Post by vegas on Aug 5, 2012 16:18:07 GMT -5
So here's the deal. This is a short story I'm working on...it may wind up being a novella, I may convert it to a comic and try to sell it that way, I may convert it to a script. I am trying to get some feedback on it. It is not finished (maybe it's halfway done...maybe...hard to say). So read, enjoy, give me all the feedback you can, good or bad.
I sit on the train, listening to the clackety-clack of the wheels and rocking gently from side to side as the train rolls heedlessly on it’s way to Kansas City. Once more, I flatten the letter upon my knee and read it for what may well be the thousandth time.
Dear Mr. Josiah Brown,
I have followed your exploits over the past months with great interest and
was delighted to see how swiftly you brought your most recent case to so
successful a conclusion. It must have been an especially difficult case for
you as I have ascertained that you have little or no training in the ‘Greater
and Lesser Mysteries’.
It turns out, I have need of a man of your talent, skill and dogged deter-
mination. I can match what Pinkerton’s is paying you and put you up with
room and board as well. Furthermore, I can promise you problems the
like of which you will see nowhere else.
We all have a choice to make, Mr. Brown, and yours, at the moment, is a
simple one. Do you take the potential advancement and mostly boring
security cases that come from being a Pinkerton’s man…or do you step
outside the world you know and experience things that you have never
even dreamed of.
I await your prompt reply.
The letter was signed simply ‘D. L. Arkane’ and had been posted from Kansas City, Missouri, the city that even now I was rolling towards. I rub my shoulder as I read through the letter once more. My shoulder…how often I’ve rued the pain in it.
As the letter said, my name is Josiah Brown and I am three and thirty years of age. The pain in my shoulder is a souvenir from my time in the Union Army, an organization I joined in my youth. I had a fervent and patriotic desire to see the country reunited…a desire that led me to a place called Gettysburg during a bloody three days that seemed never to end. In those bloody three days I witnessed horrors that will last me a lifetime. On the second day of that bloody conflict, a confederate bullet pierced my shoulder and left me bleeding and unconscious upon the field of battle.
When I came to, some hours later, I was lying on the ground with a rough bandage upon my shoulder and my arm in a sling. The bullet, I came to learn, passed through my shoulder cleanly…and made me lucky. It’s a distinction of sorts, but not one I can recommend fully. I helped out around the infirmary and saw more butchery in the name of medicine than I cared to. Magicians within our regiment did their best to aid the healers, but by the second day of fighting their personal energies were depleted functionally reducing them to orderlies for the barbaric surgeons, or administering potions to the men most gravely injured. At the end of the third day, with Lee in retreat, I was glad to see the end of my military service as well.
However, with the end of my military service also came the end of my chosen avocation. Before signing my papers to join the Union Army, I had made my daily bread as a prize-fighter, an avocation I pursued with much success. My mother swore that I was full of blood and thunder as a child and whether I was or not, I certainly had my share of fights. The child of a brewer, I grew up strong and I studied the art of pugilism. Thus, in choosing to be a prize fighter, I relied on speed and skill in addition to my natural power. With the bullet through my shoulder, I had lost much of my quickness as well as the ability to withhold a sustained fight without experiencing extreme pain. I could still hold my own and get down and dirty if the need arose, but I would never again be a part of a prizefight.
I was somewhat despondent after the end of my military career, not for the loss of my life as a soldier, but more for the change forced upon me by my time in service. I knew the career of a prizefighter was never destined to be a long one…but I had hoped for more than I got. I felt I had been cut down in my prime.
It was with these gloomy thoughts in my head that I looked out the window of the train and saw that darkness had fallen at some point during my reverie. The letter had fallen from my knee where I had placed it and onto the floor. I picked it up, folded it closed and put it back in it’s envelope and from there, I put it back in my jacket.
With a need for sleep brought on by nightfall, the movement of the train and my own weary rememberances, I lay down upon the seat and drifted off into a dark slumber. I wish I could say I slept well…but the truth is, the little I remember from my slumber that evening was filled with the screams of the dying and the blood of the injured and a battlefield where a never ending battle raged.
I was woken by the light of morning and I bestirred myself to the dining car where I was able to find dippy eggs and toast as the most palatable meal in my price range. As I had my breakfast, I was drawn back to my thoughts of the night before.
The loss of my career as a professional pugilist and the end of my military career had left me adrift. I was fortunate enough after doing some searching to find a warehouseman in need of a night watchman and who felt injured at not having been able to serve as a Union soldier himself (though from speaking to the man, what he seemed to really want was to have been in the group of men who hunted down Lincoln’s assassin Booth and those who conspired with him to murder Lincoln). Still, it was a good berth and gave me room, board and pocket money. I often used this money to drink and while I do not recommend drinking as a way to solve one’s problems, it did indeed lead me towards the solution to my problem.
While drinking at the local tavern, I encountered a man I knew from my former regiment named Phillips. As it happened, he too had cashiered his military papers. However, he had earned a position with the prestigious Pinkerton’s agency and since we served together, he offered to put a good word in for me. And so it was that I went from being a simple night watchman at a warehouse to a respected agent and detective among the Pinkerton’s firm.
I served humbly, but with distinction and eventually was sent to Arhkam, Massachussets where a private client had hired the firm to locate his missing son. In searching for the child, I noted that he was among a rash of disappearances of children (mostly from poor families). In searching, I soon discovered the culprit to be Ephai Whately, an eccentric wizard of evil repute, who was using the children in awful ceremonies to appease dark and malignant deities. By dint of a great amount of luck, me and my fellow Pinkerton agents were able to capture Whately alive (though he somehow managed to cause his own death in prison afterwards) and rescue one of the missing children…though not the child we had been hired to find.
It was shortly after this case…and the horrors I saw attendant to it, that I received the letter. Once more, I removed it from my jacket pocket and examined it. Upon my receiving it at Pinkerton’s there were few who could tell me much of this ‘Arkane’. Some believed him to be something of an amateur detective and some believed him to be some sort of wizard. All in all, though, none had heard of him. I removed the letter from it’s envelope once more and, carrying it, returned to my seat.
From the letter itself, I could deduce a few things. It seemed certain that the man was a magical practitioner of some kind for it was they who most used the term ‘Greater and Lesser Mysteries’ while most merely called it magic. It also seemed that he had some skill as a private detective because the information he had gained about me was accurate enough and we had never met, to my knowledge.
The more I thought about the offer, the more intrigued I became. After all, how many offers does a man get to ‘experience thing he never even dreamed of.’ I figured if there was any truth to it, I wanted in.
These were the thoughts that kept me company as we approached our destination. Shortly after passing through St. Louis, it began to rain. The rain, though I did not know it at the time, was destined to complicate my arrival in Kansas City. I arrived by passenger train to an almost flooded out train station near a massive stockyard in the city of Kansas City, Missouri. My shoulder pained me greatly and when I stepped out in front of the station, I found a private cab waiting to take me and my solitary bag to meet my new employer.
