Harry Dickson and the Werewolf of Rutherford Grange Page 14

  Gravely, he shook hands with his hosts. Tiziraou bowed comically. Then, with a promise to return one day, the two travelers sauntered off deeper into the garden, where they had left their ship.

  Phyllis settled in next to her beloved Jinn.

  “Could it be true, darling?” she asked. “Could we really civilize those creatures and let them into our society as equals?”

  Frowning, the chimpanzee shook his head. “I don’t know, my love. Man is such a peculiar beast...”

  Tros Must Be Crazy!

  Gaul, 55 B.C.

  The warrior had to admit he felt nervous, although he’d never say as much to his crew. It was hard enough keeping them in line on ordinary days. Let alone on a night like this…

  The late autumn wind was chill, and the warrior quietly drew his cloak tighter. Above, the Moon took on a pale, leprous tinge. He was but a rank initiate into the Mysteries, but even he could deduce bad omens when he saw them.

  Perhaps this was not one of my best ideas….but to defeat Caesar, I would ally myself with anyone, yea, even with the damned, twisted Wyrms of the Earth themselves! he thought.

  The tiny landing craft drew up against the shore and two of his swarthy, battered crew stumbled out to pull it ashore, both reeking of stale ale and fresh urine. It was a wonder they had even gotten the craft this far without sinking it. Ignoring them, the warrior climbed out before they had finished and waded the last few feet to shore, carefully examining the surroundings as was his wont. The beach, silent and empty, stretched along for miles without obstruction. At its edge, it sloped slowly upward, its sandy waste vanishing into the midst of black, fertile forest. A few night birds cried out.

  Gesturing to his men to wait, the warrior moved forward boldly across the beach, up the slope and to the very border of the thick, seemingly impenetrable trees.

  “You may as well come out,” he called, calmly but commandingly. “I know you are there.”

  For a moment, the only answer was silence. Then, the vegetation was brushed away, and slowly from the foliage stepped a bent, wizened figure, long-bearded, with every joint creaking.

  The warrior grimaced in spite of himself. As a novice, he should bow before the Druid with respect, but great age had rendered the man so unattractive it was difficult to pay him proper homage. The figure grinned, showing a crooked mouth of yellow teeth, and pulled his crimson cloak closer to ward off the cold.

  “You are far from Samothrace, my friend.”

  “That matters little. What does is whether you have what we agreed upon, Druid. Do you?”

  Chuckling a bubbly, acidic laugh, the Druid reached a scrawny arm into his cloak. “I do. But what about you?”

  The warrior dared turn his head enough to nod toward his men. At his signal, two reached down into the boat and then approached, lugging between them a huge chest. They dropped it at their leader’s feet and backtracked, gazing apprehensively upon the white-haired Druid.

  The warrior opened the chest.

  “There,” he said. “The treasure of the Picts. It was simple enough to take it. Over the centuries, they have descended into grotesque parodies of their former selves. Only in their aristocracy do they retain their old blood...”

  The warrior’s mouth twisted a moment, recalling the mighty battle he had had with their king. Surely, that man could have been a great thorn in Caesar’s side. That, or his son, or his son’s son… Enough. Time to get what he came for.

  “I have given you what you desired, Druid. And now, it is your turn.”

  The ancient Druid’s ugly smile drew wider. “As you wish.” His arm withdrew from the cloak and a taloned, liver-spotted hand held forth a small vial. “Here. Drink this and all your troubles with Caesar will be over.”

  With skeptical fingers, the warrior’s hand closed over the vial. He could hear a strange potion sloshing about within. “And just how do I know this sorcery you brag about so well shall truly work?”

  “Do you truly doubt my—”

  The admonishment was never completed. From behind the brush, a great scream was heard and, suddenly, the warrior witnessed the sight of a man, clad in Roman armor and helmet, shooting up over the trees in a wide arc, passing over the beach a good 20 feet in the air and coming to a hard splash not half a mile from shore. For a moment the calm sea foamed, then settled. The Roman soldier was gone.

