The Vesuvius Club

13. L.B. to V.C

CHARLIE Jackpot had that annoying knack of looking ravishing even in sleep. He lay stretched over the burst stuffing of the chaise, starkers except for his striped socks. Whatever these had once possessed by way of elastic had long since perished and they hung slackly over his white shins like discarded caterpillar pupae.

For myself, I sat on a creaking chair, also in the buff, relishing the gorgeous glow of the fire as I contemplated this most recent act of naughtiness. You are shocked, are you not? Or, perhaps, reading this in some distant and unimaginably utopian future like that funny little man Mr Wells would have us believe in, you are not shocked at all! Fact is, Lucky Lucifer here has still more secrets. My arsenal is formidable — a sentence which comes across more interestingly in a French accent.

As you know, there is no service I am unprepared to render for King and country, and I am not averse to a pretty face and a pretty rump, whether they be man’s or woman’s (I draw the line at beasts, unlike at least one member of the Cabinet). It is the prerogative of the secret agent to be (and to have!) whatever he fancies, don’t you agree? This is not a privilege extended to the population at large, as I found when I was discovered in a house off the Bow Road — the incident that brought me to the attention of Joshua Reynolds. The old dear helped extricate me from that spot of bother but saw it as a very useful way of getting me on to his payroll. In the yellow-backed novels it is known as blackmail.

You must remember that London was in a bit of a panic, with the recent exigencies of Mr O.F.O’F.W. Wilde so fresh in the memory, and J.R. had me by the unmentionables. The compensation was that my divers assassinations took me all over the globe where the love that dared not speak its name was positively encouraged to bellow from the rooftops. Such as in old Napoli, it seemed.

Still, it was a dangerous game and I was in no great hurry to do two years’ hard labour just for a frolic with some dolly renter.

Charlie opened a sleepy eye (exhausted, poor thing) and smiled his simian smile. Reaching over to my discarded coat, I retrieved my cigarette case and lit a fag for myself and then for him, padding naked over the cheap carpet to the chaise and delicately inserting the cigarette between his kiss-crushed lips. Charlie sucked in the smoke as though his life depended on it and let it rise over his mouth like the curly tips of a ghostly moustache.

«Ta,» he said softly.

«How much do I owe you?»

«Owe me?»

«For services rendered.»

The boy dragged on the cigarette. «My pleasure.»

I bowed my head. «Then, tomorrow, you must at least allow me to buy you a bun.»

Charlie draped himself across my lap with his knees up. Gazing into my face he idly scratched his balls. I could feel his hot feet against my thigh. «’Spect you’re wondering why I was so forward with you,» he said at last.

«Forward?»

«You know. This evening at the old fella’s place.»

I blew smoke into his face.

«Young men often throw themselves at me. I’ve come to regard it as something of a burden.»

«I’d seen you before.» He grinned.

«Really? At Ascot? Windsor? I was in Mentone last summer, perhaps we met there?»

He scowled again, rather pleasingly, and wiped at his nose. «Do you know where you are?»

«Yes. A filthy knocking shop for undiscerning tourists.»

Charlie got to his feet and perched on the edge of the table, crossing one foot over the other. «No, no. There’s a little more to it than meets the eye.»

I grunted sceptically. In my experience there’s very rarely more to these places than meets the eye.

«This one’s different,» he said quickly. «Better even than that big yellow house in Islington.»

That was where he’d first spotted me! A Hallowe’en Masque held by a very pretty couple called Flora and Walter Paste. I had come as the Prince of Darkness (of course) and come across a fetching Succubus in very tight fleshings. It had been a night of grand indiscretion. Lawks. No wonder Jackpot been so damned impudent at Quibble’s.

«It’s supposed to be strictly members only but I know a trick or two. Get your togs on.»

«I am not in the habit of obeying orders.»

«All right. But it’s the only way you’re gonna find out about the VC.»

I pulled up my braces. «Very well. Shall we get on?»

Charlie dressed quickly with the abandon of one who cares little for his appearance. Curbing my natural instinct to spend at least an hour getting back into my clothes I graciously allowed Charlie to help me with my collar studs and cuffs. I shrugged on my cut-away and, moments later, looking only a little the worse for wear, followed him back out into the corridor.

Several identical doors studded the shoddy walls, plaster hanging like rotten cloth in the spaces in between. The place reeked of damp. There was no sign of the ape-like doorman.

Charlie walked on ahead, ignoring these doors, all of which undoubtedly led to similar bleakly furnished rooms.

As we advanced I became aware that we seemed to be moving almost imperceptibly but inexorably downwards. Also, the corridor’s decoration stabilized so that smooth expanses of crimson wall began to emerge, as though we were travelling along an artery and had left behind some morbid and diseased junction.

I flipped my watch from my waistcoat. Nearly two o’clock in the morning. From ahead of us came a curious subdued hubbub. Music. Chatter. What I can only call carousing.

