-Heeled Jack and Varney the Vampire competed with Maléficus the Martian for the public’s attention; to Blackwood, at least, there were times when Maléficus’s nefarious exploits came perilously close to anti-Martian propaganda.
During the first few minutes of the drive to the Bureau’s headquarters in Whitehall, Blackwood and Meddings exchanged a few trivialities concerning the weather but said little more to each other. Blackwood was not in the mood for conversation, and his young companion was astute enough to notice the fact. However, as they turned into Parliament Street, they passed a newspaper boy on the corner, who was shouting at the top of his lungs, ‘Read all abart it! Spring-Heeled Jack strikes again! Anovver attack in the East End! Read all abart it!’
Blackwood chuckled to himself, and Meddings turned to him. ‘Do you not place any credence in those reports, sir?’
‘Most certainly not! Although I’ll admit that the business is somewhat interesting from a socio-anthropological point of view.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘Do you know anything of folklore, Mr Meddings?’
‘Not a great deal, Mr Blackwood, I’m bound to say.’
‘Most people, if they consider the subject at all, believe folklore to be little more than a collection of quaint beliefs from the past, with precious little relevance to the modern world. But that is not so: folklore – by which I mean the traditional tales and beliefs of a people, widely-accepted yet spurious – is in a constant state of development and modification. It is happening all around us, if we would but pause to take note of it. This business about Spring-heeled Jack is a case in point.’
‘How so, if I may ask?’
Blackwood turned to his companion. ‘Have you ever seen Jack?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Do you know anyone who has?’
Meddings shook his head. ‘However,’ he added, ‘a friend of the fiancée of my sister’s best friend’s cousin claims to have caught sight of him about a month ago, in Spittalfields, so I understand.’
Blackwood chuckled again. ‘My dear chap, you make my point for me! Spring-Heeled Jack is no more than a creature of modern folklore, with no independent existence of his own. He is the subject of tales told by those wishing to add spice to their otherwise mundane and dreary lives. No offence to the friend of the fiancée of your sister’s best friend’s cousin, I hasten to add.’
‘None taken, sir, I assure you.’
‘Thank you. I merely wished to impress upon you the point that creatures such as Spring-Heeled Jack may cavort through the pages of the penny dreadfuls, but they most certainly do not cavort through the streets of London.’
‘Creatures like Spring-Heeled Jack and Varney the Vampire.’
‘Precisely,’ Blackwood smiled.
‘And... Maléficus the Martian?’
‘Ah! I see your line of reasoning: Maléficus the Martian and Spring-Heeled Jack are both written about in the penny dreadfuls, and since Martians exist, Jack must exist also.’
‘Not the sturdiest of arguments, I suppose,’ said Meddings a little ruefully.
‘Indeed not,’ Blackwood replied, although his smile had faded at the mention of Maléficus.
Fortunately, he was spared any further unsavoury contemplations by their arrival at the Foreign Office. He stepped down from the cab while Meddings paid the driver, who tugged at his cap before spurring the horse away into the fog, and together they walked through the great arched doorway into the building.
Almost as soon as they had entered, Meddings made to take his leave of Blackwood, who asked, ‘Will you not be joining us, Mr Meddings?’
‘Ah, no sir: I was instructed merely to deliver the message to you.’
‘Very well. Then I’ll bid you good day.’
‘And to you, sir,’ replied the young man with a slight bow, before hurrying off to attend to his other duties, whatever they might be.
Blackwood’s footsteps echoed in counterpoint to the murmur of voices as he made his way across the vast, richly-decorated entrance hall. The designer of the Foreign Office, George Gilbert Scott, had described the building as ‘a kind of national palace or drawing room for the nation’, and Blackwood, who admired the ancient, the traditional and the permanent, never failed to appreciate the timeless elegance of the building’s classical design, even on a day like today, when he was here on urgent business. He now moved swiftly amongst the clerks and other functionaries who seemed to inhabit the place constantly, some carrying sheaves of papers between departments, others congregated in groups of varying sizes, discussing the issues of the moment.
The Special Investigator went straight to a nondescript door in a far corner of the room and unlocked it with a key selected from a small bunch that he withdrew from an inner pocket of his overcoat. He went quickly through the door and closed it behind him, then descended the ancient stone staircase that wound deep into the ground.
The bottom of the staircase gave onto a short corridor, also constructed of ancient and pitted stone and lit by flickering gas lamps, at the end of which was another door. A black-uniformed guard stood stiffly to attention at the door, and he watched Blackwood’s approach with unblinking eyes. He remained perfectly still, but the Special Investigator knew that he would fly instantly to violent action should the credentials Blackwood now displayed prove to be anything but perfectly in order.
The guard examined the leather wallet which Blackwood held open for him, then nodded once and stepped aside. Blackwood opened the door and stepped into an outer office whose walls were lined with heavy oak filing cabinets, and at the centre of which stood a large desk. An impeccably-dressed woman in her middle years looked up from the scrying glass of the cogitator which dominated the desktop.
‘Ah, Special Investigator Blackwood,’ she said in a quietly mellifluous voice.