  “Oops! Sorry!” From the forest, a head, bearing a huge nose and scraggly yellow mustache that seemed even huger, popped out. From the warrior’s viewpoint, the person owning them must have been smaller than even a Pict. “Just a spy I had to take care of! Sorry to interrupt!” It popped back into the foliage.

  The white-cloaked Druid gave the warrior a sardonic look.

  He sighed. “I’ll take 20.”

  Who Made Me Such A Woman?

  Tokyo, November 1945

  At long last, the storm had finally ended. But Kanoto Yoshimuta felt no cleansing from the rain.

  The remaining precipitation felt cold and dirty; a soggy premonition of colder, grayer days to come. Grimacing, Kanoto drew the nape of her cloak closer. It was a raggedy, threadbare thing; patched in far too many places; yet, for a body that had not, all that long ago, known the finest European fashions money could buy, it at least kept one warm. Unfortunately the cheap straw hat pulled low down her brow was a much poorer thing; sending thick, dribbly rivulets drenching down upon her feet. Mind you, becoming soaked would have been inescapable, for she could take not even one step which did not result in at least one foot being immersed in the filthy concrete ponds pitting what had once been one of the city’s side thoroughfares.

  The Yankees, they said, were pouring millions of dollars into the economy to help facilitate Tokyo’s rebuilding, but any coinage the gai-jin may be granting their newest protectorate out of the goodness of their newly-victorious heart had yet to even begin to penetrate here. The Yurakucho District didn’t have enough sniveling jackals milling about MacArthur and his cronies to convince them to help out yet. Everywhere rested the remains of fire-bombings past: the abandoned, rusting skeletons of charcoal-powered cars; crumbling piles of stone and masonry; the blackened, ashy edges outlining what had once been paper-walled homes and businesses. And then, there were the residents, crawling about the wreckage. Draped low in one of the abandoned autos seats, a sallow, sickly man in the filthy remains of an Imperial Navy uniform lay snoring, an empty bottle of beer bought from some American clutched to his chest. Two old biddies pushed past, bent and crone-like, mumbling to themselves that, hopefully, the Black Market might have some meat today. And, crouched next to the flowing gutter, an urchin, perhaps all of eight years old, suddenly jerked his hand down into the brown water to bring up the dregs of a used cigarette, not even worth being called a butt, and dragged on it with all his strength.

  Dogs, she thought. Cowed beaten dogs whimpering at the feet of their masters.

  THESE were the loyal Sons and Daughters of the Emperor; the proud scions of samurai and ronin, who, only a few years ago, had pledged to their gods and ancestors they would willingly take their own lives and the lives of their children rather than submit to the command of white, barbarian gai-jin.

  Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

  Crawling around in garbage like common rats. And yet, she knew, whatever was happening here was nothing compared to the suffering she had just left in Nagasaki.

  Nagasaki. Her home. Her family.

  Even though once she would have died rather than acknowledge their existence, the relatives who had taken her in told her the gods must have chosen to save her, smiling sadly, as if their feeble attempts at empathy could even begin to comfort her. Surely the Gods of Nippon had spared her for her great intelligence, they said; surely they must have some great plan for her future. Perhaps to invent something that would finally end this world’s mad continual rush to war and ruin, in memory of her husband and children. They would have wanted that, they said. For her to go on and create something Great and
Good out of such world-wide devastation.

  They knew nothing. About her family or about her. Besides, there was only one god Kanoto Yoshimuta believed in anymore.

  The God of Vengeance.

  The rain had muted to a dull drizzle. Kanoto kept on walking. For some, the exercise would have been a way to dull stress. For her, it was a way to keep her rage kindled; to keep the raging fire lit within her soul. The people had failed Nippon. The military had failed Nippon. The gods-damned EMPEROR had failed Nippon. But she would not. No. If she lived to be a hundred, a thousand, a million, two names would remain forever etched into her brain.

  Hiroshima.

  Nagasaki.

  Always and forever, until America burned like they did.

  A series of odd sounds, almost animal-like, brought her out of her reverie. She was seemingly alone now, in a small alley between a few surviving buildings. In the gloom, about a hundred yards ahead, a long, irregular piece of sheet metal had been propped up at an angle alongside one of the alley walls. The sounds came from there.