We had come to the end of our journey. Before us stood a massive set of ebony doors. They looked very old indeed, banded in iron and carved into grotesque, leering faces.

Charlie gave me a strange smile and then hammered on the doors, like some scruffy Black Rod. The doors shuddered open. I caught a vague impression of a hulking doorman with whom Charlie exchanged either words or a kiss. Then I was ushered through.

Beyond the doors was a vision of Hell.

Don’t fret. It is Lucifer’s domain, after all.

The chamber we had entered was very large and lit by dim gas-light. A series of swooping arches stretched away into the darkness and I realized, dimly, that we must be in some kind of adapted tunnel system running right under the roadway above. The walls were expensively rendered in a brilliant display of the art nouveau, black and gold tendrils curling like some monstrous plant from floor to ceiling.

Tapestries and great swathes of scarlet cloth billowed overhead like the skirts of a giantess. Upon them was wrought, in (well, exquisite is not quite the word) well-observed detail, classical pornography of the most astonishing variety. Priapic old lechers pursued virgins with a passion around a witches’ sabbat, dominated by a frightening goat-headed Devil. Girlish youths and Rubens-esque ladies formed a frame around scenes of Caligulan excess, where satyrs had their way with women deprived of their togas, and centaurs carried off drunken revellers.

The embroidered shenanigans, however, were as nothing to what was being enacted beneath them.

Flashes of colour rose up out of the gloom; male and female faces fixed in orgasmic relish, oil-slicked hair bobbing over a sea of unbuttoned britches, silken knickerbockers flung up from the mêlée like flags of surrender. The stench of absinthe and tobacco was overwhelming.

I glanced at Charlie Jackpot but his expression was unreadable in the murk. Of course my overwhelming emotion was one of horror. Not at the extraordinary outrages being committed in the name of love all about me, of course, but at the dreadful, unarguable fact that such a place existed and it would take me four days throwing up over the side of a steamer to get to it! What price my poor Pomegranate Rooms now?

Charlie pushed his way through the fleshy miasma, kicking aside copulating couples, until he found us a kind of ottoman. The pair he dislodged from this with the toe of his boot rolled off on to the floor with hardly a murmur, locked together like the jaws of a ferret.

I leaned back against the cushioned velvet. Charlie disappeared for a moment and then returned with a battered silver tray, bottles and glasses crammed upon it up to its tarnished edge. Pouring me some kind of hideous brandy, he gulped down most of a pint of porter and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

«You work in shifts, then?» I pondered.

«How’s that?»

«I was just wondering how you find time to look after Sir Emmanuel. It must be exhausting to wash dishes and then come on to this place.»

He giggled. «I like my work.»

I drank the brandy as swiftly as I could so it didn’t have time to touch the inside of my mouth.

Charlie leaned closer until his lips brushed my ear. «I’ll tell you it all, Mr Box. But you have to promise to get me out of here. Set me up.»

«I can make no assurances,» I said, my attention distracted momentarily by the sight of a Negro youth in a guardsman’s uniform merrily tossing himself off over the patrons to our left. «Not unless you have something of real import to impart.»

«That I do. See, I hear things,» murmured Charlie, darkly. «They don’t know that I work up at the house as well as here.»

«Who are they?»

There was a swish of skirts close by. I was conscious of a scent of mimosa and suddenly someone was standing right at my elbow.

«Buonasera, Charlie.»

The low voice belonged to a girl of middling height, exceptionally slim, wearing only an ivory corset and mustard-coloured stockings. Her long auburn hair was piled high and interlaced with flowers, crowning a face of surpassing loveliness; almond-shaped eyes heavily lined in kohl.

«Venus!» cried Charlie delightedly. He pulled the girl on to his lap and kissed her fiercely, running his hand up and down her stockinged leg. She adjusted herself in his embrace and cast a furtive glance to me.

«Who ees this?» she asked in the same seductive whisper. Her accent was as thick as tomato sauce.

Charlie grinned. «This is Mr Box. Mr Box, meet Venus.»

I gave a little bow. Venus proffered a painted hand. I kissed the middle knuckles, taking care to let the tip of my tongue linger a moment. It seemed the form in these environs.

Venus’s gaudily rouged lips puckered and she looked down, all abashed, the little minx. I had the queerest feeling that we’d met before.

«You like-a ma place, Signor Box?» she said with a half-smile.

My eyes widened. «Your place, my dear? Well, you do surprise me. Yes. Yes, it’s quite something. What do you call it?»

It was Charlie who answered, fixing me with a meaningful stare and taking a plug of his porter. «This? This is the Vesuvius Club.»

Well, of course I noticed. Vesuvius Club. V.C.! Not the Verdigris Collective, not the Verdi Cabal, not the Victoria Cross and not the bloody Venomous Centipede. The Vesuvius Club! K to V.C. Poor old Poop must have known of this place!

