End of the Century (33 page)

A shiver ran down Blank's spine as he remembered what he'd learned concerning aerial bombing in the School of Thought, however jumbled and garbled the intelligence had been. He straightened, saw a peculiar glint in Miss Bonaventure's eye, and wondered for the thousandth time just what she knew of what lay in store for their beloved London in the decades to come.

Whatever her foreknowledge of events to come, Miss Bonaventure played the article off as the hoax it doubtless was. “It must be longer than I'd realized since last I visited the United States,” she said lightly, an eyebrow raised, “if they've already begun to travel by airship.”

“Hmm?” Taylor looked over, distracted. He saw the paper spread across table. “Oh, that. My brother Jack lives in Recondito, California, and sends me a stack of American newspapers from time to time. I think he intends to make me all homesick, reminding me of what I've left behind, but it tends to have the opposite effect, most times, when I read bunkum like that.”

“How long has it been, Mr. Taylor?” Miss Bonaventure asked, casually. “Since you came to England?”

“I came across the big water with Cody's Wild West show in 1887, ma'am, but when he pulled up stakes and went back to the States, I stayed up.”

“It's ‘miss,' actually,” Miss Bonaventure corrected discreetly.

Taylor nodded and picked up a glass ball from atop a dressing table. The ball was the twin of those Taylor was depicted shooting out of midair in the poster. Was it one that he'd missed, all those years before? He tossed it up in
the air and caught it neatly, and then again, over and over. It seemed to Blank to be some sort of nervous habit which the tall American did unconsciously, as another would tap a foot or drum fingers on a table.

“So Cecilia's dead, is she?” Taylor shook his head, disbelievingly. “Hell, Brade's body's barely cold, and now there's Cecilia to be laid out right beside him.” He paused, thoughtfully, snatching the glass ball out of midair and holding it for a moment, frozen. “I gotta wonder if someone ain't come gunning for us.”

“I wonder, Mr. Taylor, about this Cody you mentioned,” Blank said, casually looking up from his examination of the titles on the bookshelf. “Did you mean Colonel Cody, he of the Wild West show?”

“Hell, no,” Taylor spat. “I meant Samuel Cody. The polecat claims to be from Texas, but I've got it on good authority he's really from Iowa, of all places. And his name's just as phony. It isn't even Cody, but Cowdrey or some such thing. Hell, Buffalo Bill had to sue the bastard twice, to keep him from using the name ‘Wild West' in his act, and to keep the bastard from claiming to be Buffalo Bill's own son on his playbills, and his wife Bill Cody's daughter.”

“And he's been troubling you, this Samuel Cody?” Miss Bonaventure asked, looking up from the papers before her.

“He tried to talk me into investing in the development of some new rapid-fire pistol he couldn't get the British government to buy, and now he's trying to put on a new Wild West revue at Alexandra Palace and wants me to perform in it.”

“The return of the ‘Knight of the Plains,' Mr. Taylor?” Blank indicated the poster with a nod.

A blush rose in Taylor's cheek, and an incongruously boyish expression of embarrassment flitted across his rugged features. “Ah, that's just huckstering,” Taylor said, glancing at the poster. “They needed to put something to balance out my name, I guess.” He looked back to Miss Bonaventure and Blank. “But no, I'm retired from all that now, no matter what that bastard Sam Cody might ask.”

A momentary silence stretched between them, as Taylor's attention drifted away, his expression growing once more careworn.

“If you don't mind our asking,” Miss Bonaventure asked, at length, “how were you connected with Mr. Brade and Miss Villers? Were you friends?”

Taylor snapped back into focus and shook his head. “I don't know as I'd call us friends, miss. Professional acquaintances, maybe. I met Brade in the league, and then I met Cecilia when Lady P hired her to take the pictures for our big project, ‘The Raid on the Unworld.'”

“Lady P?” Blank prompted, from the bookshelves.

“Lady Priscilla Cavendish,” Taylor clarified.

“And they, along with yourself, belonged to this League of the Round Table?” Blank asked.

Taylor cocked an eyebrow, perhaps curious how Blank had come by the organization's name, but didn't voice a question about it, if he had one. Instead, he nodded, and said, “Yep. The group started up a few years back, as I understand it, when Baron Carmody got back to London after his trip to Africa went south. They roped me into it after reading some poems I'd written about King Arthur.”

