Copyright, 2014

Dead Leprechauns & Devil Cats: Strange Tales of the White Street Society by Grady Hendrix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Cover art by Eric Mueller.

ISBN: 978-0-9834487-5-4

Grady Hendrix is the author of Satan Loves You, a ridiculous novel about Hell that has brought strong men to tears. He has also written Occupy Space, a “scientific fiction” novella which has been known to cause spontaneous combustion and should not be read by those suffering from pregnancy, heart palpitations, or possessing weak minds. His fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Strange Horizons, and his story “Mofongo Knows” appears in John Joseph Adam’s The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination. Many of the tales in this volume have been read aloud as “audio books” by the good men and women of Pseudopod. His nonfiction has appeared in Variety, Slate, Playboy, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, the New York Sun and the Village Voice. You can follow every little move he makes at www.gradyhendrix.com.

Books By Grady Hendrix

SATAN LOVES YOU - managing Hell turns out to be a lot harder than Satan ever imagined, and now he must deal with professional wrestlers and chihuahuas in hats as he tries to save his underground realm from a corporate takeover by the Heavenly Host.

OCCUPY SPACE - the residents of an economically depressed South Carolina town build a Redneck NASA to put a man into space.

DEAD LEPRECHAUNS & DEVIL CATS: STRANGE TALES OF THE WHITE STREET SOCIETY - Shiver in horror at these steampunk tales of 19th century Men of Science battling the forces of the irrational and beating them to death with shovels. Killer Leprechauns! The true meaning of Christmas! Severed heads that sing!

THE MAD SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION - edited by John Joseph Adams, this anthology of mad scientist stories features Grady Hendrix’s “Mofongo Knows” the heart-rending tale of Mofongo, the mighty science ape with the atomic brain, now fallen on hard times and working the freak beat in a traveling carnival.

For more information, please go to www.gradyhendrix.com

Find me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Can’t read?

The White Street Society can help.

If you are one of the millions of illiterate Kindle, iPad, Nook, or Kobo owners, we hear your plight. Perhaps you just like the pretty colors? Maybe you’re a baby? Either way, we have a solution. Half of the Tales of the White Street Society are available “free of charge” in “audio” versions, read in sonorous tones by the good people of Pseudopod, the premiere online site for horrible audio fiction.

“The Hairy Ghost”

“The Corpse Army of Khartoum”

Unfortunately, you’ll have to get a friend or a bus driver to read “The Yellow Curse” and “The Christmas Spirits” to you.

See more horrible tales of the supernatural at Pseudopod.

Dead Leprechauns &

Devil Cats:

Strange Tales of the

White Street Society

Chapter One….The Hairy Ghost

Chapter Two….The Corpse Army of Khartoum

Chapter Three….The Yellow Curse

Chapter Four….The Christmas Spirits

To Amanda —

It turns out

that you did not

weigh the same as a feather

when thrown from a great height.

My saddest day —

yet what a victory for science.

The Hairy Ghost

We arrived at the White Street clubhouse at a quarter after eight and were led into the dining room by the inscrutable Charles, who promptly whisked our topcoats away into the mysterious bowels of that great brownstone. Our host, Augustus Mortimer, welcomed the three of us and we dined well on the club's excellent fare, none of us mentioning the nervous excitement we felt at being summoned, once more, to convene this meeting of the White Street Society.

After dinner, we retired to the murky clubroom where Lewis stoked the fire into a crackling blaze while Mortimer distributed Russian cigars. Drake, his whiskers trembling with exertion, applied himself to the cork of a dusty bottle of excellent brandy and then passed around snifters of the amber liquid as we settled into our accustomed places. Mortimer raised his snifter and solemnly intoned:

“Spirits for spirits,” and we simultaneously raised our glasses and drained them. The bottle was passed again as Mortimer addressed us.

“You will be surprised to learn that my absence of the past several weeks did not take me to sunny Spain, underdeveloped Mexico, nor balmy Italy. Instead, I have been, gentlemen, in Cow Bay, that epicenter of filth in lower New York.”

“Whyever for?” Drake cried, expressing the astonishment we all felt.

“Wherever the veil of our world is drawn back and glimpses of that other, uneasy shore are revealed. Wherever spirits haunt the steps of man, where time runs backwards, and dogs mutter, wherever the weird and mysterious bedevil our material plane there shall you find I, bedeviling right back. And, for reasons incomprehensible to the sane and hygienic, this time the veil was drawn back in...the ghetto.”

We all shivered.

“I have never encountered a case as blood-chilling as this one. Never have I, except perhaps once in Majorca, had my sensibilities so affronted as in a sodden tenement on Little Water Street. There, in the filthiest conditions imaginable, I confronted the worst case of the supernatural run amuck that I have ever had the misfortune to witness.”

“Worse than the Infant Aerialist?“ asked Lewis, precipitating a chill to pass around the room at the mere mention of that silent marauder.

“Worse, my old friend.”

“Worse than the Devil Cat?” I asked, my tongue stumbling over the hideous name of the demonic presence that had terrorized a buttery in Connecticut and almost cost Drake his life.

“Nothing is worse than the Devil Cat!” said Drake.

“My friends, it is a case worse than that of the Levitating Head of Al Arak, more insidious than the Humming Book, more demonic than even the Devil Cat, dear Drake. This, my friends, is the only time you shall hear told of The Hairy Ghost. And you are the more fortunate for it.”

We settled back into our chairs, hearts pounding, ears straining to catch every word as Augustus Mortimer recounted to us the following bizarre narrative.

THE TALE OF THE HAIRY GHOST

“One morning, overtaken by hunger and fatigue, I abandoned a rather pointed letter to the Times and repaired to a nearby hotel for breakfast. There my gaze happened to fall on a day old newspaper. Imagine how upsetting it was for me to read on the front page an account of the self-murder of one Dr. Ebenezeus Hagedorn in a hideous establishment known as Weeping House in the slums of Cow Bay.

“Dr. Hagedorn and I had served one another, unofficially, as consultants on difficult diagnoses, usually through the post as he is the possessor of a singular personal odor: like that of a large, sweating cheese. Being Italian, it is to be expected, but even after years of association I was unable to acclimate myself to his unpleasant bouquet.

“The article described, in rather poor taste, the discovery of Dr. Hagedorn dangling lifeless from a noose, in a cramped and fetid chamber, helpfully supplying me with the greasy abode's address. I intended to report it to the health authorities, perhaps encouraging them to burn it to the ground and incarcerate its occupants in lunatic asylums and prison cells, when a tiny paragraph at the bottom of the column caught my eye: The doctor was found with a great quantity of paper currency upon his person, but otherwise he had no possessions save the clothes he wore upon his back.

“Why should that alarm you, Mortimer?” Drake asked.

“Because nowhere does it mention his lucky lodestone.”

“Lucky lodestone!” ejaculated Lewis.

“Yes. Hagedorn never went anywhere without a tiny lodestone in his right front trouser pocket.”

“Could it be theft?” I asked.

“Why take the stone and leave the paper currency?” said Drake.

“It could have fallen out,” I replied, trying to bring reason to this room.

“That is possible,” said Mortimer, “were it not for the fact that the lucky stamp nailed to the heel of his shoe was also not mentioned.”

“Worn off,” I said.

“And the tiny gypsy charm he carried attached to his watch fob?”

“But the watch itself was missing, according to your article.”

“Then what about the splinter of the true cross this fanatical papist wore beneath his shirt?”

“Perhaps he didn't put it on that day?”

“Or the vial of blessed water he carried in his waistcoat pocket?”

“Carried away by rats.”

“Then there is the tiny magnet he wore on a leathern string concealed beneath his copious beard. What of that, William?”

“That, I admit, is very strange. But might not all of this be the work of rodents or light-fingered police officers?”

“Perhaps my boundaries of the fantastic are not as broad as yours, my friend,” Mortimer said. “To me, a Dr. Hagedorn shorn of his numerous charms and talismans is a Dr. Hagedorn awry. And so, after finishing my breakfast — which was quite excellent I might add — I took myself down to Cow Bay to demand answers to this mystery.”

“Was it...was it in the Five Points?” Drake asked, naming the very black, beating heart of corruption and poverty in New York.

“Not in the epicenter, my friend, but very nearby.”

“But how did you get there?” Drake asked.

“I tramped southwards, down Manhattan Island. Thriving gaudy neighborhoods gave way to blighted streets overseen by dead-eyed buildings and crammed with a species of animal that bore only a passing resemblance to humanity. Gangs of children, maddened by depravity and rum, bit and tore at one another. Human excrement rained from the sky, spilling from broken windows by the bucketful. Insensate women lay sprawled in doorways, their garments disheveled so as to reveal gruesome portions of biology.

“I finally arrived at a tall, narrow structure like a vertical kennel, sagging between its two more robust neighbors. An obese, unconscious Irishwoman, sprawled on her back, blocked the front door. I looked about for someone who might grant me alternate access and settled on a pinch-faced hag running her hands through the filth beside the rickety wooden steps.

‘Old hag, tell me —’ I began.

‘Yew wanna see the death room? Cost yew a nickel,’ she said.

“I was rather taken aback at this crude reception, but the loathsome creature misinterpreted it as an attempt at haggling.

‘Four cents then, an’ thas’ as low as I go.’

“Unsure of how to respond, I fished four pennies from my pocketbook and without a word she led me around to the side of the building, through a rough woolen blanket tacked over a hole in the wall of Weeping House, and into its putrescent interior.

“The house was as black as pitch, its windows barricaded with dirty rags and broken boards, while all around me in the dark I could dimly perceive sleeping bodies. The floor was be-slimed with filth and with each step it oozed up almost to my shoe mouth. Pale faces leered at me out of the dark as I passed. The smell of boiled cabbage was rank and oppressed my soul. We passed from room to room, each packed with pallid shapes moving suggestively in the darkness. I observed leaking buckets of filthy water over which harlots would raise their skirts and relieve themselves, and into which children would dip their tin drinking cups. The house was permeated with a sense that the collective dregs of humanity were hidden here and they were up to something vicious, secret, and disgusting.

“After winding through these intestinal corridors for some time we arrived at a door. The old witch brusquely pushed it open and stepped aside.

‘I doan go in,’ she said by way of reply to my unspoken query.

‘Madam, I thank —’ but before I had finished my courtesies she was but a dim shape, scuttling away from me down the hallway and swallowed up by the darkness.

“I shook my head at the typical Irish rudeness of her manner, then stepped into the room, which was little more than a closet, illuminated by one broken and dispiriting window. The walls were covered with graffitoed crudities and childish attempts at anatomical diagrams. I even found a hole in the planking, beneath which was a rat's nest containing five blind ratlings, Hagedorn's lucky lodestone, and the leathern strap with the magnet on it which he wore beneath his beard.”

“Ah ha!“ I said. “It was the rats!”

Mortimer dismissed me with a languid wave of his hand.

“I have no time for rats and talk of rats,” he said, and then he continued.

“I looked around this forsaken room and wondered what on earth could have brought such a great, albeit odorous, man as Hagedorn to this pit of poverty. I must admit I was tempted to join a reform movement and burn this filthy hovel to the ground immediately if I could have ensured that cremation would not release harmful gases into the atmosphere.

“A creak of the floor caught my attention and I turned sharply, expecting to find my guide creeping up behind me with a jackblack in her hand and murder in her Irish eyes. Instead, I beheld a waif with a waxen pallor, protruding bones and papery skin, crouching inside the doorway. Her furtive creeping was arrested when she saw me. Raising herself up to her full height she fixed her watery eyes on me and said:

‘Harry don't like you.’

“I was about to strike her for her insolence when her face slackened and she swooned. I stepped forward to catch her, then noticed spittle running from her mouth, and stepped back just as quickly to avoid soiling my clothes. Fortunately she was very light and the fall did her no great damage. With an empty room at my back, an unconscious child at my feet, and no way of locating my guide or escaping from Weeping House I was in a tight spot.

“After due consideration I decided to make for the street. Unfortunately the dim hallways proved to be more than my match and I found myself passing deeper and deeper into the filthy core of the blasted house. Ghoulish faces babbled, ‘Arby, arby rose,’ at me as I ran by, and I saw such scenes of depravity in my peripheral vision that I shudder to recall them even now.

“Finally I heard distant voices raised in excitement and I directed my steps towards them, eager not to lose this slight spoor of humanity. It shames me to confess it now but I was not a little afraid at this point that I would never see daylight again. When I rounded that final corner and saw a knot of broken-down inebriates gathered around a doorway my heart raced as if confronted with the Heavenly Host itself. A cry of greeting on my lips, I stumbled towards this clump of subhuman excrescence who were mumbling to themselves and staring down at a fallen form. They turned in terror as I approached them, and my relief turned to dismay as I recognized the fallen figure as the emaciated trollop who had assaulted me earlier. She had somewhat recovered and was in the doughy arms of my guide. Turning her baleful gaze upon me, she coughed up a sticky brown substance.

‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I’m a doctor.’

‘She sez yew left her on the floar,’ snarled my decrepit Virgil.

‘She is obviously hallucinating. She is a sick girl and belongs in a sanitarium.’

‘She’s got fits, that's awl,’ the creature said.

‘She seems well enough now. Tell me, Miss...’

‘Miss Kathy,’ the girl said.

‘Miss Kathy,’ I said, kneeling down in her general vicinity. ‘Tell these...people how you attacked me and fell to the floor on your own.’

The wizened crone who had brought me into this hellhole narrowed her eyes.

‘She says yew left ‘er on the floor. What kind of man be ye’ oo’d do sech a thing to an innercent child like ‘er?’

“The crowd of derelicts mumbled assent from behind their yellowed falls of unkempt facial hair. I realized instantly that I must take charge of this situation or risk being trampled and sodomised.”

“Sodomised?!?” cried Drake.

“Yes, dear Drake, for it was immediately clear to me that this crowd was composed in no small part of sodomites. Their lack of energy, their sallow skin, their unkempt hair. The sure signs of sodomy were writ large upon their broken bodies.

‘Look here, you old harridan,’ I said, drawing myself up to my full height. ‘I am a gentleman and a doctor and I am used to being addressed with the respect due my position. Now show me to the kitchen. We shall lay this hapless creature on the table, boil some water and examine her. Then,’ and here I made my eyes flash quite menacingly, ‘you shall answer some questions.’

“My speech had the exact opposite effect than what I had intended. The woman cursed and formed her hands into claws, and the men shuffled forward en masse, many of them wielding boat hooks and cudgels. I retreated until my back was pressed against the doorframe. The rabble continued their lethal advance, and so I shot one of them. Crying out, he fell backwards and his fellows froze as one. They looked at their fallen comrade, then withdrew to a respectful distance. I could tell the attitude of the crowd had changed significantly.

‘I am here to help you,’ I said.

‘You shot Fergus,’ an unseen voice protested.

‘Only in the shoulder, now carry this girl to the kitchen.’

‘You’ll shoot us.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘We’re going to call the coppers.’

‘He’ll recover.’

‘You still shot him.’

“At that point, the unfortunate Fergus awoke, and bestirred himself, mumbling in his incoherent Irish brogue. A wave of relief passed through the crowd.

‘You see, I told you he'd recover. When I leave this place I shall take Franklin with me, and I shall employ him in my household as a coachman and he shall never want again. I so solemnly swear.’ The crowd was greatly moved by this fine promise. ‘Now bring the girl to the kitchen. I shall follow!’

“So with the lack of efficiency that is the hallmark of the Irish race we made our way to the greasy, soot-blackened kitchen of this hellhole. The filthy animal who called herself Kathy was fully conscious by the time we laid her on the rough, splintery trestle that served as a kitchen table, and despite my instructions to the contrary, she attempted to rise.

‘You there,’ I said to my guide.

‘Mrs. O’Hanlon,’ she said.

‘Yes, make this beast hold still,’ I said. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

“So saying I tossed her a penny and she raised a wooden ladle and delivered Kathy a great rap on the head that dropped her flat upon the table. Flush with success she rapped the unconscious Kathy on the head again, then raised her arm for another blow.

‘That will do, Mrs. O’Hanlon. Now boil some water and remove these rouges from the room. I require utmost privacy for the acts I am about to perform.’

‘I rapped ‘er two times,’ said Mrs. O’Hanlon. ‘Yew owe me another penny.’

‘Very well, you beast,’ and I threw the penny into the hall. The disgusting woman ran after it, fighting for it with her fellow tenants as wild pigs will do battle with one another over a small helpless child, giving me the opportunity to close the plank door and secure the baling wire hook upon its latch. I pulled my leather work gloves from my coat and set to work.

“I shall spare all of you a retracing of the gruesome geography of this unfortunate mongrel’s body, but there were several points of interest: a strong, greasy smell of pork was upon her; her skin was unnaturally smooth and clean around her most animalistic regions; tiny bruises covered the majority of her thighs, both inside and out; and needle scratches were much about her neck, ankles, wrists and stomach.

“Finished with my examination I covered the girl and unlatched the kitchen door. The populace of the house stood outside in the dark, sooty hallway and they turned their hairy, blank faces towards me as I spoke.

‘There are interesting things in this house, for a man of learning and education such as myself, and I wish to study them at my leisure. I shall rent a room in which to work. Here, old crone,’ I said, passing a dime to Mrs. O’Hanlon. ‘Take my lodgings out of this.’

“A murmur went through the dense knot of inebriates as the coin flashed in the firelight from the kitchen.

‘I do not want any obstacles to my work, nor do I intend to smooth my stay here with liberal dispensations of currency. I am a doctor and I am here to help you. It is in your own best interests to give me your full cooperation. Do I make myself clear?’

“The murmuring turned dark and ugly.

‘What’s 'e say then?’

‘E’s not going to pay us?’

“The largest, and ugliest, of the crowd stepped close to me, pushing me back with his puffed-out chest.

‘Look ‘ere. The way we see it, yoar our boarder and you owe each of us a coin like the one yew gave to Mrs. O’Hanlon ‘ere.’

‘I do not.’

‘Yew do.’

‘I’m warning you, Mick, don’t put me in a position where I must do you harm.’

‘What’d yew call me?’

‘Stand down, sir,’ I said firmly.

‘I’ll stand down yoar arse,’ he roared.

“And so I shot him.

“He went down like a load of coal and the crowd rushed forward like a surging wave to tend to their injured companion.

‘You’ll notice that I have only wounded him in the leg,’ I pointed out.

“It was Mrs. O’Hanlon who finally pushed herself forward, and shook her gnarled and crooked finger in my face.

‘I expect yew’ll be givin’ ‘im a job in yer house, next, sir.’

‘Oh yes, he shall be employed as a footman and I shall pay him three dollars a week.’

“An admiring murmur rippled through the gaggle of miscreants, but did not take hold. Their eyes were still hard.

‘And I shall give him free room and board.’

“With that the floodgates opened and they clapped their bleeding companion on the back in a congratulatory fashion which caused him to grin through his bloody teeth. Somehow he managed to smile up at me.

‘God bless ‘ew, sir.’

‘Nonsense, you’re a hardy fellow. You shall fit right in with my staff. Now, if there's nothing further to discuss, I wish to establish an examining room here by the kitchen fire and examine each of you in a scientific manner.’