  After a moment, the low, moaning grunting stopped. Two figures emerged from the makeshift shelter. The first was the mere slip of a girl, pockmarked and plain, perhaps sixteen or so. Turning, she held her hand out, palm upward, toward her companion.

  Kanoto’s eyes narrowed. “Panpan,” she breathed. A common prostitute.

  Then she thought, no, not just a common trollop. For the man who had emerged with her was no son of Nippon. Tall and blond, pink-faced and smirking, clad in the uniform of an American soldier, he was just buckling up his belt as he came out.

  The girl was a traitor. Making it her business to “assist” the invaders looking for comfort from their misfortune in being so, so far from home.

  They apparently had not seen her. Kanoto watched as the G.I., looking very self-satisfied, put back on his jacket and clamped his hat down. He gazed down at the expectant hand, laughed, and commented, in English, “You gotta be kiddin’ me. It was OK, but nothin’ to write home about. I’ve had twice as good in the Philippines.”

  The look upon her face showed the child might not have understood the words but received the meaning clearly enough. “Sonofbitch! Bastard!” she squawked in cracked, infuriated English. “Gimme money!” She reached out as if to grab him.

  With a swift backhand he slapped her to the ground. “Little Jap cunt,” he growled. “You should feel honored that a real American even thought about doing you. God knows, we should have wiped out the lot of you when we had the chance—Hey!”

  The interjection was because Kanoto had done two things. First, almost idly she had reached into her cloak, fiddling within it for a moment. Then, she had taken it back out and approached the soldier while he was giving his harangue. She gently tapped the man upon the shoulder with her other hand. Unthinkingly, he turned.

  —And Kanoto raked the nails of her other hand right across his throat.

  They dug deep into the flesh of the G.I.’s neck. He staggered back, clutching at the red daubs of blood spotting under his chin.

  “You little—!” he began, but never finished. For suddenly the soldier’s eyes glazed, rolling up like they were trying to gaze upon his scalp. Then, he toppled forward, a sawed tree in an American uniform, down unmoving into the muck.

  He was quite dead.

  Kanoto rolled the body over with her foot. “The first. You are only the first.” Then she turned to the panpan.

  The girl, her eyes wide, was finally beginning to pull herself back up. A well-aimed kick in the backside sent her down again. “You fool,” Kanoto hissed down at the struggling girl. “You miserable little fool!” She reached down to jerk the girl over, forcing her to look up at her. Quite intentionally, she was using the other hand, the one that had not touched the G.I., to do so. “How could you? How could you sell your country and your race just to pleasure them? Who made you such a woman?”

  The girl tried to speak and gagged, puking up the ground-filth she had swallowed. “Do you think I want to?” she choked out at last. “My family is dead! I have no job and no money to buy food! I’m hungry!”

  “Hungry?” She slapped the little whore’s face. “Hungry? You don’t think I’m not hungry? But do you see me disrobing for the enemy simply to fill my belly? Our sacred ancestors would have starved before humiliating themselves in such a way! But you—you’re like all the cowards in this land who would rather bow the knee to barbarians rather than fight them to the last breath! You shame our ancestors and you shame our race! Did Hiroshima, Nagasaki mean nothing to you? I should—” Slowly she drew back her other hand.

  “Really, Kanoto.”

  The interrupting voice was quiet, inoffensive. As was the figure she saw when she turned. Somehow, the limousine had arrived in the alley behind her absolutely silently. The little man stood regarding her calmly, in that clinical way he had that reminded her of the way she looked at lab animals. Disinterestedly, but without contempt. That would have been a waste of emotion.

  “You.”

  He smiled, a glint of gold-capped teeth showing. His Prussian hairstyle and immaculate Western suit was well-protected by the shield of a giant umbrella. Beside him, arms folded, stood a uniformed driver, faceless and mute, looking as though the only thoughts that ever entered his head were the ones his companion gave him.

  The little man shook his head, gazing down at the body of the former American. “Oh, Kanoto. Death is always a tragedy, is it not?” He sighed. “Well, I suppose we cannot just leave the poor fellow lying there on the ground.” He turned to the driver. “Do see if you can find a better place for him. One where he can lie in peace and quiet for a while. A considerable while.”

