Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure (6 page)

“Stop it!
Stop it!” Lavinia's howl was clearly audible above the hubbub.

There was
consternation among those in the audience. Clearly, this was not a regular part
of the séance. I hesitated then stood up. Taking hold of someone being
electrocuted is a dangerous thing to do. The sitters had more
experience—more psychic resilience—than me; the force that ran
through them might burn out my nerves. There seemed little alternative though.

Yang had
quietly pushed himself back as far as he could go. A grey cobra reared up
before him, taking on definition and form like a magic-lantern picture
gradually coming into focus. I took Yang’s wrist in one hand and Victor’s in
the other and tried to pull them apart. It was more difficult than I expected.
A grey form was writhing and splitting in the corner of my eye. I gave a sharp
wrench and pulled their hands apart.

The room
went dark, and the chanting halted as suddenly and completely as though
Elizabeth had been struck with a hammer. There was a moment of silence before
the turmoil erupted.

Someone had
the presence of mind to turn on the electric light. Elizabeth was slumped
forwards, face down on the table, her hair in disarray.

Victor was
flapping his hand about, not the one that I had pulled but the one Elizabeth
had held. He seemed to be in some pain. Lavinia was still working to extract
her own hand from Elizabeth's grip. Howard shook his head to clear it and
looked dazed.

“Is anybody
hurt?” asked Yang imperturbably.

“Can
someone look at Elizabeth, please?” Lavinia asked.

Yang went
to look at Elizabeth. There was a triangle chalked on the back of his chair that
I had not seen before.

Elizabeth
was unconscious. One of the ladies wafted smelling salts under her nose, and
she twitched and came to, blinking and rubbing her face as though it had been
stretched out of shape. The maid was on hand with a glass of water.

“I’m fine,”
Elizabeth said bravely. “I think.” She looked pale and drained—literally
drained, as though substance had been sucked out of her and she had lost pounds
of weight.

“Did you
catch any of the words?” Howard asked Victor.

“A few, I
think. We'd better write them down as soon as possible. Or you had—don't
think I can write just now.” Victor was still rubbing his wrist.

“He's more
powerful than we thought,” said Howard.

“A doctor
for this woman would be advisable,” said Yang, taking the glass from Elizabeth
before she dropped it.

“Oh, dear.”
Something had gone out of Elizabeth's face, as if it were a lightbulb burned
out by too much current. “I don’t feel well. What happened?”

Victor said
something to Howard in an undertone, inclining his head towards Yang.
Evidently, they wondered if he might be connected with the séance
running out of control.

“Excuse me,
but I'm afraid I may need a doctor, too,” said Lavinia, holding the hand that
had been crushed in Elizabeth's grip. “I’m afraid I may have broken some
fingers.”

Chapter Five: Of the Sorcerer Roslyn
D’Onston

“You have read the leaflets on Theosophy,” Yang said.

As usual,
he was driving, and I was navigating. He was wearing a new salt-and-pepper suit
in the American style with a dark-red bow tie, and a Fedora. And alligator
shoes, and dark glasses, an affectation I had only seen in pictures of
Hollywood actors.

Yang never
said as much, but I had finally twigged that he did not, could not, read a
single word of English. In spite of his obvious education and literacy in his
own language, he had a sort of word-blindness when it came to the English
alphabet. That made it even more curious that he had come alone without any
assistant. It was not my place to ask questions. I simply made sure I was available
to do any reading that was necessary without causing embarrassment.

“I read
some of them,” I said. “It's strange to me, all that business about Lemuria and
Atlantis and Hyperborea and those other old kingdoms. It's worse than the Bible
with the Moabites and the Elamites and the rest of them. If you know that lot.”

“Please go
on.”

“Atlantis
sank under the waves in a battle between good and bad magicians, so they say,”
I said. “According to Theosophy, every so often the bad magicians get the upper
hand, and the whole lot goes under one way or another. The thing is,
though— this ‘magic’ is a cosmic force called Vril, a bit like
electricity…”

“Indeed?”

“But Vril
was just a made-up thing. I don't know if the novels of Mr Edward Bulwer-Lytton
have been translated into Chinese? Bulwer-Lytton invented Vril in a book called
The Coming Race
, as a matter of fact.”

I would
never have believed that reading adventure novels would give me the chance to
sound learned, but this was a topic on which I could be authoritative. I wanted
to add that Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of the phrase about the pen being
mightier than the sword—a doubtful proposition, to my mind—but felt
that this would be lost on someone from China.

“It seems
to me—only from reading those pamphlets—that Theosophy mixes up
fact and fiction all higgledy-piggledy. Vril isn’t real, and I’m sure Atlantis
was never a real place. They have these dreams and visions, and they write them
down as if they’re true. On top of that—and they don’t say it in as many words—Mrs
Blavatsky cheated with at least some of her psychic effects.”

