Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“So you admit to the actions of Vincent Sneed yet still say you aren't him?”

The little man wrung his hands together then raised them to cover his face.

“Yes,” he groaned.

“Does the name Zeppelin mean anything to you?”

Sneed parted his fingers and looked out from behind them. “Zephram?”

“Zeppelin.”

“I don't know no Zeppelin.”

Burton turned to Trounce and Honesty. “Would you hand the prisoner over to your Egyptian colleagues, please?”

The two detectives nodded, stepped forward, and hoisted Sneed up off the bed.

“No!” he screeched, writhing in their grip. “Get yer 'ands off me!”

“No nonsense, if you please!” Trounce snapped.

They bundled him out of the cabin, to where four Egyptian constables waited. Sneed howled.

Burton, speaking fluent Arabic in the local dialect, quietly addressed Al-Mustazi: “Despite my threats to the man, I'd prefer it if you kept him from the worst of it. I sent my parakeet to the consul as soon as we landed with a request that the prisoner be processed with due dispatch. He'll be handed over to British authorities and sent home in a few days but there's no need to tell him that. Let him think he's going to be in Cairo prison for the long haul, it may teach him a lesson.”

Al-Mustazi murmured an acknowledgement, bowed, and departed.

Burton left the cabin and met Trounce and Honesty in the corridor. They headed up to the passenger lounge.

“Strange!” said Honesty. “Why so stubborn?”

“It's odd, I'll admit,” Burton replied. “And there was something else rather peculiar, too. He kept glancing up at the ceiling.”

“I noticed that,” Trounce grunted. “I wonder why?”

The three men joined Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, Bhatti, and Herbert Spencer in the lounge. The clockwork philosopher was incapable of drinking or smoking but he enjoyed company and needed the mental relaxation, despite that his mind was an electrical field processed by a machine. With Pox on his head, he sat at the bar with the men, who sipped at their brandy and sodas and gazed at the scattered lights of the city's houses and minarets. Burton smoked one of his disreputable Manila cheroots, Trounce opted for a rather more expensive Flor de Dindigul Indian cigar, while Honesty and Krishnamurthy puffed at their pipes. Neither Swinburne nor Bhatti smoked. The poet compensated for it by consuming twice as much brandy.

“Steady on,” Burton advised him.

“I need it,” his assistant answered. “I'm frustrated. Willy Cornish is a splendid young man, and I can't for the life of me think why he would defend a scurrilous miscreant like Sneed. And now he's vanished into the pipes and probably won't emerge until he's starving!”

“Needs interrogating!” Honesty snapped. “Spill the beans. Tell us what Zeppelin is up to.”

“Dribbly snot-rag!” Pox cawed.

“I don't understand it,” Krishnamurthy said. “Why would the Prussian hire a villain Mr. Swinburne could recognise in an instant?”

“Perhaps he didn't know that we'd encountered Sneed before,” Bhatti suggested.

Trounce snorted. “Pah! Too much of a coincidence! There's more to it, mark my words, lad!”

Burton nodded thoughtfully. “I agree,” he murmured. “There's a deeper mystery here.”

Doctor Quaint and Sister Raghavendra entered the chamber and began to light the oil lamps. Burton stood and wandered over to the young woman.

“Hello, Sadhvi. Have you settled into your duties?”

“Hello, Captain Burton. Yes. It's been a busy day. I'll go down to the kitchen in a minute to help Mr. Butler and Miss Mayson with the supper, then once that's cooked and eaten and tidied away, I'll retire to my cabin for a well-earned rest. Incidentally, I brought with me a volume of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads to read but I seem to have misplaced it. Might you ask him if he has a spare copy?”

“You can borrow mine. I'll have Quips deliver it to you. I should warn you, though-it's a mite vivid!”

“So I've heard, but I'm from India, Captain. I don't suffer the modesties, embarrassments, or fainting fits of your English ladies!”

Burton smiled. “Then you are most fortunate!”

On his way back to his friends, halfway across the small dance floor, the king's agent suddenly stopped and gazed up at the ceiling.

“By James!” he whispered. “Could it be? It would certainly explain a lot!”

When he sat down and picked up his drink, the others noticed that he wore a distracted expression.

“What's on your mind, Captain?” Bhatti asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I'm just-just thinking about-about-um-Christopher Rigby.”

“Yikes!” Swinburne exclaimed. “He's going to be nothing but trouble!”

“Who's Rigby?” Herbert Spencer asked.

“Malodorous horse bucket!” Pox whistled.

“The parakeet has it!” Swinburne declared. “Lieutenant Christopher Palmer Rigby is the consul at Zanzibar and a fat-headed ninny of the first order. Richard repeatedly knocked him off the top spot in language examinations back when they were stationed in India, and Rigby, sore loser that he is, has never forgotten it. The rotter's made a career of besmirching our friend's reputation. I'd like to punch the hound right on the nose!”

“Thank you, Algy,” Burton said. He explained further: “Rigby and I were in the East India Company's Eighteenth Bombay Native Infantry at Scinde, and he formed an immediate and irrational hatred of me from the outset. He'll cause problems for us when we land in Africa, of that I'm certain.”

“King's agent!” Honesty barked. “Authority!”

“Possessing authority is one thing,” Burton replied, “but expecting a man like Rigby to respect it is quite another.”

Over the next hour, he barely said another word, and when they attended the captain's table for supper, the explorer appeared so preoccupied that his bearing came perilously close to impoliteness. Afterward, he muttered a few words about writing up his journals and retired to his cabin.

He lit one lamp and turned it down low, then got undressed, washed, put on his pyjamas, and wrapped himself in his jubbah. He lit a cheroot and relaxed in an armchair, his eyes focused inward, his mind working on a Sufi meditation exercise.

He finished the cigar.

A couple of hours passed.

He didn't move.

Then: There!

He'd heard a faint noise, a tiny rasping sound.

He waited.

Again, an almost imperceptible scrape.

He allowed a few minutes to tick by.

“You should have asked before borrowing Sister Raghavendra's copy of Poems and Ballads .”

Silence.

He spoke again. “You made a scapegoat of Vincent Sneed. I have no fondness for the fellow, but why? What was the point?”

Thirty seconds or so passed.

A small, whispery voice said, “Distraction, Captain Burton.”

“There you are! Hello, lad! I take it Sneed and Willy Cornish smuggled you onto the ship in the replacement section of pipe?”

“Yes. I had ordered the previous two funnel scrubbers to purposely damage a section in order to facilitate my presence here.”

“So the Beetle, the chief of the League of Chimney Sweeps, finds himself en route to Africa. A bizarre circumstance indeed, and I imagine you must have a very good reason for leaving your chimney. Distraction, you say? Who are you trying to distract, and from what?”

Burton stood and moved to the middle of the room. He looked up at the grille in the thick ventilation pipe. Vaguely, he could discern something moving behind it.

“Don't turn the lamps up,” came the whisper.

“I don't intend to. I know how you abhor light.”

“One of my boys was killed.”