Mark Gatiss - The Vesuvius Club

Charlie stepped gingerly into the room, his mouth agape. He held up a hand towards the great fat pipes, then looked back towards me, smiling delightedly.

«Feel them, Mr Box!» he cried. «They’re warm.»

It was true. Whatever strange machinery had been erected here, it brought light and heat to the dead ruins.

«Quite something, ain’t it?» said Charlie.

A footstep. Then the voice, familiar to me yet strangely elusive.

«Isn’t it just?» said the voice from the shadows.

Both Charlie and I turned towards the sound.

Framed in the doorway stood a beautiful figure, resplendent in a crimson velvet gown. Her auburn hair was piled up and her dark-eyes lined with kohl as I had first seen them that night in the Vesuvius Club.

«Venus!» cried Charlie.

«Good evening, my dear,» I said mildly.

The gorgeous creature inclined her head slightly. «Charlie. Signor Box. Such a pleasure to meet you again,» she said gaily, clapping her hands together and advancing into the room. «Let us have wine! Despite the improvements, it is still chill down here and one feels the damp.» The Italian accent seemed to have gone west.

Venus strode to a fat-legged mahogany table and poured three glasses of wine rather carelessly.

«What’s going on, Venus?» said Charlie plaintively. «That fella of yours has gone too far this time. You’ve got to throw your lot in with us.»

Venus smiled. «He’s gone too far, has he, Charlie?»

She offered me a glass but I shook my head.

«We’ve supped, thanks,» I said curtly. «Now, if you come quietly, I swear I will do what I can for you.»

Venus paused with a crystal goblet of dark wine halfway to her lips and began to chuckle, her laugh filling the ancient room. «You will do what you can for me?» she roared. «Where? When?»

«At your trial,» I said evenly.

«My trial?»

«Yours and that of the villain you call your lover.»

«My dear sir, you are quite comical. For what should… we… stand trial?»

«For the attempted murders of Professors Sash, Verdigris and Quibble.»

«Pooh! They are alive! What have I done but give them a little trip abroad, gratis.»

«And for the abduction of Mrs Midsomer Knight.»

«Safe and well and here also.»

«Well then, for the murder of Jocelyn Poop of His Majesty’s Diplomatic.»

«Ah well,» said a new voice. «I’m afraid I must plead guilty to that one.»

A man walked into the room, also dressed in crimson robes, his face covered by one of the masks I had seen at the Vesuvius Club.

Venus took his hand and kissed it. He removed his mask with the other hand and smiled. «Good evening, Mr Box,» said Cretaceous Unmann, raising a pistol.

«I’ll take that drink now, if I may,» I said quietly.

I sank a goblet of wine in one draft. «Won’t you join me?» I asked Unmann, proffering a glass. «It’s really very fine.»

Unmann shook his head, a sly smile playing over his lips.

«Well then,» I said, «Perhaps you’d like to tell me what the blazes you’re doing burrowing beneath Pompeii and who it is that you’re both working for.»

Unmann smiled again and cocked an eyebrow at Venus. «Shall I explain?»

«No,» she replied. «Let us allow that honour to pass to the genius behind this whole scheme. A greater mind, even, than his sainted father who the world so cruelly wronged. Please say buonasera once more, Mr Box, to the man you know only as Signor Victor. Signor Victor Morraine !»

I turned instinctively, expecting to see the slim, striking young man from the funicular railway entering the cavern but there was no sign of anyone. I turned back when I heard a faint rustling sound.

Venus was untying her hair so that it fell in heavy, auburn loops about her neck. With a jerk of her hand, the hair flopped to the floor. A wig! She stared at me, grinning wildly, her dark, dark eyes ablaze with triumph, then hoisted up her crimson skirts, exposing bare, muscular legs and what we doctors call a cock and balls.

«Christ Almighty!» was all I had to say.

«Venus!» gasped Charlie. «You’re a boy!»

AND so «she» was. The beautiful Venus was the youth I had been introduced to as Victor. But Victor Morraine! This was almost more extraordinary. The dazzling creature inclined his head and moved towards my manservant, skirts swishing over the cold stone floor. «Oh, Charlie. If only you had been true to me!»

The boy was staring at him, open-mouthed. Venus flopped down in the armchair. Unmann continued to cover Charlie and me with the pistol.

«I suppose it takes all sorts,» I said philosophically. «Really, Unmann, I can’t see what you can gain by helping this… person with whatever pathetic revenge he’s planning.»

Unmann laughed, no longer the silly ass. His composure was quite chilling. «You can have no conception of the scale of Venus’s ambition. But you’re right in one respect, Mr Box. It is revenge that he seeks.»

I twiddled the stem of the goblet between my fingers. «Do tell.» In my experience, that’s all it takes.

Venus’s eyes blazed. «Yes! I want revenge! Revenge on those treacherous men who earned their reputations from my father’s work yet had not the brains to complete it! Revenge against the woman who betrayed him and broke his fragile mind. They shall all suffer.»

I cocked my head to one side and waved a hand around me. «But this is all very elaborate, isn’t it? What exactly do you have in mind for this „suffering“?»

Venus’s face set into a hard mask as though he were gazing back through the years. «My father was a great man — a visionary. He lacked only the discipline to see his work through to its logical conclusion. Fortunately his genius was passed on to me! And I have completed his work.»

I felt suddenly cold. «Completed? You mean that’s what all this is?»

«It is. Heat and light from the immense power of the volcano.»

«Very commendable,» I said levelly. «I presume you intend to help the world?»

Unmann chuckled. «Yes — to understand its mistakes.»

I sighed. «I imagine you intend to hold civilization to ransom or something equally dreary.»

Venus rose and held out his arms wide, so that the velvet hung down from his marble-white flesh like the wings of a monstrous bird. «We stand in the ruins of a once-teeming city. A city destroyed by the might of the great volcano, by the wrath of the very earth herself! But consider for a moment, Signor Box, the geology of this great country. From north to south, she is encircled by a ring of fire, a network of volcanoes erupting like sores on her beautiful form. Etna, Stromboli, Ischia, Vulcano»

«Campi Flegri! Cimino! Vulsini!» chimed in Unmann.

«And greatest of all,» cried Venus breathlessly. «Vesuvius!»

I blinked. Thought a little. Thought a little more. «What are you saying?»

«An immense explosive device placed within her very bowels…» whispered Venus. «A weapon of such incalculable power that the world will shudder at the very thought of it!»

«And when the bomb goes off…» I cried, appalled, «a chain reaction!»

«A stupendous river of fire will erupt,» crowed Venus. «Tearing apart the rock, consuming the seas, plunging this kingdom into oblivion for ever!»

«My God!»

«You’re out of your bloody mind!» cried Charlie.

«But what do you gain from such an act?» I demanded. «The destruction of your entire country? Centuries of culture?»

Venus’s eyes grew brighter yet. «I owe this country nothing! It was the arena for my father’s dissolution and ruin. I only know that I must show those traitors that Maxwell Morraine was the greatest scientist the world has ever seen! They, and all this sordid land, shall perish in the flames of my vengeance.»