Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

She dangled a hand in front of my face. My eyes and mouth were free of bandages.

That bloody jewel loomed like the sun and the moon and — most particularly — the stars. I saw the sparkling flaws, in the shape of the constellation of Ursa Major. I’ve never been able to see the Plough or a Bear in it, just seven dots which look more like a saucepan with a too-long handle. Now I had cause to wish myself upon some far star, rather than in a Kensington basement at the mercy of this monumental (if decorative) cuckoo. Maniac Marge took the Queen of Ancient Egypt business seriously. To her, it wasn’t a racket, but a religion. Another lunatic, albeit more tempting… I’ve no idea why anyone would be willing to blow themselves up for Irish Home Rule or get their throat cut for the honour of a tatty Neapolitan statue, but a tumble with the fleshly incarnation of wicked Queen Tera might well be worth small discomfort. At this point, that was a distant prospect.

I tried to sit up, but had no joy. You think of mummy wrappings as rotten old things, but new linen bandages are stout stuff.

Then rough hands grabbed handfuls of bandage where my lapels would have been and hauled me half out of the coffin. The angry man beside Miss Trelawny had lost patience. He snarled in my face. He wore iron gauntlets and a tabard with a crusader cross.

“Calm down, Marshall Alaric,” said our hostess, soothing and commanding.

“He must be put to the Question! The Falcon must be recovered!”

I thumped back into my coffin, bumping my head on a stone pillow.

Margaret patted me on my chest. If the ring had a smell, it would have been in my nostrils.

I realized I’d just met Marshall Alaric Molina de Marnac, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. I supposed it should have come as no surprise these people all knew each other. There were occult, Masonic ties between the Templars and Queen Tera’s orgiastic cult. Rivalries, too, but a lot in common. They would have friendly competitions, like the Oxford-Cambridge boat race or the Army-Navy rugby match but with more sacrificed virgins and obscene oblations. Though — even after an evening in the basement of Trelawny House — it was hard to credit that Margaret could preside over anything more chaotically perverted than the piss-up which follows the Army-Navy brawl.

De Marnac, a foreigner, spat.

“I won’t tell you where the Falcon is,” I swore — knowing that, realistically, I’d tell him before he got to the fingers of my right hand. I can stick more pain than most but I’ve tortured enough to know everyone talks in the end.

“It’s on your Professor’s sideboard, silly,” said Miss Trelawny. “All London knows. Among other trinkets, you also have the Green Eye of the Little Yellow God and the Jewels of the Madonna of Naples. Once Moriarty took to collecting, word got round.”

Again, I should have known that would happen.

My hostess made a fist and pressed her ring to my forehead.

“I can’t think what goes on in that head of yours, Colonel,” she said. “Did you really believe you could wander in here and take the Jewel of Seven Stars. It’s the focus of aetheric forces which have enabled me to endure centuries in darkness and enter this shell to live anew. I was hardly likely to give it up.”

“You all say that…”

She slapped me, lightly.

“So, you are asking yourself why we’re having this conversation. Why are you not screaming in a tomb, using up precious air?”

I did my best to shrug.

“While we were going through your clothes, an odd item came to light…”

I had French postcards in my wallet, but nothing likely to shock Queen Tera Redivivus. The derringer holstered in my sock, perhaps?

“Why was this in your waistcoat lining?”

She held up a shiny black oval. The Borgia pearl. I remembered Moriarty patting me, and thinking it an odd gesture — now, I knew he had slipped me one of his crown jewels. However, I had no idea why…

“Swapsies?” I suggested.

Would she have the thing set in another ring? Wearing the Jewel of Seven Stars and the Black Pearl of the Borgias would be asking for trouble … I’d been collecting asking-for-trouble items for the past two days, and what had I got for it? Mummification and the prospect of burial alive.

The Marshall made an iron fist and aimed at my face.

“Steady on, old man,” I said, “try not to lose your rag.”

Of course, that was calculated to inflame him further. I’d the measure of the Grand Master. Wrath was his presiding sin. He launched a punch. I shifted my head to the side of the sarcophagus. Metalled knuckles rammed the stone pillow. He swore in French and Spanish and bit his bluish beard.

“You mustn’t let things get on top of you, chummy. Try whistling.”

This time, he put his hand flat on my chest and pressed down. That hurt. Quite a bit. I didn’t consider whistling.

“You are a puzzle, Colonel,” said Margaret. “I don’t suppose you would consider … an arrangement?”

She pouted, prettily. The snakes set off her face.

In disgust, de Marnac left me alone. He had disarranged my bandages and, as I’d hoped, torn through a few. If you loosen one, you loosen ‘em all. My sister Augusta knitted me a cardigan for my twelfth birthday which suffered from the same flaw. A tiny dropped stitch and the whole thing unravelled. I made a play of breathing heavily, expanding and contracting my chest inside the bandages. I fancied I’d be able to get my arms loose.

“Employment with me offers ‘benefits’ I doubt you get from that dried-up old stick of a maths tutor,” Margaret said, trailing fingers over my face. “A desirable package is offered.”

Leaving Moriarty’s employ wasn’t as simple as she suggested. And, when working with him, I wasn’t likely to be transformed into an ass simply by a wink and a shimmy. I knew myself well enough to know this would not be the case if I became an attendant to Queen Tera. When there’s a woman in the crime, you always think you’ll get ‘benefits’ but get dirked in the arras. I speak from sorry experience, witness: Irene ‘that Bitch’ Adler, Sylvia ‘Worm Woman’ Marsh, Hagar ‘Thieving Pikey’ Wilde, et cetera, et cetera.

“The Falcon, the Falcon,” muttered the Marshall, obsessively. There was something about these objects. You set out to own them, and they end up owning you. Tera Trelawny was a ring wearing a woman.

Above, outside, there was a crashing noise, and a drawn-out scream.

I hoped for Simon Carne leading an army of Moriarty’s hand-picked roughs in a well-armed, brilliantly- conceived frontal assault, intent on my rescue. The quality of the screams suggested otherwise. No matter what disguise Carne wore, he wasn’t as terrifying as whoever was attacking Trelawny House.

Margaret and de Marnac exchanged anxious looks. I managed to sit up, arms free under the bandages, and wasn’t instantly slapped down.

“What is that?” said the Grand Master.

A huge shape blocked the cellar door. A huge shape topped with a porkpie hat. A knocked-over lamp underlit a jowly, pig-eyed face which seemed to have melted. Big fists opened and closed.

De Marnac drew a sword.

The Hoxton Creeper tottered into the room, eyes fixed on Margaret, but not for the reason most blokes stared at her. In her open palm glistened the black pearl.

“Who are you?” demanded de Marnac.

The Creeper whistled the ‘Barcarolle’ from Tales of Hoffman. He had a tune in his head, too. As he advanced he loomed bigger. His shadow grew.

“Here,” said Miss Trelawny, “Grand Master, you’d better have this.”

She popped the pearl into the back of his tunic and it disappeared. He reached awkwardly for the back of his neck, but couldn’t trap it. He wriggled, as if a bug were burrowing under his armor.

The Creeper wheeled about and stared at the Knight of St. John. He raised his arms.

Margaret’s blackamoor prize-fighter, blood streaming from his broken face, came into the room and laid hold of the Creeper’s shoulder, only to be shrugged off and thrown against the wall.