The cab was the open air variety and I took my seat behind the driver with my bag next to me and the driver cracked his whip, yelled something unintelligible and took off much faster than seemed safe on the wet muddy streets. The pungent odor of the stockyards filled the air and my nostrils, my stomach turned from both the aroma and the driving. In the falling drizzle, my start here in Kansas City did not seem an auspicious one and in the pit of my stomach, I dreaded meeting my new employer.
Soon, however, the cab emerged onto a bricked over street and brought me around to the College of Physicians and Surgeons where the cabbie informed me that my employer was inside. Once inside, I noticed a balding man standing behind a small desk and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of my employer. As soon as I mentioned the name ‘D. L. Arkane’ the man blanched quite visibly and told me he was downstairs with the cadavers.
Upon hearing that my employer was among the cadavers, I was filled with a vague sense of dread. I tried to figure out what a man, and one who is no medical man, could be doing among the preserved dead. After my mind came up with several scenarios, each more horrible than the last, I decided that I was much affected by my transit from the train station to the college and that this was not the time for imagination.
So it was that I headed down the nearby stairs to locate a cold, stone room filled with small tables on which laid a variety of figures who had breathed their last, their bodies waxy in their lifelessness. Standing with his back to me was a man in a red smoking jacket wearing a white silk cravat with a simple silver pin in the shape of a diamond. He wore brown pants and had on the simple shoes of a workman. He was in his early to mid-forties with an iron grey beard and moustache and brown hair with gray streaks on the side. He did not look remarkable in the least. However, standing next to one of the corpses, he had a silver headed cane in one hand which he was using to strike the corpse repeatedly. After each strike, he would rest the cane against the slab, place his monocle over his left eye (a monocle that glowed the faintest blue in the dim light) and examine the corpse before raising his cane to strike it once more. Now, I am not a man who overly believes in and extols the virtues of our society, however, on certain issues of respect and decency, I can find myself moved to passionate outbursts and such was the case now.
‘Dear God Man!’ I cried indignantly, ‘Stop that at once or I shall have to call the law!’
The man turned around and looked me over casually before replying, ‘Go ahead and call them, Mr. Brown, it is in their best interest that I do what I do.’
‘You must be my new employer, Mr. Arkane,’ I said, ‘however, if you expect me to engage in this sort of outrage on the dead than I might as well return to Pinkerton’s!’
‘Mr. Brown, your vitriolic defense of the deceased is most heartwarming,’ he replied, ‘but also most unnecessary. While I do not normally go around pummeling the recently deceased with my walking stick, in this instance, there is reason. I am attempting to ascertain how far after death a bruise may be produced on a corpse.’
‘Good God, Man, why?’ I asked with alarm.
‘Because in my line of work, Mr. Brown,’ he replied taciturnly, ‘there are those who would often obfuscate the manner of death and it behooves me to know these things. However, this experiment, is for a moment at a standstill. Allow us to adjourn upstairs where we can begin the process of getting to know one another and I can explain to you your duties.’
With that, D. L. Arkane turned around and led the way up the stairs in the masterful way of one who is in perfect command of his surroundings. Once upstairs, he led me to a small salon used as a studying area by the students of the college. He took a seat in a large overstuffed armchair and filled a clay pipe with some tobacco and tortured into life with a wooden match. As he began to smoke, the attendant came to the door as if to say something, however, Mr. Arkane shot the man a dark look and the attendant fled back to his post like a frightened rabbit outrunning a fox.
‘So,’ Mr. Arkane began, ‘I’m sure you have some curiousity about myself and your new position. Now is the time to ask.’
‘Well, downstairs you mentioned your line of work…what is that, exactly?’ I asked.
‘I do not believe my job has a title…if anything, I am something of a consulting occultist,’ he replied. I interrupted him at once.
‘If by that you mean that you conduct séances and other such chicanery to beguile money from grieving widows I believe this conversation has reached it’s end…’ I responded. He waved his hand perfunctorily, interrupting my words.
‘Hardly, Mr. Brown. The dead, for the most part, have very little to say to the living and what secrets they take with them to the grave are almost impossible to pierce by even the greatest sorcerers,’ he took a puff from his clay pipe and blew the smoke out in a great cloud.
‘I have heard that ghosts often seek something from the living,’ I said. I don’t know why I insisted upon challenging, other than, perhaps, the scene in the basement stuck with me.
‘Ghosts are not the dead in the truest sense of the word. They are more the undead and the inability to resolve something in this life is the very condition that makes them undead. Now, please, allow me to finish, if you don’t mind. What I do, Mr. Brown, is solve crimes. Not murders, pocket-pickings or other such mundane doings…those are well within the purview of the police. No, I specialize in crimes committed either by magical means or for magical gain of some sort. Exactly the sort of crime you solved so recently in Arkham,’ he said with a nod to me.
‘I got lucky,’ I said not wanting to take credit for a work that had been a group effort, ‘but even those crimes are more the purview of the Council of Order, aren’t they?’ I asked.
‘The Council of Order would have the world believe that they are the policemen of the magickal world,’ he responded, ‘but such is far from the case. What they are mostly is a body of well-intentioned mages who, while quite adept at spell casting, know less than nothing about the actual art of detecting and solving crime. In fact, on many occasions they will present cases to me for me to apply my expertise. If you are looking for an enchantment to imprison an evil spirit into a stone for ten thousand years…they are the men who have it…but if you want to find that evil spirit in the first place…then the person you hire is me.’
‘And where do I fit in, in this world of yours,’ I asked, now curious about my own future with this man…even though I wasn’t entirely sure I had one.
‘Well, as I get on in years, I find myself less active than I would like. Besides which, I cannot always see to everything that I need to all at the same time. You would be something of an assistant investigator, occasionally you would run errands and sometimes, I would invoke you to use your combat training to protect our persons. Oddly, those engaged in magickal crime are just as likely to attempt to injure you to prevent it’s detection as any other criminal,’ he responded with a smile.
I considered his words carefully. What he described as my job duties seemed to be an odd mixture of intriguing, insulting and incredibly dangerous. I knew that on a strictly rational level, I should thank him and return to Pinkerton’s at once in the hope of reacquiring my old job. However part of me, probably the same ‘blood and thunder’ part of me that my mother swore led me to becoming a prize-fighter, was incredibly interested in the prospects of this job. I was about to ask for time to think the matter over when a voice from behind us spoke.
‘Mister Arkane, sir.’
I turned around to see a young police officer dressed in a simple black uniform standing behind me. His brass buttons and badge shone brightly and attested to the great care he took in polishing them. The legs of his pants were splashed with mud on the right hand side, a sign that he had been delivered here in a horse drawn police wagon at some speed. He had blue eyes, set somewhat closer together than seemed necessary and a tiny elfin nose. His mouth was a resolute line as he attempted to convey he was here upon some official business. Some dirty blonde hair peeked out from beneath his crested helmet and overall, he had the air of a child playing at being an officer than an actual officer of the law.
Mr. Arkane, however, looked upon the young officer with a delighted smile spreading across his face. The young officer, now assured of Mr. Arkane’s attention, began to speak in a calm, but loud voice, carefully enunciating each syllable as he spoke.
