Retromancer

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Indeed.’ And Hugo Rune applied a nosegay to his sniffer. ‘But if your love is for a cockney singalong about getting your knees up and eating jellied eels, then this is the place to be.’

  ‘We are losing time here,’ I said. ‘If you wish to solve this case by the end of the day we have to get out of here at the hurry-up.’

  ‘And so we will, Rizla. Now follow me.’

  And I followed Hugo Rune, down onto the platform of Piccadilly Underground Station, through the hurly-burly and hustle and bustle of cockney costermongers, pearly kings and queens, chimney-sweeping lads and a whole host of colourful period characters who surely should have peopled a Victorian music hall rather than a nineteen-forties Underground station.

  ‘Style never dates,’ said Hugo Rune, as if in answer to my unasked question. ‘Now follow me further.’

  And we left the platform’s edge and stepped down onto the track.

  ‘Oh no!’ I cried. ‘We shall surely be electrocuted or run over by a train. This is not a good idea at all.’

  ‘Be not so timid, Rizla,’ called Himself, striding away with vigour. ‘The power is switched off during air raids. We have a good twenty minutes. Hurry now, the fun-fur-collared anorak of dread masks not the tattooed shoulder of Talula the hula-hula girl from Kealakekua, Hawaii. No siree. By golly.’

  And so I shrugged and followed Mr Rune.

  I am still uncertain as to how he created the light which shone ahead of us along the darkness of the tunnel. It appeared to flow from the pommel of his stout stick, but as to how I do not know, because I did not ask.

  ‘Where are we heading to?’ I did ask, tripping for the umpteenth time and stumbling about.

  ‘Only to Whitechapel.’

  ‘What?’ I replied. ‘That is miles away, surely.’

  ‘Naught but a brisk stroll. Are you tooled-up?’

  And I had to ask just what he meant.

  ‘Are you armed, Rizla? As my good friend Mr Sherlock Holmes used to say, “Always carry a firearm east of Aldwych”.’

  ‘You never knew—’ But I did not bother to finish. I stumbled and bumbled along behind Mr Rune, who, it seemed to me, although I might well have been mistaken, took some pleasure in my stumblings and bumblings. By his unstifled laughter.

  ‘It is not funny, me falling down,’ I told him.

  ‘Nearly there, Rizla,’ he replied. And then he chuckled some more.

  And eventually we reached Whitechapel Station. I now had very grazed knees and was not at the peak of my general unfailing cheerfulness. ‘You can be a thoroughgoing rotter at times,’ I told Hugo Rune. ‘On this matter I agree with little Mr McMurdo.’

  We hustled and bustled through many more cockneys and climbed over the turnstiles when no station staff were watching and reached daylight in time to hear the ‘all clear’.

  Which somehow seemed so convenient.

  I looked up at Hugo Rune.

  And then I shook my head.

  ‘Well, you wanted excitement,’ he said. ‘Now let’s press on.’ And press on so we did.

  I had never been to this area of London before and I must say that it had taken a terrible pounding. But apparently not today, as I saw no signs of smoke, nor gallant firemen with pockets full of diamonds and guts all full of liberated beer.

  ‘This is Jack the Ripper territory,’ I said to Hugo Rune.

  And the great man smiled and said, ‘Don’t get me going on him.’ And then he pointed with his cane and said, ‘That way, down the Radcliffe Highway.’

  At length we reached a rather delightful house. It had blooming wisteria all about its door, which considering the month of the year it really should not have. And it had flowering chrysanthemums and hollyhocks and tulips, roses and Rafflesia arnoldii in its neat little trimmed front garden. The house was constructed of London Stock, beneath a roof of Northampton Slate. And there was something altogether musical about it. The front door was of Henry wood and the windows, Philip glass.

  I noted also a doorstop of Sly stone and that the afternoon sun angling down gave the front garden the look of a dusty spring field.

  ‘Stop that as soon as you like!’ said Mr Rune, and he rapped with his stout stick on the door.

