Chapter 21
It didn’t occur to me the theft would be the focus of every newspaper in New England, until I alighted from a cab in front of the Ladysmith and found a crowd of newsmen loitering on the steps. I started past them, assuming they waited for someone more important than me to speak with, and was surprised when the entire pack rushed to surround me.
“Dr. Whyborne! Is it true you tried to apprehend the criminals?” one of them demanded, while another cried: “Do you think the police are doing enough, Dr. Whyborne?”
“Is it true your father doesn’t contribute the museum? Does he think it isn’t safe?”
“What sort of artifact was stolen?”
“Show us where you were shot!”
“I, er—no!” I exclaimed. Clutching the collar of my overcoat against the cold wind, I hurried past them.
Rockwell glowered from his post in front of the doors, which no doubt explained why the reporters had gotten no farther. As I started past him, he laid a meaty hand on my upper arm, directly on top of my wound.
I winced, but bit back a gasp. “Good morning, Mr. Rockwell.”
“Think you’re better than us, do you?” he asked in a low voice. His hand tightened on my arm, sending a throb of pain through the trail left by the bullet. “Trying to show us up? Running after the thieves like you think you’re some kind of hero and we’re nothing?”
“I-I, no,” I said, barely holding back a gasp of pain. Hot blood trickled down my arm as the scab broke under his grip.
“If I were you, sir, I’d keep to my place.”
Hidden in my office, out of sight and mind. God knew it’s what I would prefer. “Y-Yes. I will.”
His eyes assessed me for an uncomfortably long minute. Then he gave a curt nod and let go. My arm throbbing, I fled past him and into the museum.
I didn’t slow until I’d reached the safety of the hall leading to my office. Damn the man. If he’d only done his cursed job, he wouldn’t have to fear a thin, weak scholar would show him up. Every beat of my heart sent a pulse of pain through my arm, and I shifted my shoulder uncomfortably, trying to get my coat to hang less heavily on the bandage. I could not afford to ruin another shirt.
The book in my coat pocket tapped lightly against my breast, dislodged by my movements. If he knew the power the Arcanorum could give me, Rockwell would never dare lay a hand on me again. Bullies like him were only strong while assured of victory; when faced with anyone more powerful, they turned into fawning sycophants, desperate to prove themselves. I could—
Could what? Turn into Blackbyrne, commanding a secret army of men and thugs and monsters? The idea was so absurd as to be laughable.
Wasn’t it?
The smell of coffee greeted me as I approached my office, and I entered to find Griffin seated in the spare chair. A large box of photographs occupied the center of my desk.
“The director jumped at Christine’s suggestion,” he said, nodding at the box. “Unfortunately, although the photographs were developed, they haven’t been sorted yet. Christine has left for the docks. Have you eaten?”
“No,” I said, closing the door behind me.
“I suspected you wouldn’t take the time, so I brought you a donut. It’s there beside your coffee.”
His thoughtfulness brought a smile to my face. “Thank you.” I reached for the coffee with my off hand, then winced when the wound pulled.
Griffin was instantly alert. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Mostly.” He gave me a narrow look, though, and I relented with a sigh. “I had a bit of a run-in with Mr. Rockwell.”
I tried to make light of the account, but by the time I finished, Griffin’s brows were pulled down in a threatening scowl. “Damn the man. He had all the guards he should have needed, not to mention every reason to suspect something would happen last night. He should have positioned his men better. If this had been a Pinkerton job—”
He caught himself with an effort, his lips thinning. “Well. There’s no sense in what-ifs. But if the man is weak enough to bully you because you performed his job better than he did, then your security is ill-served. I will mention the matter to Mr. Rice.”
I was sorry I’d said anything. “Don’t, please. I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“He’s a wretch.”
“He’s afraid of losing his job.”
“As he should be!”
I toyed uncomfortably with a pencil. “I know, but I don’t wish any conflict with him.”
Griffin looked at me closely, before letting out a sigh. “Very well, my dear. I won’t mention it to Mr. Rice. But I won’t forget about it, either.”
I sat down and pulled the box of photos closer. “Help me sort these,” I said, hoping to distract him. My dignity wouldn’t survive Griffin thrashing Rockwell on my behalf.
We spent the next hour combing through the photographs. Eventually, I found a single image of the stolen scroll. The angle and lighting were poor, and I wasn’t certain I’d be able to make out enough detail. I took out a pad of paper and a magnifying glass, and set to work.
Some hours later, I sat back in my chair. My neck and back hurt from leaning over the desk, and squinting through the magnifying glass left me with a headache.
“Well?” Griffin asked.
I glanced at him guiltily. How long had he sat there while I ignored everything but the picture before me? “I don’t have a complete translation. The photograph is too poor to make out some of the hieroglyphs. But I do have the gist of it. I’m afraid the news isn’t good.”
