Atlantis and Other Places (54 page)

Two policemen, both large and rotund, huffed up. Each wore on his hip in a patent-leather holster a stout brute of a pistol, of the same model as Sergeant Karpinski’s—no doubt the standard weapon for the police in Thetford, if not in all of Atlantis. “That’s Morris, all right,” one of them said, eyeing the body. “There’ll be hell to pay when word of this gets out.”

“Yes, and the Preacher to pay it,” the other man said with a certain grim anticipation.

The first policeman eyed Helms and Walton. “And who the devil are you two, and where were you when this poor bastard got cooled?”

“This is the famous Athelstan Helms,” Dr. Walton said indignantly.

“We were dining in the Belvedere when Mr. Morris was shot,” Helms continued. “We have witnesses to that effect. We were conversing with him shortly before his death, however.”

“If Mr. What’s-his-name Helms is so famous, how come I never heard of him?” the local policeman said.

Because you are an ignorant, back-country lout
, went through Dr. Walton’s mind. Saying that to the back-country lout’s face when said lout was armed and also armored in authority struck him as inexpedient. What he did say was, “Inspector La Strada of Hanover brought us from England to assist in the investigation of the House of Universal Devotion.”

“About time they give those maniacs their just deserts,” the second policeman said.

“Which reminds me, Helms,” the good doctor said. “We were interrupted before we could attend to ours.”

“I dare hope ours would require another ‘s,’” Helms said. He nodded to the policemen. “If you will be kind enough to excuse us . . . ?” The blue-uniformed Atlanteans did not say no. With another polite nod, Helms walked back toward the Belvedere, Dr. Walton at first at his heels and then bustling on ahead of him.

 

 

After finishing their desserts—which proved not to come up to the hopes Walton had lavished on them—the Englishmen went up to their rooms. “What puzzles me,” Walton said, “is how the Preacher could have known Morris would speak to us then, and had a gunman waiting for him as he emerged.”

“He would have done better to dispose of the man before we conversed,” Helms replied. “If he had a pistoleer waiting for him, why not anticipate and set the blackguard in place ahead of time?”

“Maybe someone in the dining room belongs to the House and hotfooted away to let him know what was toward,” Dr. Walton suggested.

“It could be,” Helms said. “I wonder what the post-mortem will show.”

“Cause of death is obvious enough,” Walton said. “Poor devil got in the way of at least three rounds to the chest.”

“Quite,” Helms said. “But, as always, the devil is in the details.”

“Do you suppose the devil is in Mr. Jones?” Walton asked.

“Well, if we were required to dispose of every man who ever made a sport of, ah, sporting with a number of pretty young women, the world would be a duller and a much emptier place,” Athelstan Helms said judiciously. “Indeed, given the Prince of Wales’ predilections, even the succession might be jeopardized. Murder, however, is a far more serious business, whether motivated by religious zeal or some reason considerably more secular.”

“What would you say if the Preacher appeared on our door-step proclaiming his innocence?” Dr. Walton asked.

“At this hour of the evening? I do believe I’d say, ‘Fascinating, old chap. Do you suppose you could elaborate at breakfast tomorrow?’”

The good doctor pulled his watch from a waistcoat pocket. “It
is
late, isn’t it? And I know I didn’t get much sleep on that wretched train last night. You, though . . . Sometimes I think you are powered by steel springs and steam, not flesh and blood.”

“A misapprehension, I assure you. I have never cared for the taste of coal,” Helms said gravely.

“Er—I suppose not,” Walton said. “Shall we knit up the raveled sleeve of care, then?”

“A capital notion,” the detective replied. “And while we’re about it, we should also sleep.” Walton started to say something in response to that, then seemed to give it up as a bad job. Whether that had been his particular friend’s intention did not appear to cross his mind, which, under the circumstances, might have been just as well.

A reasonably restful night, a hearty breakfast, and strong coffee might have put some distance between the Englishmen and Benjamin Morris’ murder—had the waiter in the dining room not seated them at the table where they’d spoken with him at supper. Dr. Walton kept looking around as if expecting the attorney to walk in again. Barring an unanticipated Judgment Trump, that seemed unlikely.