“Hours later, my joints stiffened with exhaustion, my fingers and ears grown cold, two pairs of leathern examining gloves soiled beyond reclamation and burnt in the fire, I looked up from my last subject to see that night had fallen on the house as thoroughly as if it had been submerged in a brackish lagoon. Unwilling to die for science, I rejected Mrs. O’Hanlon’s offer of a bowl of greasy water dotted with floating gristle, and retired to my room upstairs where I pored over my notes late into the evening.

“My clear penmanship combined with my colorful writing style made the situation instantly clear to me: many of the pathetic residents of this overgrown hovel shared similar symptoms. The men bore bruises around their nether regions. The few women — many of whom had to be sluiced with water and have their matted hair removed with a knife before I could even determine their gender or age — bore the same symptoms, but no scratches were found on any but tiny Kathy. Nor were the unspeakably animalistic regions of the other women as clean, or as bruised, as Kathy’s.

“I sat back and lit a cigar while pondering this enigma, and realized that I still did not know the identity of the Harry whom Kathy had mentioned. Determined to spend not a minute more in this stinking pile than I must, I launched myself into the bowels of the house to find Kathy and question her severely. To this end I brought with me a short length of leather filled with shot to make a sturdy yard-long cudgel. A crude weapon, but an essential diagnostic tool.

“The hour was late and the sound of drunken squabbles echoed throughout the house. Suddenly, an increase in the smell of rotten garbage informed me that the kitchen was near, and from behind its door I could hear a wet sucking sound. On stealthy feet I approached and peered around the jamb to be greeted by a most un-Christian sight.”

“What was it, man!” said Drake.

“It was the young ragamuffin, Kathy, in a state of complete dishabille. She was standing next to the kitchen table, illuminated faintly by the orange glow of the dying hearthfire. And here is where this story takes a turn towards the grotesque, gentlemen. In her hand she was holding a cake of bacon fat and she was slathering her body with it. Rubbing the greasy block over all her limbs and torso, and around her darkest unspeakables. She performed this activity with no small measure of excitement, briskly and sensuously lathering her body.

“I was struck dumb, but had the presence of mind to secure my grip upon the cudgel. She soon finished her oleaginous chore and dressed herself lightly in rags. My heart leapt into my throat as she moved directly towards the doorway where I lay watching. In one deft move, I sprang into the deepest shadows. Kathy walked out of the door, looking neither left nor right, and quickly made for the interior of the house. I followed her as best I could. It was a task of no small difficulty to keep her in sight as she darted through the dim interior of the sleeping ghetto as if she had been born there.

“Our journey came to an end at the suicide's dormer of Dr. Hagedorn. The girl plunged into the room and closed the door behind her. I pressed my eye immediately to the keyhole, and through it I observed the mean apartment in which this girl was conducting her rendezvous with the unknown.”

“What was she doing?” asked Lewis, unable to contain himself.

“She was undraped. Standing in the center of the room, lit only by a cheap tallow candle which cast its sickly yellow glow upon her skin, which was shining brightly with bacon grease. She turned herself this way and that, as if dancing to unheard music, exposing every inch of her flesh to the moon’s blind eye. Little sighs and moans escaped her parted lips, and I quickly realized that she was not alone.”

“Not alone?!?” cried Drake.

“Not alone,” continued Mortimer, “for on her flesh, her resilient youthful flesh, were indentations. They moved with a purpose and in an orderly path from her neck and shoulders to her back and stomach and then to her bestial protuberances. It was as if an invisible hand was kneading her flesh like dough. Where it moved, the bacon grease disappeared as if it was being pulled into the aether by whatever invisible force roamed freely over her body. Hours passed before she was deposited in a limp heap on the floor. She was panting and gasping, quite nearly unconscious, as dawn’s watery light crept in.

“Desperate to interrogate her I flung open the door and knelt by her side.

‘Kathy! Kathy!’ I cried, roughly shaking her shoulders. Her eyes, half-closed and glazed with a lustful exhaustion, could not focus on me, but I snapped her head to and fro until she turned it in my direction and bestowed me with a sickly, satiated smile.

‘That was Harry,’ she sighed, then dropped into unconsciousness. Unwilling to be discovered like this yet again, I left her on the floor and retired to my room to record the nauseating events of the evening.

“The next day, I made my way to the kitchen. No one was present except what I took to be the normal human garbage, sucking great portions of rough barley porridge into their horrible maws. I enquired as to Kathy's whereabouts, and after enduring many lewd and suggestive innuendoes, I was informed that she was in an undisclosed location doing piecework. Hours later she returned to the Weeping House, her fingertips red and sore. Without giving her a moment in which to order her thoughts I pounced. Using logic and reason I soon had her isolated in my rooms, sobbing and in no condition to dissemble.

‘Kathy,’ I said, ‘I saw you in the kitchen last night, and I saw you go to Dr. Hagedorn's room. Do you remember this?’

“She shook her head.

‘Liar! You told me that you had seen Harry, and that he had assaulted you. You smeared yourself with grease and performed lewd gyrations.’

“Her beady eyes, sharpened with tears, fixed me with a wanton look.

‘Did yew like seeing that, sir?’

‘My god, no. It was like watching animals rutting in the barnyard. However, as a doctor I was compelled to observe it carefully.’

‘Yew liked it, dincha’, sir?’

‘I want to know who Harry is, and why you smeared yourself with bacon grease, and exactly what was going on in that room. I want to know all of these things, and you will reveal them to me posthaste!’

“My thundering put her in a pensive state of mind. She bit her lips, she twisted her hands, she squirmed in her chair. Finally, she took a great breath and spoke:

‘I don't know.’

‘Oh for the love of God! Are you a sentient being? Shall you go from the cradle to the grave without even the simplest perception of your surroundings? Tell me what is happening here or I shall beat it from you.’

‘It’s ‘arry, sir. ‘e likes lickin’ the grease offar me. It tastes good to ‘im, sir. Please don't beat me, sir. I’m tellin’ the truth, so ‘elp me.’

“I looked into her dumb eyes and realized that she was telling the truth, but I decided to thrash her anyway to confirm my hypothesis. After a few minutes’s frenzy I sat down in a chair.

‘Kathy, I now believe that you are telling the truth,’ I said, panting. ‘So you must help me to capture this Harry.’

‘ ‘e won’t like that, sir.’

‘No, I suspect he won’t. What is he? Does he speak to you?’

‘ ‘e whispers things in my ear when ‘e’s lickin’ off the grease, sir, but I canna be sure if I’m hearin’ things or if ‘e’s really sayin’ them.’

‘Let’s assume that he is saying them. What is he saying?’

“She told me, and I blushed.

‘That’s quite enough of that. How long have you been visiting Harry?’

‘Quite some months now, sir. ‘e leaves me very tired.’

‘And are you the only one who has relations with Harry?’

‘ ‘e tells me that ‘e goes after all the boarders — th’ menfolk an’ th’ women. But I’m ‘is favorite. ’at’s what ‘e tells me.’

‘And what do you think Harry is?’

‘I t’ink ‘e’s a ghost, sir. Only…’

‘Yes? Speak up.’

‘Only ‘e’s very hairy and I dinna’ know that ghosts were an ‘airy lot.’

“I had never heard of this before, yet it stands to reason that if an individual possessed a large quantity of hair in their life, then in death their mind might shape their ectoplasmic form so as to resemble hair in order that they might feel as if they were still bound to this earthly plane. A paper on the phenomena of post-mortem hair would be most informative and educational.

‘May I go now, sir?’

‘Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere, Kathy. You're going to get some rest, and tonight we shall capture this Hairy Ghost.’

‘I t’ink ‘arry will not like ‘at, sir.’

‘I tend to think the same. However, I am a man of science and am disinclined to allow the objections of others to stay my hand.’

“I dismissed her, drawing forth a promise to meet that evening in the kitchen where she would apply the bacon grease and we would go together to dear, late Hagedorn’s room to speak severely with Harry, the Hairy Ghost.

“That night, after the house was asleep, I dragged the protesting Kathy out of bed and brought her to the kitchen. There she coated her body with bacon grease while I averted my eyes. She warmed to her task, and I had to walk quickly to keep pace with her as she practically ran to the room designated for her ectoplasmic assignation.

“She proceeded into the room and stood in an over-eager attitude in the middle of the rude apartment, whilst I lurked outside the door, cudgel in hand. I did not have long to wait before the noxious spirit made its presence know.

“The first sign was a slight glassiness to the girl’s eyes, followed by a line of spittle that appeared to run from the corner of her mouth. I swiftly noticed the telltale imprints of the invisible form pressed upon her flesh and soon it was making its presence known most gratifyingly. Her debauched sighs and carnal moans merely tempered my resolve, and I tightened my grip on the leather cudgel in my hand. I waited until things had proceeded to a point most inappropriate before my sense of decency recoiled and I was propelled into action.

“I leapt into the room with a cry, and the spirit instantly ceased its mauling of the girl’s nether regions. Sensing the phantasm’s hesitation I brought my cudgel down on the area which I judged to contain the invisible beast, and I was rewarded with a tactile shudder as my blow struck home. And then several things happened at once.

“Kathy dropped to the floor, insensate; an unearthly cry pierced my ears; and immediately the spirit manifested itself. And its appearance turned my soul to ice.

“There, writhing in lurid agony upon the floor was a short creature, perhaps two feet tall. It was covered with red, wire-like hair on every inch of its exposed flesh. A bristling beard sprung from its acne-scarred face, as did a pair of bushy eyebrows, and long tufts of untended hair, the same shocking red color, unfurled from its nostrils and its ears. On its head it wore a green cap, and a stained leather apron covered its body. Its feet were shod in shiny leather shoes with bright brass buckles, and it was, upon first glance, a man. A small man. A small man with red hair and green clothes.

“Judging by my surroundings, and the ethnic swamp in which these people lived I should have guessed earlier that what plagued this house was nothing less than the Cluricaune, the Lurikeen, the Irish blight, the potato homunculus: the Leprechaun. This randy, common fairy had been sating its lust on the good, albeit disgusting and filthy, people of this boarding house; depositing in them the seed of its drunken lusts, and taking from them their vital fluids, as well as the bacon grease lapped from the flesh of young Kathy.

“The Leprechaun growled, and launched itself at my knees. I beat at it with my cudgel, but the little demon was too devilishly quick for me. My center of gravity is quite high, which those who know me will admit makes me an exceptional dancer, but it is a distinct disadvantage when doing battle with Leprechauns, gnomes, or Black Forest dwarves, all of whose low stature gives them the gravitational advantage. The creature upended me with its attack on my lower body and I sprawled across the floor.

“It crawled up my trousers as I lay prostrate and snatched and grabbed at my johnny, attempting in a stupor to unbutton my trousers, a most debased scheme flashing in its bloodshot eyes; foul, Gaelic mumblings dribbling from its thick, chapped lips. I threw the hideous thing against a nearby wall, but immediately it was back upon me, and I had to beat it off with my cudgel, dealing myself several glancing blows in the process.

“Our battle raged on and the sound of splintering wood echoed throughout the house and drew a crowd of onlookers. As this sleep-addled throng pushed into the doorway I managed to stagger to my feet and struck at the leaping Leprechaun as it ran from me. It pulled out its prodigious member and urinated at me from a great distance, spattering my clothing with its foul-smelling bile. I lashed out at it with my cudgel, smashing the floor, and delivering not a few blows to its johnny, legs, back and head.

“I freed my pistol from within my jacket, and had its square, Irish head in my sights when, with a leap, it landed on the nearest bystander and scurried up inside his nightshirt. It was one of those foul drunkards whom I had seen earlier, an elderly man whose body bore the ravages of premature aging brought on by drink. Now this poor unfortunate had a randy Leprechaun beneath his clothing, trying with all its might to sodomise him. I struck at the vulgar creature through the wastrel's nightdress, and managed to drive it out, but not before rendering its victim unconscious. The tiny, evil sodomite leapt at the other members of the impromptu audience and they ran about in circles, screaming. Several times I fired my pistol at it, and lashed out with my stick, until in the confusion I managed to catch hold of the filthy beast's ankle with one hand.

“Triumphantly I lifted it into the air, carefully keeping it far from my face. It twisted itself upwards and gnawed at my hand with its needle-sharp teeth, sending daggers of agony shooting up my arm. But I had steeled myself for this, and I called out to Mrs. O’Hanlon:

‘Stoke a fire in the kitchen hearth, old hag. Hurry! Stoke it bright and hot.’

She stumbled ahead of me as I raced through the black hallways. I leapt over the bodies of dissolute alcoholics passed out with fear, and I pushed past staggering half-wits whose terror had reduced them to drooling idiots. All the while, the Leprechaun snapped and bit at my hand, tearing my flesh to bloody shreds.

“I arrived in the kitchen to find the fire barely smoldering and Mrs. O’Hanlon struggling to open a bottle of cheap whiskey. Knocking her to the floor I wrested the whiskey bottle from her and threw it into the hearth where it exploded into roaring flames. The hearth was now crackling as merrily as the gates of hell, and the degenerate faerie struggled mightily as it perceived my plan.

‘Arh, me boy. Don’t yew wan’ ta fine me pot o’gold? Aye can promise ye treasures th’ laiks of which ye’ve never seen! Ye’ve caught a leprechaun, m’boyo, an’ ye’ve airned yerself a booty. Let me go, an’ claim yer due.’

“But a lifetime of reading and intellectual cultivation has made me a cruel man, and so I tossed him into the blaze. The Leprechaun staggered across the hot, whiskey-soaked coals, consumed by flames, beating its arms helplessly at its burning body. Some of the heartier tenants were peeking around the doorframe by now, and Mrs. O’Hanlon was bestirring herself as the smell of scorched corned beef filled the room. All eyes were drawn to the blazing hearth and the stumbling shape within.

“Suddenly, with a savage scream, the blazing Leprechaun launched itself at my throat. It sailed out of the hearth, its flaming arms outstretched, its eyes burning red in the middle of its blackened face, a hateful cry upon its scorched lips. The crowd stumbled backwards in horror and Mrs. O’Hanlon fell to the floor and covered her face. I calmly drew my pistol and with one shot I neatly decapitated the vile thing. Its headless body fell to the floor, while its shaggy head sailed backwards into the fire, where it crackled and popped for some time.

“Sensing that the drama had passed and that shortly I would be petitioned to part with more money and listen to the further ramblings of degenerates, I left that vulgar house and made for fresh air and safety. But as I clopped down the wooden front steps of Weeping House onto the muddy track of Little Water Street a sudden consideration brought me to a halt.

“Was not the Irish problem really a Leprechaun problem? These foreigners seemed to have brought their own supernatural oppressors with them to our great country and now they were paying the price. I thought of savage, yet fair, Mrs. O’Hanlon. Of brave, lewd Kathy. Of the horrible Leprechaun that had turned this house into a den of wanton buggery. Acting on a sudden surge of sentiment I brought out a box of matches from my waistcoat and burned Weeping House down. It caught quickly and its flimsy framework went up like a torch. I watched it burn for some time, bemoaning the fate of the poor Irish who came to our shores so full of hopes and dreams only to have them dashed by Leprechauns, and then I returned to my apartments uptown where Charles prepared for me a wonderful meal in the French style and I had a hot bath with plenty of carbolic soap.

“But there is one thing that haunts me still. Before I left Little Water Street I saw their eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of them, staring out at me from chinks and crannies, through broken windows, from under mountains of dung: Leprechaun eyes, blazing with hatred. I saw them and counted their number, and my blood froze in my veins. They are a blight, and one day they shall overrun us all. They shall tear down our churches, our art galleries, and our great halls of government and make of them a muddy swamp of moral degeneracy. They shall usurp democracy, and decency, and goodness, and make us all nothing more than human cows which they shall milk for food. They are our reckoning. They are the wages of sin. They are our doom.”

Mortimer's tale was finished and we sat in stunned silence until the clubroom clock struck twelve and roused us from our grim contemplation. One by one we took leave of our host.

I was the last to go, and on the front stairs of 44 White Street I took Mortimer's elbow and had a confidential word in his ear.

“Look here, Augustus, if there's a fund for the extermination of these tiny monsters I am good for a substantial contribution. But it must be for their complete and total eradication. Nothing less.”

“No, William,” Augustus said with a rueful smile. “There are too many of them. It is too late for extermination now. We must put our faith solely in God. And in these.”

And he drew back his waistcoat and showed me two pistols tucked into his trousers.

We said our farewells and I walked out onto the cold city streets. New York was silent, and my thoughts were troubled. A stiff wind was picking up from the east. I could not believe that the Lord had abandoned us to this Irish blight. He would hear our prayers. He would deliver us from evil. Turning my steps homeward I resolved that, come morning, I would go to church and light a candle and offer up a fervent prayer for the salvation of our souls — after I had purchased a pair of pistols.

The Corpse Army of Khartoum

It had been some time since last we were called to a meeting of the White Street Society and all of us yearned to quench the thirst for strange adventure these meetings had fostered in our souls. That is why the three of us — Drake, Lewis and myself — finally abandoned formality and stopped by the clubhouse uninvited, fully expecting Augustus to be absent, overseas perhaps, investigating some mysterious mystery. Instead, we stood frozen in surprise and dripping with February rain in the doorway of the clubroom, as we watched our old friend sitting by the fire and reading the ‘papers, as cool as an oyster.

“Augustus,” cried Drake. “What are you doing here?”

“And where’s Charles?,” asked Lewis, as an unfamiliar manservant helped him off with his overcoat.

“Good evening,” Augustus Mortimer said. “Brandy?”

“I say, Mortimer,” Drake chided. “That’s an awfully cool reception. We’ve heard neither hide nor hair from you for months so we come dashing over here, expecting the worst, and instead find you surrounded by unfamiliar servants, acting as if nothing is amiss. If you let Charles go then there had better be an explanation.”

“Calm yourself, Drake,” Augustus said. “Charles is still in my employ, but he attends to other duties now. Why don’t you sit and have a brandy. According to the papers, the weather outside is positively foul.”

Soaking wet, we sat and this new valet poured us each a brandy as Augustus turned his attention back to the newspapers, occasionally circling an item that caught his interest. For some time there was no sound save the ticking of the clock and the occasional pop from the hearth.

“So,” Lewis said.

“So,” I said.

“Mm?“ Augustus replied, conclusively ending the matter.

The silence dragged on.

Finally, Drake could stand it no longer and he leapt to his feet.

“Now look here, Augustus,” he said. “Your brandy is finer than usual, and the quality of your cigars has greatly improved since our last visit. And I admit that your new man seems adequate, but I came for conversation and if you have none to offer then I shall go out and pay for it.”

“I forget that the silence seems inhospitable to you,” Augustus said. “For I have been in Egypt these past months and the clamor there is quite overwhelming.”

“Egypt,” Drake said sitting back down. “That’s more like it. How did you find it?“

“Most Egyptian,” Augustus said.

“Egypt,” Lewis breathed, his eyes shining. “What wonders did you encounter in that land of mystery and antiquity?“

“Not one,” Augustus said. “The food is oily, as are the people. Cairo is like a second rate Philadelphia, only more crowded, and outside of the city the country contains not a single site of any interest.”

“The great pyramids of Giza?” Lewis asked.

“Derelict wrecks.”

“The Sphinx?”

“Covered in guano and with grotesque proportions. A child could sculpt better.”

“The Nile?”

“An open sewer. No, Egypt was entirely devoid of interest,” Augustus said. Then he called his man over, handed him the folded newspaper and gave him whispered instructions. The man slipped from the room on padded feet.

