The Vesuvius Club

15. Into the Crimson Chamber

THERE were footsteps in the tunnel. Caught in the open corridor, I rapidly rifled through my options. Only one. Lifting the edge of the tapestry, I tucked myself in behind it, and pressed myself flat against the wall which had a distinct curve I had not previously noted. I listened attentively as several pairs of feet passed by and began to descend the spiral stair, accompanied by a rustling sound.

As I stood with my back to the wall, I noticed a point of bright yellow light emerging just above my left shoulder. As soon as I was sure the passers-by had gone I turned around and put my eye to the hole in the crumbling mortar.

What I saw was a strange, circular room that, like everywhere else in that place, was the colour of flame. This time, however, the decoration actually imitated the pit of Hell or, more probably, the crater of a boiling volcano. Painted fire licked the round room, twisting into orange shapes like barley-sugar canes and merging into patterns of deep crimson lava.

The room was dominated by a massive round table with four ornately carved chairs set about it. In them had been placed straw figures, exactly like the one I had found in Professor Verdigris’s coffin.

The air seemed heavy with oily incense. Its foggy weight hung under the ceiling, swirling like a nest of serpents as it was disturbed by draughts from the crumbling walls.

As I watched, a yellow door opened and an extraordinary procession came in: three figures, resplendent in red velvet robes, decorated all over in blazes of gold and silver sunbursts. All three wore what looked like masks from the Venice Carnival, exquisitely rendered in similar hues, the cruel, snarling features picked out in white. Not for the first time in that bizarre place, I wished I’d had my sketchbook. Though this was, perhaps, a rare occasion where the Duce Tiepolo’s photographic apparatus might have been handier! Without it, who would believe such a sight? My thoughts dwelled on the Duce for a moment. Could he be the paramour of Venus? The organizing brain behind this whole enterprise?

One of the robed figures, slight in build, took up a gavel that lay at his right hand and rapped it on the table.

«I, Vesuvius, summon thee,» he said.

The next figure, altogether more imposing, bowed his head saying, «I, Stromboli, answer.» This could be Tiepolo. His build was similar.

The third, tall and thin, bowed too. «Etna answers thee,» he squeaked.

My eye widened as I pressed closer to the spy-hole.

Now I’ve been around a bit, as you can imagine, and I knew at once that this was more than a knocking shop’s AGM. Few go about their business in motley and even fewer adopt names stranger than «Mister Chairman» as their monikers.

No, this was rummer than a baba.

More torches had been lit and now I could see that there were maps and what appeared to be charts pinned to the walls. I looked more closely at the four chairs. Bizarrely, the straw figures had been shackled to their seats, as though to prevent their escape.

Vesuvius set aside the gavel and spread his hands wide, looking for all the world like a sinister masked version of the Messiah from Da Vinci’s Last Supper. A queer, piercing note began to rise in his throat. After a moment the sound was taken up by his two fellow volcanoes who moved swiftly to apparently pre-appointed positions around the circular chamber.

I narrowed my eye in an effort to see more. Now I realized that the place was littered with curious paraphernalia, scattered about like grave goods in a plundered tomb. There were great brass bowls filled with what looked like spice standing on piles of glittering rock. Red candles were held in tightly bound bundles atop a mahogany rail that ran right around the room.

Still the shrill note continued. As I watched, they picked up the brass bowls and carried them over to the centre of the table. Stromboli’s robed chest rose and fell visibly as he began to scoop out handfuls of mauve-coloured powder — a colour that was beginning to make me uneasy.

Vesuvius turned his masked head and, just for a moment, I had the curious sensation that his fixed features were moving, glowering. The painted mask gave him a strange pagan appearance and behind the diamond-shaped slits, his eyes were merely black hollows.

Stromboli handed him a brass goblet, into which the mauve powders were rapidly poured, then placed two of the black rocks into his outstretched hands. I saw now that they were chunks of raw flint.

«O Vulcan!» bellowed Stromboli. «Son of Jupiter and Juno! Forger of Creation! Labourer beneath the slopes of great Etna. Smith of the Gods!»

«Vulcan!» cried the assembly.

I strained to hear.

The intonation rose ever higher. «Builder of the brass houses,» thundered Stromboli. «Shoer of the golden shoes with which the gods trod on wind or water.»

Something about wind?

«Ye who shod the mighty steeds of Jove’s chariot! We honour thee!»

What was that? Cobblers?

«Vulcan! We honour thee!»

