Beauregard nodded. ‘I suppose so. There’s always a chance the murderer will be turned up by the raids.’
‘He’s not one of us,’ snorted Colonel Moran.
‘’E’s a ravin’ nutter, that’s what ’e is. Listen, none of us is ’zactly squeamish – know what I mean? – but this bloke is takin’ it too far. If an ’ore gets too rorty, you takes a razor to ’er fyce not ’er bleedin’ froat.’
‘There’s never been any suggestion, so far as I know, that any of you are involved in the murders.’
‘That is not the point, Mr Beauregard,’ the Professor continued. ‘Our shadow empire is like a spider-web. It extends throughout the world but it concentrates here, in this city. Thick and complicated and surprisingly delicate. If enough threads are severed, it will fall. And threads are being severed left and right. We have all suffered since Mary Ann Nichols was killed, and the inconvenience will redouble with each fresh atrocity. Every time this murderer strikes at the public, he stabs at us also.’
‘My ’ores don’t wanna go on the streets wiv ’im out there. It’s ’urtin’ me pockets. I’m seriously out of the uxter.’
‘I’m sure the police will catch the man. There’s a reward of fifty pounds for information.’
‘And we have posted a reward of a thousand guineas but nothing has come of it.’
‘Forget what they say about us on the screw stickin’ together like Ikeys. If we tumbled old Silver Knife, ’e’d be narked to the esclop quicker’n an Irish dipper can flimp a drunkard’s pogue.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mr Beauregard,’ said the Doctor. ‘What our associate is venturing to suggest is that we should like to add our humble efforts to those of your most estimable police. We pledge that any intimate knowledge which comes into our possession – as knowledge on so many matters so often does – shall be passed directly to you. In return we ask that the personal interest in this matter, which we know the Diogenes Club has required you take, be persecuted with the utmost vigour.’
He tried not to show it, but was deeply shocked that the innermost workings of the ruling cabal were somehow known to the Lord of Strange Deaths. And yet the Chinaman evidently knew in detail of the briefing he had been given barely two days earlier. The briefing at which it had been assumed no more would be heard from the Si-Fan for some years.
‘This bounder is letting the side down,’ the amateur cracksman said, ‘and it’d be best if he stripped his whites and slunk back to the bally pavilion.’
‘We’ve put up a thousand guineas for information,’ the Colonel said, ‘and two thousand for his rotten head.’
‘Unlike the police, we have no trouble with mendacious individuals coming forward offering false information in the hope of swindling us out of a reward. Such individuals do not long survive in our spider-web world. Do we have an understanding, Mr Beauregard?’
‘Yes, Professor.’
The new-born smiled a thin smile. One murderer meant very little to these men, but a loose cannon of crime was an inconvenience they would not brook.
‘And when the Whitechapel Murderer is caught?’
‘Then it’s business as usual,’ said Moran.
The Doctor nodded sagely, and Sikes spat out ‘too bloody right, pal.’
‘Once our agreement is at an end,’ the Chinaman announced, ‘we shall revert to our former positions. And I should advise you to settle down with your Miss Churchward and leave the affairs of my countrymen to other hands. You have been unlucky with wives and you deserve your few years of contentment.’
Beauregard contained his anger. The threat to Penelope was beyond the boundaries.
‘For myself,’ said the Professor, eyes gleaming, ‘I hope to disengage, and hand over the everyday running of my organisation to Colonel Moran. I now have the opportunity to live for centuries, which will give me the time I need to refine my model of the universe. I intend to undertake a voyage into pure mathematics, a voyage which will take me beyond the dull geometries of space.’
The Doctor smiled, crinkling his eyes and lifting his thin moustaches. Only he seemed to appreciate the Professor’s grandiose schemes. Everyone else in the ring looked as if they had eaten bad eggs while the Professor’s eyes glowed with the thought of an infinity of multiplying theorems, expanding to fill all space.
‘Conceive of it,’ the Professor said, ‘one theorem encompassing everything.’
‘A cab will take you to Cheyne Walk,’ the Celestial explained. ‘This meeting is at an end. Serve our purpose, and you will be rewarded. Fail us, and the consequences will be... not so pleasant.’
With a wave, Beauregard was dismissed.
‘Our regards to your Miss Churchward,’ said Moran, leering nastily. Beauregard fancied he detected a moue of distaste on the Chinaman’s proverbially inscrutable face.
As the sportsman took him back up through the passages, Beauregard wondered how many Devils he would have to ally himself with to discharge his duty. He resisted the urge to demonstrate bravado by forging ahead and leading his guide to the entrance. He could have pulled off the stunt, but it might be as well to remain in the underestimation of the ring.
When they reached the surface, it was near dawn. The first streaks of blue-grey crept upwards from the East, and the seagulls drawn inland by the Thames squawked for breakfast.
The cab still stood in the yard, the driver perched on the box, swaddled in black blankets. Beauregard’s hat, cloak and cane were waiting for him inside.
‘Toodle-oo,’ said the cricketer, red eyes shining. ‘See you at Lords.’
11
MATTERS OF NO IMPORTANCE
‘Why so quiet, Penny?’
‘What?’ she blurted, shocked out of her angry reverie. The noise of the reception was momentarily overwhelming, seeming to resolve itself to a stage buzz of background chatter.
With sham outrage, Art rebuked her. ‘Penelope, I believe you were dreaming. I have been expending my meagre wit upon you for minutes, yet you’ve not taken in a word. When I try to be amusing you murmur “oh, how true” with a palpable sigh, and when I endeavour to add a sombre note in an attempt to secure your sympathies, you politely laugh behind your fan.’
The outing was wasted. It was to have been her first public appearance with Charles, her first showing as an engaged woman. She had planned for weeks, selecting exactly the right dress, the correct corsage, the proper event, the suitable company. Thanks to Charles’s mysterious masters, it was a ruin. She had been out of sorts all evening, trying not to revert to her old habit of wrinkling her forehead. Her governess, Madame de la Rougierre, had often warned her if the wind changed her face would set that way; now, if she examined herself in the glass for even the trace of a line, she knew the old biddy had not been wrong.
‘You are right, Art,’ she admitted, quelling the interior fury that always came to her when things were not just so. ‘I was gone.’
‘That hardly says much for my powers of vampire fascination.’
When he tried to look comically offended, the tips of his teeth stuck out like grains of rice stuck to his lower lip.
Across the hotel restaurant, Florence was engaged in conversation with a tiddly gentleman whom Penelope understood to be the critic from the Telegraph. Florence was supposed to be the leader of this tiny expedition into hostile territory – their sympathies were naturally with the Lyceum, and this was the Criterion – but she had abandoned her supporters to each other’s company. That was typical of Florence. She was flighty, and, even at the advanced age of thirty, a flirt. No wonder her husband disappeared. As Charles had disappeared this evening.