  The lady who answered his rappings was beauteous to behold. Her hair was simply red and her coat was deacon blue. It seemed we had just caught her as she was on her way out, and her face was flushed and pink.

  Mr Rune made faces at me and introduced himself.

  ‘I know who you are,’ I told him.

  ‘I am introducing myself to this lady,’ he said.

  ‘I am sorry. I got confused.’ I scuffed my heels upon the doorstop and noticed that my brogues where Arthur brown.

  The beauteous lady bade us enter with many urgent gestures and we followed her inside.

  Mr Rune got straight down to business. ‘Show us to the cellar,’ he said. ‘There is no time to waste.’

  We were directed to a door beneath the stairs. ‘Down there,’ said the lady. ‘I will not join you, if you don’t mind. I find the professor’s laboratory an uncomfortable place to be.’

  ‘The ceiling is very low?’ I suggested.

  ‘Its ambience,’ said the lady and she shivered. ‘And now I have to go, I am in a terrible hurry. Please make sure the front door is secure when you leave.’

  ‘Farewell, then. My companion and I will go down without you,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Rizla, you first, I think.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Why me?’

  But Mr Rune had opened the door and thrust me through the opening. There was a string that hung down in my face and I gave that string a pull. A narrow staircase was illuminated and I stepped cautiously down it.

  ‘This is not quite what I expected,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘I thought that a professor working on a project of national importance would probably live in a big Georgian house with a laboratory that looked a bit like your sitting room, but with more test tubes.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘And retorts.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘And Bunsen burners too. Oh, and litmus paper. I have always loved litmus paper. The blue, you understand, never the pink.’

  ‘Quite so, never the pink.’

  And then we came to a door. A very sturdy door and a brass one also. This door had clearly been jemmied open and its lock was all broken in.

  Mr Rune pushed past me, pushed upon the door, found a light switch, flicked it on.

  A most curious room came into view and one with a very low ceiling. It certainly did not resemble my idea of a scientist’s laboratory. There were no test tubes, nor retorts, nor Bunsen burners, nor litmus paper of any colour or hue. There was a desk and there were books. And there were more books and there were papers too. And there were more papers and even more papers and, from what I could see of these papers, they all appeared to be covered in mathematical calculations.

  ‘He made a lot of notes,’ I observed. ‘He was clearly seeking to see if things added up.’ And I did a kind of foolish titter. And for my pains received a light cuff to the forehead.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said.

  ‘Buffoon,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘Oh look,’ I said. ‘His clothes, they are still laid out on the floor.’

  Hugo Rune gazed down at the clothes and said, ‘That is most suggestive.’

  ‘Perhaps to you,’ I said, ‘but men’s clothes do not really do it for me.’

  ‘Rizla, you are acting the giddy goat, will you please smarten up.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I am drunk. What would you say the hue of that paper is? Barry white, do you think?’

  ‘I think you need to sit down.’

  And indeed I did.

  Mr Rune sat me down upon the only chair, which stood behind the book- and paper-smothered desk. I drummed my fingers upon that desk and grinned foolishly. I really did feel rather strange.

  Mr Rune did not do all those things that detectives are expected to do. He
did not throw himself onto the floor and search about for clues. Nor did he pace up and down, deep in thought, before exclaiming, ‘I have it.’

  Instead he simply took out his cigar case and selected a smoke.

  ‘You are, I believe, my good Rizla, in a somewhat heightened state of mind. Whilst in this state would you care to make free with your observations?’

  ‘I am thinking that I would like some cheese,’ I said. ‘Which I find puzzling, as I am no real lover of cheese.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Can this be relevant?’

  ‘Please indulge me, do.’

  ‘I am feeling, and this is really weird, I am feeling that we are not the only ones present in this room. There is someone else here, but I cannot see who it is.’

  ‘Splendid, Rizla, splendid. Then perhaps I can assist you.’

  ‘I really do not understand.’

  ‘But you will.’ And Hugo Rune lit up his fine cigar and did great puffings upon it. ‘This might surprise you, Rizla,’ he said as he puffed. ‘Indeed it might frighten you. But you need not be afeared for I am here to protect you.’