‘Detective Killian has sent me to fetch you sir, there has been a murder and Killian believes sorcery may have been involved,’ the young officer said.
‘Excellent! Lead on, young sir, my companion and I shall join you in returning to the scene of the crime with all alacrity,’ Arkane said. The young officer turned and headed back to the door and outside where presumably the police wagon waited. He let the young man get some distance on us before he began speaking to me once more.
‘Ah, Mr. Brown,’ he said, ‘I know in your heart of hearts that you remain unconvinced that you have made the correct decision in taking me up on my offer of employment. May I propose that you work this case with me and at it’s end, if you choose to return to Pinkerton’s, I shall write you a reference that will be the envy of detectives and security agents everywhere!’
‘Done,’ I replied, noticing my mood was lifting with the prospect of some work in front of me.
‘This could be a very short investigation,’ Arkane whispered as we exited the college, ‘Killian lacks a certain amount of imagination and sees sorcery in every case he cannot immediately solve. However, he has been on the right track just often enough for me not to completely discount him.’
The young officer climbed up on the front bench next to the wagon driver and Arkane and I took the seat behind them. The driver yelled ‘Giddyap’ and snapped the reins and the horses took off like a shot.
We arrived several minutes later, and disembarked from the wagon to find a rather disturbing scene. We were in a muddy alley between two buildings just off of Main Street. The body was on it’s back in the mud, a young man in his late twenties with blonde hair. The one eye remaining was a dull green, though it may have been much more vibrant in life. A cheap suit jacket had been torn from his body, and lay in the mud a few feet from his outstretched hand. Whether it had been torn from him in life or afterwards I could not tell. His buttoned shirt had been torn open so violently, the buttons had been ripped from the shirt itself and I could see one lying in the mud next to his head. His chest and face had several large bite marks…seeming almost impossibly large. On what was left of his face, the look of fear was still plainly visible.
Standing over the body was a giant of a man standing over six feet tall. He had thick red hair emerging from under his peaked cap. He wore a beige duster and a simple white shirt and denim jeans. Instead of the regulation footwear of the police force, he instead wore cowboy-style boots. A simple brass star on his duster identified him as a member of the police force and I assumed this was Detective Killian. His eyes were a muddy brown, and he wore a large red handlebar moustache. He looked more like a rancher than a detective and a hand rolled cigarette, doused by the rain, still hung from his lips.
He saw my employer and immediately, his eyes brightened.
‘Mr. Arkane,’ Killian said, ‘certainly it seems this man was killed by some sort of creature…and considering these bite marks, I assumed it was magickal in nature.’
Mr. Arkane waved him off and putting his monocle to his eye, begin to inspect the ground around the body. After several moments he looked up at Killian.
‘How many people have been through here since the body was discovered,’ he asked in an irritated and exasperated tone.
‘Just me and my men,’ Killian responded smartly.
‘Interesting,’ Arkane replied, ‘between you and them you have managed to systematically eliminate most of the evidence I would ordinarily use to solve such a crime!’ Having chastened Killian, Arkane returned to examining the ground around the body with his monocle, then he examined the body itself. Afterwards, he removed the monocle and repeated the entire process. He removed a tailor’s measure from one pocket and measured the bite marks. Then he unfolded the man’s jacket and began to inspect it thoroughly. Finally, he stood, and walked over to Killian.
‘Have you notified the Council?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Killian responded, ‘It wasn’t no natural creature that bit that young man. The Council sent Magus Hightower over who said he suspected some sort of lycanthrope.’ Arkane raised an eyebrow in response.
‘Magus Hightower,’ he began, ‘I suspect could not accurately identify my weight if it were written with charcoal upon my forehead! I also commend to you, Detective Killian, the study of actual detective work. The victim was pursued here by some form of undead…powerful undead in that they left no track that I can find even though the ground itself is solid mud. Examining the bite marks, they are scalloped at the edges indicating a creature with conical teeth. There are also traces of putrefaction in the wounds themselves. These things all taken together point sharply to the culprit. ’ Killian laughed loudly in response.
‘And if you would be so good as to identify him,’ Killian said, ‘I would happily arrest the individual in the name of Good Justice!’
‘Naming him would do no good as I strongly suspect it was less a ‘him’ and more of a ‘them’. Through the enchantment on my monocle, I see several different trails which seem to indicate a rather dangerous strain of undead. Mr. Killian, have you ever heard the Wyandot speak of the skadegamutc?’ Arkane replied.
‘Hardly,’ Killian said with a laugh, ‘I’m afraid I have little time to gather such esoteric information in the pursuit of my duties.’
Arkane shook his head slowly and sadly.
‘And that is why, Mr. Killian, that you will never rise high among the detective division. A little imagination, a little digging into esoteric details would put a world of understanding at your fingertips. And now, as to your victim, judging from the ink stains on his fingers he is almost assuredly a clerk. A card in his jacket pocket as well as a notebook in the interior pocket are stamped with the legend ‘Harley and Koch: Attorneys-at-Law’, so it seems a reasonable deduction that he probably worked for the firm, especially as the notebook contained the details of a property that the firm seems in charge of selling. In the mud near the body is a Masonic pin and there is a corresponding hole in the lapel of the jacket which serves to confirm the assumption that the young man is almost certainly a member of that august order. Other than that, sir, there is little I can give you…although considering the culprits are undead, I’m sure the case will be given over to the Order at the earliest convenience of the department, thus lightening your workload and allowing you to focus on cases requiring far less imagination.’
Having spoken this prophetic announcement, Mr. Arkane turned from Killian and walked quickly away from him. I followed afterwards and once out of earshot, I began to speak to my employer.
‘I see you have little regard or respect for the police,’ I said as I caught up to him.
‘Not true at all,’ he responded with some surprise, ‘In fact, I admire them. They, as a whole, have put themselves between crime and society and may be further required to lay down their very life to protect the same. No, I am second to none in my admiration of the local gendarmerie!’
‘Then obviously, it is Killian who excites your ire,’ I replied as he waved down a passing hansom cab.
‘Killian excites my disappointment, nothing more,’ he said as he climbed into the cab, ‘the man is smart enough, has the ability to be imaginative at times, and is always diligent. All qualities of a first rate detective, however, the man won’t push past that and study or acquire the knowledge that would make him one of the most effective anti-criminal agents in the city. At my age, I hate to see potential wasted and I am no longer so good at holding my tongue when I do.’
He gave the driver an address and the man whistled to the horses and off we went. We rode in silence as I pondered the day so far, and my would-be employer. The man certainly seemed to be observant and had a ready command of the mental tools of a detective, however, it also seemed he had little time for those who he felt behaved foolishly. His comments proved that. I couldn’t make up my mind if I liked the man yet, but he certainly intrigued me.
The cab pulled up in front of a small building. A wooden sign hanging above the open door read ‘Harley and Koch Attorneys At Law’. Arkane dismounted, paid the cabbie and went inside. I followed him.