Stromboli brought his hands together with a great crack as he smashed the flints against themselves. At once, they sparked and in the blink of an eye, the ruddy powder that lay piled high in the goblet caught and flared up with a glorious purple flame. Yet the smoke did not seem to choke the assembly as it had with Charlie and me. Rather they seem to relish it, swaying gently as though in the grip of some powerful drug.

The hem of his velvet robes rustling over the flagged floor, Stromboli strode towards the wall.

«Now! In honour of the mighty volcano of Vesuvius, we offer our sacrifice!»

With great precision he took hold of one of the torch-sconces and pulled it toward him.

At once unseen gears began to clatter into life. Then, to my astonishment, the great round table began to hinge open like the lid of some titanic coffee-pot revealing, beneath it, the top of a stone-faced well. A waft of dank air came flooding towards me. It reminded me of the bottom-of-the-vase stink of Tom Bowler’s office. Then, with the sound of further machinery, the whole roof began to open, as though some baleful eye was set there. What I first took for a puppet began to droop downwards. In the guttering torch-light I could see bare feet and legs, then, with a crunch of gears, a whole body flopped into view, suspended by its arms above the hole in the floor.

It was Charlie Jackpot!

He had been beaten, manacled at the wrists and hung from chains, clad only in a pair of grisly grey undergarments.

«Oh Christ!» he groaned. «What do you want with me? Let me go!»

Stromboli was standing with hands on hips, surveying his nefarious handiwork. With a great clank like the moving hand of a town-hall clock, Charlie fell another few inches.

«Please!» he begged. «Don’t hurt me!»

«Our gift to Neptune!» For the first time, the pomposity of the ceremony was broken as Stromboli burst into throaty laughter.

Clunk!

Charlie’s chained form descended a foot further towards the well. The boy cried out but the figures remained unmoved.

«So much for traitors,» hissed Vesuvius.

Then, with a snap of his fingers, he turned on his heel and marched out with Stromboli, Etna scurrying behind them. The yellow door slammed shut.

Footfalls on the spiral stair told me that these strange apostles of the volcano, were passing right by my hiding place. I waited until their steps had receded and then, taking a chance, I slipped out from behind the tapestry and dashed down the spiral stair towards the door of the round chamber.

With a quick look around, I pulled it open and nipped inside.

The air was still thick and unhealthy. Above me, Charlie, eyes closed, was groaning softly to himself. The strange system of cogs and pulleys that suspended him juddered again and his bound body descended another inch.

«Hello, Charlie,» I said, leaning against the edge of the well.

His eyes flicked open and he stared wildly down at me.

«Oh thank God! Mr Box!»

I, in turn, looked down into the dark water below. It was moving — either a sewer or an underground river of some sort. Either way it would be enough to dunk Charlie to death like a human madeleine cake.

«Glad to see you hale and hearty. Now where were we? You were, I believe, about to tell me something rather important.»

«Mr Box! Please. You got to get me out of here!»

I shrugged casually, jumped up on to the lip of the well and grabbed at one of the boy’s shoulders but only succeeded in setting him swaying to and fro in a fashion that endangered us both. The mechanism dropped again; it seemed to have increased its speed. Charlie groaned pitiably.

«Can you move your hands at all?» I cried.

«No,» he gasped.

With a great creaking shudder, he dropped a whole foot into the well and gave a little yell.

I shook my head. «If I can’t stop this infernal device of theirs then you’ll drown for sure.»

«Thanks a million.»

Again, Charlie’s chained form dropped alarmingly. Now his head, hair stiff with sweat and grime, was level with the lip of the hole. Rushing to the wall, I scrabbled about amongst the maps and charts that littered the wooden rail. One, its colours gleaming darkly in the torch-light, was some kind of tough paper stretched between two cream-coloured tubes of metal. Snapping the thing together I moved quickly to the lip of the well and thrust it up towards the mechanism. On cue, the great cogs turned again and Charlie disappeared into the hole. Only his manacled arms projected now.

I strained on tip-toe but finally managed to shove the tube into the gears. At once the cogs seized, although it was obvious I hadn’t bought Charlie much time. The oily teeth of the machine were already squeezing and crushing the thin metal of the map-tube.

Throwing myself over the stones of the well I pulled Charlie’s arms towards me with one hand and tore the knife from my watch-chain with the other.

Feverishly, I pierced the lock of the manacles with the thin blade and rattled it about inside.

«Quickly, sir!» squealed Charlie, his voice a hollow echo. «Oh, quickly!»

