The Devil in Amber (22 page)

Crouching in the snow just outside of the pool of electric light thrown from the station, Flarge and I watched as the vehicle clunked downwards. A shadow flickered in the window and I breathed a sigh of relief. The car sliding down the wire towards us was empty and there seemed only to be a single fellah on guard in the station itself. Flarge and I hastily devised a plan and then waited for the cable-car to come to a halt.

I signalled to my new ally, who nodded and covered me with his pistol as I crept forward, boots crumping through the impacted snow. Marching boldly to the steamed-up glass door of the terminus, I knocked and plastered a pleasant smile onto my face. Through the fog of condensation, I watched the guard frown, unshoulder his Tommy gun and slide back the door.

‘
Pardon
,’ I cried. ‘
Je suis un peu perdu
.’

Like a flash, Flarge leapt from his hiding place, reared up and
plunged a knife into the guard’s sternum. The unfortunate chap slid noiselessly to the floor.

Flarge dashed inside, studied the controls for a moment and then set the opposite lift moving. Without hesitation, the pair of us ran across and piled inside.

The car rocked and then began to lurch upwards and I let my gaze drink in the huge spotlit carpet of snow that illumined both the mountainside and castle with a bone-white glow.

Within the car, the atmosphere was pretty stifling: melted snow puddling on the wooden floor and rising off our clothes in great steaming clouds. Flarge was watchful as a hawk, gazing down at the glittering landscape below as we shuddered heavenwards on the narrow steel cable.

I was silent and anxious. The situation could hardly be more grim. Mons had both his Perfect Victim and the completed Jerusalem Prayer. My only hope lay in his not knowing the exact location of the ‘Tomb’–the place where Aggie’s sacrifice was destined to occur. That at least might buy us some time. I caught sight of myself in the glass, reflection distorted and ghastly-looking, my face clammy and beaded with sweat that stood out on my forehead like diamonds on cloth.

Still the lift clanked onwards, a persistent squeal coming from the steel wheels as they trundled over the cable. I watched as the ground disappeared into the inky darkness below and the jagged, snow-streaked rocks of the mountain reared up before us.

‘All right,’ said Flarge at last. ‘Any bright ideas? We’ll be arriving at Mons’s castle in a few minutes and there may well be a welcoming committee—’

‘Look!’ I cried suddenly. ‘There! Down there. Do you see them?’

‘What?’

I dashed across the cabin and hauled open the sliding door. A wild and chilling wind immediately whipped at our hair and clothes. ‘Come on!’ I called.

‘Don’t play games, Box!’ cried Flarge. ‘What did you see?’

I glanced outside and saw that the trajectory of the cable had brought us within six feet or so of the mountain’s jagged surface. Clambering over the lip of the car, I swung like an ape, jumped into space and landed softly in the snow. I beckoned urgently to Flarge, who calmly dropped onto his rear, pushed himself off and fell into the powdery drift.

The now-empty cable-car continued at once on its upward ascent, but I was already striding forward towards the two shapes I’d espied from the cabin, screwing up my eyes against the snow that lashed at my face. From the deeply drifted ravine on which we’d landed, I led the way towards a track that wound around the mountain.

And suddenly, there they were. Two huddled human shapes, snow already piling over their prone forms.

‘Who is it?’ cried Flarge, racing to my side.

I turned over the first: a massive, familiar bulk, still breathing–thank the Lord Harry. Delilah!

‘Out cold,’ I muttered, examining her pallid features. Reaching inside my coat, I pulled out a hip flask and managed to get some whisky past my old friend’s frozen lips.

Flarge had bent to uncover the second body but suddenly cried out, stumbled onto his rear and, with a guttural retch, vomited copiously into the drift.

I trudged towards him and knelt before the second body, knowing from its size and clothing that it was Professor Reiss-Mueller. In all honesty, I was grateful for these clues, as what lay before me was scarcely recognizable as human.

Reiss-Mueller’s skin was shiny and black as rotten fruit, his eyes–fixed in an expression of absolute terror–rolled up horribly into the very limits of their sockets. His nose and mouth, merely flayed holes now, ran with a dreadful green pus that steamed in the frozen air.