“Then if you’re finished dashing Lewis’s dreams,” Drake declared, “I am going to find more interesting company.”

“As you wish, Drake,” Augustus said. “But you haven’t yet asked me about the Sudan.”

“You went to the Sudan?” Lewis asked. “Was it dreary and awful, too?”

“On the contrary,” Augustus said. “For it was in the Sudan that I encountered a gruesome adventure that has changed my life forever.”

Drake sat back down.

“Caught your interest, have I?” Augustus asked. “Well, stoke the fire and pass around the cigars. While we wait for the rain to pass, I shall tell you of...

THE CORPSE ARMY OF KHARTOUM

“Cairo is a filthy place,” Augustus began. “A wealthy and decadent puppet state with the hand of Lord Salisbury shoved up its backside. The British have blackmailed Khedive Tawfik to keep the Suez Canal open for their goods, forcing this dusky devil to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ in order to keep pounds sterling clanking into his coffers. The Suez Company owns and operates Egypt with a blessing from Queen Victoria herself.

“My older sister, who was something of an adventurer in her earlier years, had the misfortune to marry a Scotsman enrolled in service to the Queen and this ruddy-cheeked blowhard recently relocated their household to Cairo. Before my sister could complain he had filled her to overflowing with babies. I’d been thinking of visiting them in order to discuss some family matters.”

“You needed to borrow money!” Drake cried.

“Well, not just that,” Augustus said.

“You could have asked me for a loan,” Lewis chimed in. “No need to go all the way to Cairo.”

“The main purpose of my journey was to visit my sister’s children,” Augustus snapped.

“How many does she have?” Drake asked.

“Some,” Augustus replied.

“How many is some?”

“Between five and thirteen,” Augustus replied. “The number of children is irrelevant.”

“Not to your sister,” Lewis observed.

“I admit, there was more to my visit than conducting a census of my sister’s brood. My brother-in-law is a financially cautious man and his bank accounts merely sit and gather dust. I thought perhaps I could interest him in some investments. For my sister’s sake.

“And so I traveled to Cairo. My sister was overjoyed at my arrival, and her...many children felt similarly. My brother-in-law was in Luxor and so business matters would have to wait until his return three days later. It took one day to exhaust all that Cairo had to offer and I spent the remaining two in a state of tedium approaching insanity.

“At sunset on the third day I was at the Sheepheard Hotel medicating myself with a whiskey and soda. On the hotel porch hawkers stage fights between trained babies and baboons and I had just lost a considerable sum when my brother-in-law materialized. Imagine a sunburned hippopotamus sporting a great, white beard and wearing a kilt and you have him, a man whose idiocy approaches genius.

‘Douglas,’ I cried, grasping his hand.

‘Shenaurlly,’ he moaned in his incomprehensible brogue. ‘Groustaur. Emborgay.’

“So I ordered him a whiskey and soda. After drinking two more, he reverted to something approaching the King’s English.

‘Yer a cheeky divil,’ he muttered. “Come ‘ere tuh touch me fer a loan.’

‘Now look here,’ I warned him. ‘I’m merely volunteering to guide you in some investments of which I’ve only recently become aware. All your money will return to you, minus a small fee for handling the matter. You’ll find it’s quite in line what any bank would charge you.’

‘Yer nut enny benk, arrh ye?’ he mumbled, while having the gall to order yet another whiskey and soda on my tab. ‘Yer me good gal’s reprobate brother who cahn’t hold a job to save ‘is life an’ hew spinds all ‘is time mucking aboot wi’ spiritualism.’

“My astonishment that he knew a long word like ‘reprobate’ almost kept me from becoming offended that he had characterized my scientific work as if it were the mere twaddlings of some Seance Cindy going to hear the ramblings of dear, dead Uncle Cedric on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

‘Yeh think ye’ come ovar ‘ere tuh pinch summa me cash? Then think agin, boyo. I’m skint! Haven’t had the nerve tuh tell yer sister, but ah cun’t even pay fer these whiskies. Until muh next paycheck I donna have nothin’ in my pocket worth spindin’ sew beg all ye lahk. Ye’ll get naught!’

“And with that, this vile relation heaved himself upright and stumbled off into the dusty, sunset city.

“I sat in a stupor for a moment, feeling the cool touch of despair. It’s a terrible thing to need money when you’re halfway around the world in a filthy foreign city like Cairo. I had bought a one-way ticket, you see, trusting in the investment opportunities I was offering my brother-in-law to see me home. I was on the verge of utter desolation, so perhaps that explains why I screamed when I felt a touch upon my arm.

‘My apologies, sir,’ said a dapper fellow. ‘I heard a bit of that conversation with Red Harry and I wanted to let you know that we’ve taken up a collection in your honor and would like to buy you a drink.’

“It was the first decent thing I’d heard in days, and so I joined the party of this silky, well-dressed gentleman and his glittering young friends. They were like visitors from another world. How on earth did they keep themselves so clean in Cairo? After a few hour’s conversation I understood that they had come to Egypt to make their fortunes but once here they had no idea what to do next. They were young and idealistic, full of God and Empire and eventually I found myself so intoxicated by their company that I went to the bar to buy another round with money I did not have.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to a grizzled, sunburnt man with no arms or legs perched on a stool and lapping whiskey from a saucer. He began to weep.

‘There, there,’ I said to the sobbing stump. ‘It’s not that bad.’

I wanted the bartender to hurry over so I could distance myself from this mockery of a man making a spectacle of himself, especially as he was now leaning against my side and sobbing.

‘It is that bad, sir,’ he said. ‘I served with Chinese Gordon and lost everything in Khartoum. My mates. My fortune. My arms and legs.’

‘They’ll grow back,’ I said.

‘They will?’ he asked, through his tears.

‘Of course they will. I’m a doctor. You just have to give them time and... and drink more whiskey.’

‘I loved Chinese Gordon,’ he moaned. ‘He was God’s General. God’s General here on Earth, but the woolies hate God, don’t they?’

“Some people will never be happy. I had just told this grotesque fellow that his arms and legs would grow back and he had the gall to whine on about some romantic attachment to his military superior, who was Chinese Gordon of all people.

“I had, generally, a low opinion of Chinese Gordon at the time, the abolitionist British general sent to the Sudan to wipe human trafficking from the map. But the British were never quite comfortable with their religious visionaries and so when, against all human reason, Gordon’s mad crusade seemed to be bearing fruit they abandoned him in Khartoum while the Ansar laid siege for almost a year before taking the city and chopping off his head. The beheading of Chinese Gordon marked the expulsion of the white man from the Sudan and the beginning of that land’s long descent into a nightmare of unreason and superstition ushered in by the Mahdi and the Ansar, his fanatical Musselman army.

“But then this alcoholic amputee began to tell me a different story and gradually my impatience faded. I shan’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say that when he finally stopped talking I was convinced that not only had this man lost his limbs in a manner involving iron hooks and crocodile fishing, and that not only were the Ansar cruel beyond all human understanding, but also that through some quirk of the paranormal, Chinese Gordon’s decapitated head was still alive and supposedly possessed of oracular powers.

“Perhaps my trip to Egypt was not a waste after all. What a discovery: the living head of the world’s most notorious abolitionist, able to peer into the future? It was a must-have item.

“But how to equip an expedition five hundred miles up the Nile to Khartoum? How to fight the thousands of Allah-mad Ansar who would butcher us as soon as we landed? How to make my way into the heart of these Musselman fortifications and steal this mystical relic without losing any or all of my limbs?

“At that moment I heard ‘O Send Them To Golgotha,’ that week’s chosen song of the abolitionist movement, rising up like some repellant dirge in the lounge. I winced in embarrassment as I realized it came from the young gentlemen I had recently befriended, and then my shame turned to elation as I looked at their expensive clothes, listened to their abolitionist moanings, and observed their irrepressible high spirits. I ordered pink gins all around and explained to them my unique proposition.

“One week later, we were on a steamer headed up the Nile, already past the first cataract and making good time to Metemma. Young Harry, Winston, Standish, Lyle, and Merrimack, my young, optimistic abolitionist friends, had hired a company of riflemen and now they were only too delighted to be going to liberate the slaves of the Sudan and recover the remains of their movement’s saint.

“Our journey took two weeks, giving me ample time to become acquainted with our mercenaries. They were Egyptian soldiers who had deserted the British army and most of them were slave owners, but they had no problem carrying arms for my abolitionist friends because the money was good, and they were sure the mission would fall apart long before it reached Khartoum. However, their suspicions that we were all softheaded made conversation difficult.

“Fortunately, I discovered that one of them, Abdul Al Maziri, was a hashish addict and on the third day I confiscated his stash of that tarry drug. The skull-pounding summertime heat was enough to drive any man mad, but Abdul in particular found himself crawling out of his skin without his narcotic. It was simplicity itself to dole out to him a small amount of his necessary for information pertaining to Khartoum and that was how I learned the lay of the land.

“Khartoum was a ghost city. The Ansar had raped and plundered it into submission and then into ruin. When disease rose up like a wildfire from the piles of rotten corpses in the streets they abandoned the city and repaired to their sprawling military camp of Omdurman across the Nile. Omdurman, the tent city, had put down foundations and slathered itself in stucco and brick, growing walls and streets, markets and minarets, piling layer after layer upon itself like an oyster’s shell. And the pearl in the middle of this oyster was the Khalifa, ruler of the Ansar army, a most dangerous man, paranoid and mad, a massive, bloated drunkard poised to expand the Musselman empire across Egypt and into Africa.

“As we approached Omdurman, it became clear that we needed a plan so as not to be slaughtered the second we put down our gangplank as I had no doubt that the forces of the Khalifa were totally insane. At night, while dining with my abolitionist friends, this issue was turned over and over, prodded, probed, and discussed from a variety of angles, yet we never arrived at a general solution. Meanwhile, the servants and mercenaries became more and more nervous as we made our way up the Nile, past the first, second, and third cataracts, then past the joining of the Atbara River and down towards Khartoum where the mighty Nile divided itself into the White and the Blue. Each landmark was one more tick on the clock counting down to our doom. Each morning brought news of more deserters.

“And then came the day, just before teatime, with the Sixth Cataract thundering off our stern, when the ruined towers of Khartoum hove into view. Omdurman was visible on the opposite side of the Nile, a low blot on the horizon, smudged with the smoke of a thousand dung fires. It was with a sinking feeling that I realized our plan of attack consisted entirely of standing at the gangplank singing hymns and holding three white baby lambs as a gesture of peace, then asking the Khalifa, politely, for General Gordon’s head to be returned. From a strategic point of view there were flaws, but I decided to keep my doubts to myself and to be off the rear of the ship while the Answar’s attention was focused on the front.”

“You convinced these abolitionists to join you on your journey and then left them to die?“ Drake said in disbelief.

“Not to die. No,” Augustus said. “Merely to serve as a distraction. As it happens, they did die. Quite horribly, in fact, but that was through no fault of mine.”

“The Ansar had kept the docks at Khartoum in use, and they massed on them in the hundreds from the moment our steamer first drifted into sight. By the time we were ready to let down the gangplank, there were thousands of them waiting in an eerie silence. My abolitionist friends were nervous but full of faith that God was with them, so I left them to it, and as the low moaning sound of ‘O Send Me to Golgotha’ rose in the oven-hot summer air, I slipped off the stern into the lukewarm Nile and hid beneath the stern of the ship while the Ansar rounded up our remaining mercenaries, servants, ship’s crew, and the abolitionists, and clapped them all into chains. The lambs were promptly eaten.

“Night fell, and under cover of darkness I swam for Omdurman and snuck into a mosque that was left unlocked. I hid in a side room at the top of the minaret and slept until I was awakened by the muezzin calling for prayers at dawn’s first light. The city was abuzz, like a great anthill stirred with a stick and fortunately, from high up in the minaret I could see the center of the excitement quite clearly. It was an open square on which stood a gallows. I was amazed to discover this instrument of civilization so deep within this savage country, but I became slightly depressed when I realized that my friends were being lined up next to it.

“After a list of their crimes was read in Arabic, they began to hang them by the neck until dead. There were fifty of them, altogether, and after the first ten or eleven were hung the ropes began to break. Swords and axes were summoned and the prisoners were beheaded for a little while, but the process moved slowly and the swords had to be sharpened frequently. Heads were tossed into the crowd like coconuts while the town butchers were summoned and ordered to chop off the hands and feet of the remaining mercenaries. This they did, and the discarded members formed great bloody piles that starving children stole, grilled and sold to the crowd as snacks. When the executioners reached my friends, sometime in the late afternoon, they were exhausted and so they merely kicked them off the gallows and into the crowd who, it’s my sad duty to report, tore them from limb to limb while they screamed and begged for mercy.

“It was at this point that I began to re-evalutate my position. Here I was in a minaret, in a mosque, in the most radically anti-Western city on the planet, surrounded by five hundred miles of desert in every direction. At my feet lay 45,000 people who hated the white man as an article of faith, and I was the only white man within reach. Plus, I didn’t speak a word of the local language and my shirt was very dirty. It would take a cock-eyed optimist to say that my situation did not look bleak.

“In my depression I forgot that these desert devils prayed to their monstrous god five times a day and I was more than a little startled when the door opened and the elderly muezzin walked in. The old fellow radiated a rustic nobility from his strong-featured face and well-shaped head. He was old, but his white beard was lustrous, and his limbs possessed a rude vigor.

“I could tell that he was as surprised to find me in his minaret as I was to be found, and we both gawked at each other for a moment before he opened his mouth to raise the alarm and I punched him in the face. Staggering about the room, hands pressed to his gushing nose, he howled in pain. I had been merely trying to distract him so that I might flee, and so no one was more surprised than I when he staggered to the edge of the minaret, tripped against the railings, and fell to his death. A minute later I was surrounded by the Khalifa’s guard, a dozen rifles pressed to my skull.”

“Did they kill you?“ shouted Drake, unable to contain himself.

“Obviously not, Drake,” Augustus said. “Instead they put me in chains and took me to the palace of the Khalifa Abdullahi. It was the only two-story building in Omdurman, with their stinking slave market pressed in on one side and a filthy prison leaning against the other. I was passed from guard to guard until finally I reached one clean enough to drag me into the presence of the Khalifa himself. They pushed me to the ground, pressed my forehead into the dirt floor and it was all getting to be a bit much when I heard a voice speaking German-accented English.

‘You are a British subject?’

“I looked up and saw before me that traitor to Christianity, Rudolf Carl von Slatin, the Austrian Governor-General of Darfur who had surrendered to the Mahdi, converted to Islam, and wore the most ridiculous mustache in all of Christendom.

‘I am an American,’ I said. ‘My name is Augustus Mortimer and I demand to be returned to Cairo at once.’

‘The comings and the goings — these are not simple things! Here the Khalifa governs and makes these decisions for us,’ he barked.

“Von Slatin conferred with the Khalifa in their sneaky language, and I took this moment to steal a glance at the Sudan’s mad ruler. He was a molten mountain of lard, his features submerged in a slow avalanche of fat, his fingers and toes buried beneath rolls of jaundiced flesh. He was immense, clad in silks and brocade, and he moved with all the speed of an intoxicated tree sloth.

“Then, as an alarming buzz darted about the room, a clutch of armed natives led by von Slatin dragged me outside.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I demanded.

‘You are so lucky,’ von Slatin hissed. ‘You are to be imprisoned and lightly tortured before your execution.’

‘Why is being tortured lightly lucky?’

‘Because the man you pushed out the window was the last honorable man in Omdurman and so no one has the time to torture you heavily. For you the death will be fast and you will greet it while you still possess all of your fingernails.’

‘Wait!’ I cried.

‘No, there is a schedule,’ von Slatin said. ‘The sun is going down.’

“It was as if the alarming buzz had followed us out of the palace and urgency and fear raced through the city after us like a swarm of bees. Crowds were gathering, clotting on the corners and jabbering in their heathen tongue. Terror swept the mud hovels and hell shacks of Omdurman as all the citizenry emptied out onto the streets. Their eyes were focused southwest, in the direction of the setting sun.

‘Wait,’ I called to von Slatin. ‘I am the foremost authority in America on spiritualism. I have come all this way to see the oracular head of General Gordon. If it truly exists, let me gaze upon it one time before my death.’

‘The head only speaks the nonsense,’ the prancing Prussian priss said.

‘I can decipher it,’ I said. ‘I understand the language of the heads.’

“Von Slatin paused, genuinely torn, then he barked orders to the guards in Arabic, and we changed direction.

‘We go now to my quarters,’ he said. “You are lucky I am taking you places. You will tell me what the head is saying.’

“For a prisoner of the Khalifa, von Slatin enjoyed certain privileges. He could walk around the city unshackled. He had his own quarters and allowance. In return, he translated and advised the Khalifa, reading his moods as if they were the weather and he was a sailor adrift on an ocean of the Khalifa’s whims. Omdurman was his prison, as surely as it was mine.

“The guards posted themselves outside his quarters and he sneered at me through his silly mustache.

‘How did you hear of the head of General Gordon?’ he asked.

‘I’ll answer you if you answer me,’ I said, pressing my advantage. ‘What is everyone so worked up about?’

‘Your rash actions have merely doomed us all.’

‘I find that hard to believe. I have impeccable manners.’

‘The muezzin you defenestrated was the last faithful Muslim in Omdurman. As long as he calls the adhan the dead stay in the ground and allow the Khalifa and his followers their decadence. The corpses of those who died taking Khartoum are hungry to bring sharia to the living and their law is harsh. They would root out all traces of Christian corruption: the rifles, the liquor, the hoarding of wealth and tobacco, the fornicators. All would die at the hands of the Ansar dead. It would be most unpleasant. Only the voice of Ismail stood between this city of sinners and their total destruction. And now you have killed him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Fairy tales always bore me and I must have nodded off. Now, I believe you had a head?’

“Von Slatin produced an oiled sandalwood box, and from it he withdrew a silken sack which he opened. The smell of uncured leather and cinnamon shot fire through my nostrils as he pulled out the severed head of Chinese Gordon. It had been washed, barbered, and perfumed but underneath the rosewater I could smell its leathery stink. The General’s eyes showed only their whites, but from his beard a mumbling came forth. It was merely a nerve reaction and a not very interesting one at that and I became depressed I had come all this way for nothing. And then:

‘The hands are piled in a mountain,’ he cried in a strong, clear voice. ‘A mountain range of black hands. The rubber river flows north. Msiri whispers of Casement and Morel.’

‘Stop it,’ hissed von Slatin.

‘You’re going to die, Carl,’ General Gordon’s head said to von Slatin. ‘You’re going to die! They shall stalk the streets and rub out every vestige of Christendom.’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘That he is predicting your doom.’

“The sounds of panic in the street filtered in through the wooden shutters.

‘The black tide will drown you all. You’re all going to die!’

“Von Slatin turned quite pale, and dashed out the door and up the stairs to the roof while I followed as best I could. Behind me I could hear General Gordon start in on the first verse of ‘O Send Them To Golgotha.’

“The sun squatted on the Western horizon like an ugly red eye. Von Slatin pointed out over the White Nile towards Kalakala, near the ruined walls of old Khartoum.

‘They’re coming,’ he breathed. ‘The corpse army of Khartoum.’

