Mariah Mundi and the Ghost Diamonds (28 page)

‘That is a promise too far. Not even Skull and Bones would allow that,’ Mariah replied.

‘You train him well, Captain. He is so much like you. If I didn’t know better I would say you were his father,’ Zogel said as he walked slowly across the pier towards the submersible. ‘Did you destroy my submarine?’ he asked as the swirling smoke ghosted his appearance.

‘Is that what it is called?’ asked Charity.

‘I had thought of under-sea-boat, but it didn’t sound as romantic,’ Zogel quipped. ‘I take it I can still leave?’

‘Without the diamonds,’ said Mariah as he held out his hand.

‘A boy with a golden tip to his finger, now
that
is interesting. Will you sell it to me?’

‘I don’t sell memories,’ Mariah replied. ‘The diamonds?’

Begrudgingly, Zogel handed Mariah the bag of Ghost Diamonds and scowled.

‘Easy come,’ he said.

‘Easy go,’ Mariah replied with a smile.

‘Let me walk you to your craft,’ Charity interrupted, pushing Zogel in the back to move him along.

‘I will have to book in to the Prince Regent next year. I hear the food is very good. Baron Hoetzendorf said how much he enjoyed it – especially the sandwiches,’ Zogel replied.

‘We shall always be full. I will make certain Mrs Mukluk never returns your calls or opens your letters,’ Charity said as
he pushed Zogel further along the pier towards the submersible.

‘Perhaps that would be a very wise thing. You could never win again and I would have to kill you like I did the others,’ Zogel replied.

‘I am the one holding the gun. The only thing that stops me shooting you is that I am an Englishman,’ said Charity as he clicked the hammer of the pistol, ready to fire.

‘I have outstayed my welcome. It has been a grand chase and one which I have enjoyed immensely. You have my permission to do what you want with Bardolph. He is beyond use, even for the Society of Truth.’

‘Are you really the power behind the power?’ Mariah asked. Sacha stood close by him, holding the hem of his jacket nervously.

‘Only in this world,’ Zogel said solemnly. ‘We shall all come before a greater authority one day.’

‘I think it is time for you to take to the sea,’ Charity said as they got to the steps.

Before Zogel left, Mariah handed Charity the Ghost Diamonds. He looked inside: they sparkled as if they were jewelled eggs in a snug nest.

‘I would have liked them for myself,’ Zogel said. ‘The Bureau of Antiquities will hide them away never to be seen or enjoyed. Such a tragic fate for things so beautiful.’ They were the last words he spoke before he went slowly down the steps and got into the boat. A guard came from within and opened the hatch. Zogel went inside as the engine started. The craft cast off and shunted slowly through the calm harbour water towards the storm.

Zogel turned as they were just about to submerge and waved from the open hatch. From inside his coat he pulled an identical bag to the one in Charity’s hand.

‘They were for Bardolph,’ he shouted. ‘Identical in every way but made of crystal. He would never have known and neither would you.’ He laughed.

Charity grabbed two diamonds as he dropped the bag to the floor.

‘Look at them, Captain – can you see your ghost?’ Zogel asked mockingly.

Charity stared into the diamonds. There was only a faint reflection. He crashed them together and watched as the cut glass shattered in his hands.

‘Fakes,’ Mariah said. ‘He tricked us.’

From out in the harbour they could hear Zogel’s laughter.

‘Look further – there is a gift from me to Mariah and Sacha,’ he shouted as he pulled the hatch on the submarine and the craft sank beneath the waves in the direction of the
Irenzee
.

Sacha searched the bag. Deep inside, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, was a miniature golden monkey. It was cast upon a small stone. For eyes it had red jewels, and about its waist was a belt of diamonds. Written on the stone were the words:
Where
I fit – there will be more
…

Charity laughed. ‘Sunwu – the Golden Monkey. Yet another legend.’

T
HE
square outside the Prince Regent was lifeless. Far away, Mariah could hear the crowd that had returned to stare at the rats the size of cats running from the burning buildings on the pier. The dark sky was edged in a blood-red glow, and even on the other side of the bay sparks fell to earth like dying fireflies.

