Johannes Cabal the Detective (36 page)

Within its portals (which are not “hallowed,” because enhallowment suggests some fame, and this is anathema to the establishment) lie facilities of comfort and convenience for the rare variety of clubbable men who do not care for clubs. In all conceivable senses, it is a club for gentlemen, but in a single ineffable sense it is not, and this is what attracts a particular caste. Nor is it sheer coyness to say that this exotic factor is ineffable—it is a je ne sais quoi of which one literally does not know what. The nature of this curious factor is neither germane to the following narrative nor even to the jealousies of rival clubs, which are simply aware of the existence of “Blakes men” and are content to leave them in Blakes.

Certainly, there was little beyond its doors, hallowed or otherwise, to mark it out as anything but one of the smaller clubs of the great metropolis. There is a dining room, studies, some rooms for members to stay overnight should the need arise, and a library, which, despite its books going untouched from one year to the next, is the most popular room in the place. Here the members slouch in overstuffed chairs, hold desultory conversations, and read (newspapers, that is, although the otherwise unloved books get the occasional perusal provided they are either a volume of
Wisden
or, oddly enough, Quiller-Couch’s
Oxford Book of English Verse
).

On a wintery evening, the members had concluded a pleasant dinner—the majority enjoying an excellent beef Wellington followed by spotted dick and custard, finishing with a good port served with a varied cheeseboard—and had retired to the library to cap the evening with brandy and cigars. There, they occupied their habitual seats and settled into a warm and happy glow as they chatted about politics and sport. Chiltern, who seemed to spend every morning memorising the newspaper so that he should never be without a topic for conversation, was setting forth his views on the marbles that the Greeks seemed to regard as theirs. These views seemed uncannily similar to those of that morning’s editorial, but that was Chiltern; he regarded the newspaper as a useful alternative to having to evolve any opinions of his own.

“They’re ours,” he said, waving his pipe stem at Protheroe, who seemed to be asleep. “How dare those Grecians start laying down the law to us. To
us
. If we hadn’t removed the blessed things, the Turks would probably have blown them up or something.” He glowered. “You know what the Turks are like.” Chiltern had read history and had yet to forgive the fall of Constantinople.

“How much does a Greek earn?” asked Tompkinson abruptly of anybody. “I mean, what does a Greek earn?”

“Drachmas, I should think,” said Munroe, sketching Chiltern in profile. None too flatteringly, at that. “That’s what they use instead of money over there.”

“No, no, no,” said Tompkinson, shaking his head emphatically. “I mean, What’s a Greek earn?” He looked around until he caught somebody’s eye. On this occasion, the poor unfortunate was Kay, the professor of chemistry. “About five bob!” said Tompkinson. Kay looked at him blankly. “It’s a joke,” Tompkinson explained. “What’s a Greek earn?”

“About five bob?” Kay ventured.

“No! You’re supposed to say, ‘It’s a bit of pottery’ or similar. It’s a pun! A … a … thingy.
Earn
, E-A-R-N,” he spelled out, “and
urn
, U-R-N. Sounds the same, but it’s different.”

“Homophone,” supplied Munroe.

“Well, good Lord, if you can’t take a joke,” said Tompkinson, and subsided into an aggrieved silence, for which they were all very grateful.

“One should be very careful with archaeology,” said Enright from where he stood by the fireplace. Everybody stopped and looked at him.

Enright was something of a mystery. Blakes was, as has already been intimated, a club of slightly unusual attributes, this slightness being of such a degree that nobody was sure exactly which attributes were specifically the unusual ones. There had been the incident of the whiskers in the water closet, and some of the members became very tight-lipped should the words “clockwork” and “Lord Palmerston” ever accidentally find themselves in the same sentence, but these were no more than the common eccentricities of any establishment. Enright, by comparison, was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a very tasteful Holland & Sherry suit. No one knew very much about him. He came highly recommended from a former member, and sailed gracefully and somewhat laconically through the selection committee. It seemed that the club was perhaps his only social indulgence, as he was never seen at any of the many parties that one attends in and about town. Attempts at gentle investigation into his past by having a word with his primary sponsor came to naught when that gentleman took a nosedive off Beachy Head after some share options turned out to be less than on the square. Even the committee had been reticent in discussing Enright’s background. Everyone made noncommittal noises about “salt of the earth” and “confidentiality” but seemed discomforted and eager to change the subject. Thus, it may be understood that all were intrigued about anything to do with Enright, and all listened attentively as he spoke on this occasion.