“At first I saw only a cloud of dust rising from the desert sands, but soon I could make out ragged brown skeletons clad in scraps of dried meat, standing stark still in the dust cloud and when the wind brought me their scent they smelt of dried chicken spiced with cinnamon. A harmattan wind began to blow and as it passed through their taut, exposed sinews it produced a dreadful sound, like all the violins of hell howling and screeching. And then these things turned their grizzled heads on Omdurman and they began to walk.

“Screams rose up from the city below, and like metal filings drawn by a magnet, the population streamed eastwards, away from the advancing corpse army. From where we were standing we could see the dead Ansar emerge out of the dust cloud and fall upon late returning fishermen, who were drunk on local sorghum wine, and tear them to shreds. Their cries floated faintly to us in the summer dusk.

“I knew in an instant what I had to do.

‘Von Slatin,’ I said. ‘Unlock these manacles! We must defend the city gates!’

“He looked at me for a moment, confused.

‘Come on, man! There’s no time to lose. You’ll need every able-bodied man you can find. I can use a rifle and I have no intention of being murdered by a horde of dead Musselmen.’

“My logic appealed to Von Slatin’s Prussian mind and he unlocked my chains, whereupon I promptly shoved him off the roof. Don’t look so shocked, Lewis. It was only a one-story fall and I’m sure the crowd just trampled him a bit. Most of them were barefoot, anyways.

“However, I didn’t take the time to peer over the edge and ascertain his well-being. Instead, I dashed to his quarters and seized the silken bag containing Chinese Gordon’s head and ran from the building, pausing only to disguise myself in one of von Slatin’s white silk jibbas.

“From the roof I had seen that the city gates were not far to my east and so I headed in the opposite direction. I was pushing against a tide of terrified natives, but they paid no mind to the mad white man dashing into the jaws of death. The eerie orchestra of the corpse army’s rotten sinews was getting louder than the screams around me and I felt as if I were racing into the center of the maelstrom.

“I arrived at the city walls where barked orders drew my attention to the parapets where the remainders of the Ansar army were being bullied into making one last stand. Their captain screamed abuse as his soldiers gripped their sweaty rifles and hoped to live to see the dawn.

“I raced up the stairs to the top of the wall and what I saw filled me with hope and terror. Terror because what I saw was beyond all sane understanding. The Ansar had fallen by the thousands during their year-long siege of Khartoum and their bodies had been baked by the sun and stripped of flesh by the scouring sands. Now, animated by religious mania, they had heaved themselves up from their graves, jaws hanging agape, blind eye sockets filled with sand, lungs flapping in tatters, and they marched on Omdurman determined to wipe out the defiled city, a zombie jihad armed with weaponized hate. And there were thousands of them, enough to un-gut every man, woman, and child in the city.

“A few scattered rifles barked up and down the wall as jittery Ansar squeezed their triggers in terror, but mostly they held firm, waiting for their dead comrades to draw closer. And that was when I felt the hope rising in my breast. Just then, the head of Chinese Gordon began to bray ‘Jerusalem’ in an obnoxious baritone.

‘And did those feet in ancient time,’ he bellowed, ‘Walk upon England’s mountains green!’

Curious heads turned towards me as I stuffed a corner of my jibba into his mouth.

‘And was the holy lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen!’

‘Shut UP,’ I said.

‘And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills!’

“The head and I were drawing undue attention, and so I abandoned the parapets. The sound of terrified horses led me quickly to a stable, while that jackass head continued to sing. If I had not come all that way to secure the damn thing I would have pitched it into the crush of the walking dead outside the city gates right then and there.

“I found the horses rolling their eyes, their muzzles flecked with foam and terror. A stablehand tried to chase me away but I knocked him one in the skull with Gordon’s head and he went down like a stone. Gordon, needless to say, did not miss a note.

‘Bring me my Bow of burning Gold; Bring me my arrows of desire; Bring me my spear, O clouds unfurl; Bring me my chariot of fire.’

“Mounting quickly, I galloped back to the wall, where the firing had begun in earnest. The living Ansar on the walls had realized by now what I had realized earlier, that as long as they stood out of reach, firing down on the corpse army, they would survive the night. The dead had rejected the pollution of Western ideas like ladders and siege machinery and so they could merely press against the walls harmlessly while the Khalifa’s army tore them apart with bullets. Things might not turn out so badly as long as the status quo prevailed and the gates remained closed and the walls unbreached. That’s when I opened the western city gates and galloped out into the corpse army of Khartoum.”

“My god,” Drake said softly. “Were you mad?“

“Not mad,” said Augustus. “Merely determined to escape. I find torture most disagreeable and I was certain that if I remained in this city the army would dispense of the corpses and then Von Slatin and the Khalifa would turn their attention back to me. I had one chance, and I was taking it. And so, as Chinese Gordon’s head started in on ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God,’ with the Khalifa’s army above me, and the living dead before me, I charged out into their midst. Immediately there were bloodcurdling screams as the fanatical corpses poured into the city, and no one had time to focus on one lone madman riding into the face of certain death.

“I could hear the firing line falling apart behind me as I rode, and rode hard. The horse sensed what was around him as these things grabbed at his bridle but he and I were fused together into one being with a single purpose: forward! And the animal acquitted itself nobly. Gordon’s head didn’t help in the slightest, it merely sang on:

‘And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us!’

“The dead broke into pieces before my horse’s hooves as I beat the demons off with my bare hands and we parted this mass of rotten tissue like the Red Sea. Behind us, their brown and dusty death march drained into Omdurman where they wrote their sharia law in blood, but ahead of us their rear came into sight and finally we broke through their line and galloped into the open desert like hell itself was behind us. Judging from the chorus of screams rising from Omdurman, that was not so far wrong.”

“And what then?” asked Lewis in an awed whisper.

“I rode for three days before a steamer passed and I was able to secure passage back to Cairo. It was not a simple matter, but it was tedious the first time around and I shan’t bore myself by describing the journey again. I will say, however, that Gordon’s head didn’t shut up once the entire time. At night I was forced to bury it in the sand or wrap it in cotton wool so that I could sleep.”

“It’s an amazing tale,” I said, finally speaking. “But come now, Augustus, even for you this is too much. If such an adventure occurred then, for example, where is the head of Gordon now? Shouldn’t we all be hearing the strains of ‘Meet Me in Golgotha’?“

“Oh no, my friend,” Augustus said. “I have distracted it with other subjects. Come. I’ll show you.”

“Augustus,” I said as we rose to follow. “We are calling your bluff.”

Without a word he led us upstairs and paused outside his study.

“Listen now, you must not repeat a word of this to anyone. I am trusting to your discretion and to your honor.”

And with that he opened the door onto a scene that is difficult to describe. One wall was hung with a large chart laying out stock market symbols, while on the desk a ticker tape machine chattered out the movements of the market. Charles attended to a small table in the center of the room. He turned upon seeing us and gave a slight bow.

“Gentlemen,” he said.”

“Charles!“ Drake exclaimed. “What are you doing hiding up here?“

“I am attending to General Gordon, sir,” Charles said, unflappably.

And there in the center of the table, resting in a velvet lined tray, was the head of General Gordon, his mouth moving and out of it yammered an endless stream of numbers and letters, abbreviations and words I barely recognized.

“Is that Arabic?“ I asked Augustus.

“Listen to him,” Augustus said. “He’s predicting tomorrow’s stock market.”

“American Mining up five, up two points American Telegraph, Capital Steam Engine Consolidated down one and a half...”

I was aghast.

“It has made me quite rich, if I might say so,” said Augustus. As Lewis and Drake cooed over his system, the room swam before my eyes and I felt sick. I excused myself and ran downstairs where I leaned against the wall.

I thought of the dead abolitionists, far from their homes and their sweethearts, torn to bloody rags by a crowd of Musselmen. I thought of the wives of their hired riflemen, eternally waiting for their husbands to come home. I thought of the city of Omdurman and its thousands murdered by the corpse army of Khartoum when Augustus had opened its gates.

I thought of the vast road of blood that Augustus had ridden in order to bring back this thing that made him money, so many dead so that he could enjoy a better brand of cigar, a finer brandy. It made me giddy and sick. Money is different for men who are not born with it, and I knew that Augustus had not been born with money but had had to scrape for it, and so it inspired within him a kind of madness, and every day there were born more and more like him, men willing to lose their senses to secure a dollar.

From upstairs I could hear Gordon’s insane babbling and the voices of Drake and Lewis and Augustus and Charles and the clatter of the ticker tape machine and in my mind I imagined it was the sound of Gordon’s head spitting out blood-streaked gold coins, clinking one after the other into Augustus’s vaults and I thought of all the vaults around it in the bank, all smeared with blood, and I could smell it dripping and collecting, pooling on the marble floors and running together until it was a great stream, a cataract of blood rushing down the steps of the banks and out into the city streets to drown us all.

The Yellow Curse

It was a cool Spring morning and I sat in the clubroom of the White Street Society watching helplessly as my friend, Augustus Mortimer, fell apart. Breakfast was digesting in our tummies but newspapers littered the carpet at our feet and ennui gripped his soul. He tore through ‘paper after ‘paper, broadsheets and tabloids, dailies and weeklies, yellow scream sheets and small type mumblers, The Tribune, The Forward, The Dispatch, The Sun, The Age, The Mirror, The Herald, The New York Clipper: none could offer him relief.

“The Spanish War is over, the Philippines buzz with menace, the Catholics are in China, the Australians think they’re a country. I have tornadoes, and blizzards, and crime doctors, trunk murders, and electrocutions and none of it is interesting. None of it!” he wailed, lowering his head into his hands.

“Look here, Augustus,” I said, picking up a newspaper. “It says that today in Iceland they have formed their first football club. That’s interesting!”

Augustus moaned in despair.

“I am not an investigator of footballing. I am an investigator of the supernatural! Where are my Whistling Rooms? Where is my Phantom Pony? My Howling Death Owls? My House that Leers?

There was a crazed look in his eyes.

“You know,” he said. “I would even welcome the return of the Infant Aerialist!”

“Augustus!” I cried. “Do not even joke about the...about the...” I couldn’t bring myself to say the name of that supernatural suckling who had nearly cost us our lives. Instead, I merely rebuked him with my eyes.

“Don’t you see? I’m being driven out of my mind by boredom!” he exclaimed. “Dear God, relieve me from the hell that is New York in the summer!”

At that moment, the bell rang.

“Augustus!” I said. “The bell!”

“It’s some tedious visitor,” he said, dragging a sheet of newsprint over his head and turning facedown on the sofa. “Come to say something boring.”

As Augustus marinated in despair I heard the quick, steady step of Charles crossing the hall and opening the front door. There was a moment of silence and then a cry. Then more silence and suddenly Charles materialized behind me.

“Sir,” he whispered urgently into my ear. “There is a foreign gentleman at the front door. He would like to speak with Mr. Mortimer, but...” and he indicated Augustus’s prostrate form.

“Yes, Charles, thank you,” I said.

I followed him into the front hall and noted that the door was closed. I opened it. On the doorstep stood a Chinaman. I screamed and slammed it again.

“Great Scott! Charles, it’s a Chinaman.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do we do?“

“Perhaps he will go away,” Charles ventured.

I pressed my eye to the mail slot.

“He’s still there, dammit,” I said. “They give me the willies, Charles.”

“Yes, sir. May I point out, sir, that perhaps we should invite him inside?“

“My god, man! Why?”

“The longer he stands on the doorstep the more attention he will draw from the neighbors.”

Charles was right. I had to overcome my instinctual aversion, invite the little fellow in, and then promptly hustle him out the back.

Charles and I counted to three and then I snatched the door open, grabbed the fellow by the collar and dragged him inside. We turned to hustle him out the back but Augustus blocked our way. Arms crossed, he regarded us coolly.

“I heard your cries of alarm,” he said. “And now I find you with a Chinaman.”

“We’re just disposing of him now, sir,” Charles said.

“Whyever for? It’s the most interesting thing to happen all day. Hello, little fellow,” Augustus said.

“I don’t think he speaks the lingo,” I said.

“What…brings…you…up...here?“ Augustus persisted.

“Augustus, this is ridiculous.”

“Mr. Mortimer,” the tiny Oriental said. “My name is Jim Gun and I come from the Chinese Merchant’s Guild. I wish one moment of your time.”

I stifled the urge to scream. He spoke perfect English!

“You have twenty seconds to interest me,” Augustus said.

“The mayor of Chinatown sends me to ask for your aid. The Tongs are about to go to war.”

“The Tongs are always about to go to war,” Augustus said. “That is a matter for the police not a man of science such as myself.”

“This time they will war over something that is lost,” Jim Gun said. “Zu Guo, the Heavenly Pearl, has been stolen. It is a mystical object of great power, and its theft has disturbed the delicate balance of power in Chinatown.”

With my eyes I begged Augustus to refuse. Unlike most New Yorkers, I hated Chinatown. Too many Chinese for my liking.

“William,” Augustus announced. “Let us ready ourselves.”

“But…”

“I’ve made up my mind,” Augustus said, and he seized a cane from the hat stand. Canes were a recent affectation of his, and my heart sank even lower when I realized he meant to bring it with us.

“Chinatown suffers,” he declared. “Rumors of war. A mysterious artifact. Something stolen in the night. Adventure calls. And I answer with a merry cry on my lips and a cane in my hand. Come, William! Prepare yourself for sights beyond the ken of mortal man! For we go now to solve....

THE YELLOW CURSE

One hour later, our hansom ‘cab was still stuck in traffic. A bulky extracts wagon blocked the way forward while a team and six dragging an omnibus blocked the street behind. To our sides a steady stream of dogcarts and runabouts dashed through the gutters, their tiger boys cracking whips and screaming obscenities.

Augustus and I sat across from Jim Gun, who rested his hat on his knees and stared at us blankly. His hair was shaved back to the middle of his skull and chopped off at the neck. It was most unflattering.

“Mr. Gun,” Augustus said. “Where are you taking us?“

“To my employer.”

“And your employer is?“

“The man to whom I’m taking you.”

“I see you possess the Oriental love of riddles,” Augustus said. “Very good. Very good.”

“Augustus,” I whispered. “How can you converse with him so calmly?”

“Do the Chinese make you uneasy?” he asked.

“Uneasy! They make my skin crawl!”

“Yes, the hooded eye of the Oriental makes it impossible to tell where he is looking. While it gives them a devilish advantage in unarmed combat it also limits their depth perception and makes them vulnerable to thrown weapons.”

“We are going to the Chung Wah Kung So,” Jim Gun said.

“Excellent!” Augustus replied.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“The Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association,” Augustus answered. “They are a neutral party, the highest authority in Chinatown. Run by the merchants and the heads of the family associations they arbitrate disputes and regulate business.”

Our hansom lurched sickeningly forward, nearly separating my head from my neck, then crashed to a halt.

“We shall walk,” Jim Gun said. “It is faster.”

“An excellent suggestion,” Augustus said and he leapt out of the ‘cab, followed by Jim Gun, leaving me to pay the driver and follow in their wake.

Augustus strode down the sidewalk, bearing east and south through the city, with the tiny figure of Jim Gun hopping along beside him. Swinging his cane ostentatiously, he tipped his hat to various individuals and, given the great vogue of the day for the heathen Chinese, he attracted not a small amount of attention. I hung back, for I had read about the snares of Chinatown that waited for the white man and I vowed to remain alert.

We crossed Canal, passed Rag Picker’s Row and were approaching Bottle Alley when it happened. I saw Jim Gun take a small mincing step to the side and before I could shout an alarm three black-clad Chinamen stepped out of a storefront and scooped Augustus up in an enormous sack. I had read of this happening! I reached into my waistband for a pistol but it was too late and I found my own feet leaving the pavement as I, too, was scooped up in a sack and everything went dark.

“Hello, sirs. Hello,” a delicate voice said.

I opened my eyes and saw that I was lying on the floor, my cheek pressed to a richly colored carpet of Oriental design. My head throbbed as I rolled over onto my back and levered myself up into a sitting position. Four Chinese surrounded me, as implacable as the gruesome joss idols that lined the walls behind them. Silken banners in red and gold hung from the ceiling and moved lazily in the breeze from the open windows. One of the Chinamen lifted me up and sat me at a dark wooden table.

Across from me, an elderly Chinese dressed in Western clothes and sporting a wispy white beard, poured a cup of tea.

“Drink this,” he said.

I sniffed the porcelain cup suspiciously and the old man burst into delighted laughter.

“Oh, very good, sir. Very good!“

“I do not like being poisoned,” I said, pushing the tea away.

Augustus pulled himself up to the table beside me and sniffed his cup.

“It’s safe to drink, William,” he said. “I’d say it was Tibetan Six Mountain Pu’erh. About twenty years old.”

The old Chinaman beamed.

“Only a man of refinement could identify such a precious tea from aroma alone.”

I took a sip. It tasted like dirty socks.

“I do not like being scooped up in sacks,” Augustus said, curtly.

“I apologize for my methods. But it was only by transporting you through the secret Chinatown tunnels inside of sacks that I could bring you here unseen.”

“You’re Tom Lee,” said Augustus. “Head of the On Leong Tong. This must be your Tong house.”

“The Tongs!“ I cried. “We will be killed!“

“My apologies for deceiving you,” said Jim Gun, bowing deeply from where he stood by the wall. “A minor injury was necessary to correct a greater wrong.”

“What are these madmen talking about?“ I said loudly, and winced as my head throbbed.

“Drink your tea, William,” said Augustus. “It will scour the chloral hydrate from your blood. So, Mr. Lee, why don’t you explain to me why you have acted in this disgusting and uncivilized manner?“

“As Mr. Gun told you, a precious item has been stolen. We Chinese are far from our homes and so we cling closely to one another, building Chinatown to satisfy all our needs. But these stones do not warm our spirit. For that we have Zu Guo, the Heavenly Pearl, a piece of our Celestial Kingdom transported here at great price. Gazing upon Zu Guo, oil is poured on the troubled waters of our hearts. For Chinese, it is a precious memory of our homeland. It belongs to no man. But now the Hip Sing Tong has stolen it.”

“And you On Leongs wish to steal it back,” I said.

“You misunderstand,” said Tom Lee. “We do not want Zu Guo for ourselves, it will be restored to the Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association who must remain above this conflict. If they antagonize the Hip Sings they undermine their neutrality, so they turn to us for aid. But if we On Leongs go looking for Zu Guo in Hip Sing houses, then it will incite them to violence and all of Chinatown will weep.”

“But us, being white men, have immunity,” Augustus finished calmly. “Chinese will kill Chinese without a second thought, for life is cheap in your land. But they will not lay a hand on the white man for they fear our laws. It’s a cunning gambit, Old Tom Lee, but you overlook one important detail. Why should I help you? I am a man of science, devoted to the study of that which is termed the supernatural. I am not interested in your trinket.”

“Then you misunderstand the nature of Zu Guo,” Tom Lee said. “It is a treasure passed down from mother to daughter for many centuries, smuggled out of China and into your country at great peril by four men who killed themselves when they reached these shores, for they could not live even a minute without it after spending so long in its presence. It kindles both great peace and great longing in a man’s heart. I will allow you to study this object for three days and three nights if you recover it for the Chinese Charitable and Benevolent Association. Cigar?“

A scrawny Chinese lad wearing a billowing white blouse approached the table bearing a box of cigars on a tray. His hands were shaking so badly that the tray rattled. Tom Lee took one of the cigars and lit it with a massive jade lighter, blowing out a cool jet of blue smoke that hung over the table like a long silence.

