Josh and the Magic Vial (19 page)

“I'm saying it's time to move on, Puddifant. I shall be assigning someone else to this case . . . ”

“You're removing me from the case!” Puddifant blazed with indignation.

“Calm down, man,” the chief warned. “I'm not removing you for any question of competence. You are one of our best investigators, Puddifant. But circumstances have brought you too close to this case. One person has died and another has gone missing since you commenced your investigation. Your judgment is bound to have been affected and that could certainly become an issue in a court of law. I'm not going to put ourselves in a position where the defence can undermine our case.”

“But.”

“No buts!” the chief shouted, banging his fist on his desk. “You are off the case, Puddifant, and I don't want to hear of you meddling in it, do you understand?”

Puddifant nodded wearily. Blackstone had won.

“I'm sorry,” the chief was saying, “this just has to be done.” Then he rocked forward in his chair again, thinking. “Look,” he continued, “it's been a long while since you've had any time off, Puddifant. Lord knows, we can't do without you around here, but why don't you take a few days. Go away somewhere and relax. Take a trip to the seaside. I'll reassign you when you get back.”

“I don't want any time off, Chief,” Puddifant complained.

Chief Inspector Wexly smiled wisely. “I know you don't Horace,” he said quietly. “And that's precisely why you need to take some time. You can't bury yourself in your work forever, man.”

32

D
azed, Puddifant stepped into the bright sunlight.

Strenuously as he'd argued against being removed from the case, part of him was relieved. He
had
been obsessed. Wexly
was
right.

But?

The truth was, he didn't want to be anywhere but London, nor did he want to be doing anything but police work.

“Stop it!” he grumbled, forcing himself down the steps of New Scotland Yard and out into the street. He had intended to head home, past the Houses of Parliament and then on to Millbank Road. Instead, he had turned right on Parliament Street, and arrived at Trafalgar Square before he realized where he was heading — The British Medical Association library, on the Strand. He had an appointment there to do some research into the types of poison Blackstone might have employed on his victims. Now that he was off the case his interest in the arcane research should have wilted. “I'll just have a look,” he told himself. “No harm in expanding the mind. Who knows when such knowledge might come in handy?”

So intent was he on these thoughts, Puddifant failed to notice a squat, muscular man who had fallen in behind him the moment he'd left New Scotland Yard. Even if he hadn't been preoccupied, Puddifant might not have detected Hector and Jack Gowler. They were accomplished stalkers, considerably more practiced at their trade than poor old Skogs. Nor did their talents stop at mere stalking. The two were known as ruthless thugs. Trackers, whose list of accomplishments would have ensured them a trip to the gallows if anything could have been proven.

Unaware of his companions, Puddifant entered the Medical Association library. While they loitered, he delved into a stack of books and excruciatingly boring papers. He learned how Ethiopians made poison to dip arrows in; how digitalis could seize up a heart; how the bite of a tsetse fly could prove horribly fatal — about malaria, bubonic plague, polio, the common cold . . . Puddifant learned more than he'd ever wanted to know about poisons, diseases, and infections, and more than he could possibly remember, but nowhere could he discover anything that explained what had happened to Charlie Underwood and the others.

“Damn!” he cursed, slamming shut the last volume he could bear to look at. “How the devil does he do it? Has he invented some drug of his own? Is he
that
diabolical?”

Pulling on his overcoat, he thanked the librarian and hustled out of the stuffy reading room, eager for fresh air. Darkness had set in as he'd studied, but The Strand still bustled with pedestrians and traffic. Puddifant allowed himself to be carried along, heading back toward Trafalgar Square. His pursuers moved with him, watching, waiting. He made his way down Whitehall, then toward Millbank and home.

“Home,” he snorted bitterly. The thought of being cooped up in his flat depressed him, and yet, he didn't want to be with anyone. What Puddifant wanted was to become invisible, to prowl the streets of London without being seen, to witness and eavesdrop — not as a voyeur, but as a curious spirit who sought to understand. Past the Parliament Buildings, he cut across a park and found a bench beside the Thames. From this vantage he could watch the lights on the riverboats and on the opposite shore. They seemed distant as stars, beacons from separate worlds. In the thick of things, you felt yourself a part of London; out here, you realized each man inhabited his own tiny planet. People lived and died marooned in their private worlds, hardly ever aware of the terrible distances between minds . . .