  ‘I will take comfort in your words,’ I said. ‘Whatever they mean.’

  ‘Then in that case, Rizla, let me introduce you to Professor James Stigmata Campbell, would-be discoverer of the God Particle.’

  And Mr Rune took great lungfuls of smoke and blew them out through his mouth. And the smoke billowed into the low-ceilinged room and much to my surprise and indeed shock it wafted all around and about the shape of a man. An invisible man, so it seemed, who stood stock still in the centre room, frozen in an attitude of terror.

  I could make out for a moment the expression on his face as the smoke brought his features into visibility. And that expression was one of horror. His arms were flung up as if to protect himself from the onrush of some hideous force. His knees were bent, his shoulders stooped and he was all over naked.

  Hugo Rune blew further smoke, but I had seen enough. I jumped from that chair and fled from that room and ran with great speed up the stairs.

  13

  I bent over in that flowery garden, my hands upon my knees, feeling all sick and woozy and no good to man nor to beast.

  Mr Rune joined me there, still puffing on his cigar.

  ‘You are a villain,’ I said, drawing myself into the vertical plane. ‘You are a scoundrel and a rotter. Of course you could solve this case. Because you are the cause of the horror. You did that to that poor man. Turned him invisible with your magic, as you turned Mr McMurdo into a garden gnome.’

  ‘A garden gnome?’ And Mr Rune chuckled. ‘I rather like that. But no, Rizla, once more you have it wrong. I did not do that to Professor Campbell. Rather it would seem that he did it to himself.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘Are you telling me the truth? This is all too weird for me. Is Professor Campbell dead? Can he be brought back to life?’

  ‘Questions, questions, questions.’ Hugo Rune took a further suck at his cigar and blew out a plume of smoke in the shape of the Lord Mayor’s coach. ‘Allow me to explain,’ he said and then went on to do so. ‘I must confess some puzzlement, young Rizla, regarding you doubting the existence of God, as to my personal knowledge you watched the crucifixion of Christ on the screen of the Chronovision and met his many-times great-grandson, Lord Tobes.’

  ‘I am a teenager,’ I explained to the guru’s guru. ‘I am inconsistent and contradictory as the mood takes me.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But to me the existence of God is, as our American cousins might put it, “a given”. Without the existence of God and the orders of beings He created, angelic and otherwise, magic, the High Magick, could not function. Professor Campbell sought to discover the God Particle because it is this particle that constitutes the ether, the very medium along which magic is transmitted, as it were.’

  ‘And you are saying that he found it and in doing so put himself into the unfortunate situation that he is now in?’

  Hugo Rune flicked ash from his cigar with his little pinkie finger and shook his large head sagely. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I am not. Professor Campbell did not discover the God Particle. Because the God Particle cannot be discovered. The evidence of God’s existence is essentially esoteric and exclusively within the realm of belief. There can never be solid evidence that you can hold in your hand. God is God, Rizla, He knows everything and He is everywhere. Everything is composed of God Particles, everything.’

  ‘I am as confused as ever I was,’ I said.

  ‘Now that does surprise me. For I have only devoted several lifetimes to this study and still confess to knowing but little. I naturally would have thought that a present-day teenager could pick up such matters within half an hour.’

  ‘You are being sarcastic,’ I observed. ‘So fair enough. But what did happen to the professor? And can he be restored to health and normality?’

  ‘Professor Campbell is dead,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘His mortal form dissolved into the ether. No magic that I or any other Magus living possesses can restore him to life. Presently the psychic echo of him that I outlined through the employment of this sanctified cigar will vanish for ever. Clearly he worked out the formula, the equation necessary to prove the existence of the God Particle. Such a formula or equation would constitute the strongest spell in the universe. The war would certainly be won in an instant by the country that possessed such a spell and knew how to use it correctly. And he read it aloud. I suspect that his calculations were only ninety-nine-point-nine per cent correct. And so he became subject to the scourge of all clumsy magicians, the three-fold law of return, whereby an incorrect calling is reflected back upon the caller with triple force. Most unfortunate for the professor, but fortunate for the Allies.’