Once inside, we saw a woman dressed in a tight fitting brown ankle length skirt and a white blouse flying about the office with much energy and vigor while it was equally apparent that she was rattled, confused and out of her depth. Her chestnut hair, which had once been pulled up into a tight workmanlike bun, was all but falling apart with strands going every which way as the bun slowly deteriorated. Her brown eyes showed tiredness and strain and as Mr. Arkane and I entered the office, she looked upon us as a mother might a child with muddy shoes entering a home with a freshly cleaned floor.
‘May I help you?’ she inquired rather sharply.
‘I should ask, madam’ Arkane replied politely, ‘much the same of you? You seem a capable and competent woman and yet you seem at your wits end? Is this the first time you’ve had to fill in for the usual clerk?’
She seemed to sigh in relief as she replied, ‘Indeed it is. Johnathan Shipley, the usual clerk, did not make it in today. I am Agnes Moore, Mr. Harley’s niece and I have only recently completed finishing school. When my uncle sent for me to come help, I thought I could fill the duties admirably…but I feel like a started several hundred steps behind and each new thing puts me further back still!’
Mr. Arkane patted Ms. Moore gently upon the hand.
‘There, there, miss,’ he said paternally, ‘We will soon have this matter cleared up and I think you shall discover you have the strength, intelligence and will to overcome the tasks put before you. May we speak to your uncle, we may have news about young Mr. Shipley?’
She smiled at Mr. Arkane’s manner, ‘Well, I will go and see, however, he seems to be in a terrible black mood about the clerk not coming in today. I cannot swear he will be in his best temper.’
With that, she turned and opened a door on the left hand side of the room. As she walked into the interior office a barrage of yelling emerged from the office. She closed the door behind her and while we could no longer make out the words of the man doing the yelling, the fact that he continued to speak to her with a raised voice was quite apparent. She emerged a short while later with a haunted look in her eyes.
‘My uncle will see you, but I pray keep it brief, he seems half mad this morning,’ she said.
We crossed through the office to the interior door and entered. Inside sat a man with an enormous stomach. His stomach was so large, his great grey vest seemed to strain against it and looked at any moment to explode and divest itself of its brass buttons in a most permanent fashion. The vest was worn over a white shirt with a black tie of the ‘Mississippi string’ variety. He wore a gray greatcoat and grey trousers which stopped at his calves revealing a pair of tall white socks. The man had a waxed handlebar moustache of a carroty color and hair to match. His green eyes boiled with ire and he looked upon Mr. Arkane and myself in a most unwelcome manner.
‘My niece,’ he began in short clipped tones, ‘seems to think you may know the whereabouts of my former clerk Mr. John
Shipley. I assume therefore, that you are perhaps his friends or relatives come to explain why he has not returned to work. I feel it is only fair to tell you then, that unless the young man is in the hospital or the morgue, his employment with the firm was terminated for failing to properly discharge his duties…’
Mr. Arkane held up a hand and Mr. Harley grew silent.
‘I assure you, we are neither kith nor kin to the aforementioned Mr. Shipley, however, I believe I can assure you that if he is not resting in the morgue as we speak, then his body is certainly being conveyed there. My name is Mr. D. L. Arkane and this man is my associate, Josiah Brown. We have recently come from investigating an unidentified corpse that I believe to have been your Mr. Shipley. Tell me, Mr. Harley, is your firm involved in the disposition of an address on McGee Street? A rather large home, if the notes I scanned in Mr. Shipley’s notebooks are any indication.’
Mr. Harley’s eyes went wide.
‘Indeed we are sir! In fact, last evening Mr. Shipley was supposed to go to that address and have the new owner, a Mister West Davidson, sign all the appropriate paperwork so we could conclude the sale,’ Mr. Harley said with an air of some surprise.
Arkane’s eyes narrowed, ‘Mr. Davidson…he is not a native to Kansas City, I’ll warrant. I would guess some retired southern officer moving up here to escape memories of the Civil War!’
Mr. Harley shook his head, ‘Not at all, Mister Arkane. Mister Davidson has been for many years a merchant. Most recently, he comes from a trip to Arabia where he brought back rugs, cloth and his new wife! Prior to his wedding, I believe he lived in Boston…but he is no southerner.’
Arkane seemed somewhat deflated and defeated, ‘Well, then, that is all well and good. I suppose it is only in your best interest to let you know that I believe you should hold no ill will against young Mr. Shipley, for if the body I examined was his…then he had indeed completed his errand for the firm before he was so viciously murdered. However, if he was to return the papers, I believe they were stolen from him.’
‘He probably left them with Mr. Davidson,’ Harley said, ‘for Mr. Davidson to fill out and return at his convenience. I will go myself to check upon them later today. It is sad to lose a clerk like Mr. Shipley. He came rather highly recommended through some friends of mine in the Masonic Order…and to lose him in so sudden a fashion…especially as he was discharging his duties for the firm. In fact, I will close the office and go check on this body…make sure it is young Shipley before I look in on Mr. Davidson.
Mister Arkane smiled wryly at me before turning once more to Mister Harley.
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that perhaps a wiser course of action would be for you and Mr. Koch to attend to the body of Mr. Shipley together and from there both of you go see your Mr. Davidson. Remember, Mr. Shipley was murdered and the house…or the selling of it…may have been the reason why. Strength in numbers, my friend.’
Mr. Arkane stood, shook Mr. Harley’s hand and we exited the office. We nodded to Ms. Moore on the way out and only once we regained the street would Mr. Arkane speak.
‘You must not think me too down upon the southern states,’ he began, ‘however, our Mr. Harley came across as one of those intemperate oafs who feels that it is perfectly okay to berate friends, family and perfect strangers when things don’t work out the way he feels they should. The way to get such a man to speak the truth is almost always to accuse him of something completely untrue…thus my little ruse about a southerner moving here to Kansas City,’ he said.
‘Why did you need to know anything about the man buying the house,’ I asked, somewhat baffled.
‘Because I suspected that somewhere in this we would find a woman of middle-eastern descent. To find that Mr. Davidson is married to one…well it does not bode well for him…or for our young Mr. Shipley,’ he responded.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ I told him.
‘It will all come out in time,’ he replied.
Arkane paused in our walk down the street to locate and fill his pipe. Once filled, he patted about his person until he located a match which he used to light it. As he lit his pipe, I noticed he was gazing off into the distance. Following his gaze, I saw a man approaching us wearing a gray duster over a simple white robe. The man was tall, standing at least a head higher than myself and he wore a grey cowboy hat popular with the frontiersmen. He carried a long staff, shod in silver and ornately carved with runes and sigils which made the eye and stomach twist.
Removing the pipe from his mouth, Arkane spoke only two words.
‘Oh, bother!’
‘What’s wrong,’ I asked, wondering if we should prepare to defend ourselves.
‘Unless I miss my guess, ‘ he replied, ‘and I almost never do, this man is most likely an underling of Magus Hightower and we are about to be called before the Council of Order.’
No sooner had he finished this dread-sounding pronouncement before the tall man was standing before us, staff planted firmly on the wooden planks of the side walk.
‘I am sent,’ he began in a deep gravelly voice which invoked images of open sepulchers, ‘to bring you before the Council of Order at the request of Magus Hightower.’
