The Anubis Gates

“Put an end to this idiocy,” spoke a new voice, pitched so deeply that it cut through the cacophony. The music and clapping faltered to a stop as the assembly became aware of the newcomer—a very tall, bald-headed man wrapped in a cloak. He stepped into the hall with a weirdly bouncing gait, as though he were walking across a trampoline instead of the solid stone floor.

“Ah!” exclaimed Horrabin, his voice, at least, expressing delight—his facial expression, as always, was impossible to read under all the paint—”Our wandering chief! Well, this is one meeting in which your honorary chair won’t stand empty!”

The newcomer nodded, whirled the cloak off his shoulders and tossed it to Dungy—who gratefully scuttled out of the room with it—and stepped up to the highchair at the foot of the table. Now that the cloak was gone everyone could see the spring-soled shoes that he bobbed up and down on.

“My various lords and commoners,” said Horrabin in a ringmaster’s voice, “may I present our overlord, the Gypsy King, Doctor Romany!” There were a few half-hearted cheers and whistles. “What business induces you to grace our table, Your Majesty?”

Romany didn’t reply until he had climbed up into the highchair and, with a sigh of relief, removed his spring-shoes. “Several matters have brought me to your throne-sewer, Horrabin,” he said. “For one thing, I’ve personally brought this month’s coin shipment—gold sovereigns in fifty-pound sacks in the corridor back there, probably still hot from the molds.” This news brought on a racket of more sincere cheering from the congregation. “And some new developments in the matter of manhunting.” He accepted a glass of red wine from one of the thief lords. “Somehow you still haven’t found for me the man you call Dog-Face Joe.”

“A goddamn werewolf is a dangerous sort of man to find, mate,” came a call, and there were murmurs of assent.

“He’s not a werewolf,” said Doctor Romany without turning around, “but I’ll agree he is very dangerous. That’s why I’ve made the reward so big, and advised you all to bring him to me dead rather than alive. In any case, the reward has increased now to ten thousand pounds cash and passage on one of my merchant ships to any spot on the globe. There is now, though, another man I want you to find for me—and this one must be captured alive and undamaged. The reward for bringing me this man will be twenty thousand pounds, and a wife of any description you care for, guaranteed to be as affectionate as you please, and of course passage to anywhere you like.” The audience shifted and muttered among themselves, and even one or two of the ruined derelicts, who’d only shambled down the ramps and stairs for the traditional concluding food fight, seemed to be showing interest. “I don’t know this man’s name,” Doctor Romany went on, “but he’s about thirty-five years old, with dark hair beginning to go bald, he’s tending to fat around his middle, pale, and he speaks with some sort of colonial accent. I lost him last night in a field near Kensington, by the Chelsea Creek. He was tightly bound, but apparently—” Romany paused, for Horrabin had begun swinging back and forth in excitement. “Yes, Horrabin?”

“Was he dressed as a costermonger?” the clown asked.

“Not when last seen, but if he escaped by way of the creek, as I suspect he did, he’d certainly have wanted a change of clothes. You’ve seen him? Where, man, when?”

“I saw a man just like what you’ve described, but in a coster’s old corduroy, trying to peddle onions in Billingsgate this morning, just before the market closed. He sat for my Punch show, and I offered him a begging job, but he got all insulted and walked away. He said he was American. I did tell him that when he changed his mind—and you never saw a man less able to fend for himself—to ask where Horrabin’s Punch show is playing, and to talk to me again.”

“I think that is probably him,” said Doctor Romany with controlled excitement. “Thank Anubis! I was afraid he might have drowned in the creek. Billingsgate, you say—very well, I want your people to scour the entire area from St. Paul’s and Blackfriar’s Bridge east to the rookery above London Dock, and from the river north to Christ’s Hospital, London Wall and Long Alley. The man who brings him to me alive will live the rest of his life in sunny luxury;” Romany did turn around now, and swept the entire company with his cold gaze, “but if anyone should kill him, his lot will be”—he seemed to search for an appropriate image—”such that he’d bitterly envy old Dungy.”

From the crowd came mutters to the effect that there were worse things than setting tables and doing idiot dances for a living, but the men around the table, several of whom had sat there when Dungy was their chief, frowned doubtfully, as though wondering whether capturing this man would be worth the risk.