The Anubis Gates

“Well, tell your man Dennessen that if he could recognize the man who tried to kill the American, and bring that man to me alive, the reward will be the same as if he’d killed Dog-Face Joe.” He flapped his arms to stop swinging. “The bearded man who shot at the American and then picked him up may be of the same group. You say you recognized the daring canoeist?”

“I believe so, yer Worship. He wasn’t wearing his usual turban, but it looked like a beggar who sometimes hangs around here, called Ahmed. A fake Hindoo. I’ve got an order and reward out now for his capture.”

“Good. We’ll wring the story out of one of these birds, Set willing, even if we have to peel him down to nothing but lungs and a tongue and a brain.”

Damnable Richard carefully reached for his wooden monkey, whom he’d set on the window ledge so as to be able to see the prodigy of two sorcerers hung up like hams in a smokehouse, and put his thumb and forefinger over its ears, for savage talk tended to upset it. And Richard himself wasn’t pleased. He’d been in town for a full week now, confined to Rat’s Castle and the hall under Bainbridge Street, while Doctor Romany at least got to travel around in order to be at each gate when it appeared, which involved going out into the country a good deal of the time.

“I can’t help thinking—wondering whether—this interference may be prompted by my… partner’s efforts in Turkey,” said Doctor Romany.

“But nobody knows what they are,” pointed out Horrabin. He added more softly, “Even I know only that your twin brother has found a young British lord, sojourning abroad alone, who you two seem to think you can make some use of. It seems to me I should be more fully acquainted with your plans.”

Romany seemed not to have heard him. He said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe there’s been any breach of secrecy at this end, simply because I’m the only one that knows anything important. But I don’t know much about what may be going on at Doctor Romanelli’s end of things, back in Turkey; I understand this young lord is fond of writing letters. I just hope my… brother hasn’t allowed some unobtrusively important bit of information to find its way, in one of these letters, to certain people in this island.”

Horrabin looked surprised. “Where’d you say this troublesome young peer is?”

“A few days out of Athens, obediently heading back up the Gulf of Corinth to Patras; for some reason milord is very vulnerable psychically when he’s in that little area: Patras, the Gulf of Patras, Missolonghi. So when he was last there, in July, Romanelli had the imperial consul, an employee of his, put milord to sleep by having him concentrate on the operation of a musical clock, and while he was asleep my brother placed a command in milord’s mind, under the thinking level so he wouldn’t be aware of it—a command to return to Patras in mid-September, by which time things should be warmed up here so that everything will come to a boil at once. And his lordship is even now carrying out the order, blithely supposing that the decision to return to Patras is his own.”

Horrabin was nodding impatiently. “The reason I asked was, well, for a letter of his to have incited trouble here, it would have to have been sent… when? Months ago, I should think. Aren’t there about a dozen wars going on between here and there? So even if he’d written to somebody right at first, in July, there hasn’t been time for the letter to arrive here and for somebody here to find out who you are and what you want.”

Romany raised his eyebrows and nodded. “You’re right—I hadn’t considered the slow pace of international mail these days.” He frowned. “Then who in hell were those men, and why are they interfering with me? “

“I couldn’t say,” answered the clown, slowly stretching and bending his limbs like some sort of huge, painted spider. Damnable Richard covered his monkey’s eyes. “But,” added Horrabin, “they’re interfering with me too. Four dozen of my tiniest homunculi were drowned out there tonight by that bloody Hindoo. You need to make your Master in Cairo send more of that stuff—what’s it called?”

“Paut,” said Doctor Romany. “That’s damned hard stuff to produce nowadays, magic being as strangled as it is.” He shook his head dubiously.