While Augustus turned this proposition over in his mind, I let my gaze wander, coming to a rest on the silk banners hanging from the ceiling.

“Ah, I see you notice our Five Thousand Year Flags,” Tom Lee said. “Each flag belongs to a single clan and it is handed down through the centuries, the father of each generation painting on it his name and the name of his descendants. Any Chinese who wants to know the name of his great-great-great-great-grandfather merely needs to consult our Five Thousand Year Flags. These treasures are hardly what you would find in the evil Tong House of the Hip Sings.”

“How shall we know where to look?“ Augustus asked. “Chinatown may be small but its roots are deep and its shadows are dark. We will need a guide.”

“Take Ping,” Tom Lee said, indicating the underfed youth. “He was an apprentice dishwasher when I selected him to work here. He understands your English. When you have found Zu Guo he will guide you back here by secret passages.”

“I accept your task,” Augustus said, standing up suddenly. “I will find your Zu Guo and return it to prevent violence from erupting in Chinatown. All life, even Chinese life, has some value.”

“Very good, Mr. Mortimer. Very good,” Tom Lee grinned and he said something in his heathen tongue to the other men in the room and they all broke into smiles. “Ping will lead you to the basement and escort you to Doyers Street by the tunnels. It is best if you are not seen leaving this house.”

“That was a bit thick,” I said to Augustus as Ping led us down the rickety wooden stairs to the basement. “Even Chinese life has value?“

“It has been studied,” Augustus replied. “The Chinese soul weighs almost one half the soul of a white man.”

“Impossible,” I said.

“Science,” Augustus answered.

And Ping led us down into the secret tunnels below the streets.

Fifteen minutes later we emerged, blinking, into the crazed carnival of Chinatown and for a moment I felt as if we had been transported into the pages of an enormous book that was being slammed shut. The absurdly narrow street was hemmed in by vertiginously rising buildings that hid all but a thin slice of sky, and all around us streamed Chinese letters. Black characters marched down every surface, pasted to walls, pasted to windows, pasted to the green, gold, and red wooden balconies hanging off the fronts of buildings like flowering vines. The cobblestones were carpeted with discarded Chinese newspapers and the awnings, the gables, the dormers, the goods piled outside shops, the door jambs, and the doors themselves were covered with layer after layer of writing. We were afloat in a sea of Chinese.

On all sides we were buffeted and spun about by their bodies. An endless ocean of black felt hats and half-shaved heads shoved past us, hawked gobs, clustered around Chinese Bulletin Boards, read Chinese proclamations, stood by doors shouting “Fan tan, fan tan,” pulled patrons inside darkened storefronts, dropped bundles, lifted baskets, hustled thrill seekers, greeted friends, lit cigars, and generally acted as if they were in their own country.

“Too...many...Chinese...” I stammered as my vision swam.

“Get ahold of yourself, William,” Augustus snapped, slapping me sharply across my face. “I have a plan.”

I struggled to maintain a semblance self-control.

“What do we do?“ I managed.

“We need to find the leader of the Hip Sings,” he said.

“What?“ I gasped in disbelief.

“If they stole this Heavenly Pearl then it’s likely they have it hidden in their den. Ah, that’s what I was looking for.”

He pushed off through the crowd towards a towering Irishman with a blue police coat buttoned up to his chin. I followed as best I could.

“Officer, my name is Augustus Mortimer,” Augustus said.

“And I’m policeman John Young, and the exit from Chinatown is that way,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “If you want a tour of the gambling hells and opium joints you’re going to have to hire your own lobbygow because I’m an officer of the peace not your personal servant.”

“I wish to know the location of the worst Hip Sing gambling hell,” Augustus said. “The most sinister ulcer of Oriental iniquity.”

“No you don’t,” John Young said, in his thick brogue.

“Yes, I do.”

“Sir, I plunge into this boiling pot of Celestial vice to keep the peace and make sure none of our white lasses are molested by these coolie bastards. I keep them penned by betwixt Bayard, Baxter, and the Bowery and I have no time to babysit slumming swells like yourself. I recommend you find a nice white lobbygow like Chuck Connors and have him show you one of his good, clean tourist joints where you can puff a pipe of his adulterated tar and look at Opium Annie’s bubbies. Now please, piss off because I have better things to do than change yer nappies and mop yer chin.”

“Sir, you misunderstand me. I am here to bring peace to the Tongs at the behest of Old Tom Lee himself,” said Augustus.

There was a silence as John Young examined Augustus’ face, his red whiskers bristling with concentration, and then he burst out laughing and walked away, spinning his nightstick, Chinese scattering in his path.

Augustus quivered with rage.

“Perhaps we should — ?” I began, but Augustus seized Ping.

“Ping, where is the vilest gambling hell of the Hip Sings? Where do I find Mock Duck?”

Ping turned pale and shook his head in fear, trying to pull away from Augustus.

“Tell me, you little Oriental imp! Tell me where to find Mock Duck!”

A few bystanders were slowing down to watch, eager to see a white man beat a Chinese boy with his cane.

“I will report you as an obnoxious person,” Augustus said. “And they will ship you back to China in chains if you do not tell me!”

I had not thought it possible for Ping to look any more terrified than he already did, but somehow he managed to find an even more frightened expression in his repertoire as he lifted his arm and pointed across the street to a storefront marked in English as the Yee Hing Company

“Yes,” Augustus said, and he dashed into its dark doorway.

“My god, Ping,” I shouted. “What have you done? You’ve sent him to his death!”

I chased after Augustus.

“Fan tan, fan tan,” the men lolling outside the doorway said, barely moving their terrible eyes as I plunged past them. Their hands made secret signs to some unseen party lurking in the shadows as I burst into the gambling hell, right on the heels of Augustus.

First, I heard nothing but a roaring silence. Then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw that the room was sloshing over with Chinese who were all doing the exact same thing: staring at me. Their ivory gambling plaques lay forgotten on the tables as they fixed me with a collective look of either fear or hatred — I couldn’t tell which.

Ahead of me, Augustus was just disappearing into another doorway from which the sound of game play still spilled. I raced after him, crashed through the doorway, and plowed into his back. This room was better heeled than the one we had just left, with fewer tables and richer Chinese.

“Now what?” I whispered out the side of my mouth.

“Now we get ourselves abducted by the Hip Sing,” he said.

Before I could react he strode to the nearest table and upended it, sending dominoes and cups of tea flying. The Chinese scattered like startled chickens and Augustus roared:

“Where is Mock Duck?”

He raged about the room like a madman, tipping tables, as the Chinese seized their winnings and fled before him and it would have been amusing if not for the large group of men emerging from a trap door in the floor armed with snickersnees and evil expressions.

I was going to call out to warn Augustus, but suddenly I was scooped up in an enormous sack and the last thing I thought to myself was:

“Not again.”

“Wake up, white bastards!” shrieked a shrill Oriental voice.

I opened my eyes and saw rough splintery wood all around me. I rolled over on my back, helped along by the silken shoe that was kicking me in the ribs. Above me were dozens of incomplete faces, missing eyes and nostrils, teeth and lips; one was missing his chin entirely. What they had in common was that they were all kicking me with great abandon.

I glanced to my side and saw Augustus and a little further along, thrown against the wall like a sack of old laundry, Ping. Augustus was also being thoroughly kicked, but the savages were ignoring Ping. He had probably led us right into this trap. Then I remembered Augustus up-ending the pai gow tables and I thought that perhaps this might be one trap we had walked into ourselves.

“You want see Mock Duck?” The same annoying voice shouted. “Mock Duck want see you too. Mock Duck want see you dead!”

Arms hauled me up into a sitting position and Augustus was hauled up next to me. Across from us, oddly enough, was an enormous crayon portrait of Frank Moss, the lawyer for the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime. Before this incongruous artifact squatted the ugliest, most insolent man I had ever seen. He was wearing a stained silk blouse that barely covered a chain mail shirt, a battered and dusty bowler hat was perched on the back of his head and in his right hand was a hatchet.

“What you want me for?” Mock Duck shrieked.

“You brought us here,” Augustus said. “What do you want us for?”

“No want you. You come in my house. You break my tables. You die.”

“Look here, Mock Duck,” Augustus said.

“No, you look here,” Mock Duck screeched. “You really piss me off! That my pai gow room. Big money from pai gow. Now everyone think I look like asshole. I show you the asshole. Carve you up until all that left is asshole. Tough, chewy asshole.”

“Policeman John Young saw us go into your gambling hell,” Augustus said. “If we go missing he will come looking for us. Consider that before you do something rash.”

Silence descended on the room. Then Mock Duck howled and spat a long, green gob onto Augustus’s waistcoat.

“I watch. Mr. John Young, he hate you. He hate you guts! Go to basement. Get dead fast, dummy.”

“You won’t watch us die, Mr. Mock Duck?” Augustus challenged. “You won’t deliver the killing blow yourself?”

“I no watch white man die,” Mock Duck said. “They scream like little girls. You ever hear little girl scream? Give me indigestion. I go to Delmonico’s tonight, no want hear white man screaming while I eat Oyster Rockefeller.”

As he passed Ping he toed the prostrate boy with his foot.

“And chop off head of this cherry boy,” he said to his henchmen, and left the room.

Then his henchmen dragged us to the basement, giggling all the way.

“Augustus — ” I whispered as the four henchmen marched us down the groaning wooden halls.

“Quiet,” he said. “This is going exactly as I planned.”

I was flummoxed. This was going to plan? We were surrounded by highbinders who were taking us to the basement of one of the most notorious Tong Houses in the city to execute us and no one knew where we were. If this plan had been presented to me earlier then I would have happily pointed out several of its glaring flaws. I began to suspect that Augustus might not actually have a plan.

We passed a door guarded by two bored-looking Chinamen, scratching idly at their buttocks and smelling their fingers. Our four captors called out greetings, which were returned, then we turned a corner and were in a dirt-floored cell. A gas jet on the wall was lit and we were shoved into the far corner, little Ping clinging to my legs. I had forgotten the pup was even with us. He was acting most unmanly for a lad of fifteen, which I judged to be his age.

“Come on, Ping,” I growled at him. “Face your fate like an American.”

But I don’t think he understood me.

One of the Chinamen had been carrying Augustus’s hat and his damnable cane and, affectation of affectations, Augustus made it known through gestures that he wanted them both. The Chinese villains laughed at this and handed him his hat but no sooner had the cane touched Augustus’s hand than it was suddenly animated with a life of its own.

“Ahoy!“ Augustus shouted and he was lashing out with it in every direction at once. The cane cracked one Chinaman behind the ear, it smashed another’s temple, then invaded the eye socket of a third. Augustus posed like a bullfighter and then uttered a triumphant, “Ho!”

“Augustus,” I exclaimed looking at the fallen forms. “How did you — ?”

“Cane fighting. I learnt it from a band of geriatric sailors whom I encountered while investigating the Zombie Parrots of Jamaica. Come, speed is of the essence.”

Ping and I were bounding along after him, trying to keep up as he ran through the basement halls.

“William, to my right. Hurl Ping!“ he commanded, and I knew instantly what he had in mind.

I scooped up the surprised lad, who weighed next to nothing, and as we rounded the corner I flung him with all my strength at the two bored guards who were not laughing so heartily now. Ping caught one of them full in the face and they went down in a tangle of limbs. Augustus was in amongst them with his fighting stick and I gave one of them several stern remarks with my fists.

“If my calculations are correct, Zu Guo is behind this door,” Augustus said and, needing no further encouragement, I put my foot to the lock and bashed it open.

What lay behind that door was a wonder I still think of to this day. The room was crudely furnished with only a chair and a bed but on that bed sat the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was a Chinese, but her beauty softened the savagery of her Oriental features. Her face was perfectly formed, her eyes were dark shining pools, and her skin was as pale as snow.

“Bin go wah?“ she said in alarm.

Ping mumbled something from the floor in their heathen tongue and it must have soothed her for she stood and took a step towards me, reaching out with one of her perfect hands to touch my arm. As she did so, I felt something touch my mind as well and I was no longer in that basement at all.

I was home.

The nursery fire crackled in the grate while outside the sky was dark and stormy and the street lamps were on early. Rain lay over the house like a blanket, but the nursery was snug and safe. There was the occasional pop from the hearth as Nanny read to me the tale of Ivanhoe, recounting the adventures of that young knight, turning the pages with one hand, and stroking my head where it lay on her skirts with the other.

Then I was dumped back into that disgusting basement. I saw that Ping had been affected too for he sat stunned, gasping for breath. The beautiful woman, Zu Guo, I now realized, was lying unconscious on the bed with Augustus’s broken walking stick next to her. A drop of blood trickled from her temple. I didn’t realize that I had been crying until I brought my hand to my face and found that my whiskers were wet.

“Ping, fetch me a sack,” Augustus commanded. “Sorry, old friend,” he said to me. “I saw that she did something to your mind and so I disabled her at my earliest opportunity. What was it, then?”

As he spoke, Ping produced an enormous black sack from somewhere beneath his blouse.

“I was home, Augustus,” I said. “She reached into my heart and took me home.”

“Oh, well, that explains it,” he said brusquely. “I did see a few things: the old homestead, dog, mother, father. All dead now, you know. No point in getting sentimental about it.”

Then we bundled Zu Guo up into the black sack. After being bundled twice myself that day, I was not surprised to find that I had acquired a knack for it.

“Now, Ping,” Augustus said, to the dazed boy. “Lead us back to Tom Lee.”

We stood once more in Tom Lee’s meeting room as his minions checked the sack to make ensure their prize was intact. She was just waking up and one look at her made my heart ache. Ping stared at her as if she were a goddess.

“We’ve returned your slattern,” Augustus said. “Now arrange a carriage so that I might examine her in my rooms for the three days and nights that you promised. I am anxious to get this creature open and examine its workings.”

At first I thought Tom Lee had stomach trouble, but then his lips split and merry laughter spilled forth. His shoulders shook as he bounced up and down in his chair with mirth.

“Mr. Mortimer,” he said. “You are so naive. Why should I share such a treasure with you or with the filthy coolies and juk sing who litter the streets of Chinatown? They can spill their seed on white prostitutes and you can research apes and monkeys but Zu Guo, she belongs to me.”

“But,” I blustered, astounded at his avarice. “There will be war between the Tongs!”

“No war,” Tom Lee said. “No war because poor Zu Guo was murdered! It was a very terrible thing. Two white men and a Chinese boy stole her from the Hip Sing Tong and killed her after slaking their lusts. Then they tried to burn her body. I even have a body. It was very expensive to get a Chinese woman into your country just to kill and burn her, but worth every penny.”

He paused to let it all sink in.

“You won’t get away with this,” Augustus said.

“What will you do? Go to the police? Hire lawyers to say that I am lying? Will it be your word against mine?”

“Yes!” Augustus shouted.

“Look outside,” Tom Lee said. And I looked.

The streets were still crowded but they were no longer bustling. Everyone was standing still and they were all looking up at the On Leong Tong. Thousands of Chinese standing shoulder to shoulder and glaring up at me with cruel hatchets in their hands.

“I believe this mob of angry Hip Sing will kill you before you can take three steps,” Tom Lee said. “In just a few moments I must take the three of you outside and turn you over to them. You can try to tell them your story, but I don’t think they understand your language.”

I sat down heavily at the table. I looked to Augustus for strength but despair lined his face. I looked at Ping, but he looked even more forlorn. Truly, this was the end.

“Before you turn us over to that mob,” Augustus rasped. “I would like a drink.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with rice wine,” Tom Lee cooed. “It’s all we have.”

“Anything that will give me courage,” Augustus pleaded.

Tom Lee barked at an attendant who barked at another attendant who barked at a third who scurried from the room and returned moments later with a large clay pot sealed at one end with red paper. Bowls were placed before Augustus, myself, and Ping and one of the Chinamen thrust his fist through the paper top of the jug and sloshed a colorless liquid into them. Its smell stung my eyes.

“How do you know that Ping won’t tell them what really happened?” Augustus asked.

“Emperor Xiaowen suspected that one of his wives was committing adultery,” Tom Lee said. “She was his favorite concubine and so he asked her if it was true. It was, she said. Having no choice, he sentenced her to death by crushing. She cried so piteously when she heard her fate that Emperor Xiaowen was moved, and said he would grant her one wish. She could wish for anything, even her own release, and secretly he hoped that this would be her wish. But do you know what she wished for? She wished to have her eyes put out before she was crushed so that the last thing she saw would be the Emperor. We Chinese value loyalty above all things. I am like a father to Ping, he will be a loyal boy.”

There was silence as I pondered this macabre story. It didn’t make any sense!

“Now,” Tom Lee said. “It is time.”

“May I have one of those cigars first?” Augustus asked, in a broken voice.

Tom Lee sighed.

“Anything else?” he said, motioning to one of his lackeys. “Would you like a massage, too?”

The lackey clipped the end of a cigar and handed it to Augustus, who took it and also another draught of the rice wine. As the lackey extended the jade lighter Augustus suddenly spat the rice wine in his face. The spirits passed through the flame and turned into an enormous fireball that ignited the lackey who, as is the way with all lackeys, ran around the room screaming.

The room erupted into confusion as the flaming lackey stumbled into the Five Thousand Year flags and their ancient silk ignited and blazed to the ceiling. The beams caught fire, and Tom Lee and his minions ran from the inferno as thick, black smoke rolled out the windows and up into the sky.

“Quickly, we have only minutes,” Augustus shouted over the roar of the flames. “Ping, take Zu Guo. Get her to safety!”

Ping grabbed the dazed young woman by the hand and ran into the hallway.

“Let’s hope this smoke has attracted the authorities,” Augustus cried. “Are you ready, William?”

“Always,” I said.

“Then let us go to meet our destiny,” Augustus said and we raced downstairs as the On Leong Tong House collapsed around us, ravenous fire consuming it plank by plank, room by room, treasure by treasure.

Bursting onto the street, I heard the shrill cry of a maniac and I saw Old Tom Lee grab a hatchet and run at us, screeching wildly. I had had enough. I put up my dukes, ready to give him a taste of the sweet science of American boxing, hoping I could knock him unconscious before he planted that hatchet in my brains.

Suddenly he crumpled in a heap and the enormous figure of John Young stepped from the crowd, nightstick in his hand. He touched Tom Lee with it again and the old man moaned.

“I’ve wanted to do that for absolute ages,” he smiled.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” I gasped. “The Tongs are trying to kill us!”

Behind him, more blue-coated officers streamed down the street, and two fire engines tried to beat each other to the blazing building.

“I think you two had better get out of here,” John Young said. “I don’t have much patience for white gentlemen who stir up Chinatown trouble and then come crying to John Young when things get out of hand.”

“But — ” I began.

“It’s alright, William,” Augustus said, pulling me away. “Thank you, Officer Young.”

He led me down the street.

“The police are in the pocket of the Tongs,” he explained. “There’s no use asking them to investigate. Come, we shall go to my friend, Commissioner Waldo, and tell him our tale. Zu Guo is too dangerous to be left in Chinese hands. She must be sent out of this country at once.”

We walked away just as the front of the On Leong Tong house collapsed in a waterfall of sparks and the driver of one fire engine threw a punch at the other and a small Chinatown riot erupted in our wake.

