The Anubis Gates

“A celebration,” the old man went on loudly, “of all that’s weakest and most unrealistic in the damned western culture. Show me a man that celebrates Christmas and I’ll show you a dewy-eyed bugger that wishes he could still be tucked in every night by his mum.”

“Write it all down, sign it ‘Iconoclast’ and send it to the Times, mate,” advised Maturo over his shoulder. “And right now stop up your jabbering mouth with drink, before someone stops it less pleasantly.”

The old man made an obscene suggestion as to how Maturo would do that.

“I don’t need this today,” Maturo sighed, pushing back his chair and standing up. He walked over to the old man and seized him by the shirt-front. “Listen to me, you unpleasant old creature. There’s plenty of taverns right nearby that’ll provide you with the fight you’re looking for, so why don’t you tote your wretched old bones thither, eh?”

The old man had started to stand up, but lost his footing and fell back into his chair. His shirt tore, and a button plunked into the cup of punch in front of him.

“Now I suppose you’ll want me to pay for your shirt,” said Maturo exasperatedly. “Well you can—” Suddenly he stopped talking and peered at the old man’s exposed chest.

“Holy God, what kind of—” The old man tore loose from Maturo’s momentarily relaxed grip and ran for the door.

“Stop him!” roared Maturo, with such urgency that Crank forgot his never interfere rule and hurled a big jar of pickled pig’s feet into the old man’s path. It burst with a loud pop and splash, and the old man lost his footing on the wet floor, fell heavily on his hip and slid rolling into a bar stool, which toppled over. Maturo was on him in an instant, and dragged the gasping old fellow to his feet. “What did he do, Doug?” asked Crank worriedly. Maturo twisted one of the old man’s arms up and forced it down on the bar. “Open your fist, you bastard,” he hissed. The fist stayed clenched for a few moments, but sprang open when Maturo began to exert pressure against the locked elbow.

“Jesus, his hand’s empty, Doug!” exclaimed Crank with some agitation. “Here we’ve roughed him up and he didn’t take noth—”

“Pull off his glove.”

“Damn it, man, we’ve done enough to—”

“Pull off his glove.”

Rolling his eyes unhappily, Crank pinched the fabric at the ends of the thumb and middle finger and jerked the glove off.

The pale, wrinkled hand was completely covered with coarse whiskers.

“It’s Dog-Face Joe,” Maturo pronounced.

“What?” wailed the flustered Crank. “The werewolf from the kid stories?”

“He’s not a werewolf. He’s the uncanniest murderer that ever walked this city’s streets. Ask Brock over in Kenyon Court what became of his boy Kenny. Or ask Mrs. Zimmerman—”

“He’s the one that did in my brother,” said a young man who quickly stood up from a corner table. “Frank was a priest, and ran off from the rectory one day, and didn’t recognize me when I found him, and laughed when I told him who I was. But I followed him to where he lived, and a week later a thing they said was an ape leaped from the roof of the place. The busted-up corpse in the street was all covered with fur, but I looked in its mouth and saw the tooth I chipped when Frankie and me was playing sword fights when we was kids.”

The captive at the bar laughed. “I remember him. I didn’t have too bad a time in his body—though I fear I made a sad shambles of his vow of celibacy.”

The young man sprang forward with an inarticulate cry and a raised fist, but Maturo shouldered him back. “What are you going to do, hit him?” Maturo asked. “Justice has got to be done.”

“Aye, fetch the police!” someone shouted.

“That’s no good either,” said Maturo. “By the time he’d even come up for trial he’d be long gone, leaving some innocent poor devil in this carcass.” He stared at the young man, then looked around at everyone else. “He’s got to be executed,” he said carefully. “Now.”

Dog-Face Joe began struggling wildly, and at the same moment a number of people leaped to their feet, loudly protesting that they wouldn’t be party to a murder. Crank grabbed Maturo’s sleeve and said, “Not in here, Doug. No way in here.”

“No,” Maturo agreed. “But who’s with me?”

“John Carroll is,” said the young man, stepping forward again.

“Me too,” spoke up a hefty, middle-aged matron. “They pulled one o’ them apes out of the river at Gravesend, and it was wearin’ my Billy’s ring on a finger so furry that it couldn’t be pulled off—and couldn’t have been pulled on, either, after the fur was growed.”

One by one three more people walked over and stood beside John Carroll and the woman.

“Good,” Maturo said. He turned toward the table he’d leaped up from. “Any of you lads?”

His suddenly sobered friends all shook their heads. “We’re none of us the sort to shrink from a scrape, Doug,” said one pleadingly, ”’but helping in a cold-blooded murder… we’ve got families … “