‘This way,’ said the amateur cracksman, indicating a wet stretch of stone wall. The new-born Chinese pressed a brick and a section of the wall tilted upwards, forming a hatch-like door. ‘Duck down or you’ll bash your bean. Deuced small, these chinks.’
He followed the new-born, who could see in the dark better than he, and was in turn followed by the rest of the party. As the vampire stooped, dragons on his shoulder-blades silently roared and flapped. They proceeded down a sloping passageway, and he realised they were below street level. The surfaces were damp and glistening, the air cold and bad: these chambers must be close to the river. As they passed a chute from which could be dimly heard rippling water, Beauregard was reminded of the nameless cadavers, supposing this place the source of quite a few of their number. The passage widened and he deduced this part of the labyrinth dated back centuries. Objets d’art, mostly of undoubted antiquity and oriental appearance, stood at significant junctures. After many turns and descents and doors, his kidnappers were sure he could never find his way unescorted to the surface. He was pleased to be underestimated.
Something chattered behind a wall and he flinched. He could not identify the animal din. The new-born turned to the noise and yanked the head of a jade caterpillar. A door opened and Beauregard was ushered into a dimly-lit, richly furnished drawing room. There were no windows, just chinoiserie screens. The centrepiece was a large desk, behind which sat an ancient Chinaman. Long, hard fingernails tapped like knifepoints on his blotter. There were others, in comfortable armchairs arranged in a half-circle about the desk. The unseen chattering thing quieted.
One man turned his head, red cigar-end making a Devil’s mask of his face. He was a vampire, but the Chinaman was not.
‘Mr Charles Beauregard,’ began the Celestial, ‘you are so kind to join our wretched and unworthy selves.’
‘You are so kind to invite me.’
The Chinaman clapped his hands, and nodded to a cold-faced servant, a Burmese.
‘Take our visitor’s hat, cloak and cane.’
Beauregard was relieved of his burdens. When the Burmese was close enough, Beauregard observed the singular earring, and the ritual tattooing about his neck.
‘A dacoit?’ he enquired.
‘You are so very observant,’ affirmed the Chinaman.
‘I have some little experience of the world of secret societies.’
‘Indeed you have, Mr Beauregard. Our paths have crossed three times: in Egypt, in the Kashmir, and in Shanghai. You caused me some little inconvenience.’
Beauregard realised to whom he was talking, and tried to smile. He assumed he was a dead man.
‘My apologies, Doctor.’
The Chinaman leaned forward, face emerging into the light, fingernails clacking. He had the brow of a Shakespeare and a smile that put Beauregard in mind of a smug Satan.
‘Think nothing of it.’ He brushed away apologies. ‘Those were trivial matters, of no import beyond the ordinary. I shall not prosecute any personal business in this instance.’
Beauregard tried not to show his relief. Whatever else he was, the criminal mandarin was known to be a man of his word. This was the person they called ‘the Devil Doctor’ or ‘the Lord of Strange Deaths’. He was one of the Council of Seven, the ruling body of the Si-Fan, a tong whose influence extended to all the quarters of the Earth. Mycroft reckoned the Celestial among the three most dangerous men in the world.
‘Although,’ the Chinaman added, ‘were this meeting to take place very far to the East, I fancy its agenda would not be so pleasant for you and, I confess, for myself. You understand me?’
Beauregard did, all too well. They met under a flag of truce, but it would be lowered as soon as the Diogenes Club again required him to work against the Si-Fan.
‘Those affairs are not of interest to us at this moment.’
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.’