The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]

by By Kim Newman

  The woman ignored him and forked a thin slice of reddened meat into her mouth.

  He looked back. The carriage had stretched. The rest of his so-called group were dozens of booths away, in a pool of light, smiling and fondling, relieved he was gone, already forgetting he’d ever been there. The bastarding bastards! They had the only bright light. The rest of the carriage was dim.

  Now there were other diners, in black and white and silent. One or two to every fifth or sixth booth. Shadows on frosted-glass partitions. Starched collars and blurry faces. Some were missing eyes or mouths; some had too many.

  Muriel was here somewhere, having her usual high old time while someone else brought home the bacon.

  Bitch!

  “May I see your ticket?”

  It was the conductor. Or was it another official? This one looked the same, but the tone of voice was not so unctuous. He sounded deeper, stronger, potentially brutal. More like a prison warder than a servant.

  What was the name again? Albert? Alfred? Angus? Ronald? Donald?

  Arnold—like Matthew Arnold, Thomas Arnold, Arnie, Arnoldo, Arnold. That was it. Arnold.

  “What is it, Arnold?” he snapped.

  “Your ticket,” he insisted. His collar insignia, like a police constable’s, was a metal badge. LSIR. That was wrong, out of date. “You must have your ticket with you at all times and be prepared to surrender it for inspection.”

  “You clipped mine at Euston,” said Cutley, patting his pockets.

  Cutley searched himself. He found his bus ticket from Essex Road to Euston, a cinema stub (Is 9d, Naked as Nature Intended, the Essoldo), a slip pinned inside his jacket since it was last dry-cleaned three years ago, a sheaf of shorthand notes for a lecture he’d never given, an invitation to Cox-Foxe’s thirty-years-service sit-down dinner, a page torn out of the Book of Common Prayer with theorems pencilled in the margin, a linked chain of magician’s handkerchiefs some bastard must have planted on him as a funny, a Hanged Man tarot card that had been slipped to him as a warning by that blasted Puma Cult, his primary school report card (“Fair Only”), an expired ration book, a French postcard Muriel had once sent him, his divorce papers, a signed photograph of Sabrina, a Turkish bank-note, a card with spare buttons sewn onto it, a leaf torn out of a desk calendar for next week, and a first edition of Thomas Love Peacock’s Headlong Hall he had once taken out of Brichester University Library and not got round to returning but which he could’ve sworn he’d left behind in the house Muriel had somehow wound up keeping when she walked out on him. But no ticket.

  “Would this be yours?” said Arnold, holding up a strip of card.

  Cutley was more annoyed. This was ridiculous.

  “If you had it all the time, why didn’t you say so, man?”

  “We have to be sure of these things.”

  Cutley noticed that the conductor wasn’t “sirring” him anymore. Before he could take the proffered ticket, he had to return his various discoveries to his pockets. Even if he piled up the things he could afford to throw away, it was a devil of a job to fit everything back into his jacket, which was baggier and heavier by the minute.

  Arnold watched, still holding out the ticket.

  Beyond the conductor, the dining car was nearly empty again. Jeperson, Annette and Magic Fingers were in the far distance, merrily tucking into knickerbocker glory or some other elaborate, sickly-sweet pud. None of that on his old ration book, he remembered with a bitter twinge.

  He was sorted out. Except he had put the Peacock with the used bus and cinema tickets. He slid the book into his side-pocket, tearing a seam with a loud rip. He had a paper of buttons but no needle and thread. Muriel always had a needle, ready threaded, pinned about her in case of emergencies. She wasn’t in the dining carriage now—probably off in some fellow’s compartment, on her knees, gagging for it, the cow, the harlot!

  “Why are you still here?” he asked Arnold, snatching his ticket.

  “To make sure,” said the conductor. “This isn’t your place. This is for First Class Passengers only.”