The New York City Police Department were taking no chances. We had warned them that the On Leong or the Hip Sing might attempt to abduct Zu Guo by force and now an army of armed blue-coated police officers lined the docks four deep. A half-dozen “paddy” wagons were parked nearby and three ambulance carts were on hand, while a dozen messenger boys stood ready to run for reinforcements. Hundreds of officers lined the dock, like actors waiting for the curtain to rise, but so far no one was in the audience.

“I will be rather relieved if no Chinamen actually show up,” First Deputy Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo said, sitting across from Augustus and I in our carriage and unwrapping a peppermint.

“Look,” Augustus said. “The show begins.”

At the end of the long avenue of policemen I saw another “paddy” wagon glide to a halt and four policemen get out, leading between them a slender figure with a bag over her head and enormous mittens over her hands. Even at this distance, I felt a pang in my heart the moment I saw her slender form.

“I’m glad to see you took my advice on the handling of that woman,” Augustus said.

“It wasn’t hard to find four men with little imagination and broken homes to escort this seductress back to China,” Waldo said around his peppermint. “It was a bit harder to get the department to pay for it, however.”

The four policemen guided Zu Guo down the avenue of officers and onto the dock while the mass of policemen scanned every alleyway with their eyes, ready for hundreds of screaming hatchet men to come pouring out at any moment. But no one appeared.

“It’s worth any expense to preserve peace among the Tongs,” Augustus said.

“Tongs. Tongs. Ting tongs,” Waldo mused. “Ting tong tongs. Such a funny little language, don’t you think?”

Suddenly there was a rustle down at one end of the avenue. A small figure dressed all in white was running down the dock. The great ranks of policemen tensed. As the figure drew nearer I could see that it was Ping.

“Zu Guo! Zu Guo!” he cried. The quartet of policemen stopped at the top of the gangplank and turned around. Zu Guo turned as well, and she shook her head so that the bag slipped off and her beauty was revealed in the morning light.

“Why, look at that,” Waldo marveled. “It’s that funny little boy. The one who was hiding her in that flophouse. He fought like a demon when we finally ran them to ground and took the woman away. Do you think he’s in love with her? Do the Chinese do that? Do they fall in love? Or is it all just bowing and smiling and eating bird nests? You have to come breakfast with me at my club after. We have these little toads in the hole that are absolutely marvelous.”

“Excuse me,” I said, and exited the carriage.

By now, every policeman was watching Ping as he stood in the middle of the dock, crying piteously.

“Zu Guo! Zu Guo!” he wailed.

Then he stopped and shouted something to her in Chinese.

“What the devil is he doing?” I wondered.

His shouts were rhythmic and the words flowed like a song. If I didn’t know any better I would say it was poetry. Then he dropped to his knees on the rough, wooden planks, pulled a dagger out of his blouse and plunged it into one of his eyes.

It was as if the entire world held its breath. Not a body moved. Ping pulled the dagger out of his left eye and thrust it into his right. Blood and clear matter ran down his cheeks. He shouted again, “Zu Guo!” and the knife fell from his fingers.

Finally, a policeman broke from the ranks and walked swiftly to him, and I saw that it was John Young. He stood over Ping, wrapping his handkerchief gently around the boy’s ruined eyes like a blindfold. Then he lifted him into his arms, like a crying child whose tears were made of jelly.

The two of them vanished into the crowd and the spell was broken and the gangplank went up and the ship blasted its whistle and the policemen began to talk and laugh again. I pushed through their milling ranks and finally found John Young in the street, walking briskly away.

“Officer Young,” I shouted. “Tell me, what happened?”

“Ah, it’s my slumming gentleman,” he said, turning and seeing me. “Nothing happened, sir. Just an overwrought Chinese harming himself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“But is he all right?” I asked, stupidly. “Is there something I can do?”

“You are a marvel, sir,” he said. “Truly a marvel. You burn down one of the oldest buildings in Chinatown, deprive the poor devils of the only comfort they have in their miserable lives, you start a riot that leaves five dead, and cause a young lad stab out his eyes. And still you want to do more? I think you’ve done quite enough already, sir.” And with that, he was gone.

I walked back to the carriage, lost in thought. I climbed in and pulled the door shut behind me. Waldo was gone and Augustus was examining a telegram.

“Ping blinded himself,” I said.

“Mm. Listen to this. There’s a dairy in Connecticut and the owners claim all their milk is being sucked up by an invisible being. The Polish milkmaids claim it’s a Devil Cat. Driver!” he shouted. “Drive on!”

The carriage lurched into motion, the wooden dock rumbling beneath its wheels. To be honest, I was glad to have something else to occupy my thoughts, and although the Devil Cat would turn out to be one of the most dangerous cases of our careers I was glad for its distractions. It gave me a reason to forget about these strangers who made me feel like a foreigner in my own land. Adventure was one thing, but these Chinese took it too far. They left a man feeling quite in the wrong, when all he’d endeavored to do was what was right. I found myself more than happy to close the book on this case full of the inscrutable Chinese and their staring, unknowable eyes.

The Christmas Spirits

You can have your Paris, your London, your Vienna, your Rome; for this good Christian there is no city more sublime than New York at Christmastime. As I walked to the White Street Society clubhouse I sucked in great gulps of cold Yuletide air until my lungs froze solid with Christmas cheer. My feet were numbed with holiday spirit as they tramped the icy streets. My face and whiskers were chapped with all the joy of the season. Six carolers raced past me in the opposite direction, screaming, their exposed skin red and blistered with burns, their wet clothes steaming, flesh hanging from one of their faces in sheets. I smiled to myself a secret Christmas smile, for this meant that my good friend Augustus Mortimer was home.

“God rest you, merry gentleman!” I shouted in gay spirits, as I pounded on his front door. “Augustus? It is William! Come a’wassailing this December eve! Augustus?”

I felt something poking me in the midsection and directed my gaze downwards to behold the blade of a saber protruding from the mail slot and halfheartedly prodding me. It was sharpened to a murderous gleam, but as I was wrapped in many cloaks, and carpets, and coats, and shawls to protect myself against the Christmas chill, I felt only a gentle massaging about my tummy.

“Augustus!” I smiled, squatting down and peering through the mail slot. “Is stabbing any way to great a visitor on this fifth night of Advent?”

His eyes went wide.

“William!” he croaked, much as a shipwrecked sailor might say “Father Christmas” as that jolly figure lands his sleigh on their floating spar after many weeks at sea. “Thank god, it’s you! Help me!”

“Let me in and I shall help you all you wish,” I smiled. “For Christmas is a’coming, and I overflow with charity and benevolence!”

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“Only on the spirit of the season.”

There was much clanking, and clattering, and rattling, and rollicking from behind the stout oaken door of 55 White Street as Augustus unlatched the latches, unchained the chains, and unlocked the locks that separated his sanctum from a white world of seasonal cheer. The knob turned and his arm shot out and yanked me inside.

“Merry Christmas!” I boomed. “And where is Charles, this evergreen evening?”

“He has the night off, so he has abandoned me and fled to his Junior Ganymede Club,” Augustus said. “Are they gone? Did you see them? Are they lurking?”

His face was as white as paper, his lips trembled with agitation, and his eyes were full of fear. He was wearing a stained dressing gown, worn slippers, and his hair was a rat’s nest.

“Augustus, you must stop dashing pots of boiling water in the faces of your carolers,” I admonished, peeling off my many layers of warm clothing, snow falling from me in sheets. “They only come to give to you the gift of the love of Christ on his birthday.”

“The only gift they bring is squalid vice,” he muttered, shuffling away into the bowels of the dark and gloomy White Street Clubhouse still gripping his sword. I finished shedding my outer garments and followed him.

The library was, at least, somewhat cheerier than the front hall as a good fire was burning in the grate and there were many decanters of brandy and scotch scattered about. The gas was not lit, however, and so the only light came from the hearth, giving Augustus’s drawn face a grim and tragic aspect as he sank onto his sofa with a moan.

“Why are you cowering in your library, moaning and groaning like Mr. Dickens’s Scrooge, when you could be out with me, strolling the city and taking in the sights, and smells, and joys of this season of lights and wonders.”

He sprang from his position, gripping my collar, pulling my face to his with the strength of a demon.

“Do not!” he warned. “Do not whisper to me of Christmas.”

I laughed, and embraced him in a Yuletide hug, while he squirmed and cursed like a snake on hot coals.

“What is wrong with you Augustus?” I smiled. “Charles has told me of your seasonal eccentricities before, but I have never seen you quite like this. Why are you acting so?”

“Shouldn’t I?” he asked, tearing away from my loving grasp and pouring himself a large brandy. “Does not every vassal shake and tremble when his dread master returns from the hunt? That is what this time of year represents, when the city’s patron saint, the dread Saint Nicholas, hies hither in his monstrous carriage drawn by ferocious reindeer: the shitting, screaming Hell beasts of Lapland. The Dutch hiss his name as Sinterklaas and the thought of his obese form slithering into my home like a murderer in the night, stuffing my socks with foul and rotten oranges, saliva-coated nuts torn from the claws of rabid squirrels, and his own rancid piss fills me with terror, as it should you!”

“I don’t believe there is a tradition of Santa Claus urinating in children’s stockings,” I said.

“The man is a monster,” Augustus snapped. “Why else would he cram himself down our chimneys when we all have perfectly good front doors? Bound by no laws save his own, judging us as ‘naughty’ or ‘nice’ in some kind of secret tribunals, respecting no national boundaries, coming and going at will. Who knows what filthy diseases his nasty reindeer carry on their sharp and pointy hooves? Who knows what plagues lurk in his lice-ridden beard? And why this obsession with children? Why?”

“He is a jolly figure, beloved by little ones everywhere,” I said.

“But you don’t know, do you?” he rasped. “You just don’t know.”

There came a timid rapping at the door. I almost missed it but Augustus sat up as if he had been struck by lightning, then collapsed cowering against the arm of his sofa.

“Oh, God! Protect us!” he gasped. “He has heard me. It’s the Dutch who founded this city, they pledged it to him for his favors and protection, and he will not tolerate anyone to speak out against his tyranny, his infamy, and the terrible liberties he takes with our chimneys. He has come to exact his revenge!”

“I am sure it is merely more carolers come to wish you good cheer,” I said, getting up to check.

“Take the pistol!” he begged, thrusting it into my hand.

To humor him, I took it with me and went and unlocked the front door. There, standing on the porch, was a mound of winter clothes in the shape of a woman. And the woman — ! A vision of such Teutonic beauty that she took my breath away. Her dress was so pure and white that it looked as if it were stitched of driven snow. Her bonnet was both practical and modest and it hid her delicate braids, coiled on the sides of her head like great piles of golden rope. Her face was round and plump and her lips rested upon its rolling crests like two sugarplums soaked in honey. Her nose was perfectly proportioned and located in the middle of her face, and her eyes were like two sparkling lumps of coal sunk deep into the mounded snowbank of her brow.

“Is dis de house of der Vite Street Society?” she asked in a charming German accent.

“It is! It is!” I cried. “I am one of its members! Who are you? Perhaps the ghost of Christmas beauty?”

“Nein,” she said. “I am not one of the unheimlich. First, allow me to bid you guten evening.” She gave a charming curtsey. “I am named Greta von Hitler und why are you holding un pistol?”

“Oh, pardon me!” I cried, stuffing it into my waistcoat. “What a charming name you have!

“Ja, it is from my fadder,” she blushed. “It means ‘one who lives in der hut’.”

“That is quite handsome,” I said. “I am William, a member of the White Street Society. Please, come in, come in!”

I ushered Miss von Hitler into the front hall, and used the snow broom to bash the snow from her clothes. When at last she was fully swept, and a large quantity of ice lay melting on the tiles, I led her back into the library, praying to the spirit of Saint Nicholas that Augustus would not say or do anything untoward.

“Augustus!” I called, as we entered. “We have a guest. Miss von Hitler is — “

“Ho!” Augustus cried as he leapt out from behind the door and brought the hilt of his sword down upon the back of Miss Hitler’s skull. She fell, insensate, to the floor.

“What have you done?”

“Fractured her skull,” he said, proudly. “The less of these Christmas spies in my house the better.”

“We don’t even know what she wants,” I cried.

“Nothing good, I can assure you.”

“How do you know that?”

“It is better to strike first and ask questions later,” Augustus said. “That is the spirit of Christmas.”

“That is the opposite of the spirit of Christmas,” I said. “The spirit of Christmas is Christian charity, benevolence, and love toward one’s fellow man.”

“No,” Augustus said. “I think you’ll find that strike first and ask questions later is the actual spirit of Christmas. At least it was in my family.”

“I think she’s having a convulsion,” I said, as Miss von Hitler began to jerk and twitch upon the floor. “Help me get her into a chair.”

Augustus refused to touch her for health reasons, but once I had her seated upright her fits seemed to settle, and soon she grew still, then stirred and opened her puffy little eyes.

“Vat…vat happened?” she asked.

“You swooned,” I said.

“It must have been the sudden elevation of temperature when you entered the room,” Augustus said, coldly. “The warmth of the fire reacted with the coldness of your flesh, causing the blood to flee from your brain box as your veins experienced dilation, and so you toppled to the floor. Now, I demand to know what you are doing in my home.”

“Augustus Mortimer,” she gasped, eyes suddenly shining in a way that they did not shine when she had looked at me. “You are de famous ubermensch, der man who solves everything.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak English,” Augustus demanded.

“Doctor, I haf come from der German Kinder Orphanage for Forgettable Children to beg for your assistance,” she said. “We are plagued by troubles und only a man uf your learning can help us.”

“William, how’s your German? I’m going to insist that you translate this gibberish for me.”

“She says that she comes form the German Kinder Orphanage for Forgettable Children and they need your help on a case.”

“Tell her I’m not leaving the house until our city is free from the terror of the flying Sinterklaas,” he began. Then he placed his hands on his knees and leaned down into her face. “I’ll tell her myself. I…NO…LEAVE…PLACE…YOU…GO…HOME…NOW.”

At that, she burst into tears.

“I haf und tale to tell you dat is a tale uv life und death, un tale uv somethink so terrible it is hard to believe, even for me, un practical German woman,” she said.

Augustus shrugged helplessly at me, shaking his head.

“I’ll translate for you,” I said.

I handed Greta von Hitler my handkerchief but she rejected it in favor of blotting her brave tears on the hem of Augustus’s dressing gown. Then she told us a most extraordinary tale, a tale I would have dismissed as a pack of dirty lies if the teller were not so honest and virtuous.

“Every year, on December 5th, un handful uf orphans go missing from our haus,” she said. “Und they are never seen again. It haf happened six times, und now it is December 5th again. I beg you to come und solve this mystery.”

“What an amazing story!” I breathed.

“It’s more a matter for the police,” Augustus said. “That is if you can tear them away from their wassailing and eggnog.”

“Dey say because it is der orphans, no crime haf been committed,” Miss von Hitler said.

“There, you see,” Augustus said. “Mystery solved. Goodbye.”

“What would you like us to do, Greta?” I asked, moving closer and taking her hand.

“Please,” she said, so overcome that she pulled back her hand. “Call me Miss von Hitler.”

“Miss von Hitler,” I breathed. “One who lives in a hut, what would you like us to do?”

“I vould like you to come und stand guard over der orphans,” she said to Augustus. “For vun nacht only. See vat comes for dem in der nacht und carries dem avay.”

I took Augustus’s elbow and guided him into a remote corner of the room.

“What is she babbling about?” Augustus said. “The German language always sounds to me like fat drunkards arguing over their bowel movements.”

“She needs our help, Augustus,” I said. “Think of the helpless orphans who drop off to sleep in their tiny orphan beds, dreams of beer and sausage dancing in their heads, and then on December 5th some hideous creature carries them off, never to be seen again.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Where is your Christmas spirit?” I enjoined. “Has not the hallowed spirit of this merry season decked the barren halls of your heart with moral mistletoe? Are not yule logs of kindness for all mankind kindled in the kitchen of your soul? Does not a poker of peace on earth and goodwill to men prod the ashes of your benevolence?”

“No,” Augustus said. “I plan to spend this month barricaded inside my home, repelling all Christmas invaders with boiling water, and if that doesn’t work I shall use swords.”

“Listen, Augustus,” I said. “You know how I feel about orphans —”

“I do not.”

“Well, I am not about to let them be wantonly abducted so close to Christmas. I am going with Miss von Hitler and you are coming with me, or else you shall be left all alone in this house.”

The color drained from his face.

“Don’t go, William,” he begged.

“The last time Charles went to his Junior Ganymede Club he did not return until the following morning,” I said. “And out on that street I saw more carolers than I have ever seen before. If you wish to lie up here, besieged by season’s greetings until dawn, then you may. But they are persistent and eventually they will find their way into your house. And what then, Augustus? And what then? Stay here if you will, but I am going to rescue orphans!”

“Let me get my things,” he said, and disappeared upstairs.

He returned some half an hour later, hair brushed, and with a great many clankings and creakings emanating from beneath his Inverness cape.

“Please,” Miss von Hitler said, strain showing on her round and doughy face. “Ve must hurry. Der hour is getting late.”

“What are you wearing?” I asked Augustus.

“I would not dream of traveling unprepared on a Hellish night like this,” he said. “I have a pair of pistols with detachable Bowie knives in my waistcoat, my sword cane, my pistol cane, and my harpoon cane, a small harmonica gun hidden in my boot heel, a five-barrel pepperbox pistol in my other boot, a folding dirk strapped to my forearm, a short dagger concealed in my belt buckle, a poisoned needle concealed in my garnet ring, a garrote concealed in my watch chain, also a knife-pistol, a pistol-knife, and a knife-pistol-knife secreted about my person.”

“Is that all?” I asked, dryly.

“Of course not,” he said. “I also have this bottle of deadly poison in case things go badly and we are forced to take our own lives, and then I have this powerful sleeping draught in case we encounter dogs or needy women. They are in identical glass bottles, but I have put a small red dot on the label of the bottle of poison so that there is absolutely no danger of mixing them up.”

“Miss von Hitler,” I said. “We are ready. Lead on!”

Though it was early in the evening, no hansom ‘cabs were available due to the season, but the walk was not far and, despite the chill, I was delighted to drink in the sights and sounds of winter merriment all around us in the streets, especially with a woman as graceful and as sensitive as Miss von Hitler by my side.

“How long have you been in the orphan trade?” I asked, attempting to learn more of the ways of this bewitching creature.

“Vot is he sayink?” she replied, referring to Augustus, who clanked along behind us, hands thrust deep in his pockets, no doubt fingering his knife-pistol or his pistol-knife or his knife-pistol-knife. To ease her worry, I leaned in to hear more clearly his mutterings.

“Eyes down…eyes down…don’t make eye contact…don’t look…don’t see their faces,” he chanted underneath his breath.

“He is simply enjoying the night air,” I said. “Don’t you find that Christmas brings out the best in people, Miss von Hitler?”

All around us, the best was coming out of everyone in a most uninhibited fashion. There were mummers mumming, drummers drumming, carolers caroling, belsnickelers belsnickeling, and I even spotted a few lords leaping. A dragoon of boys in blackface and women’s skirts raced by, leaving the strong smell of Christmas spirits in their wake and, on the corner, two brigades of men dressed in tent-sized hats, pantaloons made of ship’s sails, and chewing tobacco epaulettes were shouting “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” at each other at the top of their lungs.

