Atlantis and Other Places (49 page)

The odors greeting the newcomers when they went inside would have told them what sort of place they were finding. Dante might have had such smells in mind when he wrote,
All hope abandon, ye who enter here
. Dampness and mold, bad tobacco, stale sweat infused with the aftereffects of rum and whiskey, sour vomit, chamber pots that wanted emptying, the sharp smell of fear and the less definable odor of despair . . . Dr. Walton sighed. They were no different from what he would have smelled at the Old Bailey.

And, walking past cells on the way to the stairs, Walton and Athelstan Helms saw scenes straight out of Hogarth engravings, and others that, again, might have come straight from the
Inferno
. “Here we go,” Inspector La Strada said, politely holding the door open for the two Englishmen. When he closed the stout redwood panel (anywhere but Atlantis, it would have been oak) behind them, he might have put a mile of distance between them and the hellish din behind it.

Another door, equally sturdy, guarded each of the upper floors. Even if, through catastrophe or conspiracy, a swarm of prisoners escaped, the constables could fortify their position and defend themselves for a long time. “You have firing ports, I see,” Helms murmured. Dr. Walton, who’d fought in Afghanistan and was one of the lucky few to have escaped that hellhole, slapped at his thigh, annoyed at himself for missing the telling detail.

Inspector La Strada opened one of those fortified portals. A rotund constabulary sergeant with a large-caliber revolver sat just beyond it, ready for any eventuality. Not far away, a technician had a dissipated-looking young man in a special chair, and was measuring his skull and ear and left middle finger and ring finger with calipers and ruler. A clerk wrote down the numbers he called out.

“You still use the Bertillon system for identifying your miscreants, then?” Athelstan Helms inquired.

“We do,” La Strada replied. “It’s not perfect, but far better than any other method we’ve found.” He thrust out his receding chin as far as it would go. “And I haven’t heard that Scotland Yard’s got anything better, either.”

“Scotland Yard? No.” Helms sounded faintly dismissive. “But I am personally convinced that one day—and perhaps one day quite soon—the ridges and crenelations on a man’s fingertips will prove more efficacious yet, and with far less labor and less likelihood of error and mistaken identity.”

“Well, I’ll believe that when I see it, sir, and not a moment before.” La Strada picked his way through chaos not much quieter and not much less odorous than that downstairs. He finally halted at a plain—indeed, battered—pine desk. “My home from home, you might say,” he remarked, and purloined a couple of cheap, unpadded chairs nearby. “Have a seat, gents, and I’ll tell you what’s what, like.”

Before sitting, Dr. Walton tried to brush something off his chair. Whatever it was, it proved sticky and resistant to brushing. He perched gingerly, on one buttock, rather like the old woman in
Candide
. Either Helms’ chair was clean or he was indifferent to any dirt it might have accumulated.

La Strada reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a brown glass bottle and, after some rummaging, three none too clean tumblers. “A restorative, gentlemen?” he said, and started to pour before the Englishmen could say yea or nay.

It wasn’t scotch. It was maize whiskey—corn liquor, they called it in Atlantis—and it might have been aged a week, or perhaps even two. “Gives one the sensation of having swallowed a lighted gas lamp, what?” Dr. Walton wheezed when more or less capable of intelligible speech once more.

“It intoxicates. Past that, what more is truly required?” Helms drank his off with an aplomb suggesting long experience—and perhaps a galvanized gullet.

“This here is legal whiskey, gents. You should taste what the homecookers make.” La Strada shuddered . . . and refilled his glass. “Shall we get down to business?”

“May we talk freely here?” Helms asked. “Are you certain none of your colleagues within earshot belongs to the House of Universal Devotion?”

“Certain? Mr. Helms, I’m not certain of a damned thing,” La Strada said. “If you told me a giant honker would walk up those stairs and come through that doorway there, I couldn’t say I was certain you were wrong.”

“Aren’t honkers as extinct as the dodo?” Dr. Walton asked, sudden sharp interest in his voice: he fancied himself an amateur ornithologist. “Didn’t that Audubon chap paint some of the last of them before your slave uprising?”

