The Anubis Gates

Yessir, young Dundee, thought Joe, you’d still be a dying old man if it weren’t for me—and what do I get in return for setting you up? Employment as a butler. It’s not fair as it stands right now. Things aren’t balanced. But I’ve got a solution to everyone’s problems right here in this bowl. Miss Claire’s handsome young husband will become much more affectionate, and poor old butler Joe will commit suicide. Everybody will be happy.

Except, of course, the one who’s in Joe’s body when it hits the pavement.

He reached up to a shelf, took down a jar of ground cinnamon, and shook a lot of it over the powder in the bowl. He put the jar down and stirred the mixture with his fingers, then tapped it all into a big mug, added a hearty slug of rum, and then hopped to the floor, lifted the now ready pot of coffee and filled the mug with the steaming black brew.

He stirred it with a spoon as he walked down the hall and up the stairs. When he rapped quietly at Dundee’s door, Dundee told him to come in and set it on the table. Joe did, and then stepped back respectfully.

Dundee seemed preoccupied, and a faint frown rippled his unlined brow. “You ever notice, Joe,” he asked, mechanically picking up the mug, “that it always takes a little more trouble to get something than the thing was really worth?”

Joe considered it. “Better than taking a lot of trouble and getting nothing.”

Dundee sipped the coffee. He didn’t seem to have heard Joe. “There’s so much weariness and fatigue in it all. For every action there is an equal… stupefaction. No, that might be bearable—it’s greater than the action. What’s in this?”

“Cinnamon. If you don’t like it I could make another cup without.”

“No, it’s all right.” Dundee stirred it with the spoon and took another sip.

Joe waited for a while, but Dundee didn’t seem to have any further instructions, so he left the room and closed the door quietly.

* * *

“Hey, Snapp? That you?”

Jacky looked around. A stocky little dark-haired man sprinted lightly up to her from the other side of the street.

“Who’s that?” asked Jacky, not sounding interested.

“Humphrey Bogart, remember? Adelbert Chinnie, Doyle.” The man grinned excitedly. “I’ve been walking up and down this damn street for an hour, trying to find you.”

“What for?”

“My body—my real body—I’ve found it! The fellow that’s in it has grown a little moustache and he dresses and walks different, but it’s me!”

Jacky sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Humphrey. The body-switching man was caught and killed three months ago. So even if this person you’ve found really is in your old body—which is damned unlikely; he’d never fail twice in a row to kill the discarded host—there’s no conceivable way you can switch with him. There’s nobody around anymore that knows how to do the trick.” She shook her head wearily. “Sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me … “

The grin had fallen from Chinnie’s face. “He’s dead? Did—did you kill him? God damn it, you promised me—”

“No, I didn’t kill him. A crowd in an East End pub did. I heard about it next day.” She started to walk on.

“Wait a moment,” said Chinnie desperately. “You heard about it, you say. Have many people heard about it?”

Jacky stopped and said, with exaggerated patience, “Yes. Everybody—except you.”

“Right!” said Chinnie, beginning to get excited again. “If I was the body-switching man I’d do the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen, I went looking for depilatory shops, remember I said I would? Places where they take hair off so it won’t grow back. And I learned that there was one in Leadenhall Street where the people really could do it, something to do with electricity. The place closed down last October, but that doesn’t mean the process was lost. Hell, the body-changer might have bought the place. Anyway, if I was him, and now had the option of being able to stay in a body without turning into an orang-outang, why, I’d let myself be recognized, and caught, and then just as I was falling through the gallows trap, I’d switch into another body. Let ‘em all think they’d killed me so they’d call off the hunt.”

Jacky slowly walked back to where Chinnie stood. “Right,” she said softly, “I like it so far. But what’s all this about your old body? He’d already moved on out of it—when he was hanged he was a skinny old man.”