  Bloody typical! These jumped-up little Hitlers put on a blue serge uniform that looked a bit like a policeman’s and thought they could order everyone else about, put them all in their proper and bloody places. One look at Harry Cutley was enough to tell them he didn’t belong with silver cutlery and long-stemmed roses at every table. All the knickerbocker glory a fat girl could eat conveyed with the compliments of the chef to the table in crawling, grovelling deference! Only, just this once, Harry Cutley did belong. Baggy, torn, patched jacket and all, Cutley was in First Class. He had a First Class ticket, not bought with his own money, but his all the same. With angry pride, he brandished it at the conductor’s nose.

  “What does this say, my good man?”

  “I beg your pardon,” responded Arnold, with a tone Cutley didn’t like at all. “What does what say?”

  “This ticket, you bastard. What does this ticket say?”

  “Third Class,” said the conductor. “Which is where you should be, if you don’t mind my saying. This is not the place for you. You would not be comfortable here. You would be conscious of your, ah, shortcomings.”

  Cutley looked at his ticket. It must be some sort of funny.

  “This isn’t mine,” he said.

  “You said it was. You recognised it. You would not want to make a scene in the First Class Dining Carriage.”

  “First Class! I don’t call a stale pork pie first-class dining!”

  “The fare in Third Class might be more suited to your palate. More your taste. Rolls are available. Hard-tack biscuits. Powdered eggs, snoek, spam. Now, move along, there’s a good fellow.”

  Arnold, seeming bigger, stood between him and the booth where the others were downing champagne cocktails. Cutley tried to get their attention, but Arnold swayed and swelled to block him from their sight. Cutley tried to barge past. The conductor laid hands on him.

  “I must ask you to go back to your place.”

  “Bastard,” spat Cutley into the man’s bland face.

  Arnold had a two-handed grip on Cutley’s lapels. So where did the fist that sank into Cutley’s stomach come from?

  Cutley reeled, hearing another long rip as a lapel tore in the conductor’s hand. His gut clenched around pain. He knew when he was beaten. He slunk off, towards the connecting door. Beyond was Second Class, not his place either. He was supposed to be at the back of the train, with the baggage and the mail, probably with live chickens and families of untouchables who sat on suitcases tied with string, lost in the crowd, one of the masses, trodden under by bastards and bitches. In his place.

  There were things back there which he could use. He knew where they were. He had overheard, at Euston. He remembered the long cases.

  Guns!

  He limped out of the dining carriage, into the dark.

  * * * *

  IV

  “What’s up with Harry?” Richard asked.

  “Gyppy tummy?” suggested Magic Fingers.

  “I should go after him,” said Annette, folding her napkin. “We shouldn’t be separated.”

  Richard touched her arm. His instincts tingled. So, he knew at once, did hers.

  Harry had stumbled past Arnold, who was briefly showed bewildered, and charged out of the carriage.

  “You stay here,” said Richard. “I’ll go.”

  He stood. Annette was supposed to admire his manly resolve. She radiated a certain mumsy pride as if he were a schoolboy striding to the crease to face the demon bowler of the Upper Sixth. Not quite what he intended.

  Harry Cutley had been seized in the middle of a mouthful of pie. Not necessarily a phenomenon worth an incident form. Something in his eyes as he veered off, trying to stanch coughing, suggested he wasn’t seeing what Richard was. The man had been touched. Attacked, even.

  “Your friend, sir,” said Arnold, with concern. “He seems taken poorly.”

  “What did he say?”

&nbs
p; “Nothing repeatable, sir.”

  “I’ll see to him, thank you, Arnold.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Every time he spoke with Arnold, Richard had to quash an impulse to tip him. At the end of the journey, was it the done thing to palm a ten-bob note and pass it over with a handshake?

  He walked the length of the carriage, rolling with the movement of the train. He had become accustomed to the Scotch Streak. He had to concentrate to hear the rattle of wheels, the chuff-chuff of the engine, the small clinkings of cutlery and crockery. Almost comforting. Catriona Kaye said the most dangerous haunted houses always feel like home.

