Paris Noir

THE FIRST CHAPTER: IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

In all the many cases investigated by Sir Seaton Begg of the Home Office Metatemporal Investigative Agency, one of the most curious concerned his co-operation with his opposite number, Commissaire Lapointe of the Sureté du Temps Perdu, involving not only the albino gentleman connected to a royal house whom we call ‘Monsieur Zenith’, but also members of an infamous terrorist gang, a long-dead enemy of Begg’s German cousins and the well-known adventuress, Mrs Una Persson. As Begg’s friend, the pathologist Dr ‘Taffy’ Sinclair, remarked, ‘For a while it seemed that Chaos, in all its unchained wildness, had been let loose through every region of our vast and complex multiverse, so that even now we cannot be certain whether it was contained or whether we are merely experiencing a moment of relative harmony in a howling cacophony…’

‘I cannot tell you, my old friend, how delighted I am that you should come over at such short notice.’

Lapointe, his assistant Bardot, Taffy and Begg were wandering through the pale gold autumn light of the Luxembourg Gardens. The chestnut trees were shedding dark reds and yellows and the flower beds were full of beauty on the verge of succumbing to winter. Lapointe had thought it expedient for them to talk in the open air where there was less chance of being overheard.

‘The train? Was it comfortable?’

In his light tweed sports jacket, white shirt and well-pressed flannels, Lapointe had a bulky, stiff-necked, slightly professorial air, with a great wave of grey hair untidily arranged over his pale forehead. His deep green eyes, angular features and heavy body gave him the air of a large amiable dinosaur. Begg knew his opposite number had one of the sharpest minds on the Continent. Single-handedly Lapointe had captured the ex-police inspector turned crook: George Marsden Plummer (alias ‘Maigret’ in France) who had once been Lapointe’s chief. Lapointe had also been the one to bring ‘Fantomas’ to book at last. Together he and Begg had tracked down ‘Jock Collyn’, otherwise known as The Master Mummer, and been instrumental in his lingering to this day on Devil’s Island. Inspector Bardot, on the other hand, had no spectacular record, but was much admired at the Quai des Orfèvres for his methodology and his coolness under pressure. Small, dark, he seemed permanently and privately amused. He wore a buttoned three-piece grey suit and what was evidently an English school tie.

The two Home Office men had come from London via the recently opened Subchannel Excavation, whose roads and railway lines now connected the two nations, a material addition to the decades-old Entente Cordiale, an alliance which had been cemented by the signing of a European-wide Mutual Co-operation Pact, which, with the Universal Civil Rights Act, united all the Great Powers, including the Confederated Forty-Seven States of America, in one mighty alliance, sharing common laws and goals.

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Begg, speaking excellent French. Lapointe had put the STP’s private express at his disposal. The journey had taken less than an hour and a half from London to Paris. ‘I must say, Lapointe, that you French chaps have your priorities well in hand – rapid and comfortable transport and excellent food among them. We had a superb lunch en route.’

The French detective acknowledged this compliment with a small self-deprecating shrug.

Taffy, taller than the others, murmured his own discreet appreciation.

‘I gather, Dr Sinclair, that you are recently back from the Republic of Texas?’ Lapointe courteously acknowledged the pathologist, whose expertise was internationally famous.

‘Indeed.’ Sinclair removed his wide panama and wiped his glistening head with a large Voysey-patterned Liberty’s handkerchief, which seemed an uncharacteristic part of his otherwise muted wardrobe. Save for his taste in haberdashery, nobody would have guessed that during his time at Oxford he had been a leading light in the post-Pre-Raphaelite revival and that women had swooned over his massive head of hair and melancholy features almost as much as over his poetry. Like his friend and colleague, he wore a cream-coloured linen suit, but whereas Begg’s tie was a rather flamboyant bow, Sinclair’s neck was adorned by his old school colours. Indeed, his tie was identical to Bardot’s. The two had been contemporaries at Blackfriars School and later had attended the Sorbonne before Bardot, eldest son of a somewhat infamous Aquilonian house, entered the service of the Quai d’Orsay and Sinclair, after a spell in the army, decided to follow his father into medicine and the civil service.

‘You are familiar with the shopping arcades which radiate off the Place de L’Opéra?’ murmured Lapointe once they were strolling down a broad avenue of chestnut trees towards the Gardens’ rue Guynemer entrance. ‘And you are aware, I am sure, of the reputation the area has at night, where assignations of the heart are pursued and men and women of a certain inclination are said to come together.’

