Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [113]
Begg recognized him immediately. “So it was true,” he murmured. “I have been guilty of underestimating you, mein herr. I knew that if Monsieur Zenith was not helping this gang, it had to be someone equally knowledgeable in the ways of the multiverse.”
The newcomer's thin lips formed a mocking smile of triumph. “You had thought me defeated, Sir Seaton, in the matter of the Corsican Collar. Then your life was saved by my old enemy, your cousin, who calls himself Zenith. But you knew I would return to continue with my quest.”
Lowering his revolver, Begg turned at once to Colonel Hitler. “Believe me, if you think to link your interests with this creature's you are mistaken. He will betray you as he has betrayed every other man, woman or spirit whom he has persuaded to act with him. You might know him by another name, but I can tell you his real identity, for he is the master of lies. He is Hieronymous Klosterheim. Some believe him a fallen angel expelled from hell itself, but I know that he was once a member of the Society of Jesus before he was expelled from that order and excommunicated by the Pope himself.”
“Klosterheim!” Captain Goering's plump features shook with amusement. “What nonsense! This is Herr Johan Cornelius. You would have us believe that we have linked our fortunes with a figure from folklore—the infamous Gaynor the Damned!”
“As he is called in the opera,” said Begg quietly, “but Wagner took certain liberties with the old legends, as before him did Milton.”
Lapointe, Sinclair and the pale, wounded LeBec all looked at him as if he were mad. They knew the stories from the opera of the enemy of Parsifal, who had sought the Grail and found it, only to be cursed with eternal damnation, to wander the earth until the end of time for the crime of attempting to drink Christ's very blood.
“Drop your weapons, gentlemen, or this time I shoot your colleague in his heart and not his shoulder,” was Klosterheim's icy response.
The Nazi colonel himself was now staring a little nervously at the masked man, wondering whether any bargain he might have made with him could possibly still be to his advantage.
Then Mrs. Persson stepped out of the circle and joined Klosterheim, standing close beside him, making it clear she was the fiend's ally.
“It's said that promise of the Grail's power will corrupt even the noblest of human creatures,” declared Begg. “Had I realized exactly what we were up against, my friends, I would never have led you here! This will be forever on my conscience.”
“Fear not, Sir Seaton,” came Klosterheim's hollow, terrible voice. “You will not have to suffer for very much longer. Meanwhile I shall be obliged if you will drop your weapons at your feet.”
And as their revolvers clattered down, he uttered a mirthless laugh which echoed endlessly through the vaulted chambers and chilled the blood of all sojourners who heard it.
CHAPTER SIX
The Ultimate Power
Begg felt physically sick standing with his hands raised watching the Nazi gangster gloat over his reversal. He had underestimated not only Hitler and Company but everyone he had opposed. He had been foolish to assume that he alone, save for Mrs. Persson and Monsieur Zenith, knew the secret of the moonbeam roads. He had wanted too badly to trust that pair. Cursing himself for not anticipating his old enemy Klosterheim's ambitions, he refused to believe he might have been forgiven. Almost everyone believed Klosterheim to have met his end in Mirenburg a decade or more earlier. Not that Begg himself had been there to witness the evil eternal's demise. None other than Zenith had given him the information.
From his earliest appearance as a Satanic angel expelled from hell in the myths and legends of the seventeenth century, Klosterheim had been said to die more than once. But his antipathy to Begg's family, or at least the German side of the family, the von Beks, was well known. He had survived one apparent death