“How do you suppose we could reach the Preacher now?” Walton asked. “He surely won’t be at that House any more.”

“I’ll inquire at the closest House of Universal Devotion,” Helms answered. “Whether unofficially and informally or not, the preacher there should be able to reach him.”

Before the detective and his companion could leave the hotel, a policeman handed Helms an envelope. “The post-mortem on Mr. Morris, sir,” he said.

“I thank you.” Athelstan Helms broke the seal on the envelope. “Let’s see. . . . Two jacketed slugs through the heart, and another through the right lung. Death by rapid exsanguination.”

“Rapid? Upon my word, yes! I should say so!” Dr. Walton shook his head. “With wounds like those, he’d go down like Bob’s your uncle. With two in the heart and one in the lung, an elephant would.”

“Jacketed bullets . . .” Helms turned as if to ask something of the policeman who’d brought the report, but that worthy had already departed.

“Even so, Helms,” Walton said. “Granted, they don’t mushroom like your ordinary slug of soft lead, but they’ll do the job more than well enough, especially in vital spots like that. And they foul the bore much less than a soft slug would.”

“I am not ignorant of the advantages,” Helms said with a touch of asperity. “I merely wished to enquire . . . Well, never mind.” He gathered himself and set his cap on his head. “To the House of Universal Devotion.”

 

 

The preacher looked at Helms and Walton in something approaching astonishment. “How extraordinary!” he said. “In the past half hour, I’ve heard from the Preacher, the police, and now you gentlemen.”

“What did the Preacher want?” Helms asked.

“Why, I didn’t see him. But I have a message from him to you if you came to call.”

“And the police?” Walton inquired.

“They wanted to know if I’d heard from the Preacher.” The young man in charge of the local House sniffed. “I denied it, of course. None of their business.”

“They might have roughed you up a bit,” Walton said. They might have done a good deal worse than that. Whatever one thought of the House of Universal Devotion’s theology, the loyalty it evoked could not be ignored.

This particular preacher was thin and pale, certainly none too prepossessing. Nevertheless, when he gathered himself and said, “The tree of faith is nourished by the blood of martyrs, which is its natural manure,” he made the good doctor believe him.

“And the message from the Preacher was. . . ?” Athelstan Helms prompted.

“That he is innocent in every particular of this latest horrific crime. That it is but another example of the sort of thing of which he spoke to you in person—you will know what that means, no doubt. That an investigation is bound to establish the facts. That those facts, once established, will rock not only Atlantis but the world.”

“He doesn’t think small!” Walton exclaimed. “Not half, he doesn’t.”

“If he thought small, he would not have achieved the success that has already been his,” Helms said, and then, to the preacher, “Do you know his current whereabouts?”

“No, sir. What I don’t know, they can’t interrogate out of me, like. And I never saw the fellow who gave me the message before, either. But it’s a true message, isn’t it?”

“I believe so, yes,” Helms replied.

“
I
believe the Preacher would make a first-rate spymaster had he chosen to try his hand at that instead of founding a religion,” Dr. Walton said. “He has the principles down pat.”

“Do you believe him?” the young preacher asked anxiously.

“Well, that remains to be seen,” Helms said. “Such assertions as he has made are all the better for proof, but I can see how he is in a poor position to offer any. My investigations continue, and in the end, I trust, they will be crowned with success.”

“They commonly are,” Walton added with more than a hint of smugness.

Athelstan Helms allowed himself the barest hint of a smile. “Those who fail are seldom chronicled—the
mobile vulgus
clamors after success, and nothing less will do. A pity, that, when failure so often proves more instructive.”

“My failure to publish accounts of your failures has been more instructive than I wish it were,” Walton said feelingly.

“Let us hope that will not be the case here, then,” Helms said. “Onward!—the plot thickens.”

Dr. Walton was not particularly surprised to discover Sergeant Karpinski standing on the sidewalk outside the House of Universal Devotion. “We went in there, too,” Karpinski said. “We didn’t find anything worth knowing. You?”

“Our investigation continues.” Helms’ voice was bland. “When we have conclusions to impart, you may rest assured that you will be among the first to hear them.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” the sergeant asked.

