The Anubis Gates

He paused, and looked more closely at his visitor’s face. “D-Doyle?” he said wonderingly. His hand darted out and turned up the wick of the lamp on the desk. “My God,” he breathed. “It is you! But… I see—I must have somehow overestimated Benner’s ruthless self-interest. He lied when he said he killed you.” His confidence was coming back, but there had been real fear in his face for a moment.

The other man was sitting back, grinning delightedly. “Oh, aye, he lied, right enough. But you might say I am dead.” He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. “Poisoned.”

A bit of the fear was again visible in the old man’s eyes, and to cover it he spoke harshly. “Let’s not indulge in riddles. What do you mean?”

The grin left the little man’s face. “I mean if I throws away me razor I won’t be bald much longer.” He held up one lumpy hand. “Can ye see the whiskers between me fingers? They’ve started already.” His cheeks accordioned back as he bared all his teeth in a savage smile. “And let’s… take it as given, sir, that I can leave here any time. If I have to flee, this body will stay here, but there’ll suddenly be a very scared and confused soul in it—and I’ll be miles away.”

Darrow went pale. “Jesus, it’s you. Very well, no, don’t flee, I don’t want to do you any harm.” He stared hard into the eyes that had been Doyle’s. “What did you do with Doyle?”

“I was in yer Steerforth Benner’s body, and I’d been in it long enough so’s it was furry as a bear; I ate a whole lot o’ strychnine and also a drug that makes you see things and act crazy, and then I chewed my tongue up real good—so he’d not have a chance to talk to nobody—and then just switched places with him.”

“Good God,” Darrow whispered in an awed tone. “That… poor son of a bitch… “

He shook his head. “Well, let the dead bury the dead. I’ve come a long way to find you—to strike a bargain with you. Damn it, I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my mind a hundred times, but now I can’t think where to begin. Let’s see—for one thing, I can cure your hyperpilosity, the all-over fur, any time, and as many times as you please, so from now on you’ll be free to take a new body only when you choose to—you won’t have to anymore. But that’s not the main item I want to bargain with.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Listen to this extract from a book I own. ‘It seems,’” he read aloud, “‘a man at another table took exception to some—as I heard the tale later—heathen sentiments the stranger had voiced, and seized the front of the offender’s shirt in order the more forcefully to convey his displeasure; the shirt tore, and the man’s breast being exposed, it was remarked that the hitherto concealed skin was covered with new whiskers, such as would show on a man’s face after not shaving for a couple of days. Mr.—” Darrow looked up and smiled. “I can’t let you know his real name yet. Let’s call him Mr. Anonymous. ‘Mr. Anonymous,’” he resumed, “‘exclaimed to the company, “I believe it’s Dog-Face Joe; Seize him and take off those gloves.” The gloves were promptly pulled off of the struggling man’s hands, which proved to be likewise bewhiskered. Mr. Anonymous silenced the uproar and declared that if justice was to be visited on this notorious murderer it would have to be done at once, without involving the slow wheels of the law, and so the man was dragged out into the yard behind the pub, and hanged from a rope which was tied to one of the warehouse cranes.’” Darrow put the paper down and smiled at the other man.

“An entertaining fiction,” pronounced the man in Doyle’s body.

“Yes,” agreed Darrow, “it’s fiction now. But in a few months it will be fact—history.” He smiled. “This is going to be a long story, Joe. Would you like some brandy?”

Again Doyle’s face grinned. “Don’t mind if I do,” Amenophis Fikee said.

* * *

In the sudden silence Horrabin, his sling still swinging from his violent gesticulations of a few moments before, stared at the shattered corpse on the flagstones beside the table and realized that the fallen beggar lord had put control of the situation back within his reach. He grinned merrily, clapped his painted hands and cried, “He didn’t quite make it to the table, did he?” The clown knew he had his audience’s attention again, so he reached unhurriedly for a joint of meat on his plate, gnawed it thoughtfully, and then tossed it all the way to the back of the hall, where the shambling derelicts fell upon it with a satisfactory noise of growling and scuffling. “None of you,” said the clown quietly, “will ever take anything from me but what I let you have.”