«Is-a something wrong, Signor Box?» cooed Venus.

I shook my head to clear it. «Not a bit, my dear. It’s just that Mr Jackpot and myself have some… business to conclude…»

Venus put one hand on her hip and smiled. «I never stand in thee way of custom, eh? Perhaps you would be more comfortable in ma private quarters?»

I glanced at Charlie and he nodded.

«How kind,» I cooed. «Will you lead the way?»

The delightful girl batted her kohl-rimmed eyes and swept off into the crowd. Charlie drained the last of his pint and followed with me bringing up the rear. Wary of stepping into a bear-trap (as this much honey might turn out to be), I walked with hands clasped behind me to feel the reassuring presence of the pearl-handled revolver strapped to the small of my back.

Venus led us through the roaring mêlée and through a side door into a cooler, darkened room that smelled of rose-petals. She lit the lamps, revealing a scarlet boudoir of impressive proportions, divided by silk curtains and scattered about with fat oriental cushions. A dressing mirror dominated the far wall.

«Please make-a yourselves at home,» said Venus, sitting down on the dresser and crossing her legs. Her mustard stockings flashed in the half-light.

«Most obliging of you, miss,» I said.

Venus cocked her head again. «Charlie and I… we are old friends… yes? And any friend of his…»

Charlie grinned at her and, picking up a bottle of cham, wrenched out the cork. He poured three glasses. Venus drained hers in one go, span her champagne glass between her delicate fingers and fixed me with a slightly intimidating stare. What had those fiery eyes seen in their few years? She made me feel positively callow.

«I hope-a to see much more of you,» she said. With that, she swept past us both, paused to kiss Charlie briefly on the cheek and then was gone.

«Christ, ain’t she something!» cried Charlie. He lifted the champagne bottle to his lips and guzzled down more plonk.

«That she is. Are you two—?»

«Some chance!» laughed Charlie. «Even if I were that way inclined. No. She’s got a fella, the real boss. She runs this place for him.»

Charlie threw himself down on to a cushion.

«But you want to know about a man called Poop.»

I sat up. «Go on.»

«Well, he came in here a while ago, asking questions. Thought he was a punter. He stood me a drink but he weren’t interested in getting, you know, friendly. He just give me some moolah to keep me eyes open. Said he was on to some kind of racket.»

I frowned. «Racket?»

Charlie nodded. «Treasure. Seems that he’d had some kind of nark sniffing around but he’d gone missing. Wondered if I’d be interested in taking up where the nark left off»

The boy stopped dead.

«What is it?» I cried.

«Dunno. Can you smell something?»

Charlie coughed. His hand flew to his throat and he coughed again, more raggedly. Then it was my turn. The air had somehow turned too stifling to breathe, like being in an overheated steam bath.

I turned and saw the thread of some strange, purplish smoke drifting towards us. Feeling suddenly sick, tears sprang to my eyes and I too began to cough uncontrollably.

I tried to reach out to Charlie but suddenly found my limbs weighed down as though they were statuary. Scarcely able to move, I half-stumbled, half-fell to the floor. Through a mist of stinging tears, I could just make out Charlie’s broad back. He tumbled to the floor, scrabbling at the air as though it were attacking him. With a titanic effort I hauled myself on to one knee and peered blearily about the room. What devilry was this? A Venus fly trap — and us the flies! Clutching at the oriental cushions, I staggered to my feet and tried to head towards the door.

Every step seemed to take an eternity. It was as though I had a diver’s lead shoes upon my feet. Coughing constantly I put my hands to my face and slapped myself in an attempt to clear my befuddled brain. My mind seemed to be swirling and tumbling and swimming madly, as though I’d drunk a quart of absinthe.

Reeling around, I found I had lost the door. It was as though I’d been transported to some other room, so strange and alien did Venus’s boudoir appear. The dressing table stretched crazily before me on stilt-like legs. Great heaven! The furniture appeared to be moving! The drawers of the dresser gaped open like hungry maws, snapping at my legs as I lurched and stumbled across the floor.

The oil-lamp loomed largest of all. It was then, with my eyes almost popping from my bursting head that I saw that the lamp was the source of my terror. For, gushing from the shade like a spectre or genie was a billowing quantity of some noxious gas, mauve in colour, settling heavily on the floorboards and sending me into near-convulsions.

I reached for the lamp but the closer I got the more dreadful were its effects. My fingers seemed to bend and stretch like the talons of a terrible bird as I groped at empty air, the image of the lamp blurring and multiplying before my exhausted eyes. I looked wildly about for Charlie but could make out nothing in the greasy smoke.

With one last attempt at clear thought I grabbed hold of the lamp’s iron base and picked it up. Perhaps I intended to smother the damned thing or hurl it into a dark corner but, in truth, I do not know. My senses whirled, a great blanket of mauve darkness enveloped me and I was falling, falling, falling into an abyss…