Now it was Blank's turn to raise an eyebrow. “Really? I wouldn't have taken you for a poet.”

Taylor smiled, a bit sheepishly. “Well, see, I'd read Tennyson and just couldn't see what the fuss was about. Near as I could see, the fellow knew damned little to nothing about horses or warfare, which made him pretty ill-suited to write about a warrior king and horseman. I was practically born in the saddle, having ridden the Pony Express with Bill Cody and my twin brother, Jack, so I knew about horses. And I knew men who'd fought in the Mormon Wars and the Kansas border ruffians wars, and saw a bit of action myself fighting for the North in the War between the States, so I knew something of fighting, as well. So I figured I was better suited than most to write about Arthur, even if I wasn't exactly a dab hand at the writing itself.”

“You were in the American Civil War, then?” Miss Bonaventure asked.

“Sure was, miss,” Taylor said proudly. “I was one of the Red Legged Scouts under the command of Captain Tuff.”

Blank paused in his perusal of the shelves and pulled down a slim volume. It was bound in green cloth and had the title
Horseman King
on the spine and the name
William Blake Taylor
stamped beneath. “This is your own
work, I take it?” Blank flipped to the indicia, and saw that it had been self-published in an edition of five hundred copies.

Taylor was suddenly bashful, like a boy who'd suddenly found himself pantless in company, and hurried to take the book from Blank's hands. “Well, I know that I'm just a cowboy poet with aspirations that outreach my talent,” he said, apologetically, “but I've got visions in my head that I just can't shake, and writing them down is the only way to get shut of them. Still, I'm a damned sight better at writing than Captain Jack Crawford, self-styled ‘Poet Scout of the Black Hills,' so at least I can carry on knowing I'm not the worst damned scribbler to come out of the West.”

Blank offered a gentle smile as Taylor slipped the slim volume into his pocket.

“When did you last see Mr. Brade or Miss Villers, if you don't mind me asking,” Miss Bonaventure put in.

Taylor scratched his chin beneath his beard, thoughtfully. “I hadn't seen Cecilia in a fortnight, I suppose, but I saw Brade last week, at the regular League meeting.”

“And when is the
next
league meeting, Mr. Taylor?” Blank asked.

Taylor looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if consulting some mental calendar, and then said, with some surprise, “Tonight, I reckon.”

Blank smiled. “You know, I would very much like to accompany you and meet the other members. Do you think that could be arranged?”

Taylor had provided an address in Mayfair, near Grosvenor Square, and told Blank and Miss Bonaventure to meet him there at seven o'clock in the evening. He would arrange matters with Baron Carmody, whose residence it was, and then they would be able to question the league members regarding the late Mr. Brade and Miss Villers.

The American cowboy poet was clearly shaken by news of Miss Villers's killing, perhaps not as much because of her death in and of itself, but for what it suggested about his own prospects. The only connection between any of the Jubilee Killer's victims was between Brade and Villers, and was the
League of the Round Table. If the league were the uniting factor, then Taylor was right to suppose that he or one of the other members might be the killer's next target.

Saying their farewells to Taylor, Blank and Miss Bonaventure returned to York Place. She lounged on the divan reading a novel while he consulted his
Whitaker's
, his social registers, his
Burke's Peerage
, and his
Who's Who
, sketching out portraits of the Baron Carmody and Lady Priscilla, the two as-yet unknown members of the league. Then, when he had done, Miss Bonaventure set aside her novel, and he recited aloud the facts as he knew them.

“Priscilla Anna Cavendish née Griffith,” Blank said, his notes spread before him on the desk. “From her first husband, fourth Baronet of Sherring, Lady Priscilla was bequeathed an honorific; her second husband, however, Thomas Aston Cavendish, a former officer in the Tenth Hussars and himself a widower of the daughter of the third Baron Balinrobe, left her only a large sum of money, which doubtless proved more useful. Widowed a second time, Lady Priscilla opted not to remarry, announcing publically that she prefers instead the company of women and is now an avowed tribadist.” He paused and looked up from his papers. “If anyone thought Lady Priscilla's claims to be anything but a bald attempt at scandal, she'd likely be prosecuted for indecency, but as it is, she remains unmolested. So to speak. In any event, Lady Priscilla has pledged to spend her remaining years pursuing her ‘grand work.'”

“Which is?” Miss Bonaventure prompted.