‘You know what to do?’ Charity briskly asked Mariah as he and Sacha hid in the ornate doorway of Alfie Tugwell’s hair-dressing emporium.

‘Take the letter and give it to Walpole,’ Sacha replied as she rubbed her hands to keep out the cold.

‘Then head for the theatre,’ Charity added. ‘I’ll make sure the mannequins are ready.’

Charity then nodded and set off down the steps towards the beach.

‘Will it work?’ Sacha asked.

‘Perhaps,’ Mariah replied as he read the scrawled note once more.

‘I never thought I would be with you again,’ she said as she listened to Charity’s footsteps running down McBean Steps.

‘Thought my father and I would be on the boat and away by now.’

‘Did you want to go?’ Mariah asked.

‘At first I did. But then I thought of the Prince Regent … and you …’

‘I’m glad it has ended this way,’ Mariah replied as he looked at her. ‘Funny thing is,’ he went on, ‘I have hated myself for the things I said to you. I really wanted to hate you for what you did – but I couldn’t.’ Mariah smiled apologetically at her. It was the first time since he could remember that he had done so and meant it.

‘I felt that about my father. He can be so stupid. So easily led.’

‘Like us all,’ Mariah replied as the sound of the collapsing fish sheds rumbled through the town.

‘Zogel’s going to just sail away,’ Sacha said as she looked out to sea at the fire-red silhouette of the
Irenzee
.

‘But he’s alone.’

‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked.

‘I have to do this by myself. Go to the theatre and when I come in remember the spotlight and the hoist.’

Mariah touched her hand. It was bloodless and cold. Sacha looked away as if it was more than a gesture of goodbye. He gripped the note tightly as he stepped from the shadows and began to run.

He was soon across the square. Athol House rose up out of the muddy street like a dark mausoleum. By the door, the Peeler kept pacing back and forth. He looked up as he heard Mariah coming towards him.

‘Get Walpole! Quick – I have found the Ghost Diamonds!’ Mariah shouted as he stuffed the note into the policeman’s hand and ran back towards the Prince Regent.

For a moment the man stood and just read the words on the crumpled paper.

‘Give it to him!’ Mariah shouted as he turned. ‘Inspector Walpole.’

Mariah stopped on the corner and from the shadows of the tram hut looked back. The Peeler ambled up the steps and through the old door of Athol House. He was gone for less than a minute before the door burst open and Walpole appeared.

‘Grimm, Grendel, we can’t hang about,’ he said as he pulled his porkpie hat down to his ears. ‘Mariah Mundi is in the Prince Regent and he has the diamonds.’

It was all that Mariah wanted to hear. He ran down the steps and into the hotel. There was the same old familiar smell. His stomach churned in excitement as he took the steam elevator up to the theatre and opened the door.

It was deathly dark. Only the mellow glow of the limelight lit the stage. Two ropes of thin wire hung down. Mariah walked across and clipped them to his belt. The door burst open.

‘Better not be playing games with us,’ Walpole wheezed as Grimm and Grendel followed him in.

There was a dull clunk as the spotlight cover opened quickly. A beam of pure white light broke through the darkness. Mariah appeared, cast in a crescent of light.

‘The diamonds?’ Walpole asked as he walked down the aisle towards the front of the stage.

‘In exchange.’ Mariah replied.

‘What would a lad like you need? After all, the world thinks you are dead,’ he replied.

‘Information,’ Mariah said as he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. ‘Why do you really want the Prince Regent?’

‘The diamonds for that?’ Walpole laughed as his face turned to ash and his eyes flickered.

‘And my freedom,’ Mariah added as he waited for the man to get closer.

‘You are truly free – what could be freer than death?’ asked Grendel as he followed on behind.

‘So you have the diamonds – can we see?’ Walpole asked as he reached the front of the stage.

Mariah pulled the bag from under his coat, pulled out a diamond and held it to the spotlight.

‘See – is this what you are looking for?’ Mariah asked.

Walpole was silent. He looked at the Ghost Diamond and then to Grimm and Grendel.

‘Kill him,’ he whispered in a sweet voice.

Grendel began to giggle nervously as he fumbled in his coat for the holster in which he kept his revolver.

‘Give me the diamonds, Mariah, and you will go free,’ Grimm said as he pushed Grendel to one side.