Yang took
his time before replying. At length, he took out his cigarette case; instead of
taking a cigarette, he passed it over to me.

“Look.”

The case
was worked with an intricate pattern, a circle made up of curved shapes like
two fish wrapped around each other: a dark fish with a light eye, and a light
fish with a dark eye.

“This
distinction is false. Night and day give rise to each other. Good and evil are
not opposites but complementary. Shadow cannot exist without light. What you
call fact and fiction are intertwined and cannot be separated. They support
each other. They are ‘two sides of the same coin,’ as you say in English.”

This might
have been ancient Oriental philosophy, but it seemed like muddled thinking to
me, and dangerous at that.

“Good and
evil are two different things.”

“Indeed? As
a boxer, you fight people who you do not hate. In your work, you take money
from people who you pity to give to rich people you despise. You deal with
criminals like Mr Renville and do not report them to the police.”

Yang smiled
faintly as my discomfiture. I did not know where he had heard the name of
Arthur Renville, but it was not from me. Nor had I mentioned that I collected
debts.

“What did
you make of that séance then?” I asked quickly, handing the case back to
him.

I had gone
over the events in my mind a hundred times and was less sure than ever about
what I had seen. Lavinia’s enthusiasm for getting patronage from a wealthy
American was plain. Yang was also moneyed. Perhaps they had planned to stage an
event to impress him. Theatrical smoke and sound effects, along with the power
of suggestion, might have explained everything I witnessed. It is not unknown
for mediums to be overcome with hysteria, perhaps even an infectious hysteria.
That was more or less the version of events that I had agreed on with Arthur
and Reg at our evening debriefing.

Perhaps it
was my previous experience that made me think that magic is not so unlikely as
all that, or maybe it was working in a Law firm. A man can stand up in court
and say ‘Habeas Corpus’ and it changes everything. The right ‘Hocus Pocus’
might work just as well, with the laws of the natural world rather than human
laws. Arthur and Reg maintained these laws they were two different things, but
I was not so sure.

“A most
curious event,” said Yang. “The manifestation was unusual.”

“Was it…
real?”

Yang
laughed sharply. “Real and unreal, dark and light—everything is dualism
for you! Do you forget the pattern so quickly?”

“The
manifestation—was it dangerous?”

“Perhaps.”

“Did I do
the right thing, pulling your hands apart from Howard's?”

“Who can
say? Right and wrong is more dualism… now, please, which turning here?”

We had an
appointment in Upper Norwood Library. It was one of the more compact sort of
Victorian libraries and one that I had made use of on occasion. The library was
doing its usual quiet trade. A scattering of people browsed the shelves while
the reading tables were fully occupied—some pensioners but also several
younger men hunched over the Jobs Vacant sections of the library newspapers.

Although I
did not know whom we were meeting, Yang had again decided that I should come
along—as though he wished me to be seen with him.

Yang
consulted a note and led the way to the last alcove on the left, where a
bearded man was absorbed in his studies at a round table, open books piled up
around him. He was an odd individual, his beard long and ragged and his
shoulder-length hair tied back in bohemian style. He had no jacket, just a
colourless linen shirt a size too large for him with a rag of a tie and reading
glasses mended with copper wire. He looked the sort of man who was too busy
with higher things to take any trouble over his appearance and undid the work
of any wife or valet who tried to set him straight.

He was
looking from one to book to another, lost in his work. I coughed politely. And
he looked up.

“Gentlemen,
gentlemen!” he said at once, standing up and offering his hand. “Delighted to
see you. My name is Powell.”

Yang stood
with his hands behind his back and nodded slightly. I made up for the
deficiency and shook hands, introducing both of us.

“Make
yourselves comfortable,” said Powell, pulling out two chairs. “My library is
your library. It’s a pleasure to meet other students of Roslyn D'Onston. “

“As
students, we are novices,” said Yang, suddenly humble. He took out a notebook
and a silver fountain pen. “We are honoured that you interrupt your work for a
few minutes to share your knowledge with us. Please permit me to record your
words.”

“The honour
is all mine,” Powell beamed, and I saw he was missing a tooth.

“All
aspects of Roslyn D’Onston are fascinating,” said Yang. “But my purpose today
is in what occult powers he claimed to possess and who his teacher was.”

“So I
gather—a most unusual interest!” Powell unfolded a grubby sheet of paper.
“To start at the beginning… as a young man, he travelled to Paris in the 1860s
to study medicine. He became acquainted with young Edward Lytton, son of Sir Edward
Bulwer-Lytton. When he showed an interest in the occult arts, he was introduced
to the older gentleman, who initiated him into the Hermetic Mysteries.”

“Bulwer-Lytton
the famous novelist?” I said, astonished to hear the name again.

“The same,”
added Powell. “Properly, Lord Lytton, of course. Known to the public for his
works of fiction but also a magist of considerable reputation. The account of
magic in some of his works is correct—have you read
Zanoni
?”