“And here I’d hoped it would be an ancient birthday party invitation,” he said dryly.
“I mean this is bad news even for the Brotherhood,” I clarified. “I can’t imagine what they’d want with it.”
“Who is translating for them?” Griffin asked.
A question I hadn’t considered before. “I don’t know. Mummies are cheap enough, and there were plenty of Greeks who spoke both their own language and Egyptian, who might be resurrected and forced to translate. Perhaps not from the same era, but close enough to read the hieroglyphs. If the Brotherhood could raise Blackbyrne, they—or he—might be able to raise a mummy. Assuming Blackbyrne didn’t learn to translate hieroglyphics during his earlier occult career.”
“What does it say?”
“The scroll speaks of raising the dead, which the Brotherhood already knows how to accomplish. But it takes things a step beyond. It talks about the path to immortality.”
“Immortality,” Griffin repeated, but he sounded oddly resigned. “Of course. If you’re a society of powerful, wealthy men, what’s left?”
The next words stuck in my throat, but I forced them out. “True, but…it’s immortality at a cost. Listen: ‘Lo, he has come into being; the man who was dead has come into being; the container has come into being. Then shall you call on the Beyond-One, saying, “You who are All-in-One and One-in-All, the God Behind the Veil, who open the gate and are the gate, Yog-Sothoth, let Those from Outside see and rejoice, let this container be filled.” Then say to the one who is summoned, ‘I have called you while the stars stand at…’ I can’t make out the rest of the incantation, I’m afraid, so I don’t know where the stars are supposed to be. It picks back up at: ‘…the container will be yours to command, and lo shall it make the rivers into deserts, and the desert into ocean, and lift up the land or cast it down as you say.’”
The silence after seemed very great, as if we weren’t surrounded by a city, or were the only living beings in the whole of the museum
At last Griffin stirred. “What are we looking at if we don’t stop them?” he asked quietly.
I met his gaze. “The end of the world.”
~ * ~
“Someone paid off Rosa,” Griffin said.
We had sat in silence for several minutes, during which my thoughts spun in useless circles, like a machine with a slipped gear. “What?” I asked.
“Rosa. The madam. The Brotherhood either paid her to betray me, or fed her false information. I’m guessing the former, as she’s too savvy for the latter. If she knows someone in the cult, or at least someone who works for them, perhaps we can chase them to ground.”
“It’s worth a try,” I agreed.
Griffin rose to his feet. “Shall ‘Weatherby’ and ‘Flannery’ make their triumphant return?”
Considering my last experience, “triumphant” hardly seemed appropriate. Still, I nodded and said, “If you think my presence will be of use, then of course I’ll go.”
“I knew I could count on you.” He came around the desk, leaned down, and brushed his lips across mine. “I have some things to look into. I’ll meet you at seven o’clock outside your apartment.”
I spent the rest of the day hunched over the Arcanorum, making notes and attempting to match certain passages to the information on the scroll, in hopes of building a fuller picture. I made a few brief trips to the library; on one of them, I overheard Mr. Quinn discussing the secret passage and old tunnels the thieves had fled into the night before.
“Has anyone looked into them?” I asked.
Mr. Quinn turned his unnerving stare on me; he didn’t seem to blink quite as much as normal people. “Mr. Rockwell took a troop of men into the vaults last night,” he said in his sepulchral voice. His long hands twisted together like a pair of white spiders. “The thieves collapsed part of the tunnel behind them. The director has had work crews tramping through the library all morning, trying to move the rubble. Mr. Bradley is quite put out he was not informed there were ruins beneath the museum.”
“Did anyone know about them to tell him?”
“Oh no, no.” Mr. Quinn smiled dreamily. “Imagine, a secret passage in the library. How often we all walked past it without knowing. Anything could have been on the other side. Watching.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Er, yes,” I managed, “well, if that’s all, I have, er, things. To look up.”
“Of course, Dr. Whyborne. Do let us know if you need any…assistance.”
Somehow, I didn’t want to bring up the name Yog-Sothoth to Mr. Quinn.
My research revealed nothing more. Many rituals depended on astronomical phenomena. The winter solstice was fast approaching, but there was no guarantee it was the celestial event to which the ritual was keyed. The rise of a particular star, or a certain conjunction of planets, were just as likely.
We didn’t know when, or where. Or who; some poor devil would have to serve as the ‘container’ of the entity called through, after all. No doubt the Brotherhood would choose one of their own, but other than Blackbyrne, we didn’t know the identities of the living cult members, let alone dead ones.
Perhaps the madam would be able—and willing—to shed some light on our opponents. We needed something, anything, to give us a chance.
