Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [32]
The amateur cracksman turned up the gaslight and faces became clear. The chattering thing burst into its screech and was quelled only by a mild glance from the Devil Doctor. In one corner was a large golden cage, built as if for a parrot with a six-foot wingspan, containing a long-tailed ape. It bared yellow teeth in bright pink gums that took up two-thirds of its face. The Chinaman was renowned for a strange taste in pets, as Beauregard had cause to recall whenever he used his snakeskin-handled boot scraper.
‘Business,’ snorted a military-looking vampire, ‘time is money, remember...’
‘A thousand pardons, Colonel Moran. In the East, things are different. Here, we must bow to your Western ways, hurry and bustle, haste and industry.’
The cigar-smoker stood up, unbending a lanky figure from which hung a frock coat marked around the pockets with chalk. The Colonel deferred to him and sat back, eyes falling. The smoker’s head oscillated from side to side like a lizard’s, eye-teeth protruding over his lower lip.
‘My associate is a businessman,’ he explained between puffs, ‘our cricketing friend is a dilettante, Griffin over there is a scientist, Captain Macheath – who, by the way, sends his apologies – is a soldier, Sikes is continuing his family business, I am a mathematician, but you, my dear doctor, are an artist.’
‘The Professor flatters me.’
Beauregard had heard of the Professor too. Mycroft’s brother, the consulting detective, had a craze of sorts for him. He might well be the worst Englishman unhanged.
‘With two of the three most dangerous men in the world in one room,’ he observed, ‘I have to ask myself where the third might be?’
‘I see our names and positions are not unknown to you, Mr Beauregard,’ said the Chinaman. ‘Dr Nikola is unavailable for our little gathering. I believe he may be found investigating some sunken ships off the coast of Tasmania. He no longer concerns us. He has his own interests.’
Beauregard looked at the others in the meeting, those still unaccounted for. Griffin, whom the Professor had mentioned, was an albino who seemed to fade into the background. Sikes was a pig-faced man, warm, short, burly and brutal. With a loud striped jacket and cheap oil on his hair, he looked out of place in such a distinguished gathering. Alone in the company, he was the image of a criminal.
‘Professor, if you would care to explain to our honoured guest...’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ replied the man sometimes called ‘the Napoleon of Crime’. ‘Mr Beauregard, as you are aware none of us – and I include you among our number – has what we might call common cause. We pursue our own furrows. If they happen to intersect... well, that is often unfortunate. Lately there have been the changes, but, whatever personal metamorphoses we might welcome, our calling has remained essentially the same. We are, as we always have been, a shadow community. To an extent, we have reached an accommodation. We pit our wits against each other, but when the sun comes up we draw a line. We let well enough alone. It grieves me greatly to have to say this, but that line seems not to be holding...’
‘There was police raids all over the East End,’ Sikes interrupted. ‘Balmy Charlie Warren’s sent in another bleedin’ cavalry charge. Years of bloody work overturned in a single night. ’Ouses smashed. Gamblin’, opium, girls: nuffin’ sacred. Our business ’as been bought ’n’ paid for, an’ the filthy peelers done us dirty when they went back on the deal.’
‘I have no connection with the police,’ Beauregard said.
‘Do not think us naïve,’ said the Professor. ‘Like all agents of the Diogenes Club, you have no official position at all. But what is official and what is effective are separate things.’
‘This persecution of our interests will continue,’ the Doctor said, ‘so long as the gentleman known as Silver Knife is at liberty.’
Beauregard nodded. ‘I suppose so. There’s always a chance the murderer will be turned up by the raids.’
‘He’s not one of us,’ snorted Colonel Moran.
‘’E’s a ravin’ nutter, that’s what ’e is. Listen, none