‘I have read something of the place,’ said Begg, while Taffy nodded gravely.

‘These arcades are the most complex in Paris, of course, and extend into and beneath the surrounding buildings, in turn becoming a warren of corridors and suites of chambers connected to the catacombs. They have never been fully mapped. It is said that some poor devils have been lost there for eternity, cursed to wander forever beneath the city.’

Begg smiled. ‘I am familiar with Smith’s Kitchen in London, which is similarly configured. I know the stories of the Arcades, yes. How fanciful they are, I have yet to judge. I know, too, that they were spared destruction by Haussmann, when he was building the boulevards of Paris for Louis Napoleon, because the Emperor himself wished to preserve his own somewhat lavish pied-à-terre where he maintained the notorious Comtesse de Gavray.’

‘Exactly, my friend. Whose favours he was said to share with Balzac the Younger. I gather there was some scandal. Didn’t Balzac denounce her as a German spy?’

‘In 1876. Yes. It was the end of her career. She fled to Berlin and ended her days in penury. Strangely, this present case has echoes of that one.’

As he reached the little glass and wrought-iron café across from the Théâtre des Marionettes, Lapointe paused. ‘The coffee here isn’t too bad and I see there is a table just over there where we are unlikely to be disturbed.’

With the acquiescence of the others, Lapointe let them seat themselves at the dark-green metal table and signalled for a serviteur, who came immediately, recognising a regular customer. A brief exchange followed. Typically, the Englishmen ordered café crème and the Frenchmen took theirs espresso. They sat in silence for a little while, admiring the merry-go-round, with its vividly painted horses rising and falling in comforting regularity, circling to the tune of a complex steam-driven fairground calliope, as excited little boys and girls waved to waiting parents. The puppet theatre was yet to open and many of the children, Begg knew, would disappear into its darkness soon enough to witness the traditional bloody escapades of Guignol which had entertained French children for the past century or more.

It delighted Begg to see that the same diversions which he had enjoyed as a boy were equally pleasing to this, the first generation of the new century. He was always grateful that his father’s diplomatic work had allowed him to make a home in the French capital. For him London and Paris made a natural marriage, if not exactly of opposites, then of complementary personalities. Both had powerful public images and a thousand secrets, not all of them by any means sinister.

Commissioner Lapointe leaned forward so that his voice could only be heard by the other three men at the table. ‘You have no doubt already reached the conclusion, my friends, that this business concerns the ongoing problems we have in Germany. While the insurgency is generally under control, Hitler’s terrorists continue to trouble the German government and our friends in the Reichstag have asked us for help. In the main we have done our best to remain uninvolved with internal German politics. After defeating Hitler and driving him out of Poland, we were quickly able to support a new democratic government and withdraw our troops to this side of the Rhine. However-’ Lapointe shrugged, slowly stirring his coffee.

‘Röhm and his Freikorps?’ murmured Begg.

‘Precisely. They are relatively few, of course. But Röhm’s insurgents continue to do considerable damage. They have attacked Wehrmacht barracks, civilian institutions and even targets outside the country. They have set off bombs in public places and continue to violate synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. While Hitler remains at large, insurgent morale remains high and their plans ambitious. Disaffected petite bourgeoisie for the most part, who had hoped to succeed in war where they had failed in peace. Well, gentlemen, we have reason to believe they are planning an ambitious attack outside Germany’s borders. This attack, we think, is aimed at creating a large number of civilian casualties, probably Jewish. And we are fairly certain that it will occur in France, probably in Paris.’

‘And how can we be of assistance?’ asked Begg, clearly puzzled by their being asked to engage in what, on the surface, appeared to be primarily an internal matter for the French government.

‘In two words, my old friend-’ Lapointe glanced around before dropping his voice even lower. ‘Monsieur Zenith…’

Now the British investigator understood. He sat back in his chair, his face suddenly grave. From his pocket he took his ancient briar and a tobacco pouch. He began to fill the pipe with dark shag. Taffy Sinclair, too, was frowning. A profound silence surrounded the four men. At last Inspector Bardot spoke. ‘He is known to be in Paris. Indeed, he has been here for some time. A familiar figure in the Opéra arcades. He has exposed himself quite openly, yet, whenever our people attempted to apprehend him, pouf! He is gone like smoke.’