“The Servile Insurrection, we call it.” La Strada’s face clouded. Like most Atlanteans his age, he would have served in the fight. “I’ve got a scar on my leg on account of it. . . . But you don’t care about that. Yes, they say honkers are gone, but the backwoods of Atlantis are a mighty big place, so who knows for sure, like . . .? But you don’t care about that, either, not really. The House of Universal Devotion.”

“Yes. The House of Universal Devotion.” Helms leaned forward on his hard, uncomfortable seat.

“Well, you’ll know they’re killing important men. If you attended to my letter, you’ll know they’re doing it for no good reason any man who doesn’t belong to the House can see. And you’ll know they’re damned hard to stop, because their murderers don’t care if they live or die,” La Strada said. “They figure they go straight to heaven if they’re killed.”

“Like the Hashishin,” murmured Walton, who, from his service in the East, was steeped in Oriental lore.

La Strada looked blank. “The Assassins,” Athelstan Helms glossed.

“They’re assassins, all right,” the inspector said, missing most of the point. Neither Englishman seemed to reckon it worthwhile to enlighten him. La Strada went on, “We aim to find a way to make them stop without outlawing them altogether. We have religious freedom here in Atlantis, we do. We don’t establish any one church and disadvantage the rest.”

“Er, well, despite that, we have it in England, as well,” Walton said. “But we don’t construe it to mean freedom to slaughter your fellow man in the name of your creed.”

“Nor do we,” La Strada said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be trying to stop it, now would we?” He seemed to feel he’d proved some sort of point.

“Perhaps the best way to go about it would be to arrange for a suitable divine revelation from the Preacher,” Helms suggested.

“Yes, that would be the best way—if the Preacher could be persuaded to announce that kind of revelation,” La Strada agreed. “If, indeed, the Preacher could be found by anyone not a votary of the House of Universal Devotion.”

“Do I correctly infer you have it in mind for me to seek him out and discuss with him the possibility and practicability of such a revelation?” Helms asked.

“You are indeed a formidable detective, Mr. Helms,” La Strada said. “Your fee will be formidable, too, should you succeed.”

“Do you imagine the magnificent Athelstan Helms can fail?” Dr. Walton inquired indignantly.

“Several here have made the attempt. None has reached the Preacher. None, in fact, has survived,” Inspector La Strada answered. “So yes, I can imagine your comrade failing. I do not wish it, but I can imagine it.”

“Quite right. Quite right,” Helms said. “Imagining all that might go wrong is the best preventive. Now, then—can you tell me where the Preacher is likeliest to be found?”

“Wellll . . .” La Strada stretched the word out to an annoying length. “He’s in Atlantis. We’re pretty sure of that.”

“Capital,” Helms said without the least trace of irony. “All that remains, then, is to track him down, eh?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage in the next few days.” La Strada, by contrast . . .

 

 

The Golden Burgher, the hotel into which La Strada had booked Helms and Walton, lay only a few blocks from police headquarters, but might have come from a different world. It would not have seemed out of place in London, though the atmosphere put Dr. Walton more in mind of vulgar ostentation than of the genteel luxury more ideally British. And few British hotels would have had so many spittoons—cuspidors, they seemed to call them here—so prominently placed. The brown stains on the white marble squares of the checkerboard flooring (and, presumably though less prominently, on the black as well) argued that there might have been even more.

The room was unexceptionable. And, when the travelers went down to the restaurant, they found nothing wrong with the saddle of mutton. Walton did bristle when the waiter inquired whether he preferred his meat with mint jelly or with garlic. “Garlic!” he exploded. “D’you take me for an Italian?”

“No, sir,” said the waiter, who might have been of that extraction himself. “But some Atlanteans are fond of it.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” the physician replied, a devastating retort that somehow failed to devastate. His
amour propre
ruffled, he added, “I’m not an Atlantean, either, for which I give thanks to the Almighty.”

“So does Atlantis, sir.” The waiter hurried off.

Walton at first took that to mean Atlantis also thanked God. Only after noticing a certain gleam in Athelstan Helms’ eye did he wonder if the man meant Atlantis thanked God that he was not an Atlantean. “The cheek of the fellow!” he growled. “Have I been given the glove?”

“A finger from it, at any rate, I should say,” Helms told him.

