Beyond Rue Morgue Anthology (12 page)

“And your fiancé?”

“He suffered from a head fever. I’m sure it was nothing more. Pastor Larsson heard him sneezing and immediately the man flew into a rage. Before we could react the pastor had seized Johann and flung him from our craft. Even as I watched my beloved falling through the air to the ground, the pastor screamed at us that Johann had become infected, claiming that his depravities had allowed the evil germ into his body.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Pastor Larsson ordered his flock to their knees; he demanded that they pray harder than they had ever prayed before. They did as he ordered, yet the children were so frightened by what the pastor had done to poor Johann, they sobbed in such a heart-rending way. While the adults were at prayer, I flung the grapple hook over the side. I climbed down in the hope I could reach Johann. I prayed to God, too... however, I prayed that Johann hadn’t been killed.” She shivered. “My prayers weren’t answered. I saw that he was dead even before I reached the ground.”

“And you screamed.”

“Yes, the shock of seeing Johann’s broken body was more than I could bear.”

“You did alight briefly?”

“Yes, I jumped from the cable to the ground, intending to report the murder; however, I was too angry to grieve yet, and I promised myself I would stop the pastor from escaping. There and then, I resolved to capture the balloon. So I leapt back onto the hook after taking just a few mere steps in the snow. By sheer good fortune I succeeded in lodging the grapple in a tree; after that, I tied the rope to a branch, now the balloon is tethered. I have trapped the murderer.”

“Alas, it is we three who are trapped.” Dupin gazed up at the barn’s roof.

“Moreover,” I said, “the pastor and his balloon will not be trapped for long. He could simply cut the cable.”

“Indeed,” she said with a sigh. “My head was so muddled with anger that I had not considered that.”

The moment she finished speaking there was a tremendous crash. Shards of red tile fell inward with a shower of snow that must have accumulated on the roof. We rushed backward to the relative safety of the walls. Immediately we saw that a grapple iron had landed in our midst. The barbs of its four-pronged hook embedded themselves in the woodwork of the farmer’s plow.

Dupin ran toward the hook and tried to wrench it free. He knew devilry was afoot—and that devilry required the use of the grapple. Yet he was driven back to the wall as an entire salvo of lethally sharp darts punched through the roof tiles to embed themselves in the bales of straw. Seizing a lantern, I directed its glow up through the roof beams. The iron-tipped darts had left holes through which snowflakes fell. The rope tied to the grapple hook pulled taut. A moment later it began to quiver.

“The Indian fakir’s rope trick in reverse, I fear.” Dupin pulled a dart from the floor so he’d at least have a weapon. I retrieved one from a bale of hay.

A loud crash made me look up. Straight away, I saw tiles shattering beneath an almighty impact. Very shortly after that I saw the head of an ax cleaving the roof in order to form a large hole. In the light of the lamp, I beheld men’s faces as they stared down at us. The men were armed with more of those spears. A young man also carried a cutlass, while a large, bearded clergyman—with blazing eyes—carried an ax, which he used to smash yet more of the tiles. Above our captors floated that vast, rounded shape of the balloon. As Dupin had said,
the Indian fakir’s rope trick in reverse.
The men had climbed down the grapple hawser and onto the roof before hacking at that aperture.

Dupin pointed the dart upward, lest the men should jump down. In response, the bearded clergyman produced a pistol, which he aimed at my friend.

Annette Lamberg cried, “Pastor Larsson! These are Frenchmen. They have done you no harm, so do not harm them.”

The bearded Pastor gazed down. “Is that so?” he asked in French. “Which part of France is this?”

“You are just an hour’s walk from Paris,” Dupin told him. “An hour’s walk? I will not take a single step on this world’s poisoned soil until the plague has passed.”

“What plague?”

“The soil beneath your feet, monsieur, teems with active microbes—germs that feed on all manner of putrefaction; they mate and spawn and multiply. With a powerful microscope I have seen them with my own eyes.”

“Yes, such germs exist, but in the main they are harmless.”

“On the contrary, they are lethal to Mankind. What is more, they are increasing in number, just as a hostile army will mass on a nation’s border prior to invasion.”

Dupin endeavored to persuade the man with logic. “Such microbes teem in our bodies, too, without causing illness. Even in the smallest drop of saliva one will find a million amoeba. These tiny creatures have been created by God for His divine purpose, just as He populated the Earth with plants and animals in a myriad of diverse forms.”