  Hairy had barged past Mrs. Sweet. Richard thought of talking with her, but she glared as he walked towards her. He was a duck’s-arse-quiffed affront to everything she believed. Real killers wore respectable suits from Burton’s and had faces like trustworthy babies. That was how they got close. Richard had a pang of worry that Mrs. Sweet might have an extra gun about her—a hold-out derringer in her stocking-top or a pepperpot in her reticule—in case a wounded grouse flapped close enough to need its head dissolving with a single, deadly-accurate shot. This train gave people funny ideas. She might easily pot him on the off chance.

  He got by Mrs. Sweet unshot, looked over his shoulder at Annette and Myles, and stepped through the connecting door into the Second Class carriage. He checked the lavatory and didn’t find Harry—though he caught sight of a cracked mirror and started, shocked at a glimpse of an antlered, fox-faced quarry with a target marked on his forehead in dribbling blood. How others see us.

  The carriage was empty. The corridor was unlit. Second Class did not have sleeping berths, but there were regular compartments, suitable comfortably for six, which could take ten in a pinch. The dark made it easier to see out of the windows. This stretch of track ran though ancient forest. Branches twisted close, leaves reaching for the passing express.

  Richard made his way down the carriage, checking each compartment. None of the privacy blinds were down. One seat supported a huddle of old clothes that might have been a sleeping Second Class passenger—though it was early to turn in for the night. On a second look, no one was there. He knew better than be caught out that way, and looked again. Whatever had been huddled was gone back to its hole. He trusted it would stay there.

  It couldn’t be the throat-cut spectre of ‘Buzzy’ Maltrincham. The vicious Viscount wouldn’t have been caught dead in Second Class. 3473 had many more ghosts than him. Would Lord Kilpartinger show up again? Disgraced old Donald McRidley—assuming he was dead. The Headless Fireman? The passengers of ‘31? The waterlogged witches of Loch Gaer?

  It got darker as he proceeded. Turning back, he saw the glass of the connecting door was now opaque—had someone drawn a blind?—and the dining carriage cut off from view.

  “Harry?” he called out, feeling foolish.

  Something pattered, near the toilet cubicle. Fast and light. Not clumsy Harry Cutley. It might be a large cat. They had railway cats, didn’t they? There was one in Old Mother Possum’s. But usually on stations, not on trains.

  Another of Catriona Kaye’s sayings was that sometimes observers brought their own ghosts and the haunted place merely fleshed them out. Was there a puma person still after Harry? Hadn’t Annette been bothered by something from the war? Her ‘it,’ her Worst Thing? Some entities fished out your worst nightmare—your worst memory, your darkest secret—and threw it at you. But nothing dug for your happiest moments, your fondest wishes, your most thrilling dreams and wrapped them up as a present. What had Magic Fingers called it, Sod’s Law?

  Richard remembered his father’s advice about how to see off a tiger if you were unarmed. Knock sharply on its snout, as if rapping on a front door. Just the once. Serve notice you are not to be bothered. The big cat would bolt like a doused kitten, leaving rending, clawing and devouring for another day. Pumas are just weedy imitation tigers, so the Major Jeperson treatment should send one chasing its tail. Of course, his father never claimed to have used his tiger-defying technique in the wild. It was wisdom passed down in the family—untested, but comforting.

  “Harry?”

  Now, Richard felt like an idiot. Plainly, lightfeet wasn’t Harry Cutley.

  He walked back, past the compartments—that huddle was still absent, thank you very much—towards the toilet and the connecting door. He moved with casual ease, controlling an urge to scream and run. The puma was Harry’s Worst Thing. Not Richard Jeperson’s.

  The area between cubicle and door was untenanted. He thought. He held the door handle, torn. He couldn’t return to Annette and Myles with no news of Harry, but didn’t want to venture farther into the train without reporting back, even if he raised a fuss. Harry, technically, was in charge. He should have left instructions—not that Richard would have felt obliged to follow them. If it had been Edwin Winthrop, maybe. Catriona Kaye, certainly—though she never instructed. She provided useful information and a delicate nudge towards the wisest course.