The good doctor intended to speak sharply to the waiter. But he soon made a discovery others had found before him: it was difficult—indeed, next to impossible—to stay angry at a man who was feeding you so well. The mutton, flavorful without being gamy, matched any in England. The mint jelly complemented it marvelously. Potatoes and peas were likewise tasty and well prepared.

“For dessert,” the waiter said as a busboy took away dirty plates, “we have several flavors of ice cream made on the premises, we have a plum pudding of which many of our English guests are quite fond, and we also have a local confection: candied heart of cycad with rum sauce.” He waited expectantly.

“Plum pudding, by all means,” Dr. Walton said.

“I’ll try the cycad dessert,” Helms said. “Something I’m not likely to find elsewhere.” (“And a good thing, too,” Walton muttered, his
voce
not quite
sotto
enough.)

The physician had to admit that his plum pudding, like the mutton, lived up to all reasonable expectations. Athelstan Helms consumed the strange, chewy-looking object on his plate with every sign of enjoyment. When he was nearly finished, he offered Walton a bite.

“Thanks, but no,” the physician said. “Stuffed. Quite stuffed. I do believe I’d burst if I picked up the fork again.”

“However you please.” Helms finished the dessert himself. “Not bad at all. I shouldn’t be surprised if what they call rum is also distilled from the cycad, although they do grow considerable sugar down in the south.”

He left a meticulous gratuity for the waiter; Walton would have been less generous. They went back up to their room. Dr. Walton struck a match against the sole of his boot and lit the gas lamp.

“I say!” Helms exclaimed. “The plot thickens—so it does. I deduce that someone is not desirous of our company here.”

Again, he did not need his richly deserved reputation for detection to arrive at his conclusion. Someone had driven a dagger hilt-deep into the pillow on each bed.

 

 

“No, I’m not surprised,” Inspector La Strada said. “The House of Universal Devotion casts its web widely here.”

“Someone should step on the spider, then, by Jove!” Dr. Walton said.

“Freedom of religion again, I’m afraid,” La Strada said. “Our Basic Law guarantees the right to worship as one pleases and the right not to worship if one pleases. We find that a more just policy than yours.” Yes, he enjoyed scoring points off the mother country.

Dr. Walton was in a high temper, and in a high color as well, his cheeks approaching the hue of red-hot iron. “Where in the Good Book does it say assassinating two innocent pillows amounts to a religious observance?”

“What the good doctor means, I believe, is that any faith can use the excuse of acting in God’s cause to perpetrate deeds those more impartial might deem unrighteous,” Athelstan Helms said. Walton nodded emphatically enough to set two or three chins wobbling.

“Any liberty can become license—any policeman who’s been on the job longer than a week knows as much,” La Strada said. “But the Preacher has been going up and down in Atlantis for more than fifty years now. He may have forgotten.”

“Going up and down like Satan in the Book of Job,” Walton growled. “We need to find the rascal so we can give him a piece of our mind.”

The Atlantean inspector shifted from foot to foot. “Well, sir, like I told you last night, finding him’s a problem we haven’t ciphered out ourselves.”

“What then?” Dr. Walton was still in a challenging mood. “Shall we walk into the nearest House of Universal Devotion and ask the hemidemisemipagans pretending to be priests where the devil their precious Preacher is? The devil ought to know, all right.” No, he was not a happy man.

Athelstan Helms, by contrast, suddenly looked as happy as his saturnine features would allow. “A capital idea, Doctor! Capital, I say. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we shall do that very thing. Beard the blighters in their den, like.” He used the Atlanteanism with what struck Walton as malice, or at least mischief, aforethought.

“You’re not serious, Helms?” the doctor burst out.

“I am, sir—serious to the point of solemnity,” Helms replied. “What better way to come to know our quarry’s henchmen?”

“What better way to end up in an alley with our throats cut?” Dr. Walton said. “I’d lay long odds the blackguards have more knives than the two they wasted on goosedown.”

Helms paused long enough to light his pipe, then rounded on La Strada. “What is your view of this, Inspector?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” the policeman said. “I doubt you’d be murdered, not two such famous fellows as you are. They have to know we’d haul their Houses down on top of ’em if they worked that kind of outrage. But I don’t reckon you’d learn very much from ’em, either.”