“Nonsense!” thundered the Pastor. “There is no word of microbes in the Bible—not a single mention of those profoundly tiny germs that swarm and multiply and kill the God-fearing. Bacterial creatures are the work of demons. An angel, by our Lord’s good grace, visited me, and explained that I should take my flock to the skies until the plague has run its course.”

“An angel?”

“Do you doubt me, Frenchman?”

“I believe in angels,” replied Dupin. “I don’t believe, however, they advise on the construction of flying machines.”

“Insolent devil.” The hand that gripped the pistol began to shake. “You are alleging that I am a liar?”

“There are maladies, pastor, that produce visions of things which are not there in reality.”

“A liar and a madman—that is what you believe me to be.” The man’s eyes bulged with fury. “I will send you to Hell right now!” He aimed the pistol squarely at my friend’s heart.

Annette Lamberg stepped in front of Dupin, shielding him from the gun. “Pastor! You hurled my fiancé to his death, because he suffered from the most trivial of fevers.”

“Johann was infected. His sins allowed the bacillus to enter his body.”

“Pastor, he did but sneeze.”

“No, Annette, you must believe what I tell you. Johann was riddled with vile germs. They would have infected every single one of us aboard our craft. I had no choice but to cast him out.”

“You are wrong.”

“I am
never
wrong. The angel will endorse my words.”

“You are afflicted with madness. Do you not see?”

“Stand aside.” His eyes were red and bloodshot in the light of the lanterns. “Stand aside, so I can despatch the Frenchman to Hades!”

“No, uncle. Fire the ball through me if you must, but I will not stand aside.”

The word “uncle” made the lunatic flinch. The other men on the roof had been ready to cast those darts down upon us; however, now they paused and looked to the pastor for guidance.

“Annette, my child, I promised your father—my late, lamented brother—that I would see no harm come to you. I sincerely hoped that you would pray for forgiveness then re-join our vessel.”

“That I will never do, uncle.”

“I see.”

“Nor will I permit you to kill these men.”

“The angel told me... He whispers in my ear even now.” The pastor gazed upward. “Do none of you hear? Or see his wings of gold? Or that he has the body of an eagle and sings so sweetly. There, beside our vessel, he gazes down upon us, and there is such a shining about him.”

The men on the roof appeared uneasy now. They cast uncertain glances at one another.

Dupin seized the moment. “Pastor, speak to us about the angel. Describe his features.”

The man threw a belligerent stare at Dupin. “I have listened enough to your snake-ish words. You have a demon’s shadow, monsieur, not a mortal one. Even if the angel descended to Earth to stand face-to-face with you, you would not see it with your ungodly eyes.”

“Uncle,” Annette spoke softly, “I do not believe you are a well man. You have become infected with illusions.”

“Pah!
You are the one who has been infected, for you have walked upon the germ-drenched soil. You must remain here, Annette. I will pray for your soul, because the plague will undoubtedly claim you.”

“
Uncle
—”

Ignoring the woman’s cry, Pastor Larsson issued orders to his companions: they quickly climbed upward to the basket that hung beneath the balloon. I now saw the reason for such apparent agility—wooden pegs had been inserted into the weave of the rope to form something akin to a rope ladder.

The pastor carefully released the gun’s cocking mechanism so it would not fire, then he thrust the weapon into his belt beneath that billowing coat of his.

“May Christ’s blessing be on you all,” he said from his lofty position. “I wish I could have opened your eyes to the terrible fate that creeps toward you. But your innate depravity has blinded you to what so obviously squirms and breeds in the dirt beneath your feet. Salut!” With that he began to climb the rope, too. Above him, the balloon swayed in the breeze. That aerial leviathan strained at its leash, seemingly eager to dash to the south, and the hot, clear skies of Africa.

The other men had already reached the vessel. Pastor Larsson was perhaps some ten meters above the barn’s roof, and halfway to the basket-weave cabins, which housed the
Seraphiel
’s passengers.

Dupin gave a sigh of regret. “I am very sorry that we have not been able to apprehend the slayer of your fiancé, mademoiselle. But the pastor has the advantage of both manpower and weaponry.”