This was the first time I ever wished Mr. Arkane was wrong. Little did I know at the time, it would not be the last.
A Study in Magick
I sit on the train, listening to the clackety-clack of the wheels and rocking gently from side to side as the train rolls heedlessly on it’s way to Kansas City. Once more, I flatten the letter upon my knee and read it for what may well be the thousandth time.
Dear Mr. Josiah Brown,
I have followed your exploits over the past months with great interest and
was delighted to see how swiftly you brought your most recent case to so
successful a conclusion. It must have been an especially difficult case for
you as I have ascertained that you have little or no training in the ‘Greater
and Lesser Mysteries’.
It turns out, I have need of a man of your talent, skill and dogged deter-
mination. I can match what Pinkerton’s is paying you and put you up with
room and board as well. Furthermore, I can promise you problems the
like of which you will see nowhere else.
We all have a choice to make, Mr. Brown, and yours, at the moment, is a
simple one. Do you take the potential advancement and mostly boring
security cases that come from being a Pinkerton’s man…or do you step
outside the world you know and experience things that you have never
even dreamed of.
I await your prompt reply.
The letter was signed simply ‘D. L. Arkane’ and had been posted from Kansas City, Missouri, the city that even now I was rolling towards. I rub my shoulder as I read through the letter once more. My shoulder…how often I’ve rued the pain in it.
As the letter said, my name is Josiah Brown and I am three and thirty years of age. The pain in my shoulder is a souvenir from my time in the Union Army, an organization I joined in my youth. I had a fervent and patriotic desire to see the country reunited…a desire that led me to a place called Gettysburg during a bloody three days that seemed never to end. In those bloody three days I witnessed horrors that will last me a lifetime. On the second day of that bloody conflict, a confederate bullet pierced my shoulder and left me bleeding and unconscious upon the field of battle.
When I came to, some hours later, I was lying on the ground with a rough bandage upon my shoulder and my arm in a sling. The bullet, I came to learn, passed through my shoulder cleanly…and made me lucky. It’s a distinction of sorts, but not one I can recommend fully. I helped out around the infirmary and saw more butchery in the name of medicine than I cared to. Magicians within our regiment did their best to aid the healers, but by the second day of fighting their personal energies were depleted functionally reducing them to orderlies for the barbaric surgeons, or administering potions to the men most gravely injured. At the end of the third day, with Lee in retreat, I was glad to see the end of my military service as well.
However, with the end of my military service also came the end of my chosen avocation. Before signing my papers to join the Union Army, I had made my daily bread as a prize-fighter, an avocation I pursued with much success. My mother swore that I was full of blood and thunder as a child and whether I was or not, I certainly had my share of fights. The child of a brewer, I grew up strong and I studied the art of pugilism. Thus, in choosing to be a prize fighter, I relied on speed and skill in addition to my natural power. With the bullet through my shoulder, I had lost much of my quickness as well as the ability to withhold a sustained fight without experiencing extreme pain. I could still hold my own and get down and dirty if the need arose, but I would never again be a part of a prizefight.
I was somewhat despondent after the end of my military career, not for the loss of my life as a soldier, but more for the change forced upon me by my time in service. I knew the career of a prizefighter was never destined to be a long one…but I had hoped for more than I got. I felt I had been cut down in my prime.
It was with these gloomy thoughts in my head that I looked out the window of the train and saw that darkness had fallen at some point during my reverie. The letter had fallen from my knee where I had placed it and onto the floor. I picked it up, folded it closed and put it back in it’s envelope and from there, I put it back in my jacket.
With a need for sleep brought on by nightfall, the movement of the train and my own weary rememberances, I lay down upon the seat and drifted off into a dark slumber. I wish I could say I slept well…but the truth is, the little I remember from my slumber that evening was filled with the screams of the dying and the blood of the injured and a battlefield where a never ending battle raged.
*****
I was woken by the light of morning and I bestirred myself to the dining car where I was able to find dippy eggs and toast as the most palatable meal in my price range. As I had my breakfast, I was drawn back to my thoughts of the night before.
The loss of my career as a professional pugilist and the end of my military career had left me adrift. I was fortunate enough after doing some searching to find a warehouseman in need of a night watchman and who felt injured at not having been able to serve as a Union soldier himself (though from speaking to the man, what he seemed to really want was to have been in the group of men who hunted down Lincoln’s assassin Booth and those who conspired with him to murder Lincoln). Still, it was a good berth and gave me room, board and pocket money. I often used this money to drink and while I do not recommend drinking as a way to solve one’s problems, it did indeed lead me towards the solution to my problem.
While drinking at the local tavern, I encountered a man I knew from my former regiment named Phillips. As it happened, he too had cashiered his military papers. However, he had earned a position with the prestigious Pinkerton’s agency and since we served together, he offered to put a good word in for me. And so it was that I went from being a simple night watchman at a warehouse to a respected agent and detective among the Pinkerton’s firm.
I served humbly, but with distinction and eventually was sent to Arhkam, Massachussets where a private client had hired the firm to locate his missing son. In searching for the child, I noted that he was among a rash of disappearances of children (mostly from poor families). In searching, I soon discovered the culprit to be Ephai Whately, an eccentric wizard of evil repute, who was using the children in awful ceremonies to appease dark and malignant deities. By dint of a great amount of luck, me and my fellow Pinkerton agents were able to capture Whately alive (though he somehow managed to cause his own death in prison afterwards) and rescue one of the missing children…though not the child we had been hired to find.
It was shortly after this case…and the horrors I saw attendant to it, that I received the letter. Once more, I removed it from my jacket pocket and examined it. Upon my receiving it at Pinkerton’s there were few who could tell me much of this ‘Arkane’. Some believed him to be something of an amateur detective and some believed him to be some sort of wizard. All in all, though, none had heard of him. I removed the letter from it’s envelope once more and, carrying it, returned to my seat.
From the letter itself, I could deduce a few things. It seemed certain that the man was a magical practitioner of some kind for it was they who most used the term ‘Greater and Lesser Mysteries’ while most merely called it magic. It also seemed that he had some skill as a private detective because the information he had gained about me was accurate enough and we had never met, to my knowledge.
The more I thought about the offer, the more intrigued I became. After all, how many offers does a man get to ‘experience thing he never even dreamed of.’ I figured if there was any truth to it, I wanted in.
These were the thoughts that kept me company as we approached our destination. Shortly after passing through St. Louis, it began to rain. The rain, though I did not know it at the time, was destined to complicate my arrival in Kansas City. I arrived by passenger train to an almost flooded out train station near a massive stockyard in the city of Kansas City, Missouri. My shoulder pained me greatly and when I stepped out in front of the station, I found a private cab waiting to take me and my solitary bag to meet my new employer.
The cab was the open air variety and I took my seat behind the driver with my bag next to me and the driver cracked his whip, yelled something unintelligible and took off much faster than seemed safe on the wet muddy streets. The pungent odor of the stockyards filled the air and my nostrils, my stomach turned from both the aroma and the driving. In the falling drizzle, my start here in Kansas City did not seem an auspicious one and in the pit of my stomach, I dreaded meeting my new employer.
