J. Campbell - Gaslight Arcanum - Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Margaret Trelawny dressed to show off her person, though she would frankly have stopped traffic in a nun’s habit. Already a tall girl, she towered well over six and a half feet with the famous crown of Queen Tera set on her masses of jet black hair. The head-dress consisted of seven intertwined, jewel-eyed serpents with onyx-inlaid cheek-guards. As a connoisseur, I would venture her frontage — judged by size, firmness and ‘wobble factor’ — finer than Lily Langtry’s … and, after a couple of gins, Lily could crack walnuts between her knockers. To display the goods, Miss Trelawny wore an intricate yet minimal bustier composed of interlinked gold beetles. A transparent skirt gathered in a knot under her bare belly. If tautness of tummy were your prime requirement in womanly form, she’d pass the bounce-a-sixpence-off-it test with flying colors. A big sparkling ruby was set in a ring on her forefinger. The Jewel of Seven Stars looked like a congealed gobbet of blood. Her eyes had a mad, green-and-red lustre. Her face had a commanding — indeed demanding — beauty uncommon among the milk-and-water ladies of Kensington.

Miss Trelawny danced, which is to say undulated , in a shimmy which drew further attention — as if attention were required — to her broad hips, serpentine stomach and generous bosom. Beneath an exotic arrangement, I recognized the tune her three-piece slave band was playing. ‘The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid’. You probably don’t know the title — I had to ask a cocaine-injecting trumpet-player from the Alhambra to tell me — but it’s sung the world over by dirty-minded little boys of all ages. You can hear many, many variations on the rhyme ‘oh, the girls in France/do the hoochy-koochy dance … and the men play druu-u-ums/on the naked ladies’ buu-u-ums’, et cetera, et cetera.

For the moment, I was willing to entertain the possibility that Margaret Trelawny was — as she claimed — wicked Queen Tera reborn. She possessed at least one demonstrable supernatural power. Thanks to her presence, I suffered a prominent inconvenience in the trousers. I believe this condition was shared by not a few of the other gentlemen present.

I was drawn through the crowd, as if by magnetic attraction … or an invisible thread knotted about my gentlemen’s parts. I was gripped by tantalizing, almost painful desire. I had to concentrate on the real object of my visit — the ruby. Its redness grew large, tinting my whole view. I suspected there was something funny in the incense.

All about, houris were groped by guests and responded with a fair simulation of wild abandon. Divans were set aside for continuance of these activities, several already in use by knots of two or three — or, in one rather dangerous-looking conjunction, five — dedicated, conscience-free revellers. Some masks had slipped. A prominent social reformer and a tiresomely staunch advocate of female emancipation were sandwiching a slave-boy; the maiden ladies who signed their petitions and wore their banners would probably disapprove. A magistrate known for harsh sentences was bent over a wooden horse, taking a spirited whipping from two Cleopatra-wigged girls. Jamjars of sweet, sticky cordial were passed around, suitable for drinking or smearing. I forgot myself and took a swallow of the stuff, which seemed laced with gunpowder.

I had a notion that Margaret Trelawny wouldn’t give up her prize as easily as Bianca Castafiore.

The music rose in a frenzied crescendo. The dancing — and other activity — in the room became faster and faster. Someone indeed played drums on the posteriors of unclad maidservants, slapping with more enthusiasm than skill. I was near the altar-dais now, and the crowd was thicker. A girl with bared teeth and wide eyes tore at my robe, but I discreetly kneed her in the middle and threw her aside to be pounced on by the Mayor of a provincial city who had kept on his chain of office but nothing else.

Miss Trelawny’s exertions were extraordinary.

My inconvenience throbbed like a hammered thumb.

Then, a gong was struck — resounding throughout the cellar — and everything stopped.

Masks came off, en masse. I made no move to doff mine, but it was gone anyway.

Margaret Trelawny took a scimitar from her alter and lashed, precisely, at my head. I was unharmed, but unmasked. No, not quite unharmed. A line across my forehead dribbled blood. I clamped a hand to the wound.

My imperious hostess held a blade to my throat.

“Balls,” I said, with feeling.

XII

I woke in darkness, wearing clothes not my own. Not even clothes, I realized as my senses crawled back. Tight wrappings which smelled of moth-balls. I wriggled and found my legs tethered together and my arms bound to my chest. I was bandaged all over! I shifted my shoulders and banged against confining walls.

With a grinding sound, darkness went away. Something heavy shifted and I found myself looking up at Margaret Trelawny. A fork-bearded lesser cove I didn’t immediately recognise stood next to her, wearing a steel balaclava. I was lying in an Egyptian sarcophagus, trussed like a mummy.

“Apologies for the ‘rush job’, Colonel Moran,” said my hostess. “Before wrapping, you should have had your heart, lights and liver removed to be placed in canoptic jars and your brains pulled out through your nostrils. Revival of the arts of Egypt proceeds slower than I would like.”

Why had they wrapped and entombed me, then taken the trouble to re-open the sarcophagus? Miss Trelawny must want something from me before I was buried for the archaeologists of three thousand years’ hence to exhume and put on display. I swear, the maledictions upon Moriarty’s Crown Jewels are a Sunday stroll compared to the curses I’ll lay on those fellows. Beware the wrath of Basher Moran, you unborn tomb-looters!

The party had broken up. I hoped not on my account.

I couldn’t get that da-da-daaaah-da-da ‘Streets of Cairo’ whine out of my head. Oh, the girls in France …

“I’ll be humming it for days,” I said. “Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

Margaret sneered, magnificently. She still wore her queenly vestments. This angle afforded me a fine view of those excellent tits. With every breath, those metal scarabs seemed to crawl over all that pink poitrine . My bandages stirred, which was all I needed. My hostess was less likely to be flattered by the response than swat the swelling with her handy scimitar.

She dangled a hand in front of my face. My eyes and mouth were free of bandages.

That bloody jewel loomed like the sun and the moon and — most particularly — the stars. I saw the sparkling flaws, in the shape of the constellation of Ursa Major. I’ve never been able to see the Plough or a Bear in it, just seven dots which look more like a saucepan with a too-long handle. Now I had cause to wish myself upon some far star, rather than in a Kensington basement at the mercy of this monumental (if decorative) cuckoo. Maniac Marge took the Queen of Ancient Egypt business seriously. To her, it wasn’t a racket, but a religion . Another lunatic, albeit more tempting… I’ve no idea why anyone would be willing to blow themselves up for Irish Home Rule or get their throat cut for the honour of a tatty Neapolitan statue, but a tumble with the fleshly incarnation of wicked Queen Tera might well be worth small discomfort. At this point, that was a distant prospect.

I tried to sit up, but had no joy. You think of mummy wrappings as rotten old things, but new linen bandages are stout stuff.

Then rough hands grabbed handfuls of bandage where my lapels would have been and hauled me half out of the coffin. The angry man beside Miss Trelawny had lost patience. He snarled in my face. He wore iron gauntlets and a tabard with a crusader cross.