We made what haste we could over the icy streets towards Kleindeutschland, or “Little Germany” as it was called by our more vulgar citizens. No city in the world, save Vienna and Berlin, was home to more Germans than Kleindeutschland and, for these hardy yet sensitive people, the Feast of Saint Nicholas was their most holy day. I anticipated that their neighborhood would be filled to overflowing with a yuletide spirit that would make the rest of the city seem drab by comparison.

As we approached, the splendors of December, that most blessed of months, continued to unfold. We saw celebratory pig chases, oxen roasts, yeomen shooting rifles out of the windows of their town houses. Bands of Fantasticals passed by us, playing charivari on their tin whistles, hornpipes, handbells, sleigh bells, and pots and pans. Clumps of brightly dressed hobbledehoys made merry as their black sheeps and Gallathumpians leapt and sang, occasionally punctuating their Yuletide antics by hurling their bodies through the display windows of local shops.

Then we crossed Houston Street, and everything changed. This street marked the lower boundary of Kleindeutschland, which occupied the entire eastern half of the “village” with its pulsating, oompah heart located in Tompkins Square Park, an old swamp transformed now into a genteel park full of beer tents, brass bands, and saplings. The Germans who lived in Kleindeutschland loved Christmas with every fiber of their being, but having been fed on beer since childhood they observed their Noels with a more sober spirit. Not for them the drunkard’s dinner followed by shouted carols and riotous assembly. As Miss von Hitler led us onto Avenue B, which was their Broadway, a warm, rich, wholesome, and almost holy spirit enveloped our little band.

“I think I’m going to vomit,” Augustus moaned, staggering against my side.

The enclave was cheap, but well-tended, and to ensure the safety of their streets, members of the numerous Germanic shooting societies had formed local watches to keep out the rowdier elements. The avenue was lined with neat rows of shops that were just closing for the night, as each industrious owner hurried home to his wife and children. Tailors tucked away their bolts of richly colored woolen cloth, while golden pastries and enormous loaves of bread still nestled in the bakery windows. Outside the grocer’s den, barrels of bright red apples shone in the snow alongside enormous wheels of crumbly yellow cheese.

The rich tang of woodsmoke tickled our nostrils while smiling men tipped their hats to Miss von Hitler and murmured, “Guten abend, guten abend.” From up ahead, the sound of a tuba and the strains of “O Holy Night” sung by an angelic chorus of purebred German children drifted through the air just as fat flakes of snow began to fall through the air once more.

“Animals,” Augustus muttered.

“They seem most delightful,” I said, observing a family through a second story window trimming one of the newly popular “Christmas trees.” “A model of order and hygenic living.”

“The Germans are the worst conspirators in this Christmas disgrace,” Augustus said. “They and all the other Snow Peoples of Northern Europe have infected us with this yuletide malady. Thanksgiving is a proper holiday that has dignity and meaning, but this foreign revelry grafted clumsily onto the American body  is nothing more than a dead limb, rotting and giving off stench.”

“Seems a bit harsh,” I said as we passed a group of German women in snow hats and fur muffs singing “O Tannebaum” in close harmony.

“The German gives the outward appearance of health and industry,” Augustus said. “But they are creatures of extremes, obsessed with racial purity and beer. Few men are mentally prepared to reckon with the inner darkness of the German. A fanatical love of their fatherland, and a fixation on the borders of their precious Rhineland are the twin German neuroses that shall dominate the coming century, I promise you that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was watching those adorable babies ice skating and I entirely missed what you were saying.”

“Ve haf arrived,” Miss von Hitler interrupted. “Gentlemen, dis way.”

She led us up the steps of a neat brownstone building, dusted with powdery snow. Over the doorway was the inscription “Einigkeit - Macht - Stark.”

“What does that mean?” I asked her as we waited for admittance.

“Unity Makes Strength,” she said, then the door opened and we entered a world of warmth, good natured tumult, and delightful confusion.

On our left were thirty pegs and from the thirty pegs hung thirty coats belonging to the thirty orphans who called this place their home. From the parlor on our right we could hear their voices as they chanted their lessons, and from the back of the house we could smell spicy sausages and buttery pastries fresh from the ovens.

“Dis way,” Miss von Hitler said.

Soon we found ourselves seated in the tidy offices of Miss Goering, the stern but kind-hearted administratrix of the German Kinder Orphanage for Forgettable Children. She was an older woman, and years of kindness and wide smiles had given her a face as lined and worn as an old apple that has fallen out of the barrel and rolled away into the corner of the basement only to be discovered years later, perhaps to be remarked upon as resembling the face of the administratrix of a German orphan asylum.

“Velcome,” she said. “Perhaps you can see der fear upon my face as I velcome you?”

I looked closely and, indeed, I did see it, nestled in her folds and wrinkles.

“It is dis nacht,” she said. “Dis infernal nacht.”

“What is it about this nacht that worries you?” I asked.

She chewed her lips and began to cry.

“Auf,” she whimpered. “So much tragedy. I became der administratrix of der German Kinder Orphanage for Forgettable Children almost twenty years ago. Den I vas un beautiful girl full of hopes und dreams, like Miss von Hitler is now. Uf course I missed der beauty of der Rhineland but I felt that America vas un gutte place to live for ve German peoples, und it haf been un gutte place apart from der race-mixing. But fifteen years ago, our dreams haf turned into der nightmares.”

“That is because of the spicy sausages you enjoy eating before bedtime,” I said, injecting a little medical knowledge into this conversation. Miss Goering ignored my contribution.

“Some fifteen years ago, der first child vent missing on dis night. Little Rolf vas un naughty boy but full uf high spirits. Often ve wished he would die or perhaps lose der use uf his tiny legs so dat he vould settle down to his studies und stop his pranking, but it vas hard to be angry at Rolf for more than un day or two; der child had a smile like un angel. Den, on dis night, he settled into bed with der udder orphans und after ve had retired to our bedchambers ve heard a great clatter. Ven we raced upstairs ready for der spanking uf Rolf ve found his bed to be empty. Der other orphans said dey had seen nothink, und our orphans are many thinks but dey are not liars. Ever since den ve are losing der children on dis night vith much promiscuity. Ve lose one, three, or sometimes even five, vithout fail. It haf been so long dat ve regard our noble duty as being like der vork of der fishmonger: sometimes der stock spoils. It is merely der price of doing business. But Miss von Hitler is right. Orphans are not der rotten fish. Ve must stop dis. Vhen we heard about der adventure you did in der Chinatown ve decided to contact you and beg for your assistance.”

“I have NO idea WHAT she’s saying,” Augustus said to me.

After I had repeated the words of Miss Goering to him, he lapsed into a thoughtful frame of mind.

“So it is always on this night?” I asked.

“Alvays,” she sighed.

“Around what time?”

“Around der midnight,” she said.

“What is it about this night?” I pondered aloud.

“It is the feast of Saint Nicholas tomorrow,” Augustus said. “A day of judgment and reckoning for children when they place the Nikolaus-Stiefel, or the Saint Nicholas Boot, outside their door and pray that it is filled with oranges and candy when they awaken, rather than the Nicholas-Rute, or large tree branch which indicates to the community that they are a slovenly and disgusting child who deserves only beatings. It is a day for the eating of Stutenkerl and the singing of songs in praise of their Sinterklaas.”

I looked at him in wonder. For a man who professed such  contempt for Christmas he seemed to know a lot about it.

“Know your enemy, William,” he said. “Know your enemy. Tell me, Miss Goering, are you perhaps from the Tyrolian region of Austro-Bavaria?”

“Ja,” she said, wonderingly. “Near der border uf Salzburg.”

“She says she is from a place near the border of Salzburg,” I repeated.

“I thought so,” Augustus said. “Tell this stout woman that we shall examine the place where they store the orphans and, after I make some preliminary investigations, I will most likely decide to lie in wait and see if I can solve this Saint Nicholas conundrum. I do this not out of any great love for their primitive race, but because in their ignorance I believe that they have brought to our great and peaceful land an infection which could spread, and so I must sterilize this seeping wound in order that its stink and corruption might not contaminate and ruin all that it touches.”

I turned to Miss Goering.

“He says — “

“Ja,” she replied. “I heard.”

Miss von Hitler took us upstairs to see the room in the attic where the orphans slept. It was a long chamber with a jolly fire crackling in the hearth and thirty tiny beds each made up with snowy white sheets, and each bearing a colorful patchwork quilt folded neatly at its foot. Underneath each bed was an identical bedpan stacked on top of an  identical footlocker, no bigger than a loaf of bread, containing all the possessions of each orphan child. At the end of the room, a double window looked out over the snow-covered rooftops of the neighborhood where a forest of chimneys gave off puffs of smoke.

Augustus roamed about the room for some time, paying special attention to the chimney.

“Hurm,” he said. And “Erm,” and “Hm,” and finally, “Mm.”

The rafters of the room were carved with tiny hearts and the familiar motto from the front door of “Einigkeit - Macht - Stark” was carved over the door in a charming Gothic script. Over the mantel hung a picture of the Christkindlel, or the Christ Child, as we would call him. A general atmosphere of Old World charm pervaded everything.

“My mind is made up,” Augustus finally said. “Inform these waif dealers that I shall solve their mystery tonight, but that under no circumstances should they allow their friendless and unloved charges to sleep in this room. You and I shall wait here in the dark, William, and we will discover what it is that seems to have an unslakeable appetite for orphans.”

This news was greeted with great relief by Miss von Hitler, Miss Goering, and their cook, Miss Goebbels. They insisted that we come to the kitchen and drink strong coffee and eat spargel and wurzelbrot. I was willing to follow wherever Miss von Hitler led, but Augustus stayed me for a moment with a hand upon my sleeve.

“Word to the wise,” he whispered. “Do not eat their food unless you wish to be poisoned.”

“What?”

“The Germans are notorious poisoners,” he said. “I shall mime eating mine so as not to alert them that I am wise to their ways, but you should not become entangled in their snares.”

I assured him that I would not, then followed Miss von Hitler to the kitchen. There a sight to behold greeted our eyes. It was clearly dinner time and the kitchen was a scene of delightful chaos as thirty small orphans scurried hither and thither like little blond mice. Why, they looked almost like real people! Soon they had the table set and were consuming their bread and milk. Augustus and I observed from a scientific distance.

“Orphans!” Miss Goering said from the head of the table. “I haf un announcement. Tonacht is un special nacht. Do you know vhy?”

The innocent foundlings shook their blameless, unloved heads.

“Tonacht ve haff un special scientist, Augustus Mortimer, und his manservant, Bilbo. Many uf you who haff been viff us for many years because uf your dead parents hoping to vun day turn twelve und go liff honest und useful lives, may haff noticed dat every year several uf your little orphan friends go missink. Many uf you haff been afraid dat it is der time uv year for you to go missink. Vell, Augustus Mortimer is un doktor und he vill discover vhy dis haf been happening und he vill make sure dat no vun goes missink dis year.”

The tiny orphans clapped for us with their precious paws and I felt a great glow in my chest.

“Und now, drink your cocoa und then de tooth vashing followed by prayers und den bed in der front parlor. Ja, for tonight is un special camping night!”

The orphans chattered excitedly at this news, all atwitter that their routine had been disturbed so delightfully. When their meal was finished, they filed out, two by two, looking up at us with great curiosity. One little girl, her hair done up in braids, looking for all the world like a tiny Miss von Hitler, ran up to Augustus. She held out a cunning bracelet woven from a lock of her flaxen hair.

“Please, sir?” she said.

“Gah!” Augustus choked, making shooing motions. “Get it away from me!”

Miss Goebbels pulled the waif back into line and I watched them go, feeling a pang in my bachelor breast.

“Right,” Augustus said, standing up from his chair which was surrounded by morsels of bread which he had cunningly pinched off, pretended to eat, then thrown on the floor. “It is time for us to penetrate this dark Germanic mystery.”

At first I thought he was speaking of Miss von Hitler but then I realized he was talking about our mission here tonight on the eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas.

“Right!” I said. “Let us penetrate it together!”

We strode out of the kitchen, almost slipping in the puddle of beer that Augustus had pretended to drink. We trooped upstairs to the third floor and made for the orphan’s bedchamber underneath the eaves.

“Are you quite sure you’ll be all right?” Miss von Hitler said, blinking back tears as we neared the door.

“Don’t you worry,” I said. “You may visit us at any time in the night to check on our well-being.”

With that, she pressed a strudel into Augustus’s hand, then fled down the stairs. Augustus pushed open the door and we entered the room.

“Draw up chairs,” Augustus said, and we each pulled rough wooden chairs to opposite ends of the room, then put our feet up and prepared to wait. As the fire burned down the shadows it kept at bay seemed to bloom and blossom, rising up from the corners like untended shrubberies, soon enveloping the room in their gloomy nightshade. I rose to stoke the fire.

“Stop,” Augustus’s voice said from the darkness. I jumped, startled, for I had heard nothing from him but soft clankings and creakings for many hours. “Let it burn lower.”

“But it is so dark,” I protested. “We must have light to see our prey.”

“Perhaps our prey travels by chimney,” Augustus said. “Let it burn down and allow the Teutonic gloom to take hold.”

Reluctantly, I sat back down and tried to keep myself from nodding off. When a gentle knock at the door came sometime later, I leapt up with great relief.

“A knock! I shall investigate,” I said, and I opened the door to find the beautiful Miss von Hitler peering past me.

“What may I do for you?” I asked.

“I haf brought kaffee for Herr Mortimer,” she said.

Closing the door behind me, I stepped out into the hall and took the proffered cup.

“Thank you, good woman,” I said. “Your hospitality is most welcome at this late hour.”

“It is only for der sake of der orphans,” she said. “I vould do anythink for dem.”

“Yes,” I observed. “The orphans. How did a woman as lovely as yourself become involved in the orphan business?”

“I must go,” she said, but I caught her elbow before she could flee.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me.”

Realizing that I had no intention of releasing her arm before she unburdened the secrets of her heart, she spoke with great passion and emotion.

“You may not believe me,” she said. “But I vas un orphan, too.”

“My god,” I said. “I cannot tell. You are so kind, so gentle, so well-groomed, and clean, there is no stain of the orphan upon you.”

“Every orphan is like und snowflake,” she said, reddening. “Each is different in his or her own vay.”

“Yes,” I said, unsure of what exactly she was talking about. “What are your dreams, Miss von Hitler? May I call you Greta?”

“No,” she said, charmingly. “My dreams are my own.”

“Please,” I said. “I shan’t let you go until you open your bosom and disclose its secrets to me.”

She pulled at her arm again, but I maintained my grip and soon she realized that she was no match for my ardour.

“I dream uv one day having a home uv my own,” she said.

“You want to repair the broken home from which you crawled,” I exclaimed. “Mother, father, baby, an attempt to create the love you lacked as an orphan.”

“Nein,” she said. “I mean, dat I vant to have un home for orphans. To specialize in der relief und moral instruction uf half-orphans, foundlings, und friendless infants. To instruct them and impart in their hearts der moral lessons uv how to become upright und productive members uf — “

There was a gunshot in the other room.

“Vat vas dat?” she cried.

“It was only the wind,” I reassured her. “Now, if you will excuse me, Miss Greta, I must do investigation now. Please go away and forget you heard anything.”

I slipped inside and closed the door.

“Augustus?” I hissed in the darkness. “What happened?”

“It came in the window,” he said from somewhere in front of me. “Like a thief in the night. I heard clattering, then the window swung open and I saw a dark, monstrous shape climbing inside. So I shot it with my knife-pistol-knife. I may have also stabbed it.”

Quickly, I lit a dark lantern and raced to his side. There on the floor lay the unmistakeable shape of Father Christmas. He was quite dead.

“I have slain the beast!” Augustus cried with joy, and he began to dance around the corpse.

Father Christmas’s eyes were wide and staring, and blood had saturated his jolly white beard. There was a large hole in his chest, and two stab wounds beside. Spilled open beside him was a sackful of presents for all the good boys and girls.

“You killed Father Christmas,” I said.

“Bah,” Augustus said. “It is merely a disguise.”

He tried to pull off Santa’s beard, and actually managed to tear off a large piece of it, as well as a piece of Santa’s face which was apparently attached.

“You have murdered Saint Nicholas,” I said, dumbstruck.

“Nonsense,” Augustus said. “I merely defended myself from an attack by a large, bearded fellow with a gut like a bowlful of jelly and a twinkle in his eye who came at me in the dark wielding a sack full of presents.”

“Hello? Is everythink all right in dere?” Miss von Hitler asked through the keyhole.

“We’re fine, thank you!” I shouted. “It was merely a chair exploding.”

As I spoke, I wedged a bed underneath the doorknob.

“At least the mystery is solved,” Augustus said.

“How so?”

“It is quite clear to me, using reason and logic, that this is the mysterious orphan-napper. This creature has been slithering into this orphanage for years and hauling the unwanted children away in his sack. God knows what he does with them.”

“Santa brings presents and goodies in his sack,” I said. “He does not use it for hauling children.”

“Then you give me a logical explanation,” he challenged.

“I have none at the moment — “

“Ah ha!”

“ — except that you have slain a beloved Christmas figure.”

“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Augustus said.

“Except…”

“Except what?” he asked.

“Except eventually those orphans are going to come upstairs and they’re going to want to know what happened to the presents they expected to receive tonight from Saint Nick.”

“I would imagine that finding him dead in a pool of blood might distract them from that question, while offering them an explanation at the same time,” Augustus said.

“There are twenty-four militias and local shooting societies in Kleindeutschland,” I said. “All of them heavily armed and predisposed to err on the side of orphans. You do realize what danger we’re in?”

“Yes,” Augustus mused. “When you put it like that it does sound like rather a tight jam. Here. Don’t you know an actor?”

“Several,” I replied. “In fact, Jim Mahoney whom you met once is appearing in The Mossy Banks of My Hidden Valley over at the Bowery Theater this very night.”

“Not anymore!” Augustus cried. “For tonight he is playing Father Christmas in an orphanage for twice the fee.”

“Actors are immoral,” I said. “And they will do anything for money. Your plan is a sound one, except…”

“Damn that preposition!”

“How do we get word to him, Augustus?”

“I believe we shall take a cue from your Mr. Dickens,” he smiled, then threw open the window at the far end of the room.

It was a large window that looked down four stories into a maze of back alleys and courtyards where shoemakers tanned their leather, shopkeepers stacked their crates, and small boys and stray cats clambered and crawled all night long.

“Ho!” Augustus cried. “You there! Boy!”

But the stray boys merely continued slinking through the dirt and night soil.

“We should throw something to attract their attention,” I suggested.

All we had at hand were Augustus’s various knives and pistols, and so we began to chuck them out the window at the street urchins with great enthusiasm. Eventually we managed to gouge one of their skulls quite badly and thereby earned his notice.

“I’m going to slash your throats!” he shouted.

“Boy, how would you like to earn a penny?” Augustus called.

“Sir, would I?” he beamed, his mood instantly transformed.

“Run to the Bowery Theater and fetch Mr. Jim Mahoney from backstage at The Mossy Banks of My Hidden Valley. Let nothing stop you, for we require him here most urgently.”

“Just that?” the boy said. “For a whole penny? Do I have to kill him, sir? Make it look like an accident, burn his body, and bury his clothes, sir?”

“No, just bring him back here,” Augustus said, sawing a penny in two. He tossed down one half of it. “You shall get one half of this penny now and one half when you return.”

The shabby child picked up the penny, saluted us smartly, and disappeared down an alley.