And, tucked neatly into his breast pocket, was the silken fragment of the Jerusalem Prayer.

I
whipped the relic from the corpse and plunged it into my coat pocket. The unfortunate Reiss-Mueller must have swiped the wretched thing back in the cottage when he’d ‘stumbled’ against me. Well, much good had it done him.

Flarge staggered to his feet, wiping the bile from his chin and studiously avoiding the dreadful sight before us. ‘What the deuce happened to him?’ he croaked.

There was a low groan from Delilah’s prone form and I hastened to her side. Despite the thudding snowfall, I could see from the tracks that surrounded her that she and Reiss-Mueller hadn’t been alone. There’d been a third party–Aggie, of course–but from the agitated state of the snow, clearly others had arrived.

Delilah suddenly sat up and yelled in absolute terror.

‘No! Ho Gawd!’ she cried. ‘Ho my ruddy Gawd! No! No!’

I tried to push her back down with a soothing hand. ‘It’s all right, Delilah. It’s me. It’s Mr Box. You’re safe now.’

She looked wildly about then grasped my wrist, her ravaged
countenance streaming with sweat. ‘Mr Box, sah!’ she rasped, swallowing repeatedly. ‘Hif you’d honly seen it!’

I detached myself from her grasp with some difficulty. ‘Now just take it easy. Tell us what happened.’

Delilah collapsed onto her back, breathing stertorously and shaking her massive head in disbelief. ‘The Professor,’ she gasped. ‘’E come back, hout of the blue. ’Ad words wiv ’is boys and sent ’em horf. Then ’e pulls a pistol on me and says, “Get the girl.”’ Delilah flashed me a look of desperate appeal. “E’d’ve shot me down then hand there, sah, Hi swear it!’

‘It’s all right,’ I soothed. ‘I understand. What happened then?’

‘Well, Hi ’ad to drag Miss Haggie downstairs, sah, and we set horf for the castle. Hi thought we’d perish out ’ere, sah, but the Professor–blast ’is heyes–’e says ’e ’ad heverything ’e needed now hand we must get to the tomb come ’ell hor ’igh water.’

She grabbed the hip flask from me and drained it dry. Whisky bubbled over her cracked lips. ‘“Hit’s my time,” his what ’e said. “I shall be the one the Prince of Darkness favours.”’

I nodded slowly to myself. Flarge crouched down and tried to get his arm around Delilah’s waist in order to help him up. To my astonishment, the old girl lashed out and clocked him on the side of the head.

‘What the hell!’ he ejaculated.

Delilah rolled over and began to box poor Percy about the ears until I dragged her off by the shoulders. ‘No, no! He’s with us now. It’s all right, believe me!’

‘But you said ’e was trying to—’

‘I know, I know! But things have changed, Delilah. Please. Let go of Mr Flarge’s head!’

With great reluctance, my wonderfully brutish slavey did as she was bidden and Flarge flopped into the snow, spluttering and heaving up a little more of his lunch. Delilah shook herself all over and then continued her tale. ‘We got up ’ere, hand then…then…something awful odd ’appened, sah.’

‘Go on.’

Delilah rubbed her jowls. ‘Miss Haggie sets up ha terrible crying, sah, and the Professor tells ’er to shut ’er noise. But she says, “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel it?”, and that’s when I gets this ’orrible feeling. Like when Hi gets one of me black dogs, you know, sah.’

I knew what was coming.

‘Then Miss Haggie points a’ead through the snow. Hi thought someone was coming to meet hus, sah, but the Prof just let out an ’orrible moan and fell to ’is knees. There was somebody there, Mr Box. But it weren’t ’uman! This terrible face! And the eyes on it!’

I patted her hand. ‘I know, I know.’

‘What happened then?’ said Flarge, keeping a wary distance from Delilah.

My servant stared into the falling snow, almost unable to bear the recollection. ‘The Professor pulls out that blessed ’ankie,’ she whispered, ‘and waves it habout. “Hi’m ’ere!” he shouts. “Hi ’ave come!” But the thing just glares at ’im and its eyes glowed red and the Professor started screaming and…I don’t remember no more. Hi’m sorry, sah.’