Footsteps loping across the lawn behind him, the rustle of clothing, the panting of two men . . . if he had been attentive, Puddifant would have heard these things, and reacted sooner. He was not a big man but he was strong and very adept with his fists and boots. But Puddifant did not hear the Gowler brothers until it was too late. Hector Gowler had his truncheon raised over the inspector's head before Puddifant even began to twist round on the bench to look behind him. The numbing blow threw him sideways and as his body collapsed the first blow was followed by another, then another. Nausea overwhelmed Puddifant and he lay stunned, vaguely aware of someone pulling at his hair and rasping at it with a knife. The blade pricked his cheek. Rough hands rummaged through his pockets.

“Get it! Get it!” a gruff voice commanded.

He felt his wallet being tugged from his inside jacket pocket.

“Got it! Let's go!” a second voice confirmed.

Footsteps fled along the embankment, retreating into the night.

The assault had lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Groaning, Puddifant righted himself and tried to focus in the direction the men had run. They were gone.

His head throbbed and his cheek stung. With consciousness came an awful certainty. “Nooo!” Puddifant wailed realizing how careless he had been isolating himself in the gloomy corner of the park. No one had witnessed the attack. No one had yet come to his aid. Blackstone's mob had stalked him and he'd offered himself up as a victim. Just like Charles Underwood and the others, he'd been bludgeoned and pricked with a knife; just like the others, he'd been poisoned. Puddifant knew it.

“Idiot!” he spat. “Fool.”

Hadn't Professor Wizer warned him?

No amount of cursing could change the sickening truth. There wasn't the slightest doubt in Puddifant's mind that he'd been infected with deadly venom, even though no one would ever be able to prove Sirus Blackstone had committed yet another murder. “Doomed,” he mumbled hanging his head in disgrace.

33

W
ell done fellows! Well done!” Blackstone beamed.

“We aim to please,” Jack Gowler chortled.

“Now there's the little matter of compensation.”

“Yes. Of Course.” Blackstone opened his wallet and thumbed through a wad of notes. He handed Jack the money. “There. I think you'll find the reward satisfactory. It's more than we agreed to.”

“Very generous, sir,” the criminal winked, eyeing the wallet hungrily. “If you ever need our services again, you know where to find us, eh?”

“Indeed I do. Thank you gentlemen.”

“But now that we've disposed of the bean pole, you'll have to get someone else to let us in, ha-ha.”

Blackstone joined in their laughter, even though he didn't appreciate the jest. For a fee, they had disposed of Skogs.

Blackstone was satisfied the remains would never be discovered, but he found the brothers' crude butchery repugnant, and didn't like to be reminded of it.

He showed the brothers out, then locked the stockroom door behind them. “Elvira!” he called up the stairs. “Come down, my dear. Hurry.”

There was no time to lose. The police might arrive any minute. No evidence linked him to the assault on Inspector Puddifant, or to the disappearance of Skogs, but he didn't doubt they would come up with some pretext to search the premises. He had to cast his spell before they burst in.

“Hurry!” he urged Elvira. “We have to perform the rite this instant. The police could be on their way, even as we speak.”

“My goodness, you
are
flustered,” she mocked coming down the stairs. “It's not like you Sirus.”

He shot her an angry glance. “Puddifant has picked up the scent,” he reminded her. “We have to get rid of him before he leads the whole pack to us.”

“Killing a police officer is not going to throw them off, my dear. If anything, it will make them keener for
our
blood, don't you think?”

Blackstone sighed impatiently. “Puddifant will take ill. He will die suddenly, of natural causes. They will be suspicious, of course, but they won't have anything that would stand up in a court of law. After a few months, I think we shall be able to start up again.”

