Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘This is Jack the Ripper territory,’ I said to Hugo Rune.

And the great man smiled and said, ‘Don’t get me going on him.’ And then he pointed with his cane and said, ‘That way, down the Radcliffe Highway.’

At length we reached a rather delightful house. It had blooming wisteria all about its door, which considering the month of the year it really should not have. And it had flowering chrysanthemums and hollyhocks and tulips, roses and Rafflesia arnoldii in its neat little trimmed front garden. The house was constructed of London Stock, beneath a roof of Northampton Slate. And there was something altogether musical about it. The front door was of Henry wood and the windows, Philip glass.

I noted also a doorstop of Sly stone and that the afternoon sun angling down gave the front garden the look of a dusty spring field.

‘Stop that as soon as you like!’ said Mr Rune, and he rapped with his stout stick on the door.

The lady who answered his rappings was beauteous to behold. Her hair was simply red and her coat was deacon blue. It seemed we had just caught her as she was on her way out, and her face was flushed and pink.

Mr Rune made faces at me and introduced himself.

‘I know who you are,’ I told him.

‘I am introducing myself to this lady,’ he said.

‘I am sorry. I got confused.’ I scuffed my heels upon the doorstop and noticed that my brogues where Arthur brown.

The beauteous lady bade us enter with many urgent gestures and we followed her inside.

Mr Rune got straight down to business. ‘Show us to the cellar,’ he said. ‘There is no time to waste.’

We were directed to a door beneath the stairs. ‘Down there,’ said the lady. ‘I will not join you, if you don’t mind. I find the professor’s laboratory an uncomfortable place to be.’

‘The ceiling is very low?’ I suggested.

‘Its ambience,’ said the lady and she shivered. ‘And now I have to go, I am in a terrible hurry. Please make sure the front door is secure when you leave.’

‘Farewell, then. My companion and I will go down without you,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Rizla, you first, I think.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Why me?’

But Mr Rune had opened the door and thrust me through the opening. There was a string that hung down in my face and I gave that string a pull. A narrow staircase was illuminated and I stepped cautiously down it.

‘This is not quite what I expected,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘I thought that a professor working on a project of national importance would probably live in a big Georgian house with a laboratory that looked a bit like your sitting room, but with more test tubes.’

‘You did?’

‘And retorts.’

‘You did?’

‘And Bunsen burners too. Oh, and litmus paper. I have always loved litmus paper. The blue, you understand, never the pink.’

‘Quite so, never the pink.’

And then we came to a door. A very sturdy door and a brass one also. This door had clearly been jemmied open and its lock was all broken in.

Mr Rune pushed past me, pushed upon the door, found a light switch, flicked it on.

A most curious room came into view and one with a very low ceiling. It certainly did not resemble my idea of a scientist’s laboratory. There were no test tubes, nor retorts, nor Bunsen burners, nor litmus paper of any colour or hue. There was a desk and there were books. And there were more books and there were papers too. And there were more papers and even more papers and, from what I could see of these papers, they all appeared to be covered in mathematical calculations.

‘He made a lot of notes,’ I observed. ‘He was clearly seeking to see if things added up.’ And I did a kind of foolish titter. And for my pains received a light cuff to the forehead.

‘Ouch,’ I said.

‘Buffoon,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘Oh look,’ I said. ‘His clothes, they are still laid out on the floor.’

Hugo Rune gazed down at the clothes and said, ‘That is most suggestive.’

‘Perhaps to you,’ I said, ‘but men’s clothes do not really do it for me.’

‘Rizla, you are acting the giddy goat, will you please smarten up.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I am drunk. What would you say the hue of that paper is? Barry white, do you think?’

‘I think you need to sit down.’

And indeed I did.

Mr Rune sat me down upon the only chair, which stood behind the book- and paper-smothered desk. I drummed my fingers upon that desk and grinned foolishly. I really did feel rather strange.

Mr Rune did not do all those things that detectives are expected to do. He did not throw himself onto the floor and search about for clues. Nor did he pace up and down, deep in thought, before exclaiming, ‘I have it.’

Instead he simply took out his cigar case and selected a smoke.

‘You are, I believe, my good Rizla, in a somewhat heightened state of mind. Whilst in this state would you care to make free with your observations?’

‘I am thinking that I would like some cheese,’ I said. ‘Which I find puzzling, as I am no real lover of cheese.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Can this be relevant?’

‘Please indulge me, do.’

‘I am feeling, and this is really weird, I am feeling that we are not the only ones present in this room. There is someone else here, but I cannot see who it is.’

‘Splendid, Rizla, splendid. Then perhaps I can assist you.’

‘I really do not understand.’

‘But you will.’ And Hugo Rune lit up his fine cigar and did great puffings upon it. ‘This might surprise you, Rizla,’ he said as he puffed. ‘Indeed it might frighten you. But you need not be afeared for I am here to protect you.’

‘I will take comfort in your words,’ I said. ‘Whatever they mean.’

‘Then in that case, Rizla, let me introduce you to Professor James Stigmata Campbell, would-be discoverer of the God Particle.’

And Mr Rune took great lungfuls of smoke and blew them out through his mouth. And the smoke billowed into the low-ceilinged room and much to my surprise and indeed shock it wafted all around and about the shape of a man. An invisible man, so it seemed, who stood stock still in the centre room, frozen in an attitude of terror.

I could make out for a moment the expression on his face as the smoke brought his features into visibility. And that expression was one of horror. His arms were flung up as if to protect himself from the onrush of some hideous force. His knees were bent, his shoulders stooped and he was all over naked.

Hugo Rune blew further smoke, but I had seen enough. I jumped from that chair and fled from that room and ran with great speed up the stairs.

I bent over in that flowery garden, my hands upon my knees, feeling all sick and woozy and no good to man nor to beast.

Mr Rune joined me there, still puffing on his cigar.

‘You are a villain,’ I said, drawing myself into the vertical plane. ‘You are a scoundrel and a rotter. Of course you could solve this case. Because you are the cause of the horror. You did that to that poor man. Turned him invisible with your magic, as you turned Mr McMurdo into a garden gnome.’

‘A garden gnome?’ And Mr Rune chuckled. ‘I rather like that. But no, Rizla, once more you have it wrong. I did not do that to Professor Campbell. Rather it would seem that he did it to himself.’

‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘Are you telling me the truth? This is all too weird for me. Is Professor Campbell dead? Can he be brought back to life?’

‘Questions, questions, questions.’ Hugo Rune took a further suck at his cigar and blew out a plume of smoke in the shape of the Lord Mayor’s coach. ‘Allow me to explain,’ he said and then went on to do so. ‘I must confess some puzzlement, young Rizla, regarding you doubting the existence of God, as to my personal knowledge you watched the crucifixion of Christ on the screen of the Chronovision and met his many-times great-grandson, Lord Tobes.’