“It would seem,” Blank answered, “that Lady Priscilla is something of a self-taught scholar, following in the footsteps of Lady Charlotte Guest, she of
Mabinogion
fame.”

Miss Bonaventure nodded, and Blank continued with his recital.

“Arthur Carmody, the tenth Baron Carmody. Lord Arthur had been a member of the Hythloday Club but let his dues lapse after the tragic events of his expedition to Africa, during which he lost his wife and infant son. He splits his time between the ancestral residence of Belhorm in Somerset, a summer home in Brighton, and a large house in Mayfair off Grosvenor Square, the address for which Mr. Taylor was kind enough to provide.”

Blank could not help but be reminded of the first Baron Carmody, who'd been a member of the School of Night during the days of Queen Elizabeth
and King James. Robert Carmody had been possessed of a keen intellect and a lunge few swordsmen would turn aside. He'd done proud service as a Stranger of the School of Night, serving the crown with distinction. That the present-day claimants to the School's long tradition, Absalom Quince and his band of lunatics, had fallen so far from the body's former glory was no smirch against the work Carmody and his fellows had done in olden days.

THE DOOR ON THE FAR WALL OF THE LIBRARY
opened onto the bottom steps of a wrought-iron spiral staircase that climbed up and up into the gloom, disappearing from view.

Stillman had dressed in a gray business suit and white Oxford shirt open at the neck and without a tie. On their way through the library, he'd strapped on a shoulder holster under his suit jacket, with his Hotspur fletcher snugged into it, and clipped a small box the size of a cigarette pack onto his belt, which he explained held additional rounds. Then he slid clunky sunglasses that he might have stolen from Buddy Holly over his eyes and started climbing the stairs. Alice, wearing her Doc Martens and leather jacket, followed him up. He'd told her to leave her backpack behind, but she refused.

“You never know when you may have to jam,” Alice said.

“Suit yourself,” Stillman said.

Figured that he'd never seen
The Breakfast Club
.

It was dark at the top of the stairs, though the echoes of their own footsteps coming back from the walls suggested a fairly large space. Alice barked her shin against some sort of ledge and then backed into a rough wall.

“Just where are we going, anyway?”

“We're already there, my dear.”

Alice heard a car door open, and then the space flooded with illumination as the interior lights came up.

The damned thing looked like Speed Racer's Mach Five, but painted fire engine red. A convertible with curving lines, a pointed back end, and a point-backwards-bullet-shaped headrest for the driver.

“What
is
this?!”

Stillman grinned and slid into the driver's seat, which was of course on the wrong side of the car. “It's a 1957 Chevy Corvette SS, of course,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Considerably customized, you understand.”

By the light from the car's interior, Alice saw that they were at one side of a largish garage, with the concrete underfoot stained by oil spills back at the dawn of time.

“Used to have a whole fleet of cars up here in the motor pool, but this was the one I drove for preference. When I was promoted from Rook One to D, I used it as my personal car. When I demobbed, as it were, and MI8 moved across the river to Lambeth, I did a bit of jiggery-pokery with the files and ended up with the deed to the decommissioned Tower of London base and the keys to the Corvette SS. Seeing as I wouldn't be getting a pension, I figured it was only my due.”

Stillman turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started to rumble. Then he punched a button on the dash, and overhead Alice heard the sound of gears grinding and chains clanking.

“Hop in, now.” A band of bright sunlight appeared in front of the car as a garage door scrolled up into the ceiling. “Early bird, and all of that.”

Alice climbed into the passenger seat, hugging her backpack to her chest. Now she understood why Stillman had put on his sunglasses, as she squinted in the blinding morning sunlight. She fumbled in the pockets of her leather jacket for her shades, barely able to see in the glare.

“Buckle up, love.” Stillman flashed her a grin and suddenly looked years younger. “I like to take turns at speed, I'm afraid.”

Alice hung on for dear life and Stillman whipped the Corvette around corners, zipped ahead of buses, dodged in and out of traffic. The sound of the
horns blaring was almost, but not quite, drowned out by the music blaring from the car's stereo.

Stillman yanked the cassette out of the player—the
cassette
—and tossed it aside, slotting another in its place. Alice picked it up and read the handwritten label.
Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, Transition
. Then, from the speakers came an early Bowie number, “Life on Mars?”