  The nagging imp came again—he was just a kid, he wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t sure what this was. None of that nonsense, he told himself, sternly, trying to sound like Edwin or his father. You’re a Diogenes Club man. Inner Sanctum material. Most Valued Member potential. Bred to it, sensitive, a Talent.

  Click. He’d tell Annette Harry had gone far afield, then co-opt Arnold and make a thorough search. This was a train; it was impossible to go missing {Lord Kilpartinger did), and Harry was simply puking his pie, not held by the Headless Fireman and clawed by a Phantom Puma.

  He opened the connecting door.

  And wasn’t in the dining carriage, but the First Class Sleeping Compartments. Discreet overhead lights flickered.

  At the end of the corridor, by an open compartment door, stood a small figure in blue pyjamas decorated with space rockets, satellites, moons and stars. Her label was tied loosely around her neck. Her unbound red hair fell to her waist, almost covering her face. Her single exposed eye fixed on him.

  What was the girl’s name? He was as bad as Harry.

  “Vanessa?” it came to him. “Why are you up?”

  Setting aside the Mystery of the Vanishing Carriage, he went to the child, and knelt, sweeping hair away from her face. She wasn’t crying, but something was wrong. He recognised emptiness in her, an absence he knew well—for he had it himself. He made a smile-face, and she didn’t cringe. At least she didn’t see him as a werebeast whose head would fit the space over the mantelpiece. She also didn’t laugh, no matter how he twisted his mouth and rolled his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Dreams,” she said, hugging him around the neck, surprisingly heavy, lips close to his ear, “bad dreams.”

  * * * *

  V

  “... and then, chicklet, there were two.”

  Magic Fingers wished the Scotch Streak’s famous facilities stretched to an espresso machine. He could use a java jolt to electrify the old grey sponge, get his extra senses acting extra-sensible. Like most night birds, he ran on coffee.

  Annie pursed her lips at him and looked at the doorway through which Hard Luck Harry and now the Kid had disappeared.

  “You said we shouldn’t split the band, and you were on the button,” he told her. “We should have drawn the wagons in a circle.”

  “You’re not helping,” she said.

  Was he picking up jitters from her? When Annie was discombobulated, everyone in the house came down with the sweats. It was a downside of her Talent.

  “Chill, tomato, chill,” he said. “Put some ice on it.”

  She nodded, knowing what he meant, and tried hard. There was a switch in her brain, which turned off the receptors in her fright centre. Otherwise she’d never have made it through the war.

  Danny Myles had been blind during the war, evacuated from the East End to the wilds of Wales. He had learned his way around the sound-smell-touch-tastescape of Streatham in his first twelve years, but found the different enviro
nment—all cold wind-blasts, tongue-twisting language and lava bread—of Bedgellert a disorienting nightmare. He had run away from Mr. and Mrs. Jones the farmers on his own, and felt his way back across two countries, turning up in his street to find it wasn’t there anymore and Mum was with Auntie Brid in Brixton. Lots of cockney kids ran away from yokels they were packed off to during the Blitz—some from exploitation or abuse far beyond lava bread every evening and tuneless chapel most of the weekend—but they weren’t usually blind. It was a nine days’ wonder. Mum wasn’t sure whether to send him back to the Joneses, with a label round his neck like that chick who took a shine to the Kid, or keep him in London, sheltering in the Underground during the raids.

  Born without sight, it was hard for Danny to get his head round the idea of blindness or realise his extra senses were out of the ordinary. Then, the switch in his brain was thrown. No miracle operation, no bump on the bonce, no faith healer—it was just like a door suddenly swinging open. There was a blackout, so there wasn’t even much to see—until the sun came up. He didn’t stop whooping for a week. At first, the bright new world in his eyes blotted out the patterns of sound and touch he had made do with, but when things settled, his ears were sharper than ever. Soon, he could channel music through anything with eighty-eight keys, really earning his “Magic Fingers” handle. Then Edwin Winthrop came into the scene and the Diogenes Club took an interest, labelling him a Talent.