“What it says,” the detective replied. “Not a word more; not a word less.”

“If you think you can go poking your nose into our affairs, sir, without so much as a by-your-leave—”

“If Mr. Helms believes that, Sergeant, he’s bloody well right,” Dr. Walton broke in. “He—and I—are in your hole of a town, in your hole of a country, at the express invitation of Inspector La Strada. Without it, believe me, we should never have come. But we will thank you not to interfere with our performing our duties in the manner we see fit. Good day.”

Sergeant Karpinski’s countenance was eloquent of discontent. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then, shaking his head, walked off with whatever answer he might have given still suppressed.

“Pigheaded Polack,” Walton muttered.

“You did not endear yourself to him,” Helms said. “The unvarnished truth is seldom palatable—though I doubt whether any varnish would have made your comments appetizing.”

“Too bad,” the good doctor said, and, if an intensifying participle found its way into his diction, it need not be recorded here.

“I wonder what La Strada will say when word of this gets back to him, as it surely will,” Helms remarked.

“The worst he can do is expel us, in which case
I
shall say, ‘Thank you,’” Dr. Watson answered.

“I hope that is the worst he can do to us,” Helms said.

“He cannot claim we shot Benjamin Morris—we have witnesses to the contrary,” Walton said. “Neither can he claim we shot any of the others whom he alleges the House of Universal Devotion slew—we were safely back in England then. And the sooner we are safely back in England once more, the happier I shall be. Of that you may rest assured.”

“I begin to feel the same way,” Helms replied. “Nevertheless, we are here, and we must persevere. Onward, I say!”

 

 

Their course intersected with that of the police on several more occasions. Thetford’s self-declared finest eyed them as if they were vultures at a feast. “I do believe we shall be hard-pressed to come by any further information from official sources,” Helms said.

“Brilliant deduction!” Dr. Walton said. One of Athelstan Helms’ elegant eyebrows rose. Surely the good doctor could not be displaying an ironical side? Surely not. . . .

Gun shops flourished in Thetford. They sold all manner of shotguns and rifles for hunting. That made a certain amount of sense to Walton; the countryside surrounding the city was far wilder than any English woods. Despite the almost certain extinction of honkers, other native birds still thrived there, as did turkeys imported from Terranova and deer and wild boar and foxes brought across the sea from the British Isles and Europe.

The gun shops also sold an even greater profusion of pistols: everything from a derringer small enough to be concealed in a fancy belt buckle to pistols that Dr. Walton, a large, solidly made man, would not have cared to fire two-handed, let alone with only one. “Something like that,” he said, pointing to one in the window, “you’re better off clouting the other bloke in the head with it. That’d put the quietus on him, by Jove!”

“I daresay,” Helms replied, and then surprised his friend by going into the shop.

“Help you with something?” asked the proprietor, a wizened little man in a green eyeshade who looked more like a pawnbroker than the bluff, hearty sort one might expect to run such an establishment.

“If you would be so kind,” Helms said. “I’d like to see a police pistol, if you please.”

“A .465 Manstopper?” the proprietor said. Walton thought the pistol had an alarmingly forthright name. The man produced one: a sturdy revolver, if not quite so gargantuan as some of the weapons civilians here seemed to carry.

Athelstan Helms broke it down and reassembled it with a practiced ease that made the proprietor eye him with more respect than he’d shown hitherto. “A well-made weapon, sure enough,” Helms said. “The action seems a bit stiff, but only a bit. And the ammunition?”

“How keen on getting rid of fouling are you?” the gunshop owner asked.

“When necessary, of course,” Helms replied. “I am not averse to reducing the necessity as much as possible.”

“Sensible fellow.” The proprietor produced a gaudily printed cardboard box holding twenty-five rounds. “These are the cartridges the police use. Sell you this and the pistol for thirteen eagles twenty-five cents.”

Dr. Walton expected Helms to decline, perhaps with scorn. Instead, the detective took from his pocket a medium-sized gold coin, three large silver ones, and one medium-sized silver one. “Here you are, and I thank you very much.”