  ‘How so fortunate?’ I asked. ‘The spell does not work. Quite to the contrary in fact.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘But the Nazis aren’t to know that, are they? And so when one of the high muckamuck magicians recites it, he too will go the way of Professor Campbell. Hopefully taking a few of his close-by companions-in-infamy with him.’

  ‘But the Nazis do not have the professor’s spell, do they?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes they do,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘or at least they soon will.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked again, and I really sighed as I asked it.

  ‘Because the Nazi spy working in the professor’s house will be transporting it to them even now.’

  ‘Will they?’ I said. And now I was really confused. ‘And how could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because you and I met her only a short while ago. She opened the front door and directed us to the cellar laboratory. Did you not notice that she was in a great hurry to get us down there? It was so that she could flee before her identity was discovered. She had found what she was looking for and was making good her escape with it.’

  ‘But how did you know that she is a spy?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I recognised her, Rizla. She is Countess Lucretia. The wife of my arch-enemy Count Otto Black. You will recall that I put paid to the evil count in the nineteen sixties. But these are the nineteen forties and he is alive and well and in the employ of the Nazis.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. Which was all I had. But then I said, ‘But surely she recognised you.’

  ‘Of course she did, Rizla. I did introduce myself to her. And I’m sure that it amuses her greatly to think that she has pulled one over on me. I certainly hope that it does, anyway.’

  ‘And so the case is over,’ I said. ‘And I suppose it is a satisfactory conclusion. Although not for poor Professor Campbell.’

  ‘Caught in the cosmic crossfire, as it were. Regrettable, but these are troubled times. Ah, Rizla, I see a bus coming, let us return to town and take tea.’

  But I shouted, ‘No!’ And then I shouted, ‘Run, Mr Rune. Back into the house, run.’

  And Mr Rune, seeing that I meant what I said and clearly sensing that something was deep
ly amiss did that very thing.

  We dived through the open doorway, slammed the door behind us, rushed down the hall and into the kitchen. And not before time did we do this, because so great was the explosion that followed that it brought down the front of the house, lifted the roof and chimney pots and cast them far beyond the back garden.

  Coughing and gagging somewhat, we raised our ducked heads and Mr Rune took to dusting down his tweeds, before patting me on the shoulder.

  ‘Stirling work,’ he said to me. ‘You saved our lives, Rizla. But how you knew what was coming, I confess that I do not know.’

  ‘It was a bus,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Rizla, I am well aware that it was a bus.’

  ‘It was a Number Twenty-Seven bus,’ I said.

  And then there was a moment’s pause.

  And then Mr Rune said, ‘And that is supposed to be significant, is it?’

  ‘Well, I did not know it was going to blow up,’ I said. ‘I thought it was going to run us over.’

  ‘I am still in the dark, I regret. And such a lack of illumination suits me not at all.’

  ‘I had a vision,’ I explained, ‘on the top deck of the tram. An old ragged man warned me to run when I saw the number twenty-seven. I thought it might be a door number, or something. I was not expecting a bus. And certainly not an exploding bus.’

  ‘Packed with dynamite, I suspect, and certainly intended to destroy us. So, it was a vision that warned you.’ And Hugo Rune nodded thoughtfully. ‘And did this vision have a name?’

  ‘He did,’ I said. ‘He said that his name was Diogenes.’

  ‘Excellent, splendid, A-one and dinky-do. It would appear that you have a guardian angel watching over you. How appropriate considering the nature of our first case.’ And Hugo Rune flung an imaginary hat into the air. ‘Then this first case is now most successfully concluded. Diogenes of Sinope, my dear Rizla, was a Greek philosopher. He eschewed all domestic comforts for a life of austere asceticism. He lived in squalor and preached on self-sufficiency. A tarot card is based upon him. And the name of that tarot card is—’