  Wordlessly, the driver stepped forward and, with effortless ease, lifted the body. His anonymous face appeared neither perturbed nor pleased by his assignment. In a moment, he had vanished from Kanoto’s sight, lugging his burden with him. His master, meanwhile, had returned his attention to the ladies.

  “Kindly lower your hand and release that poor girl, Kanoto,” he purred calmly. “Poison under the nails? That’s a bit beneath you, even when dealing with an American.” He smiled kindly upon the girl. Then from a pocket he proffered a thick wad of green bills.

  The panpan’s eyes goggled. “American dollars!”

  “Indeed. Go. Buy yourself food. With one caveat—you’re going to conveniently forget everything you have seen here today, yes? You shall? Oh, that is so very nice. Here, my dear.” The girl had just enough time to seize the wad with a pair of grubby hands before she was darting out of the alley.

  Kanoto glared at him bitterly. “You should not have let her go.”

  He sighed again. “Kanoto, Kanoto, Kanoto. There are more pressing problems in Nippon today than a girl who has to spread her legs for her supper. I see you have not changed. Well—perhaps you have.” He regarded her solemnly; the hard creases in her face; the gray prematurely slicing through her hair. “The years have not been kind to you, I fear, my dear. Once your beauty was legend from Kyoto to Sapporo.”

  Her eyes glittered with dagger points. “Not to mention Nagasaki. And Hiroshima. The War has been hard on all of us, old friend.”

  “Ah, too true, too true,” her companion bowed. “I, too, have suffered loss in this War.”

  “Have you, now?” Kanoto replied sardonically. She glanced toward the limo. “You seem to be navigating the shortages of Tokyo quite well, in my opinion.”

  “Ah. Do not let my apparent outward prosperity fool you, my dear. I—”

  “What do you want?”

  “ ‘Want,’ Kanoto? Why should I ‘want’ anything? Can’t two old friends simply meet by coincidence upon the street and reminisce of old times?”

  “You do not ‘do’ coincidence. You never have. I ask again—what do you want?”

  He sighed once more; this one deepest of all. “Let us go for a drive and relieve ourselves of this inclement weather, Kanoto,” he said, opening the limo door. The driver had
returned from wherever it was he had stashed the corpse. “Please, do have a seat.”

  Warily, Kanoto slipped beside him into the limo. When she sat, she practically sank into the leather-covered seat. Her companion moved in besides her. “Just around the block for now, please,” he ordered through a speaking tube. With an imperceptible purr of engines, the limo began to move.

  “May I offer you a drink to ward the weather’s chill away?” he gestured toward the built-in bar. “I have champagne and brandy; and here is a very fine Chianti. No? Well, I believe I shall have some of this Dom Perignon ’23. Very difficult to come by these days, as you might guess.”

  Kanoto remained silent.

  He paused, sipping the wine, seemingly in some thought. “I was very sorry to hear about your husband, Kanoto,” he said at last. “Despite our differences, I counted him as a true friend.”

  She shuffled, uncomfortably it seemed. “As he did you,” she admitted at last. “Although he could never understand what it was you truly wanted for Nippon.”

  “I wanted—and still want—just as he did. The cultural and economic dominance of our country over the world. We merely disagreed about method. I have always argued that we should have acted slowly and gradually to spread our ways; to let the gai-jin see the superiority of our culture and want to become a part of it, rather than be forced to. Your husband preferred…a faster method.”

  She frowned. “And should he have not?” she demanded. “We were surrounded! Once, we were happy enough to ignore the outside world and simply stay on our island. But, no, the Americans couldn’t have that. They had to ‘open’ us up to the world—a world that treated us as, as some sort of second-class creature because of the shape of our eyes and the color of our skin! It wasn’t enough they had to force us to buy their junk and scrap—they had to wink and nod behind our backs while they did it!”

  “So we went to war…and now they can wink and nod in our faces.” He put aside his glass. “Hurrying got us quite far, did it not? No, do not make faces at me, my dear. War solved nothing for us. Now we must embrace the ways of Peace and see where that leads.”