“Sorry if my tastes aren't quite up to date, love.” Stillman grinned, his graying blond hair streaming behind him in the wind, his head resting against the flat side of the bullet-shaped headrest. “I've been underground for quite a long while now and only come up at nights for groceries and liquor.” He laughed and said something that was swallowed by the wind.

“What?” Alice shouted.

“Like a vampire,” Stillman said, leaning over and shouting into her ear.

They sped around Piccadilly Circus, then came to a juddering halt at a red light. Stillman pointed to the towering neon sign overhead for the Temple Megastore.

“I met him once, back in the old days, when I was still Rook One and the world made a little more sense. Temple, that is. Strange fella, that. I saw him interviewed the other night. Comes across as a mix between Richard Branson and David Bowie, worth as much as both of them combined and with less charm or sex appeal than either.”

The light changed, and Stillman threw the car in gear.

“Still, he knew how to throw a hell of a party, I'll give him that.”

The British Museum was closed. A small crowd of people, mostly families with children, milled in the forecourt lawns. Stillman breezed right up to the security guard standing by the front entrance.

“Excuse me, friend,” he said. “I'd like to talk to whomever is in charge, if you don't mind.”

The attendant was a South Asian who looked to be a few years older than Alice. Maybe a student working weekends. He certainly had that bored part-timer look about him.

“Sir, the museum is not open at this time. Please come back between the hours of ten o'clock and five thirty.”

Stillman checked his watch. It was a few minutes after nine. “No.” He shook his head. “I'm afraid that won't do.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a thin leather wallet. Then he flipped it open, like a TV cop flashing a badge, and held it under the guard's nose. But when Alice looked, she saw that there wasn't a badge, just a blank, featureless piece of white paper. “My friend and I are on some urgent business and can't be delayed. Why don't you fetch your superior, and we'll be about our business.”

The expression on the guard's face changed immediately. The bored indifference was gone, replaced by a wide-eyed look of respect commingled with a little fear. “Yes, sir. Right away. Just wait here, sir.”

Then the guard spun around and disappeared through the door.

Alice stepped around in front of Stillman, and got a better look at the “badge” as he was putting it away. “What? Does the sight of a blank business card strike terror into the average Londoner?”

Stillman chuckled and flipped the thin leather wallet shut. “Not exactly. It's a kind of Neuro-Linguistic Programming I learned from my mentor. Hypnosis, if you want to use a crude analogy. By modulating the pitch and tone of my voice, and adding in a bit of subvocalization, I'm able to…”

The rest of his explanation would have to wait for another time, since he was interrupted by the arrival of an attractive black woman in a smart business suit, her hair pulled up in a tight bun. When she spoke, it was with just the slightest hint of a West Indian accent.

“Can I help you?” She was smiling, but her suspicion was evident.

“Ah.” Stillman flipped the wallet open and held the blank badge out for inspection. “My name is Stillman Waters, and this is my friend…” He turned to Alice, raising an eyebrow. “You know, I don't believe we were ever properly introduced.”

“Alice. Alice Fell.”

“My friend Alice Fell,” Stillman continued, turning back to face the
woman. “And we're here to investigate the disappearance of the ‘Vanishing Gem.'”

“The theft, you mean?” The woman looked up from the blank badge.

“Well,” Stillman said with a smile, “who's to say it didn't just…vanish?”

The woman pursed her lips. “The fake left in its place, for one.”

“Touché.” Stillman mimed a bow.

The woman seemed to consider things for a moment, then nodded. “All right, come this way. But be quick about it. We're opening to the public in less than an hour, and we're trying to keep as tight a lid on this mess as possible.”

The police, apparently, had been and gone days before. If the news hadn't carried the story about the theft that morning, the public would still be none the wiser. But the decision had been made to announce, and clearly their escort was less than pleased.

Construction was ongoing at the center of the museum, a large circular court where the British Library had been housed before being moved to a new location recently, and a new courtyard with a glass and steel ceiling put in its place. It was actually because of this construction, and the attendant reorganization of the museum's holdings, their escort explained, that the gem had been discovered in the first place.

“God knows what all is down there in the basements,” she explained. “Next thing you know we'll find a whole species of tour guides gone feral, eking out a rustic existence down there in the dark.”

“So the gem was just discovered lying around in the basement, then?” Stillman asked.

“Well, properly secured, of course,” the escort answered. “But essentially, yeah. We were in the process of changing out our last exhibit—‘The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come,' did you see it?” She looked disappointed when both Alice and Stillman shook their heads.