“Please, Mr
Powell,” said Yang. “Tell us more of D’Onston. But you call him Stephenson?”

“His real
name was Robert D’Onston Stephenson, but he went more often by Roslyn
D’Onston,” said Powell. “I use that name to avoid confusion with Robert Louis
Stephenson.”

“Another
popular author—
The Case of Jekyll and Hyde
,” I supplied.

“D’Onston
studied medicine in Paris and chemistry in Hamburg, while there he carried
out
 
experiments of a psychical
nature and dabbled in hypnotism. He served as a doctor with Garibaldi in 1860
and sought out witches in Italy; in West Africa he had a sort of apprenticeship
with a witch doctor. After that, would you believe, he had a post with the
Customs in Hull. That went sour when he was shot… so he went to India to study
the occult.”

Yang was
busy taking notes. I was fascinated by the neatly composed Chinese characters
flowing from his pen and forming columns of miniature hieroglyphs.

“He
returned to London and took up with the Theosophists. He formed a romantic
attachment with Mabel Collins, secretary of the Theosophists, Madame
Blavatsky’s assistant. That was when he was in Norwood, of course.” Powell gave
me a significant look.

“At this
time, he wrote a number of articles for
Lucifer
,
the Theosophy journal, under the pen name Tautridelta.” Powell displayed a
cheap-looking magazine. “These were chiefly about Black Magic, a subject on
which he was recognised as a leading expert.”

“Do you
know what powers he claimed to possess?” Yang asked.

“I started
to compile a list for you,” said Powell. “Some of them are just street tricks.
There’s levitation—rising into the air—and being thrust through
with a metal sword without being harmed, which he got from a fakir. But then
there's this—he forced a witch in Sicily to give him the secret of a
green ointment which, applied to the nerves above the eyes, gave the power of
the fatal glance. He said he could kill cats and dogs with one look!”

“Really?” I
said.

“That’s
what he said,” said Powell with a laugh. “I might take that with a pinch of
salt. He wasn’t a modest chap, and he liked stories. D’Onston said that in
Germany, he was able to swap minds with a fellow student. While he was in the
other man’s body, he went out and made love to his fiancé.”

“Indeed,”
said Yang.

Powell
stopped suddenly. I turned to follow his look. Behind me, a woman in a plain
brown dress was going down the shelves, looking for a particular author. She
took out a book, examined it, replaced it again, and selected another. Powell
waited for her to go before continuing.

“In Africa,
he was apprenticed to a sorceress called Sube,” said Powell. “He claimed she
was the original for Rider Haggard's
She
.”

“That's
another popular novel,” I added for Yang’s benefit.

“Sube could
kill a man at four hundred paces, make plants grow in minutes and transform men
into half-bestial creatures for pagan orgies.” He was leafing through a book,
finding a marked passage. “And more surprising yet, listen to this:

“‘But the
most terrible example of her power, to my mind, was in the transformation of
the sexes. One day, being offended with a chief, who sought in vain to pacify
her, she said to him, ‘I will degrade you, and you shall become a woman!’
Placing her hands upon him while he stood powerless as though turned to
stone—his eyeballs staring in horror—she commenced her manipulations.’”

Powell paused
for effect. He enjoyed having an audience.

“‘Beginning
with his face, she rubbed away every vestige of beard and moustache. The
prominent cheekbones fell in, and the smooth, rounded face of a woman became
apparent. Next, the powerful biceps and triceps were rubbed down, and the lank
lean arm of the African woman appeared. Next, seizing hold of his vast pectoral
muscles, she began a different process, pinching up and pulling them out until
there were shortly visible, well-developed mammae. And so she proceeded, from
head to
foot, until, in less than ten minutes, every vestige of manhood
had disappeared, and there stood before us a hulking, clumsy, knock-kneed
woman.’”

“Indeed,”
said Yang. He had stopped taking notes.

While
Powell was talking, I happened to look down at his shoes. The soles were
secured to the uppers with lengths of twine, and they were battered and scuffed
far beyond the ordinary degree. Powell was not simply an impoverished scholar
who paid little attention to his appearance; he was an actual tramp. When I
sniffed, I could detect the smell of the gutter common to all men of that type.

Powell was
explaining to Yang how D’Onston could project scenes of history in the air by
means of the fourth dimension and how this was a fact of science as well as
scripture. For all his rough appearance, he spoke like a scholar. You could
tell he had not always been the man we saw here. I believe Powell had been a
respectable man once, a dry-goods wholesaler or some such. He had read an
article about Jack the Ripper and then a book; it had become a hobby and then
an obsession. The rest of his life had dropped away. Just from looking at him,
you knew he did not have a home, a family, or a steady occupation anymore. All
he had was this obsession, and it was meat and drink and family to him. This
library had become his whole world. No wonder he was happy to admit others who
shared the same interest.