She sank into herself and began to sob uncontrollably, something I’d never seen in all our years together. Giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, I rose to my feet. ‘I reckon Reiss-Mueller was operating on his own. He kept me alive just long enough to find out the identity of the Perfect Victim then pick-pocketed the relic from me and went in search of his destiny. He was a real expert, as he said. Crazy about the occult. And he wanted the evil power for himself. Unfortunately for him, old Nick seems to have had other ideas.’

Rubbing his near-throttled neck, Flarge came closer, gingerly retrieving the brass binoculars from Reiss-Mueller’s mangled corpse. ‘And the girl?’ he said at last.

‘From the look of these tracks, Mons’s men came along and took Aggie away, leaving Delilah to freeze to death.’

‘And the relic? Why the hell would they leave that?’

I shook my head. Flarge cast a longing glance at the cable above our heads. ‘Well, it’s a dashed hard climb for us now. Night on a bare mountain, what?’

I waved the silk under his nose. ‘What you don’t know is that this thing is also a kind of map. And what the late Professor and I discovered some time ago is that the location of the imprisoned brimstone-lover is located halfway up this mountain. We’re almost there.’

Which was an optimistic statement, to say the least. With the exhausted Delilah slowing us down, it was terrifically hard going, the startling white of the snow coupled with the deep, deep shadows of the treacherous rocks conspiring to confuse our every step.

Trudging on regardless, the snow buffeting us in swirling eddies like miniature cyclones, we made our way up the mountain track as it began to level out.

Machine-cut chips of rock littered the drifts beneath our boots like black threads in ermine and, as I peered through the white curtain of the weather, I made out, just ahead of us, the semicircle of a tunnel entrance.

‘Mons’s work, you reckon?’ I cried.

Flarge frowned, then advanced and began to rub with a gloved hand against the rock wall. A rusted metal sign emerged from the peppering of snow, bearing the letters
PTT
.

My new ally let out a little laugh. ‘No, old boy. This is something far more powerful. Its pernicious tentacles spread across the globe!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘
PTT!
Postal Telegraph and Telephones! It’s the Swiss Post Office! Clearly they had cause to dig into this rock long before Mons did!’

‘Very handy for the bugger, I’m sure.’

‘Look ’ere, sah!’ called Delilah, beckoning me over.

I hauled my way through the drifts and looked down to see where Delilah had brushed away the snow, revealing the rusted tracks of a
narrow-gauge railway leading into the cave. Dear me but the Swiss were funny beggars. Why the hell would they build a post-office railway inside a mountain? Nevertheless grateful for their eccentricity, I led our little party through the narrow entrance into the tunnel and it was a huge relief to be out of the howling gale. Pushing down the snow-soaked scarf from over my mouth, I took in our new surroundings.

From somewhere close by there came a repetitive throbbing beat, reminiscent of the pounding drums at the F.A.U.S.T. rally. But what drew our attention at once was the ruddy glow coming from up ahead. Gingerly, the three of us advanced until we reached a much more ragged archway, which, judging by the great piles of dusty rock that surrounded it, had only recently been excavated.

There were voices coming from within. As if the place weren’t uncanny enough, it sounded for all the world like a sermon in a country church; low, monotonous grumbling followed by hushed responses. Well I knew, though, that it was some hideously bastardized version of the familiar ritual.

We listened for a time, Delilah getting her breath back, Flarge concentrating on reloading his pistol. At last, I signalled them to follow and we crept stealthily forward to spy out the unfamiliar territory.

The tunnel opened into a cathedral-like chamber, its ceiling festooned with stalactites that dripped like the venom-laden fangs of some great serpent. The place exhibited the signs of its hasty excavation, though vast black drapes had been strung from the rock walls, their surfaces beautifully worked in diabolical designs of crimson, azure and gold. At the centre of the chamber stood a big stone altar, draped in black cloth.

I swallowed hard. Agnes Daye lay sprawled nude on her belly on that altar, seemingly insensible, her arms bound behind her back. Even at that distance I could see the ugly wound in her shoulder, black against the burnt-sugar brown of her smooth flesh. Around
her, wreathed in smoking incense, were scores of equally naked men and women, their faces covered by grotesquely carved animal masks. Pigs, wolves and bug-eyed insects leered out of the miasmic gloom, chanting, writhing and wildly gesticulating.