Elvira cursed. She was furious that they had been forced to destroy all the offerings she had gathered, and suspend meetings of the East London Coven. Amanda Clark had been saved — or, as Elvira reluctantly put it “kept from her fate” — all because of the “wretched little snoop” Horace Puddifant. Still, she questioned Blackstone's decision to do away with the inspector. “It will only make things worse,” she predicted.

But her consort would not be swayed. Puddifant had to go. It was a matter of honour as much as anything. He wanted revenge on the man who dared interfere with the proceedings of the East London Coven. He wanted to show his members how he treated meddlers, even meddlers who carried a police inspector's badge. True, Puddifant had disturbed their plans, but in the end Blackstone intended to make good use of the situation. It was an opportunity to demonstrate the reach of occult power. Not even the law was above sorcery. That's what Blackstone intended to prove.

For this he had the perfect spell. He would perform the Rite of Imprisonment. Rather than send Puddifant to Syde, he would have the intrepid inspector bunged up in a Spirit Bottle.

“The beauty of it is, I can cast the spell tonight,” he'd explained to Elvira earlier. “It's intended for urgent situations, just like this. There's no need to wait on the full moon, and the illness takes hold immediately.”

“You sound positively thrilled,” she goaded.

“Well, it is a rare opportunity. The conditions do not often crop up where the Spell of Imprisonment can be applied.”

They hurried down to the cellar, where Blackstone unlocked a heavy door that opened from the laboratory into a pitch black room. “Hail Vortigen, Lord of Syde,” he murmured as they stepped over the threshold. “This room and all who enter are consecrated to Your Highness.”

Having uttered his prayer, he struck a match and lit a candle, which sat ready in its holder by the door. The room was sealed off from any natural light. A window that had once peeped up into Wellclose Square had been blacked over with paint and, although he had installed the best electric lighting in his laboratory, not a single bulb had been run into the temple.
The
Book of Syde
lay open at the passage Blackstone needed. He knew the words by heart, but having
The Book
opened was crucial to the ceremony. He wasted no time laying the bloodstained handkerchief and snippets of hair in a brass bowl, then sprinkling them over with magnesium powder. Setting the bowl back on its stand, he bowed over
The Book
and began.

“Your enemies are my enemies, Lord of Syde, and mine yours. There is no place over or under the earth where our wills are not in harmony: if I hate, it is because you hate; if I would destroy a man and his works, I do so in your name. I have marked your enemy, my Lord, and here is his blood; I have shorn him, and here is his hair. I send this smoke to you according to the ancient law, as a warning Lord Vortigen, for the man Horace Puddifant is my enemy. He would destroy your servant and cut my praises and offerings short. Deliver him to me, Lord Vortigen. Imprison him.”

Lifting the bowl, Blackstone lit a taper in the flame of one of the candles then touched it to the offering. It went up in a flash, filling the room with acrid smoke. “Deliver him to me Lord Vortigen,” Blackstone continued, talking in a trance. He pulled a tiny, crystal vial out of his pocket and held it up. “Give me power over your enemy, Lord. Imprison him. Let him be an example to all who would hinder the servants of Syde in your sacred quest. Let me close my hand around him, Lord of Syde. For your sake and mine.”

Eyes closed, palms spread in supplication, Blackstone stood before
The Book
, waiting. For a long time nothing happened. Then, slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, the candles began to waver and the room reverberated, as if they were in the bowels of a gigantic engine. “Yes,” the air thrummed. “You shall have him.” Then the voice collapsed, folding in on itself, leaving a terrible vacuum in its wake. The room was silent, except for the breathing of Blackstone and his disciple.

“Puddifant is doomed,” the sorcerer said. “I've won.”

34

S
am Jenkins sensed something big — very big. He'd never been contacted by an investigator from New Scotland Yard before. They didn't pander to the press, those chaps. So why was this Puddifant so eager to talk?

“You must come now, and you must bring your editor with you,” the man had wheezed into the phone. He'd sounded poorly — more like an old geezer than a cop.

As soon as Sam hung up he phoned his editor, Alfred Rawling, and told him what had happened. “He says he's got some information to pass on that will cause a stir in London. Very sensational stuff.”