“How do you know he’ll come back?” I asked. “And not just abscond with your half penny?”

“Oh, I know boys,” Augustus said. “He’ll be back for his penny. Now, we have much to prepare and very little time in which to do it.”

By the time the boy returned with a reeling Jim Mahoney, we were ready. I had to admit that Augustus’s plan was a sound one, but so incredibly complex that one mistake could jeopardize our lives. I was impressed, however, that he had already prepared himself for the eventuality that Mahoney would arrive drunk and be unable to scale the building.

“I have fashioned a rope from the contents of the orphans’s footlockers,” Augustus said, throwing down a long, multi-colored rope made of nightshirts, Sunday hats, letters from dead fathers, and locks of hair from mothers long vanished. “You, Jim Mahoney! Stop that! You are quite drunk enough already!”

“Dutch courage!” Mahoney shouted, swigging down the rest of a small bottle of whiskey he had produced from his pocket then dashing it to pieces on a stray cat. Or it might have been a small boy.

For another half penny the urchin we had enlisted tied the proxy rope around Mahoney’s thick waist, then Augustus and I hauled him up to the fourth floor, bashing him into the wall several times.

“A good bashing will sober him up,” Augustus reassured me.

Finally, Jim Mahoney stood unsteadily before us in the orphans’s chamber. We had piled many beds against the door, and there were only occasional knockings from behind them now.

“Here,” Augustus said. “Put this on.”

We had stripped Father Christmas of his garb, and scalped his head of its beard and snowy locks. Because his clothes were already red, the blood was barely visible, seen more as wetness than as stains. We draped the heavy coat and baggy red pants around Jim Mahoney, then pulled the leathery scalp and face of Santa Claus over his skull like a hood.

“It stinks!” Mahoney complained.

“Now, up the chimney,” Augustus said.

“What?” Mahoney demanded.

“Clamber up the chimney, and when you hear the orphans retire for the night you can slide down and distribute their presents from this sack. It will be a great joy for all of them. And for you, sir.”

He pressed a five dollar bill into Mahoney’s hand.

“And there is another one of those waiting for you when you present yourself at my home tomorrow afternoon,” Augustus promised. “After you have given these tiny orphans a visit from Saint Nick.”

“Wunnerful, wunnerful,” Mahoney mumbled from inside the flayed face of Santa.

“Now, up you go,” Augustus said.

Mahoney contemplated the fireplace for a moment, but since the fire was now little more than ashes and cinders, and since he desperately needed ten dollars to finance his one man show, The Dogs of Shakespeare, he was soon clambering up it most adroitly.

“Ish warm in here,” he complained.

“Almost there,” Augusts said, encouragingly. “Wonderful! Now wait at least one hour before sliding down.”

“Now,” Augustus said, turning to me. “Let us restore this room to its previous state, then go and inform the hausfraus that all is well, and away we go from this blighted neighborhood.”

Because we had separated Santa’s body into parts and stored the pieces inside the orphans’s footlockers, we were careful to make sure that their little beds were back in place and everything was stowed shipshape, so that they would not have cause to discover the grisly contents before morning.

“Don’t worry so much about it,” Augustus said, slapping me on the back. “They can think of it as an impromptu anatomy lesson. I would have thought myself king for a day to receive such a gift as a boy.”

That was when we heard long, loud screams echoing from downstairs. There was one thought in my mind: Miss von Hitler was in danger!

I am still not sure how I descended those stairs but, looking back, I seemed to smash through the door, then fly down them, my boots never once touching wood. One moment I was in the attic, and the next I was in the front hall, staring in horror at the thing in the parlor.

The orphans had made little nests for themselves out of woolly blankets, and nuzzled down for the night in front of the flickering fire, while Miss von Hitler and Miss Goering kept watch over their slumbering forms. It was a vision of peace and serenity, except for this vile abomination that stood in the midst of the room while screaming orphans dashed about its feet.

Or, rather, its foot. For one of its black feet was human in form, while the other was a cloven hoof, as horny and hard as any goat’s. The hoof and the foot alike terminated in hairy ankles, and the hairy ankles became hairy legs like those of a satyr. The hairy legs terminated in a thick hairy trunk which belonged to the most hideous creature I had ever seen.

Taller than a man by a good head and a half, it had coarse, black fur all over its body except for its belly which was worn bald and covered in scabs. Its head was like a devil’s, with a long red tongue that lolled halfway down its chest, and curling horns that protruded from its forehead. Fangs, burning red eyes, and jagged, ripping claws completed the image of a denizen of the pit escaped to the earth’s surface.

“Krampus!” Augustus breathed, arriving behind me, although I knew not what he meant.

The beast was laying about itself with a length of rusty chain, beating the orphans with great abandon. Miss Goering was sprawled across the floor in a swoon while Miss von Hitler cowered against the door, trembling with fear. She saw me and cried one word:

“Krampus!”

And now I understood: this thing was called Krampus!

The hall echoed with the deafening roar of yet another of Augustus’s hidden pistols, but although I saw the ball pierce its hide, it slowed the vile Krampus not one whit. Paralyzed with fear, surrounded by screaming orphans, none of us seemed able to halt this mad creature’s rampage

It was the sight of Miss von Hitler, her eyes rolling back in her head as if she were about to swoon, that spurred me into action. Wading in amongst the orphans I grabbed a poker from the fireplace and turned to face this Krampus.

The filthy creature was ignoring me, concentrating on flogging orphans, when it dropped its chain, picked an orphan up by its heel, and flexed its own scabrous stomach. A slit appeared, which gaped opened like the pouch of the kangaroo, and it attempted to jam the child into its flesh pocket. I was having none of it.

“Cease!” I cried, bringing the poker down on the monster’s head with all my force.

It dropped the orphan and turned to face me. I struck it again, then again, and then I proceeded to batter it vigorously about the head and shoulders with my poker, causing it great distress.

“Ah ha!” Augustus shouted in triumph. “Bullets do no harm, but direct physical violence is the key!”

With that he picked up a cast iron doorstop and flung it as hard as he could at the Krampus. It struck the fiend in the back of the head and its eyes rolled up into its skull and it fell to its knees on the floor. With shouts of laughter and much joy, Augustus and I laid into it, pressing our advantage. For the next little while, I quite lost track of time.

Soon the screams of the orphans changed tone and tenor and I stopped my work and looked around. Augustus was still bringing the door stop down repeatedly on the jelly he had made of the thing’s great skull, and the Krampus now resembled a boneless pile of wet carpet. I pushed it with my toe, but it did not move.

“Augustus,” I said. “We have won!”

He stepped back and we surveyed our handiwork, then turned and smiled at the orphans. Miss Goering and Miss von Hitler had stopped screaming some time ago; now they were attempting to comfort the sobbing foundlings who were splattered head to toe in Krampus gore. The monster’s sanguinary fluids were splashed across all the walls, and some even dripped from the ceiling. I wondered at what a triumphant sight we made, decked in the entrails of our opponent, and I thought we both struck quite the manful picture, but Miss von Hitler seemed more interested in the whimperings of her charges.

“There, children,” Augustus proclaimed. “That is how we Americans deal with intruders in our homes! Now, let’s have no more crying and instead why don’t you all join me for a great cup of cocoa in the kitchen!”

I was struck by his sudden transformation, but quite pleased, so decided not to question his mood swing.

“I tink you haf done enough,” Miss Goering said, but Augustus ignored her.

“Come along, children,” he said, herding the dumbstruck little ones out of the room and towards the back of the orphanage. “This way! The first one there gets the biggest cup of cocoa!”

The parlor was suddenly quiet, leaving only Miss von Hitler and myself alone.

“How do you feel?” I asked her.

“Sick to mein stomach,” she moaned.

I came close.

“Yes, I suppose for us this is all in a night’s work but you have never seen two men of science and understanding such as Augustus and myself investigate an unexplained mystery,” I said as I tried to take her hands. Mine were quite slippery with gore so it was a difficult trick. In the end, her hands seemed to slip out of mine and she clutched them to her bosom.

“I vould like you to go now,” she moaned.

“Not without a kiss,” I said, my spirits high from the heady moment we had just shared.

I took her silence and the numbed shaking of her head as a “yes” and leaned in to those sugarplum lips of hers, ready to claim my prize…

“William!” Augustus cried, striding up the hall. “The orphans are safe with their cocoa, and now I think it is time we departed! We have a long walk ahead of us.”

Reluctantly, I stepped away from my valkyrie, my Rhinemaiden, my Nordic princess, and blew her a kiss instead. She did not catch it.

“Miss von Hitler,” Augustus said, bowing over her hand and clicking his heels. “You will find that when the orphans return upstairs they might have a very special visitor soon, one who will erase all memory of these unfortunate incidents from their tiny minds. Good evening to you, and I wish you all a good night.”

With that, he took my elbow and we strode out of the German Kinder Orphanage for Forgettable Children and walked up the street. Augustus seemed to be in high spirits, his earlier mood of fear and trembling quite forgotten now.

“Well that was a good night’s work, William,” he said cheerily, taking my arm.

“What was that creature?” I asked.

“That was — if my German folklore is correct, and I have no reason to doubt that it is — a Krampus.”

“I know that much,” I said. “But who, or what, is a Krampus?”

“From the Tyrols,” Augustus clarified. “The Krampus is a demonic figure from Germany’s pagan past. On the feast of Saint Nicholas it rides along with that bearded Christian gentleman but whereas Saint Nick passes out presents to the good children, Krampus terrorizes the bad, distributing lashings with its chains. Occasionally it carries a child away in its horrifying sack for what purposes we can only speculate, but it does not take much imagination to consider what foul deeds a Krampus unobserved might perpetrate in the privacy of a pine forest. We have no pine forests here, but it seems that the Krampus abroad still maintains its filthy habits. I would imagine a sewer or damp basement suits its tastes just as well.”

“My god,” I gasped. “And you’re telling me that this unclean creature has been carrying off orphans — ”

“ — ever since Miss Goering took over, yes. She is from the Tyrols and has apparently brought her superstitions with her. That is the problem with these people. They bring with them bad habits that are better left back home.”

“But why did it come in the downstairs parlor tonight?” I asked. “And why did Saint Nick enter the bedroom? Based on their previous reports, it seems topsy turvy to me.”

By now we were drawing near to the White Street Society clubhouse and our pace slowed. On the corner, two fire departments had started an enormous bonfire in the middle of the street. It had ignited a nearby tree which, in turn, had spread to an unhitched cart. The blaze sent cheery sheets of red sparks into the sky and many of the firefighters were now wrestling in the icy snow, punching one another playfully in the face.

“I suppose that we might have had a small influence on the matter,” Augustus said, stepping carefully over two firefighters who were trying to strangle each other. “Our mere presence, and our completely justified killing of Saint Nick in self-defense probably confused the Krampus and unhinged it from its normal habits. For all we know, it thought that it was coming in the upstairs window, when in fact it was entering the front door. There really is no way to plumb the motivations of an imaginary creature, especially a foreign one. To be honest, we never should have been involved in this matter. It has been a messy evening, all around.”

“But you have done one kindness,” I said, smiling. “And revealed yourself to be as generous and charitable as any Christian gentleman inspired by the spirit of the season.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, Augustus?” I said, feigning surprise. “You took extraordinary efforts to replace the dead Saint Nicholas with one of your own devising. I think your heart has grown large enough to contain at least thirty small orphans. Tell me you don’t feel some small glow of pride that soon, with Jim Mahoney on the job, those children will be enjoying their feast of Saint Nicholas the way they were meant to on this most magical of days.”

“If he hasn’t fallen off the roof in a drunken stupor and broken his neck,” he said, but I could detect a slight smile playing around his lips.

“He might be a clumsier Saint Nicholas than those children are used to,” I mused. “I hope he does not awaken them.”

“No fear of that,” Augustus said proudly, holding up a tiny glass bottle. “I took the liberty of lacing their hot cocoa with this sleeping draught. The little ones shall sleep soundly through the night and not awaken until morning when they will find their stockings stuffed with oranges and chocolate.”

“Augustus,” I said, examining the bottle more closely. “This label has a small red dot on it. I don’t think it is the sleeping draught.”

“What are you saying?” he demanded and examined the bottle himself. It took him quite a long time, and when he spoke again he sounded somewhat shaken. “That is merely…a bit of dried blood in the shape of a small red dot? I would…hm…I would say it probably happened while we were beating Krampus to death. Or maybe when I shot old Saint Nick.”

“I do not think that is dried blood,” I said.

We both stood there for a moment contemplating the matter. It was Augustus who broke the reverie, walking up the stairs to his front door.

“Well, it’s only orphans,” he said. “It’s not as if anyone will miss them.”

He paused for a moment, head lowered, struggling with a sentiment too large for his chest.

“Fucking Christmas,” he finally spat, then disappeared inside and slammed the door.

I stood on the cold street. The sky was clear and the moonlight merciless. A drunken mummer lay unconscious in the gutter, hugging an enormous cabbage for warmth. Up the block, two young men were beating a third with a tin pipe and a horn. Their comrade crouched in the snow, hands wrapped around his head for protection. Next to him lay his forgotten drum. A goat trailing mistletoe from its horns ran past me, pursued moments later by several hungry-looking rogues.

“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I said, to no one in particular. “And to all a good night.”

I thought for a moment, then added.

“Especially those orphans.”

I walked the cold streets to my apartments, quite alone.

My spirits immediately lifted the next morning when I read the ‘papers. My slumber had been troubled, not just by a pricking of my conscience but by a deeper, darker feeling that I could only call fear. Would Augustus and I be linked to the scene? Had we done something seriously wrong? Were orphans just as good as real children in the eyes of God? Would I awaken to find John Law pounding at my door?

By the time I arose, I had determined that I would go immediately to Augustus and convince him to accompany me to the police station where we would take responsibility for our error, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the courts. But then I saw the ‘papers and stopped in my tracks.

According to the The Sun, shortly after we left the orphanage an ominous racket had been heard emanating from upstairs. The local watch appeared on the scene and discovered a drunken Jim Mahoney surrounded by dead orphans. They were not inclined to accept his explanation that they were like that when he found them. They also discovered, upon further investigation, an unidentified man distributed about the room in several small footlockers.

Mahoney was taken into custody by the law, but that was not the news which caused me to leap hastily into my clothes, go bounding out of the house, and sent me running through the bright white streets. That was not the news that saw me pounding on the door of the White Street Society shortly thereafter. That was not the news that caused me to seize Charles in a fierce embrace when he informed me that Augustus was in the library.

“Did you see?” I shouted to Augustus, bounding into the room and shaking the papers at him.

“Mm?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I read aloud from the article:

“Due to a sudden influx of arrestees from a small riot in the Tompkins Square Park Bavarian Beer Garden, the suspected Mahoney was mistaken for another Mahoney, arrested earlier in the evening for public drunkenness, and he was erroneously released on his own recognizance. His whereabouts are, at this time, unknown.”

“Quite,” Augustus said.

“It’s a Christmas miracle, Augustus!” I cried. “Now we just have to find Mahoney and spirit him out of the country and all will be well. If only we knew where he was.”

I began to pace.

“I know where he is,” Augustus said.

“You do?” I stopped my pacing. “My God, man. Where?”

“He was just here this morning,” Augustus said. “Banging on my door like a savage and demanding money for passage to South America.”

“What did you do?”

“I gave him his money, of course,” Augustus said.

“But you never loan money!” I exclaimed.

“It wasn’t a loan,” Augustus said. “It was more of as an investment in my future. Right this minute, he should be on steamer heading for South America. You might be interested to know that I also made my first investment in show business this morning. Before the New Year, Mahoney should be performing The Dogs of Shakespeare in Brazil or some such place, and probably dying of malaria in the bargain.”

All the strength left my legs and I sank into a chair.

“If you’re really in a mood to be astounded, read the Tribune,” Augustus said, tossing it to me.

The broadsheet was folded to another article about what they were calling “The Great Orphan Massacre” which I thought was a little unfair. I ran my eyes over the familiar details until one particular item brought me to a halt.

“My word…” I gasped.

“It is a bit like a novel, isn’t it?” Augustus said. “Who would believe that one of those orphans was actually heir to an immense fortune? A jealous half-brother, an attempt to abandon the squalling brat in a snowbank foiled by his discovery at the hands of your Miss von Hitler, and a kindly uncle reading his name in the ‘papers and bringing the whole matter to light. I hear that he has settled fully half the child’s inheritance on your German orphan herders. Imagine how their collection of unwanted children can expand now? They must be giddy with excitement.”

“Most unlikely,” I exclaimed, sitting back in my chair and feeling faint. “Most incredible.”

“Agreed,” Augustus said, pouring me a coffee. “But weren’t you the one who said that Christmas is a time for miracles?”

I settled back with my steaming cup of coffee in hand, and marveled at the way the events of the previous evening had changed so many of our lives. The spirit of Christmas, it seemed, had touched us all, each in different ways. Some of us were rich, some of us were dead, some of us were on a steamship to Brazil, and some of us had avoided prosecution for manslaughter.

“Merry Christmas,” I said to Augustus, for it seemed the proper thing to say in the situation.

He mulled this over for a moment, and then I saw the light in his eyes change, as if some shade or obstacle had fallen away. He lifted his head and smiled at me, looking for all the world like a child on Christmas morning.

“Yes,” he replied. “It is quite merry, isn’t it?”

And that is how Augustus Mortimer came to know the true meaning of Christmas.

This is THE END

of the

Tales of the White Street Society…

But wait — ! There are more Tales of the White Street Society to come! Numerous electrifying adventures of this stouthearted band of scientific gentlemen have been recorded in the minutes of the White Street Society, but medical professionals claim the public is not yet ready to read them. How dare they? Our motto has ever been: D—mn the medical professionals! Let the public read these tales of eye-bulging ratiocination and be elevated, and if a few die in the process then count it as a price well-paid.

Future tales will be unveiled in this very book and your Kindle edition will automatically update when they are sent screaming into the world:

The Minnesota Werewolf — when Natives drank too much “firewater“ and ran rampant, slaughtering white men and women and their precious babes in arms, they also unleashed the foul curse of lycanthropy, a medical condition caused by lack of proper hygiene. It took an uncountable number of bullets to solve this mystery!

The Death Sausage of Adolph Luetgert — what horrors await the White Street Society in Chicago? Probably immigrants. Packed with unenlightened dialect, subhuman intellect, and the standard degree of moral squalor this tale sheds light on the healthy good cheer of the meatpacking industry and those depraved influences who seek to pervert its natural course.

The Enigma of the Erection Society — what is it that draws men to create great thrusting monuments to their own achievements that pierce the virgin sky? Is it a sickness, or something foreign? And can the White Street Society throw cold water on this turgid tale of tragic thrust and parry?

An Ectoplasmic Suffragette — nothing makes a man’s blood run colder than women who chain themselves to fence railings and demand rights and privileges far above their station, unless it is unholy intervention from the spirit world that perverts all that is decent and good in this world. In this tale of unscientific theories the White Street Society learn that love is merely weakness leaving the body.

The Vegetarian Option — Augustus Mortimer thought he was taking a health cure with his niece at the Battlecreek Sanitarium, purging his colon of toxic build-ups, and taming his animal appetites by eschewing meat in favor of nuttolene and protose logs. Instead he was getting an enema of evil in this shocking blast of black and tarry horror.

When will these be published? Subscribe to my harmless mailing list! All shall be revealed…in time.