“Careful with archaeology?” echoed Chiltern. “What’s that supposed to mean? One might as well say, ‘One should be circumspect with ornithology,’ or perhaps ‘There are dangers incipient in accountancy.’”

“Here, here,” said Wilson, whose wife had run off with a chartered accountant.

“Sorry, Wilson. Still, what do you mean, Enright, ‘careful with archaeology’?”

“Just what I say. No more, no less.”

“Good heavens,” said Clifton, folding his newspaper and putting his reading glasses into his top pocket. “I do believe there’s a story here.”

“A story?” Enright took a spill from the pot on the mantelpiece, lit it from the fire, and used it to rekindle his cigar. “Perhaps there is. There is certainly a salutary warning to the curious.”

“Don’t be so dashed mysterious, Enright,” chimed in Kay. “Is there a tale to be told or isn’t there?” Perhaps it was the impatience in his tone, but Enright shot Kay a warning glance that the chemist didn’t like at all. It was too late for discretion, however; the others had the scent of a yarn and would worry Enright like terriers with a rat until they had it out of him. To his credit, he knew an impossible position when he saw one. He warmed the brandy in his glass and took a sip as he considered his words. Then he began.

I
appreciate that I seem something of a dark horse amongst you,” said Enright. “Only the committee know anything of my background, and I swore them to silence upon their word. I fear I shall have to ask the same of you.”

This demand raised no eyebrows; if a shilling had been entered into a fund every time a member of the club agreed to tell a story only under the most sober promise of secrecy, it would by now contain two pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence (to cover Battersby’s tale of his cuckolding;
everybody
knew all about that well before Battersby did, so it was only worth half a bob). The assembly made its usual collection of incoherent mumbles to signify agreement, and he continued.

“I have seen a great deal of the world in my forty years, sometimes rather more than any Christian would want to see. I was at Panisha in the year ’85, I was in the Guasoir Valley shortly after the Desolée Suppression and, on the occasion I am thinking of, I was in Mirkarvia during the rioting after the assassination of Emperor Antrobus II. I should point out that, at all these times—and others too numerous to mention—I was acting as a private citizen. My loyalties, however, lie with the Crown in all affairs. I am, I like to think, a patriot and I believe it is my duty to see what is to be seen, and report it to the proper authorities.

“Good Lord!” interjected Chilton at this point. “You’re an amateur spy!” He looked around, aghast. “Another one!” He was always put out to discover that yet another fellow member was a spy, as he was about the only member who had never been one. He did, however, maintain hopes that one day a coded letter might accidentally make its way into his hands, or that a desperate government agent might hoarsely whisper some vital secret into his ear before succumbing to a knife between the shoulder blades. Then, he was sure, he would show his mettle and save the day. Towards this happy adventure, he read a good many yellow books, and bought a bowler hat containing a concealed camera. The others shushed him, and Enright continued.

“The rioting was very ugly and threatened to turn into civil war at any moment. I stayed as long as I could, but foreigners quickly came to be regarded as agents provocateurs by elements of both sides and I found it necessary to leave. My departure was neither as ordered nor as leisurely as I might have hoped, and I found myself on horseback with a few belongings heading for the neighbouring state of Senza in the wee hours of the morning.

“There was a … 
misunderstanding
at the frontier, the border guards made fractious and suspicious by the events of the moment, and I was forced to ride on with bullets threading the night air behind me. I made it through unscarred, but my horse was less lucky. She was a skittish mare, all I could lay hands on at short notice, and she was creased upon her left flank by one of the guards’ wild shots. The combination of her fragile nature and the mild but stinging wound conspired to drive her into a frenzy of fear, and she bore me deep into the dense forest that is common in that part of the world.