The lock snapped open. I slipped the blade between my teeth and, forcing the metal cuffs apart, I dragged Charlie from the hole just as the map tube was ground into pieces and the cogs resumed their inexorable round.

Little pieces of the destroyed chart fluttered like dead leaves all about us. Panting for breath, I found myself on the floor with my arms around Charlie as the now-empty manacles continued their descent into the depths.

«Well, Mr Box,» grinned Charlie. «It seems you can’t keep your hands off me after all.»

«You are very impudent, young man,» I replied. «It will get you a long way. Now, let’s get out of here.»

Just at that moment the yellow door was flung open, crashing back against the painted brick. Our hearts, I feel sure, stopped at the same moment.

Stromboli stormed in. The mask still disguised his eyes but it seemed a fair guess that he was staring down at Charlie and me as we lay in an undignified heap on the floor.

«What’s this?» he thundered in Italian. «The club has increased its membership somewhat unexpectedly, ah?» His masked head inclined a fraction as he looked at me.

I’m pretty nifty at thinking on my feet, even when I’m actually sitting down with a renter in my embrace, but this fellow’s sudden appearance had me more than a little stumped.

With as much dignity as I could muster, I extricated myself from Charlie and got up.

«Do forgive the intrusion,» I said, twiddling with my cuff-link. In one swift terribly well-rehearsed movement I had my revolver out and levelled squarely at Stromboli. «But please don’t move.»

The tall man held up his hands but seemed quite calm. «What is your business here, signor? Are you a… customer?»

«This boy,» I said, indicating Charlie, «is… my valet. I received word that he was being held here against his will.»

«So you came here to bring him home?»

«Correct. My laundry, you see, is in a frightful state.»

Stromboli shrugged. «Well, my dear sir. We need detain you no longer. There has evidently been some… misunderstanding. Your valet has been employed in this establishment and it appears that one of our gentlemen’s… er… games…» He pointed to the chains hanging from the ceiling. «Took on a logic of its own. If you were to let this little matter blow over, I’m sure no more need be said.» He indicated my revolver with a casual swing of his arm. «There is really no need for these… histrionics.»

I glanced quickly about. Could we really get out of here without the alarm being raised? I was armed, of course, but these people were evidently fanatics and knew that Charlie had betrayed them. What punishment had they meant for me, I wondered?

«Well, this is all most irregular, sir,» I said, reaching down and hauling Charlie to his feet. «I am not in the habit of rescuing my servants from dens of unnatural vice and then letting the matter pass.»

My indignity was, in all probability, a mite unconvincing.

«Given my pressing need for fresh linen, however, I am prepared to go no further with this. But I should like to know who I have the honour of addressing.»

The tall man laughed lightly and dropped his hands a fraction. With a jerk of the revolver, I indicated he should get them up again, sharpish.

Instead, three black-coated and very well-armed thugs emerged from behind their master.

Stromboli’s arm shot out towards me. «Kill him!» he yelled.

Oh lor.

One of the thugs dropped at once to his knee, assumed the position and prepared to fire his pistol. I shot him through the forehead and took a grim satisfaction from watching his brains slide across the wall like clay-slip.

Charlie rolled over and hid himself behind the lip of the well. Stromboli and another thug took cover behind the great raised table as I fired again. My report was answered with two shots of the thugs’ own. We were effectively pinned down, cut off from the only door.

«Bloody hell!» whispered Charlie. «This is a fix, Mr Box. What’re we going to do?»

I levelled my revolver on the stone facing of the well and tried to get Stromboli’s masked head in my sights. Frustratingly, it bobbed up and down like a shooting gallery target.

«You are trapped, my friend,» he called. «We had been saving you for our next… rehearsal. But now I fear we must put a swift end to this sport.»

I was breathing hard. There seemed no way out. Bullets sang off the stonework that was our only cover. I held up my arm to shield myself from the splinters of masonry. There was a cry to my left and I saw that Charlie had been hit by the debris. He crumpled to the floor at my side.

«Take them!» roared Stromboli. «Take them even if you have to die in the attempt! Forward, you scum!»

Obediently, the remaining thugs dashed forward. I looked around desperately. Only one bullet remained in my pearl-handled life-saver. No options presented themselves.

Except one.

I glanced down at the well.

Peeking over my stone barricade, I fired my last bullet. One black-coat was hit in the eye but the other was undeterred. Grabbing Charlie by the arm, and rolling over the lip of the well with a great unwilling cry, Lucifer descended into the pit and into the stinking darkness.