Soon, however, the cab emerged onto a bricked over street and brought me around to the College of Physicians and Surgeons where the cabbie informed me that my employer was inside. Once inside, I noticed a balding man standing behind a small desk and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of my employer. As soon as I mentioned the name ‘D. L. Arkane’ the man blanched quite visibly and told me he was downstairs with the cadavers.
Upon hearing that my employer was among the cadavers, I was filled with a vague sense of dread. I tried to figure out what a man, and one who is no medical man, could be doing among the preserved dead. After my mind came up with several scenarios, each more horrible than the last, I decided that I was much affected by my transit from the train station to the college and that this was not the time for imagination.
So it was that I headed down the nearby stairs to locate a cold, stone room filled with small tables on which laid a variety of figures who had breathed their last, their bodies waxy in their lifelessness. Standing with his back to me was a man in a red smoking jacket wearing a white silk cravat with a simple silver pin in the shape of a diamond. He wore brown pants and had on the simple shoes of a workman. He was in his early to mid-forties with an iron grey beard and moustache and brown hair with gray streaks on the side. He did not look remarkable in the least. However, standing next to one of the corpses, he had a silver headed cane in one hand which he was using to strike the corpse repeatedly. After each strike, he would rest the cane against the slab, place his monocle over his left eye (a monocle that glowed the faintest blue in the dim light) and examine the corpse before raising his cane to strike it once more. Now, I am not a man who overly believes in and extols the virtues of our society, however, on certain issues of respect and decency, I can find myself moved to passionate outbursts and such was the case now.
‘Dear God Man!’ I cried indignantly, ‘Stop that at once or I shall have to call the law!’
The man turned around and looked me over casually before replying, ‘Go ahead and call them, Mr. Brown, it is in their best interest that I do what I do.’
‘You must be my new employer, Mr. Arkane,’ I said, ‘however, if you expect me to engage in this sort of outrage on the dead than I might as well return to Pinkerton’s!’
‘Mr. Brown, your vitriolic defense of the deceased is most heartwarming,’ he replied, ‘but also most unnecessary. While I do not normally go around pummeling the recently deceased with my walking stick, in this instance, there is reason. I am attempting to ascertain how far after death a bruise may be produced on a corpse.’
‘Good God, Man, why?’ I asked with alarm.
‘Because in my line of work, Mr. Brown,’ he replied taciturnly, ‘there are those who would often obfuscate the manner of death and it behooves me to know these things. However, this experiment, is for a moment at a standstill. Allow us to adjourn upstairs where we can begin the process of getting to know one another and I can explain to you your duties.’
With that, D. L. Arkane turned around and led the way up the stairs in the masterful way of one who is in perfect command of his surroundings. Once upstairs, he led me to a small salon used as a studying area by the students of the college. He took a seat in a large overstuffed armchair and filled a clay pipe with some tobacco and tortured into life with a wooden match. As he began to smoke, the attendant came to the door as if to say something, however, Mr. Arkane shot the man a dark look and the attendant fled back to his post like a frightened rabbit outrunning a fox.
‘So,’ Mr. Arkane began, ‘I’m sure you have some curiousity about myself and your new position. Now is the time to ask.’
‘Well, downstairs you mentioned your line of work…what is that, exactly?’ I asked.
‘I do not believe my job has a title…if anything, I am something of a consulting occultist,’ he replied. I interrupted him at once.
‘If by that you mean that you conduct séances and other such chicanery to beguile money from grieving widows I believe this conversation has reached it’s end…’ I responded. He waved his hand perfunctorily, interrupting my words.
‘Hardly, Mr. Brown. The dead, for the most part, have very little to say to the living and what secrets they take with them to the grave are almost impossible to pierce by even the greatest sorcerers,’ he took a puff from his clay pipe and blew the smoke out in a great cloud.
‘I have heard that ghosts often seek something from the living,’ I said. I don’t know why I insisted upon challenging, other than, perhaps, the scene in the basement stuck with me.
‘Ghosts are not the dead in the truest sense of the word. They are more the undead and the inability to resolve something in this life is the very condition that makes them undead. Now, please, allow me to finish, if you don’t mind. What I do, Mr. Brown, is solve crimes. Not murders, pocket-pickings or other such mundane doings…those are well within the purview of the police. No, I specialize in crimes committed either by magical means or for magical gain of some sort. Exactly the sort of crime you solved so recently in Arkham,’ he said with a nod to me.
‘I got lucky,’ I said not wanting to take credit for a work that had been a group effort, ‘but even those crimes are more the purview of the Council of Order, aren’t they?’ I asked.
‘The Council of Order would have the world believe that they are the policemen of the magickal world,’ he responded, ‘but such is far from the case. What they are mostly is a body of well-intentioned mages who, while quite adept at spell casting, know less than nothing about the actual art of detecting and solving crime. In fact, on many occasions they will present cases to me for me to apply my expertise. If you are looking for an enchantment to imprison an evil spirit into a stone for ten thousand years…they are the men who have it…but if you want to find that evil spirit in the first place…then the person you hire is me.’
‘And where do I fit in, in this world of yours,’ I asked, now curious about my own future with this man…even though I wasn’t entirely sure I had one.
‘Well, as I get on in years, I find myself less active than I would like. Besides which, I cannot always see to everything that I need to all at the same time. You would be something of an assistant investigator, occasionally you would run errands and sometimes, I would invoke you to use your combat training to protect our persons. Oddly, those engaged in magickal crime are just as likely to attempt to injure you to prevent it’s detection as any other criminal,’ he responded with a smile.
I considered his words carefully. What he described as my job duties seemed to be an odd mixture of intriguing, insulting and incredibly dangerous. I knew that on a strictly rational level, I should thank him and return to Pinkerton’s at once in the hope of reacquiring my old job. However part of me, probably the same ‘blood and thunder’ part of me that my mother swore led me to becoming a prize-fighter, was incredibly interested in the prospects of this job. I was about to ask for time to think the matter over when a voice from behind us spoke.
‘Mister Arkane, sir.’
I turned around to see a young police officer dressed in a simple black uniform standing behind me. His brass buttons and badge shone brightly and attested to the great care he took in polishing them. The legs of his pants were splashed with mud on the right hand side, a sign that he had been delivered here in a horse drawn police wagon at some speed. He had blue eyes, set somewhat closer together than seemed necessary and a tiny elfin nose. His mouth was a resolute line as he attempted to convey he was here upon some official business. Some dirty blonde hair peeked out from beneath his crested helmet and overall, he had the air of a child playing at being an officer than an actual officer of the law.
Mr. Arkane, however, looked upon the young officer with a delighted smile spreading across his face. The young officer, now assured of Mr. Arkane’s attention, began to speak in a calm, but loud voice, carefully enunciating each syllable as he spoke.
‘Detective Killian has sent me to fetch you sir, there has been a murder and Killian believes sorcery may have been involved,’ the young officer said.