Only three faces remained uncovered: my sister Pandora, swamped by a floor-length robe of Roman purple, Olympus Mons, who stood at a sort of lectern, and a corpulent figure clothed in black, his multiple chins wobbling over the tight collar. It was Joshua Reynolds, his eyes shining with depraved joy. Once Flarge had told me his tale I’d suspected as much but here was the living proof. Who was better placed to lure Percy Flarge into his nefarious schemes than the head of the Royal Academy himself!

I thought back to that fateful meeting in the Moscow Tea Rooms. Of how he’d taunted me, dismissed me as a relic of a bygone age–whilst all the time I’d been vital to his terrible plans. He’d counted on my skills to hunt down Agnes Daye and return the relic to its rightful place. Rage boiled within me but I tried to suppress it and concentrate instead on the lectern before which Mons was standing. Upon it was stretched what I knew at once to be the remainder of the Jerusalem Prayer, patched together like an exquisite quilt. The left-hand corner was missing.

Mons was naked save for his own black robe, embroidered all over with slithering serpents, chased in silver and bronze. There was a wildly triumphant look in his searchlight eyes as he intoned his blasphemous verses. ‘He comes! He that is Spoken Of! As it is written, so mote it be!’ he bellowed. ‘The Prayer speaks truly! All unknowing he returns the last piece to the whole!’

I was so absorbed by this performance that at first I didn’t notice the cold barrel of an automatic pressing into my neck. Whirling round, I groaned at the sight of amber-shirt guards depriving Flarge of his pistol and others training their machine-guns on Delilah.

With a sharp jab in my side, I was propelled through into the incense-soaked chamber beyond.

Mons paused in his declamation, his ruddy face suffused with delight.

I smiled in clubbable fashion. ‘Oh. You’ve started without us. And I thought I was being fashionably late.’

Mons seemed amused and rubbed his hands like a genial host. ‘Very good, Mr Box. Ever so good.’

‘Welcome Box!’ cried Reynolds.

‘Welcome brother!’ giggled Pandora. ‘At last you’re here. And you’ve fulfilled your side of the bargain admirably.’

Delilah stumped to my side. ‘What the ’ell do they mean, sah?’ she grumbled. ‘What bargain?’

Reynolds rubbed his massive belly in delight. ‘What other kind is there, Box? A Devil’s bargain!’

Pandora licked her carmined lips. ‘Oh, poor Lucy, you
have
been naive!’

A cold wave of sickness passed over me. What had I done?

‘Haven’t you read your fragment of the Prayer?’ cried Mons, smiling. ‘It was written there the whole time.’

‘Didn’t I say he was getting slow?’ cackled Reynolds.

I gazed around the chamber, feeling utterly hollow. ‘“All unknowing will he come,”’ I quoted in a dull whisper.

Mons nodded feverishly. ‘The Prayer has been separated into fragments all these years but the text itself decrees that the last piece must be restored by one who comes all unknowing. You, my friend, you!’

‘No!’ I cried. ‘
No!
’

‘We’ve been leading you here all along, Box,’ sneered Reynolds. ‘Why’d you think we made it so damned easy for you to escape?’

‘Easy!’ I exclaimed. ‘I could have lost your blasted relic half a dozen times. Along with my ruddy life!’

Mons shook his head. ‘You were watched over all the time,’ he said, troublingly.

‘Watched over?’ I whispered, voice cracking. ‘By whom?’

Mons stroked his waxed moustache. ‘By the Prince of Darkness himself. Knowing how close we had come to releasing him, he stretched out his terrible influence to ensure you came to no harm.’

As disquieting thoughts go it was up there with the best. But now I understood why that frightful apparition had sent the police off on the wrong trail back in Norfolk, why the bullet had melted into air before my face and why Professor Reiss-Mueller had been rejected by the Dark Master he so longed to serve. It was essential that I, thick-headed dolt that I was, bring back the last fragment of the Prayer without ever knowing I was being used as its hapless courier. What had the cypher said? ‘Box
must
have the Prayer.’

‘So you’ve put me through all this,
all this
,’ I seethed, ‘just to bring back that bloody dish-rag for you?’