That evening, Griffin met me in front of my apartment building. He strolled up the street in his dockworker’s garb, and I was shocked at my sudden desire to embrace him. Such a display would only end up with us both in jail, so I tucked my hands into my pockets to keep from touching him.
“Hullo, Weatherby,” he said affably. “Nice night. Fancy a stroll?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” I fell in beside him. “Your day was well?”
“Well enough. Yours?”
“Unproductive.”
“Ah.”
I glanced at him. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a drawn look around his mouth. He was under a great deal of strain, and had been for a long time. He’d lived with the burden of having seen things most people wouldn’t credit; he’d been called mad; he’d endured knowing the Brotherhood was out there, plotting God-knew-what insanity, and been unable to do anything about it. Poor Philip Rice had already lost his life by the time Griffin came onto the case, but he was still responsible for bringing peace to a grieving father.
And now I told him failure meant the possible destruction of the human race, or at least its enslavement. No wonder he looked troubled.
“We’ll stop them,” I said quietly. The mix of snow and mud on the sidewalk squelched under our feet.
“We have to. For all our sakes.” God, he sounded bleak.
I badly wished to take his hand. Instead, I said, “Buck up, old fellow. We haven’t lost yet.”
He cast me a small smile. “You’re right, of course.” Turning his gaze back to the fore, he added, “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
Despite the circumstances, his pronouncement filled me with warmth. I ducked my head and tried not to smile too ridiculously.
I was better prepared for the brothel’s atmosphere this time. It looked much as it had on my first visit: full of bad whiskey, bad breath, and badly-dressed women.
With the addition, it would seem, of bad tempers. My partners at cards were there; catching sight of me, they rose menacingly to their feet.
“Didn’t think you’d show your face around here again, Weatherby,” said the gap-toothed dealer.
“Aw, no, ye’re not sore losers, are ye?” Griffin asked, slinging a friendly arm around me.
“To hell with you, Flannery,” another man said. “You’re the one as brought him here. Guess you got a part of the cut?”
“I didn’t cheat,” I said, affronted. How dare they suggest I was a cheat?
“I’m here to see Rosa,” Griffin said, his tone going short and businesslike. “Weatherby, wait outside.”
“You can just go with him,” said Nelly, who had been perched at the bar. “Madam Rosa ain’t seeing no one. She said we wasn’t to let anyone disturb her.”
Was Nelly telling the truth, or had Rosa just left instructions to turn Griffin away? If she had knowingly sent him into a trap, she certainly wouldn’t want to face him again.
Griffin’s face took on a harder cast; probably he’d had the same thoughts. “Sorry, Nelly, but this canna wait.”
Nelly hopped down off the bar. “Ain’t nothing she can do for you as you can’t get from any other girl here.”
A laugh escaped Griffin, but it was oddly flat. “’Tisn’t that kind of business, girl. I’ll tell her ye tried to stop me; ye willna get in trouble.” He started for the stairs.
The bouncer stepped in front of him. The man was a wall of muscle, his arms straining at the seams of his coat, and he wielded a short, stout cudgel. “You ain’t going nowhere if you know what’s good for you.”
Griffin’s mouth thinned. “I don’t have time for this.”
The bouncer lunged at him; Griffin sidestepped neatly, seized the man’s arm, and twisted. One moment, the bouncer was attacking, and the next he was on his knees, his elbow at a horrible angle, bellowing in agony. Some of the other men started for Griffin, but he drew his revolver and turned to them coolly.
“Back off, boys,” he said, no longer trying to disguise his voice with a false accent. “I don’t mean Rosa any harm, but I will speak with her now.”
No one moved. Griffin nodded and turned to the stairs. “Come along.”
I hurried after him. “Do you, er, think anyone will summon the police?” I whispered as we went up the stairs together. Being arrested in an ordinary brothel would be only marginally better than being arrested in a bathhouse.
“Not without Rosa’s order,” Griffin replied. His words were clipped, his eyes watching the doors we passed, the corners, the shadows, anywhere an assailant might hide. “I’m surprised she hasn’t yet come out. She must truly not wish to face me.”
I winced. “Not looking good for her innocence, then.” I wouldn’t have cared, except it was obvious Griffin did.
“No it isn’t,” he agreed flatly.
The madam’s room lay at the very end of the hall. Griffin didn’t bother to knock, only grabbed the knob and tried to open it. It was locked, of course.
The furrow between his brows deepened. “Rosa?” he called, pitching his voice to carry through the door. “I know you’re in there. I just want to talk.”
I pressed my ear to the door. Someone within was eating dinner, as unlikely as it seemed, given the disturbance downstairs. The sound of chewing and slurping was loud, interrupted by an odd crack every now and again. And there was a sort of leathery slither, accompanied by a gelatinous burp, which sent a frisson of atavistic horror down my spine.
I took an alarmed step back. “We need to get inside. Now.”