‘Excellent! Lead on, young sir, my companion and I shall join you in returning to the scene of the crime with all alacrity,’ Arkane said. The young officer turned and headed back to the door and outside where presumably the police wagon waited. He let the young man get some distance on us before he began speaking to me once more.
‘Ah, Mr. Brown,’ he said, ‘I know in your heart of hearts that you remain unconvinced that you have made the correct decision in taking me up on my offer of employment. May I propose that you work this case with me and at it’s end, if you choose to return to Pinkerton’s, I shall write you a reference that will be the envy of detectives and security agents everywhere!’
‘Done,’ I replied, noticing my mood was lifting with the prospect of some work in front of me.
‘This could be a very short investigation,’ Arkane whispered as we exited the college, ‘Killian lacks a certain amount of imagination and sees sorcery in every case he cannot immediately solve. However, he has been on the right track just often enough for me not to completely discount him.’
The young officer climbed up on the front bench next to the wagon driver and Arkane and I took the seat behind them. The driver yelled ‘Giddyap’ and snapped the reins and the horses took off like a shot.
*****
We arrived several minutes later, and disembarked from the wagon to find a rather disturbing scene. We were in a muddy alley between two buildings just off of Main Street. The body was on it’s back in the mud, a young man in his late twenties with blonde hair. The one eye remaining was a dull green, though it may have been much more vibrant in life. A cheap suit jacket had been torn from his body, and lay in the mud a few feet from his outstretched hand. Whether it had been torn from him in life or afterwards I could not tell. His buttoned shirt had been torn open so violently, the buttons had been ripped from the shirt itself and I could see one lying in the mud next to his head. His chest and face had several large bite marks…seeming almost impossibly large. On what was left of his face, the look of fear was still plainly visible.
Standing over the body was a giant of a man standing over six feet tall. He had thick red hair emerging from under his peaked cap. He wore a beige duster and a simple white shirt and denim jeans. Instead of the regulation footwear of the police force, he instead wore cowboy-style boots. A simple brass star on his duster identified him as a member of the police force and I assumed this was Detective Killian. His eyes were a muddy brown, and he wore a large red handlebar moustache. He looked more like a rancher than a detective and a hand rolled cigarette, doused by the rain, still hung from his lips.
He saw my employer and immediately, his eyes brightened.
‘Mr. Arkane,’ Killian said, ‘certainly it seems this man was killed by some sort of creature…and considering these bite marks, I assumed it was magickal in nature.’
Mr. Arkane waved him off and putting his monocle to his eye, begin to inspect the ground around the body. After several moments he looked up at Killian.
‘How many people have been through here since the body was discovered,’ he asked in an irritated and exasperated tone.
‘Just me and my men,’ Killian responded smartly.
‘Interesting,’ Arkane replied, ‘between you and them you have managed to systematically eliminate most of the evidence I would ordinarily use to solve such a crime!’ Having chastened Killian, Arkane returned to examining the ground around the body with his monocle, then he examined the body itself. Afterwards, he removed the monocle and repeated the entire process. He removed a tailor’s measure from one pocket and measured the bite marks. Then he unfolded the man’s jacket and began to inspect it thoroughly. Finally, he stood, and walked over to Killian.
‘Have you notified the Council?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Killian responded, ‘It wasn’t no natural creature that bit that young man. The Council sent Magus Hightower over who said he suspected some sort of lycanthrope.’ Arkane raised an eyebrow in response.
‘Magus Hightower,’ he began, ‘I suspect could not accurately identify my weight if it were written with charcoal upon my forehead! I also commend to you, Detective Killian, the study of actual detective work. The victim was pursued here by some form of undead…powerful undead in that they left no track that I can find even though the ground itself is solid mud. Examining the bite marks, they are scalloped at the edges indicating a creature with conical teeth. There are also traces of putrefaction in the wounds themselves. These things all taken together point sharply to the culprit. ’ Killian laughed loudly in response.
‘And if you would be so good as to identify him,’ Killian said, ‘I would happily arrest the individual in the name of Good Justice!’
‘Naming him would do no good as I strongly suspect it was less a ‘him’ and more of a ‘them’. Through the enchantment on my monocle, I see several different trails which seem to indicate a rather dangerous strain of undead. Mr. Killian, have you ever heard the Wyandot speak of the skadegamutc?’ Arkane replied.
‘Hardly,’ Killian said with a laugh, ‘I’m afraid I have little time to gather such esoteric information in the pursuit of my duties.’
Arkane shook his head slowly and sadly.
‘And that is why, Mr. Killian, that you will never rise high among the detective division. A little imagination, a little digging into esoteric details would put a world of understanding at your fingertips. And now, as to your victim, judging from the ink stains on his fingers he is almost assuredly a clerk. A card in his jacket pocket as well as a notebook in the interior pocket are stamped with the legend ‘Harley and Koch: Attorneys-at-Law’, so it seems a reasonable deduction that he probably worked for the firm, especially as the notebook contained the details of a property that the firm seems in charge of selling. In the mud near the body is a Masonic pin and there is a corresponding hole in the lapel of the jacket which serves to confirm the assumption that the young man is almost certainly a member of that august order. Other than that, sir, there is little I can give you…although considering the culprits are undead, I’m sure the case will be given over to the Order at the earliest convenience of the department, thus lightening your workload and allowing you to focus on cases requiring far less imagination.’
Having spoken this prophetic announcement, Mr. Arkane turned from Killian and walked quickly away from him. I followed afterwards and once out of earshot, I began to speak to my employer.
‘I see you have little regard or respect for the police,’ I said as I caught up to him.
‘Not true at all,’ he responded with some surprise, ‘In fact, I admire them. They, as a whole, have put themselves between crime and society and may be further required to lay down their very life to protect the same. No, I am second to none in my admiration of the local gendarmerie!’
‘Then obviously, it is Killian who excites your ire,’ I replied as he waved down a passing hansom cab.
‘Killian excites my disappointment, nothing more,’ he said as he climbed into the cab, ‘the man is smart enough, has the ability to be imaginative at times, and is always diligent. All qualities of a first rate detective, however, the man won’t push past that and study or acquire the knowledge that would make him one of the most effective anti-criminal agents in the city. At my age, I hate to see potential wasted and I am no longer so good at holding my tongue when I do.’
He gave the driver an address and the man whistled to the horses and off we went. We rode in silence as I pondered the day so far, and my would-be employer. The man certainly seemed to be observant and had a ready command of the mental tools of a detective, however, it also seemed he had little time for those who he felt behaved foolishly. His comments proved that. I couldn’t make up my mind if I liked the man yet, but he certainly intrigued me.
*****
The cab pulled up in front of a small building. A wooden sign hanging above the open door read ‘Harley and Koch Attorneys At Law’. Arkane dismounted, paid the cabbie and went inside. I followed him.
Once inside, we saw a woman dressed in a tight fitting brown ankle length skirt and a white blouse flying about the office with much energy and vigor while it was equally apparent that she was rattled, confused and out of her depth. Her chestnut hair, which had once been pulled up into a tight workmanlike bun, was all but falling apart with strands going every which way as the bun slowly deteriorated. Her brown eyes showed tiredness and strain and as Mr. Arkane and I entered the office, she looked upon us as a mother might a child with muddy shoes entering a home with a freshly cleaned floor.