‘Good morning, Miss Ripley,’ he replied, taking off his hat and overcoat and hanging them on the stand by the door.
‘He’s waiting for you. Please go straight in.’
‘Thank you.’ Blackwood crossed the room to the heavy oak door behind Miss Ripley’s desk, knocked once and entered the inner office.
The head of Her Majesty’s Bureau of Clandestine Affairs, who was known only by his codename of ‘Grandfather’, was pacing back and forth on his steam-powered artificial legs, clearly in a state of great distraction. As he stopped, turned and paced back the way he had come, tiny white clouds emerged from the knees of his black pinstripe trousers, accompanied by the faint but unmistakeable sounds of whispering pistons and gurgling water. Grandfather had lost his legs twenty years earlier during the Second Afghan War while serving with the Kabul Field Force under the command of Major General Sir Frederick Roberts. Although the British victory over the Afghan Army at Char Asiab had cost him dear, Grandfather looked back with great fondness on those days, and a portrait of Sir Frederick hung alongside one of the Queen on the wall behind his desk.
‘Blackwood!’ he said, turning with a faint hiss and clank. ‘Good of you to get here so promptly.’
‘Have a seat.’ Grandfather indicated one of the two burgundy leather chairs facing the desk.
‘Thank you,’ Blackwood replied, carefully refraining from looking at Grandfather’s legs. It was a shame, he reflected, how the pipes and miniature boilers in the thighs ruined the line of the man’s otherwise elegantly-cut trousers. For Queen and Country, he thought, philosophically.
Grandfather sat down heavily in his own chair and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Darjeeling?’ he asked.
‘Yes, please.’
The door opened, and Miss Ripley poked her head into the office.
‘Would you be kind enough to bring us a pot of tea, Miss Ripley?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ she replied, and closed the door again.
‘Although I dare say you’d prefer coffee, eh, Blackwood?’ Grandfather pronounced the word ‘coffee’ as if it were a particularly fulsome oath. Blackwood merely smiled. It was true that he had grown accustomed to the beverage during his previous assignment to America to investigate the case of the Wyoming Mummy. When Grandfather had overheard him confiding to a colleague upon his return that he was not absolutely sure that he didn’t prefer it to tea, he had informed Blackwood that he would have been only slightly more dismayed had his operative proclaimed allegiance to President McKinley over Her Majesty.
‘No, sir,’ Blackwood replied. ‘Darjeeling would be capital.’
Grandfather eyed him suspiciously. ‘Hmm...’ He turned his attention to a buff-coloured folder on his desk, which he opened slowly, almost tentatively, as if he half expected something profoundly unpleasant to jump out of it into his lap. ‘A dreadful business, this.’
Blackwood assumed he was referring to the death of the Ambassador rather than his taste in beverages. ‘Indeed, sir.’
‘The press has got the jump on us, which is never a good thing.’
‘It’s difficult to imagine otherwise, in view of the seriousness of the event. Someone attending the function obviously notified them at the first opportunity. Do we know yet how Ambassador R’ondd died?’
Grandfather rested an index finger on the contents of the folder. ‘I have here the report on the preliminary post-mortem, which was conducted by Dr Felix Cutter, a forensic pathologist attached to the Foreign Office. It does not make for comfortable reading.’
‘How so?’
At that moment, there was a discreet knock at the door, and Miss Ripley entered bearing a silver tea tray. The two men lapsed into silence while she set the tray down on Grandfather’s desk and retreated.
‘Thank you, Miss Ripley.’
‘You’re most welcome, sir.’
When the door had closed once again, Grandfather handed the top sheet of paper to Blackwood. ‘Read this.’
While Grandfather turned his attention to the tea things, Blackwood read the report, his eyes skimming along the lines quickly, taking everything in. ‘Good grief,’ he said quietly when he had finished. ‘I’m no expert on Martian physiology, but this doesn’t look like a natural death, even for our singular cousins across the Æther.’
‘Quite so,’ replied Grandfather, placing a cup before Blackwood.
‘These things that were discovered in the Ambassador’s oesophageal tract...’
‘Tracts,’ Grandfather corrected. ‘All four of them.’
‘The pathologist likens them to larvae of some kind.’
‘Of a kind not seen on Earth... or Mars.’
Blackwood glanced at his superior. ‘But they must have come from Mars. The Martians are incapable of breathing our atmosphere: it’s too rich for them. Their Embassy is hermetically sealed and contains its own atmosphere with the correct proportion and density of gases; in addition, they always carry their own breathing apparatus whilst abroad on Earth. There’s simply no conceivable way in which such organisms could have been introduced into Ambassador R’ondd’s apparatus.’
‘Isn’t there? At any rate, that’s what you’ll have to find out, Blackwood,’ said Grandfather, his face clouded with a pensive frown. ‘As I said, this is a dreadful business, and it could very quickly become even worse. No Martian has ever died in such suspicious circumstances whilst on Earth – and no human on Mars. We must move quickly to ascertain exactly what has happened.’
‘What do the Martians say? Do you think they might perceive this as an act of aggression on the part of Humanity?’