“I’d venture to say that I am not a novice in the saddle, but that nightmare’s ride filled me with apprehension as she bore me through the closely packed trunks of ancient and twisting trees as if the Devil himself were at our heels. There was no hope of controlling her; her neck was iron and she cared little for the bit that I pulled fiercely back into her mouth. She was beyond fear of a mere man. I was no longer her rider but simply a passenger. I clung onto her as long as I could and, as she tore blindly through the forest, I could not help but think of the tales my old Scottish nanny used to tell me of the water horses of her country that tempted the unwary onto their backs and then ran insanely along the banks of the loch, terrifying their hapless victims before plunging into the waters and drowning them, the easier to feast upon their flesh. That started me worrying about the streams that crisscross the valleys there, running off the mountain ranges that delineate the many pocket states.

“And then, suddenly, it was morning.

“I have been knocked unconscious before and am familiar with the small loss of memory that comes with it, so I was not unduly concerned that I could not recall precisely how I had lost my horse. Indeed, a wound on my brow suggested that I had been swept off her back by a low bough. I was, however,
very
concerned to discover that my clothes were filthy, and I found that I had a beard of several days’ growth.

“As I lay there, I heard voices and, looking to one side, realised that I had been laid out in a clearing in the woods. My horse, that wretched beast, was tied up by a tree with two others and, by a small fire, two men were going through my saddlebags. I have a small gift for languages, but their parochial dialect of Mirkarvian German was difficult to follow—salted as it was with Katamenian words—and only with difficulty could I make out what they were talking about. What I heard filled me with anger but made me apprehensive for my safety. They appeared to be bandits and had happened across me—they consistently referred to me as the
baromarcu’ Ausländerfotz
, a singularly insulting term for ‘foreigner’—in a state of confusion. Seeing that pickings rarely got easier than an amnesiac upon an injured horse, they had ridden after me and knocked me from the saddle. They kept speaking of me in the past tense, and I realised that that they believed this second fall had killed me. In fact, it had restored me to my senses.

“I remembered reading Mallory in my youth, and thought of the mad Lancelot lost in the forest. I couldn’t remember what happened to him, but I doubted he had recovered his wits to discover a pair of thieves bickering over his field glasses. I lay doggo and considered my next move. If they discovered me to be alive, I had little doubt they would cut my throat and consider it small inconvenience. I felt weak, and my wound—I had been fortunate that the bandits had not seen me stir and touch it—burned abominably, suggesting some infection. Fighting them was out of the question. Thus, I was left with little option but to continue to lie quite still and play dead.

“After some further argument, the two villains finished splitting my belongings between them, took their horses—and mine—and made to leave. One briefly wondered whether they should bury me, but the other said to leave me for the wolves and bears. The first was unhappy about this, and I had the sense that he was superstitious about mistreatment of the dead, a courtesy he notably didn’t extend to the living. Thankfully, his companion was made of sterner stuff and belittled him for his fears until they both left, the former in a nervous dudgeon.

“For safety’s sake, I lay still for several minutes after the sound of their movement had faded away. I was in a dilemma—injured, weakened, and lost without food or water. What was I to do? I’ve been in a good few scrapes in my time but, to be frank, none had seemed this hopeless, and it took a few moments to fight a sense of despair that arose in me as the gravity of my situation made itself perfectly apparent. Of course, I was able to rein such sensations back; despair is an enemy just as any other, but at least it can be fought with action. At which point I heard an animal moving close by.

“I stayed perfectly still. Most bears, no matter what the bandits had said, are not especially interested in dead meat until it has become a little gamy. They are, however, easily antagonised and, judging by the sounds the animal was making, it was more likely to be a bear than a wolf. I lay absolutely still, eyes shut, and listened as the animal came closer and closer by degrees, obviously suspicious of the clearing. There would be silence for seconds, sometimes minutes on end, and I would think it had moved on. Then I would hear it again, still cautious, still closer. The blood was pounding in my head as my heart raced, goading me to leap to my feet and either fight or run. I knew that either course would almost certainly result in my death. There was nothing to do but wait.