From somewhere far away came the sound of the whirring of a barrel organ. At first it was distant and soft. Walpole gave it no attention until the music grew louder. Mariah began to tap his feet in time with the music.

‘Shoot him and take the diamonds,’ Walpole said to Grendel.

Before he had time to draw his gun, Mariah had vanished. It was as if he had been snatched from before their eyes. Grendel stood for a moment and looked at the empty stage. He pointed his pistol to the circle of light cast on the floor. Then, just as he was about to speak, a sudden crash shook the stage.

From high above their heads seven mannequins had dropped to the boards. They lay in crumpled heaps, arms twisted as if they had been ripped from their sockets. Each wooden head tilted to one side as if held by a snapped neck.

‘What kind of trickery is this, Mariah?’ Walpole asked as he stood and looked on with Grimm and Grendel by his side. The music grew louder. As Walpole stared at the dolls, he was sure the mannequins began to move slightly. It was then that he
realised that the face of each puppet was crafted to be identical to that of Mariah’s.

At first Walpole thought their fingers twitched in time with the shrill notes. Grimm and Grendel looked on as Walpole moved to the edge of the stage, looking for the boy. Then one by one the mannequins began to move.

Suddenly, a doll jumped to its feet. It straightened its back and clicked its head from side to side until it fell into place with a double thud. There was a whir of a mechanical engine and the puppet began to dance. It was the size of a man and dressed as a sea captain. In its belt was a cutlass. With every beat of the music it clashed its jaw up and down and rapidly winked its eye. It was identical to Mariah in every way. Its hair curled and corked from its head and the tip of its finger shone gold. In the darkness of the theatre it was impossible to tell if it was Mariah; in the glistening spotlight the wires could barely be seen.

Walpole stepped back. Grendel aimed his pistol as Grimm cowered in the darkness.

One by one, the other automata got to their feet. Like the first, they creaked and groaned as their limbs snapped in place. Then, as if by magic, they too began to dance. Each one pulled the sword from its belt and crashed it from side to side. They leapt in the air in time with the music, barring Walpole from getting across the stage. They whirled like mad dervishes, spinning on their long taut wires and slashing with their swords.

‘Won’t be stopped by some dolls,’ Walpole shouted. ‘You got us here for the Ghost Diamonds and we won’t leave until we have them. ‘Grendel, kill the beasts!’

Grendel took aim and, as the puppets danced, pulled the hammer on the pistol.

‘One of them could be the boy,’ Grimm shouted suddenly realising that any of the automata could be Mariah.

‘They’re clockwork, ’ Grendel protested indignantly above the beat of the music from the barrel organ.

‘
Stop them!
’ Walpole screamed as he held his hands over his ears, his face contorted as if in pain.

Grendel fired. The bullet exploded in the chest of one automaton. It stopped dancing. The sword dropped from its hand. Its head fell to one side. The body hung limply from the wires as the machinery groaned and whined.

The other puppets continued to dance as the music got faster and faster.

‘One of them must be him,’ Grimm shouted above the noise while Grendel’s hand danced back and forth as he decided which one to shoot next.

‘Don’t shoot the lad!’ Walpole screamed, unsure which, if any, was Mariah.

Grendel took aim and fired again. The bullet struck another puppet in the forehead, sending a shower of wheels and cogs bouncing across the stage. Like the first it whirred to a halt and hung on its wires as if dead.

‘Another!’ shouted Walpole as he sat in the front row, his head in his hands and unable to think for the screeching of the barrel organ.

Grendel shot again and again. Automata exploded with every bullet, stopped in their dancing. The music began to slow and eventually fade. Grendel reloaded the pistol as he fired and fired until there was only one automaton left.

‘It could be him,’ Grendel screamed above the sound of the dying music.

Walpole took a long harsh look, lifting the porkpie hat from his head and staring down the ridge of his long, sharp nose.

‘It’s a puppet – just looks like the lad,’ he said after he had scrutinised it for several seconds. ‘Shoot it – he’s not here.’

Grendel took aim.

‘It could be Mariah. If we kill him we won’t find the Ghost Diamonds,’ Grimm said.