‘May I help you?’ she inquired rather sharply.
‘I should ask, madam’ Arkane replied politely, ‘much the same of you? You seem a capable and competent woman and yet you seem at your wits end? Is this the first time you’ve had to fill in for the usual clerk?’
She seemed to sigh in relief as she replied, ‘Indeed it is. Johnathan Shipley, the usual clerk, did not make it in today. I am Agnes Moore, Mr. Harley’s niece and I have only recently completed finishing school. When my uncle sent for me to come help, I thought I could fill the duties admirably…but I feel like a started several hundred steps behind and each new thing puts me further back still!’
Mr. Arkane patted Ms. Moore gently upon the hand.
‘There, there, miss,’ he said paternally, ‘We will soon have this matter cleared up and I think you shall discover you have the strength, intelligence and will to overcome the tasks put before you. May we speak to your uncle, we may have news about young Mr. Shipley?’
She smiled at Mr. Arkane’s manner, ‘Well, I will go and see, however, he seems to be in a terrible black mood about the clerk not coming in today. I cannot swear he will be in his best temper.’
With that, she turned and opened a door on the left hand side of the room. As she walked into the interior office a barrage of yelling emerged from the office. She closed the door behind her and while we could no longer make out the words of the man doing the yelling, the fact that he continued to speak to her with a raised voice was quite apparent. She emerged a short while later with a haunted look in her eyes.
‘My uncle will see you, but I pray keep it brief, he seems half mad this morning,’ she said.
We crossed through the office to the interior door and entered. Inside sat a man with an enormous stomach. His stomach was so large, his great grey vest seemed to strain against it and looked at any moment to explode and divest itself of its brass buttons in a most permanent fashion. The vest was worn over a white shirt with a black tie of the ‘Mississippi string’ variety. He wore a gray greatcoat and grey trousers which stopped at his calves revealing a pair of tall white socks. The man had a waxed handlebar moustache of a carroty color and hair to match. His green eyes boiled with ire and he looked upon Mr. Arkane and myself in a most unwelcome manner.
‘My niece,’ he began in short clipped tones, ‘seems to think you may know the whereabouts of my former clerk Mr. John
Shipley. I assume therefore, that you are perhaps his friends or relatives come to explain why he has not returned to work. I feel it is only fair to tell you then, that unless the young man is in the hospital or the morgue, his employment with the firm was terminated for failing to properly discharge his duties…’
Mr. Arkane held up a hand and Mr. Harley grew silent.
‘I assure you, we are neither kith nor kin to the aforementioned Mr. Shipley, however, I believe I can assure you that if he is not resting in the morgue as we speak, then his body is certainly being conveyed there. My name is Mr. D. L. Arkane and this man is my associate, Josiah Brown. We have recently come from investigating an unidentified corpse that I believe to have been your Mr. Shipley. Tell me, Mr. Harley, is your firm involved in the disposition of an address on McGee Street? A rather large home, if the notes I scanned in Mr. Shipley’s notebooks are any indication.’
Mr. Harley’s eyes went wide.
‘Indeed we are sir! In fact, last evening Mr. Shipley was supposed to go to that address and have the new owner, a Mister West Davidson, sign all the appropriate paperwork so we could conclude the sale,’ Mr. Harley said with an air of some surprise.
Arkane’s eyes narrowed, ‘Mr. Davidson…he is not a native to Kansas City, I’ll warrant. I would guess some retired southern officer moving up here to escape memories of the Civil War!’
Mr. Harley shook his head, ‘Not at all, Mister Arkane. Mister Davidson has been for many years a merchant. Most recently, he comes from a trip to Arabia where he brought back rugs, cloth and his new wife! Prior to his wedding, I believe he lived in Boston…but he is no southerner.’
Arkane seemed somewhat deflated and defeated, ‘Well, then, that is all well and good. I suppose it is only in your best interest to let you know that I believe you should hold no ill will against young Mr. Shipley, for if the body I examined was his…then he had indeed completed his errand for the firm before he was so viciously murdered. However, if he was to return the papers, I believe they were stolen from him.’
‘He probably left them with Mr. Davidson,’ Harley said, ‘for Mr. Davidson to fill out and return at his convenience. I will go myself to check upon them later today. It is sad to lose a clerk like Mr. Shipley. He came rather highly recommended through some friends of mine in the Masonic Order…and to lose him in so sudden a fashion…especially as he was discharging his duties for the firm. In fact, I will close the office and go check on this body…make sure it is young Shipley before I look in on Mr. Davidson.
Mister Arkane smiled wryly at me before turning once more to Mister Harley.
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that perhaps a wiser course of action would be for you and Mr. Koch to attend to the body of Mr. Shipley together and from there both of you go see your Mr. Davidson. Remember, Mr. Shipley was murdered and the house…or the selling of it…may have been the reason why. Strength in numbers, my friend.’
Mr. Arkane stood, shook Mr. Harley’s hand and we exited the office. We nodded to Ms. Moore on the way out and only once we regained the street would Mr. Arkane speak.
‘You must not think me too down upon the southern states,’ he began, ‘however, our Mr. Harley came across as one of those intemperate oafs who feels that it is perfectly okay to berate friends, family and perfect strangers when things don’t work out the way he feels they should. The way to get such a man to speak the truth is almost always to accuse him of something completely untrue…thus my little ruse about a southerner moving here to Kansas City,’ he said.
‘Why did you need to know anything about the man buying the house,’ I asked, somewhat baffled.
‘Because I suspected that somewhere in this we would find a woman of middle-eastern descent. To find that Mr. Davidson is married to one…well it does not bode well for him…or for our young Mr. Shipley,’ he responded.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ I told him.
‘It will all come out in time,’ he replied.
Arkane paused in our walk down the street to locate and fill his pipe. Once filled, he patted about his person until he located a match which he used to light it. As he lit his pipe, I noticed he was gazing off into the distance. Following his gaze, I saw a man approaching us wearing a gray duster over a simple white robe. The man was tall, standing at least a head higher than myself and he wore a grey cowboy hat popular with the frontiersmen. He carried a long staff, shod in silver and ornately carved with runes and sigils which made the eye and stomach twist.
Removing the pipe from his mouth, Arkane spoke only two words.
‘Oh, bother!’
‘What’s wrong,’ I asked, wondering if we should prepare to defend ourselves.
‘Unless I miss my guess, ‘ he replied, ‘and I almost never do, this man is most likely an underling of Magus Hightower and we are about to be called before the Council of Order.’
No sooner had he finished this dread-sounding pronouncement before the tall man was standing before us, staff planted firmly on the wooden planks of the side walk.
‘I am sent,’ he began in a deep gravelly voice which invoked images of open sepulchers, ‘to bring you before the Council of Order at the request of Magus Hightower.’
This was the first time I ever wished Mr. Arkane was wrong. Little did I know at the time, it would not be the last.
*****