The woman screamed—this sounded altogether different from the cry of dismay we’d heard earlier when she beheld the body of her husband-to-be. Instead, this raw shriek was shot through with rage and a fierce longing for vengeance. Even at that moment, I noticed that Dupin took care to preserve the sound in his memory. I confess my eyes were on him, so the woman had no difficulty in seizing the lantern from me.

In an instant she dashed the light against the blades of the plow. Flames immediately gushed upward as the glass vessel that contained the lamp oil burst open and its contents were ignited by the burning wick. And at that point a spectacle unfolded that was as horrific as it was extraordinary.

The grapple rope caught alight. Just as a burning fuse rushes toward a keg of gunpowder, so the flame raced up the rope—one no doubt soaked in tar to preserve it from the corrupting effects of rain. Meanwhile, Pastor Larsson had scaled upward to within five meters of his craft. The passengers watched in shock as the ball of fire ran up the rope toward the basketwork of the craft. That structure would catch alight quickly, but Dupin had recognized an altogether greater hazard—one of calamitous enormity.

“The balloon is inflated with hydrogen,” he breathed. “Hydrogen is the most explosive gas known to Man—just one lick of flame; just one spark. The explosion will destroy the balloon and its passengers—and the fireball will incinerate us, too.”

The fire that ascended the rope had reached the pastor. Like a burning fuse, the flame raced past him as he clung to the line. The fire seared his face and hands, yet he did not release his grip. All of a sudden, we heard the man’s shouts of
“MIN GUD!”
He’d reverted to his Danish tongue to implore the Almighty:
Min Gud
—my God!

And still he climbed. The small halo of fire, however, that encircled the cable would reach his craft first. Then there would be an explosion of such force that nobody would survive aboard the balloon... or beneath it.

The passengers on that craft, floating almost thirty meters above the ground, realized that destruction was merely seconds away, and their families would be wiped out by the searing heat of igniting hydrogen. The man with the cutlass did not pause and hacked clean through the rope. As soon as the tether parted, the balloon soared into the darkness. The burning rope fell harmlessly back to the ground. Pastor Larsson fell with it.

He plunged through the roof with such force the building shuddered. Then silence reigned supreme. We approached the clergyman, who lay face up in the center of the floor, and across the plow. His neck was broken.

His mad eyes remained open wide as they stared up toward the glory of Heaven.

The man’s niece, and executioner, at last began to weep for her dead fiancé as the snow once more began to fall. Flakes of the purest white gently descended through the gash in the roof tiles. Perhaps, if we could but return to the innocence of childhood, we would imagine those flakes as tiny, feathery angels. And, moreover, that those shining angels had come to safely chaperone the souls of the dead to an infinitely better realm than the one in which you and I, my friend, do currently dwell.

By

MEXICAN-AMERICAN BORDER. ARIZONA TERRITORY. 1895

He stands with his back to the painting, protecting it with his life as the men array themselves before him, their faces masks of red death, their every bone and muscle tightened in outrage over what he’d just done. But nothing matters except the painting— St. John tries to flee, Jesus forgives Judas, two soldiers dressed in fifteenth-century Spanish armor move to arrest Jesus, and Caravaggio himself, part of the painting he so idealized with light and brushstrokes, shines a lantern on all of them like a divine voyeur. In the Garden of Gethsemane, it is the betrayal by one so beloved that is represented by the humility and tiredness on the face of Jesus.

Today, if he is to survive, he needs something
not
portrayed in this timeless, famous painting to happen soon.

The men move one step closer.

Escape, perhaps.

Not soon.

Now.

DOUGLAS, ARIZONA. THREE DAYS EARLIER.

The word was
ratiocination
and his grandfather had been an alleged expert at its implementation. But as Nate Dupes stood and stared at the rheumy-eyed gunslinger at the end of the bar, he couldn’t help wonder if it wasn’t a load of Old World crap his father had bestowed upon him, forever trying to impress a young man with tales of a famous relative who’d solved what Edgar Allan Poe had fictionalized as
The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
The idea of
ratiocination
was to so firmly place yourself inside the mind of a criminal that you would know as much about the crime as the criminal, in this case the thief of the missing painting known as
The Taking of Christ
by the fifteenth century Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; the very same painting which had been commissioned for recovery by the British Royal Art Society through the Pinkerton Detective Agency.