Grendel’s hand began to shake. He was unsure whether he should fire.

‘Do it!’ shouted Walpole as the spotlight began to fade and the theatre darkened.

The puppet danced quietly in the shadows at the back of the stage. It was as if it knew what was going to happen. It slowed in its pace until it stood looking at Grendel. Putting its hand in its pocket, it took out a shining diamond.

‘Wait!’ screamed Walpole as he saw the large stone in its hand. ‘It’s Mariah Mundi.’

The puppet jerked in its movements as its fingers slowly opened. Grendel kept the gun aimed at its chest, his hand shaking. As the puppet slumped forward, resting on its wires, the diamond dropped from its fingers and rolled towards them.

Grimm jumped on the stage and picked up the stone, holding it to the fading spotlight.

‘A Ghost Diamond,’ he said as the light dimmed until he was a brief shadow.

All was silent except for the rolling of three more diamonds that tumbled down the rake of the stage.

‘Any more, Mariah?’ Walpole asked.

There was silence.

Grimm walked across the stage and picked up the diamonds, stuffing them into the pockets of his long raincoat. He stopped and looked at the puppet in the shadows by the side of the stage. Reaching out with his hand, he touched the forehead. It was cold and yet vaguely human, as if masked.

‘It’s a mechanical doll,’ he said as he looked back into the gloom of the theatre. From where he stood, Grendel and Walpole were indistinct shadows.

‘You have the diamonds,’ Mariah said from somewhere
nearby. ‘You can have the rest when you tell me if I am a free man.’

‘I thought you would ask for the life of your friend,’ Walpole asked.

‘He was innocent,’ Mariah replied.

‘Of course he was, Mariah Mundi. But someone had to take the blame. That was what I was ordered to do.’

‘You? Ordered?’ said Mariah as his voice echoed around the darkened theatre.

‘I am just a cog in the works, just like your dancing dummies – I do what I’m told and in return have my own piece of freedom.’

‘You danced for the Templar, Bardolph,’ Mariah said.

‘Many people dance for him. The world would dance for him if he had the chance,’ Walpole replied.

‘And you’ll take the diamonds and give them to Bardolph?’

‘Of course, and then we’ll take this place.’

‘Then Packavi will go free?’ Mariah asked.

‘He had his uses. Got rid of a problem for us in Whitechapel and did the same here. There will be some other city that needs its vermin eliminating,’ Walpole replied. ‘You will go free – he will not harm you now, I will see to that … Come out. I don’t like speaking to the dark.’

Mariah took three paces onto the stage and made his way through the dangling corpses of the automata. He could see Walpole and Grendel below him in the front row. Grimm stood nearby, holding the wire of a puppet as if afraid to move.

It was then that Mariah noticed an even darker shadow behind him. It had the shape of a man with a hood cast across its face. A long knife was pressed against Grimm’s neck.

‘Don’t be thinking you’re going anywhere with those diamonds,’ Packavi said as he held the knife to Grimm’s throat.

‘I wouldn’t …’ Grimm squealed.

‘Give them to me.’

‘Packavi!’ Walpole shouted. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Orders. Just like you. Make sure you didn’t mess things up – can’t be trusted, the Templar said.’ Packavi grunted, choking on each word. ‘Taking them back and doing the job I came to do.’

‘It’s over – we have the diamonds, and the hotel,’ Walpole insisted.

‘Only when
he
is dead. We couldn’t get his father but we can get him,’ Packavi sneered as he pushed Grimm to the floor and walked towards Mariah.

‘How many have you killed, Packavi?’ Mariah asked as he stood his ground.

‘Not enough,’ he replied.

‘Then I will not run. Take me here. I don’t fear you,’ he said as the madman approached within an arm’s length and drew back his knife to strike.

In a blinding flash, the stage was flooded with light as two explosions fired from beneath Mariah’s feet. They echoed about the room, and when all was still Mariah had vanished yet again, swallowed by the trap door.

Packavi looked at Walpole.

‘He plays tricks with us,’ the man screamed as he slashed the air with the knife. ‘Bring him back at once.’

Before he could say another word, Mariah reappeared and ran onto the stage, a hook and wire in his hand. Packavi turned just as Mariah sank the hook into his chest.