‘They haven’t commented, as yet. The Martians are essentially a peace-loving people, as you know.’ Grandfather took a contemplative sip of tea, and continued, ‘Nevertheless, their technology is somewhat in advance of ours. If they perceived us as aggressors, I think it’s reasonable to say that we wouldn’t do very well.’
Blackwood sighed. ‘Indeed not.’
‘Her Majesty is at present preparing an official letter of condolence for the Martian government, which will be carried aboard the next interplanetary cylinder to Mars – as will the Ambassador’s body.’
‘When is the cylinder scheduled to depart?’
‘In five days’ time. Her Majesty would be most gratified if she were able to assure them in her letter that no human being was to blame for their Ambassador’s untimely death ... and it would be even better if she were able to offer a true and accurate explanation of exactly what happened at the banquet, and why.’
Blackwood was silent for several moments. Then he said decisively, ‘I think it will serve us best to go on the assumption that the Ambassador was the victim of foul play.’
‘Intuition?’
‘Quite.’
‘Then our instincts are in accordance, Blackwood. Begin your investigation immediately; use whatever resources you see fit, and do please bring me an answer before that cylinder leaves for Mars in five days’ time!’
CHAPTER THREE:
The Monster
The cottage stood near the village of Old Ford, to the east of London, and visitors or even passers-by were few and far between, especially in the evening. It was a quarter to nine, and the Alsop family were gathered around the fire in their sitting room. Outside, the air hung cold and still upon the land, like a breath held in expectation. There were the beginnings of a light frost on the curtained windows, and the crystal stillness of the night pressed in upon the little house sitting alone beneath the stars.
Mr James Alsop was sitting in his armchair, reading to his family from a book of Longfellow’s poems, while his wife, Elizabeth, sewed, and their three daughters, Mary, Jane and Sarah listened attentively. The fire crackled in the hearth, and the clock on the mantelpiece measured the passage of the quiet evening with a barely audible tick... tick.
The evening might have proceeded thus for the next hour or two; it might have concluded with Mr Alsop closing the book and discussing the poetry with his family in a relaxed and amiable way, before they retired to their beds. It might have been merely one more pleasant evening in the uneventful lives of an ordinary family... had not the bell at the garden gate rung.
Mr Alsop stopped reading and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Who can that be at this hour?’ he wondered, sighing in mild irritation.
The bell rang again, louder this time, and for longer.
Mrs Alsop looked up from her sewing and said, ‘Jane, be a good girl and see who is there.’
‘Of course, Mother.’
Jane Alsop, eighteen years old, slim and pretty with long auburn hair and a quick smile, stood up and walked to the sitting room door. Her mother watched her go, her own smile of affection briefly turning her lips. Jane was a bright, friendly girl, whose gracefulness was not studied, as with so many her age, but natural and effortless; Mrs Alsop had little doubt that she would one day make a fine wife for some as yet-unknown young man.
Jane hurried along the short corridor leading to the tiny hallway and opened the front door, shivering suddenly as the cold night air enveloped her. The small garden glittered faintly with its light dusting of frost, and beyond the low wall s
urrounding the cottage, the night was silent, the land and sky asleep.
Peering into the darkness, Jane saw a figure standing at the gate leading to Bearbinder Lane. She couldn’t quite make out the details of his appearance, for her eyes had not yet grown accustomed to the night, but he appeared to be quite tall, and he wore a cloak... and something on his head which Jane took to be a helmet.
She stepped out towards the figure. ‘Who are you?’ she called. ‘What is the matter?’
The figure answered immediately in a loud, urgent voice, ‘I am a policeman. For God’s sake, bring me a light, for we have caught Spring-Heeled Jack here in the lane!’
Jane gasped and took an involuntary step backwards. Spring-Heeled Jack... a vicious criminal according to some, a ghost or demon according to others, he had been terrorising London for nearly a year. No one had been able to apprehend him, for he was, so they said, possessed of supernatural strength and was able to leap over buildings, but many had been frightened half to death by his horrific appearance and the cruel and motiveless assaults to which he had subjected them.
Without a word, Jane hurried back into the house and fetched a candle, which she carried to the garden gate and the man who was still standing there, waiting silently. Without a word, he took the candle from her...
But then, instead of hurrying away to secure his quarry, he threw off his cloak and held the candle to his chest, so that its flame illuminated his face.
Jane screamed at the apparition that was thus revealed to her; she screamed at the eyes burning like red-hot coals in a grimacing, tight-skinned, mask-like face; at the strange metal helmet she had at first taken to be that of a policeman; at the tight-fitting white suit that shimmered like oilskin in the fitful candlelight; at the device that resembled a lamp that was strapped to his chest...
Jane barely had time to register these details – barely had time to realise that this was no policeman but Spring-Heeled Jack himself – before the apparition lunged at her. He opened his lipless mouth and vomited a seething ball of blue fire into her face. Jane screamed again as he grabbed her by the back of her neck and thrust her head under one of his arms, holding her there in an iron-fast grip while, with his other hand, he began to tear at her dress. In the chaos of her terror, Jane realised that her attacker did not have hands, but long, razor-sharp metal talons. She felt them biting into the skin on her back and arms, felt the warm blood begin to dampen her clothing.