‘Eventually, it became clear to us that we would be better engaged in keeping watch on him,’ continued Lapointe. ‘For some months he has continued the same habits. Every morning between eleven and one he appears in the passage D’lappe, always wearing perfect morning dress. He takes his coffee at L’Albertine. He reads his newspaper: Le Figaro, usually, but sometimes the New York Herald Tribune. He strolls. He makes a small purchase or two. He enters a bookshop and inspects a few volumes. He has even been known to visit Larnier’s Waxworks. Occasionally, he buys a book – usually a classic of some kind. Then, at lunchtime, he will either stroll towards the Quartier Latin, taking the Pont St-Michel, where he will eat lunch at Lipp’s or he will enter one of the more shadowy branches of the arcades and – vanish! Sometimes he will be seen again in the afternoon, making his way to the Louvre, where he will inspect a different exhibit, though he seems to favour Da Vinci’s Portrait of a Young Jew in Female Dress. Then he will return to the arcades and, yes, he will disappear again.’

‘He speaks to no one?’

‘Oh, he will pass the time of day with any number of persons. He is politeness itself, especially where a lady is concerned. He has conversed with more than one of our own people, usually realising immediately who they are. He is the very model of a gentlemanly flâneur, whiling away his hours in what some would call a desultory way. He buys his cigarettes at Sullivan’s, his newspaper from the same kiosk at the south-eastern corner of the arcades. He carries a cane in ebony and silver. His gloves are always that perfect shade of lavender, matching his cravat, his coat cut just so, his hat at just such an angle, his buttonhole always the same, a crimson rosebud emphasising those blood-red eyes of his. Women, of course, are fascinated by him. Yet, with a recent exception, he keeps no regular engagements with anyone, though he will enjoy a little flirtation over an aperitif, perhaps. He tips well and is much liked by the staff wherever he takes refreshment. Sometimes, a Lagonda limousine calls for him at the northwest entrance and he enters it. We have been able to trace the car to the general area of Clichy but all we know is that it is driven by a Japanese chauffeur and is garaged in rue Clément, in the name of a Monsieur Amano. There its batteries are recharged. Everything is in order. The Lagonda has not left Paris since we have been observing it.’

‘And as far as you know neither has Monsieur Zenith?’

’Exactly.’

‘Where does he go at night?’ Dr Sinclair wanted d to know.

’That’s the thing, old man,’ said Bardot in English, ‘we simply can’t find out!’

’It is as if he becomes invisible from the evening hours until mid-morning,’ added Lapointe. ‘Then, suddenly, he appears in the Opéra Arcades, perfectly dressed and poised, as ever. Even if we had a cause to arrest him, which we have not, he would still evade us. Indeed, if he had not been seen in the company of a suspected Nazi agent, we would not devote so much interest to him. He is a decorated war hero, after all, leading a Polish electric cavalry brigade during the recent conflict. But sadly his actions suggest that he is helping organise whatever Nazi plot is about to be unleashed on honest civilians. His name has come up more than once, in various coded messages we have intercepted. Sometimes he is merely Monsieur Z, sometimes ‘Zenith’ and sometimes ‘Zodiac’. All versions of his own given name, of course. There is no doubt at all that he is Count Rudolf Zoltan von Beck, descendant of the infamous ‘Crimson Eyes’ who terrorised the people of Mirenburg and London in the course of the last century. He renounced his title as hereditary ruler of Wäldenstein. But as for the suggestion that Hitler intended to restore him as puppet monarch there, had his plans for the conquest of Europe been successful, that is surely nonsense!’

‘Especially since he voluntarily gave up his title,’ mused Sir Seaton. From his mouth now issued alarming quantities of dark smoke as he fired up his old pipe. ‘I am still curious as to why he moved his base from London to Paris. He was even rumoured to have been seen recently in Berlin. It is as if he were fascinated by our friend Herr Hitler. This is not the first time he and that gentleman have been linked, in various incarnations across the multiverse.’

‘Perhaps he agrees with Hitler’s ideas?’ ventured Lapointe. But Begg shook his head.

‘They are scarcely ‘ideas’. They are the opinions of a beerhall braggart of the kind commonly found throughout the world. They emerge to fill a vacuum. They might appeal to an uneducated and unemployed labourer, a dispossessed shopkeeper or some disenchanted professional soldier like Röhm – even some brainless and inbred titled fool. But Zenith is none of those things. Indeed, he is both well educated and of superior intelligence. His only weakness is his thirst for danger, for the thrill which fills the veins with pounding blood and which takes one’s mind off the dullness of the day-to-day.’ It was as if Begg knew exactly what moved his old adversary. The expression on Dr Sinclair’s face suggested that he thought the metatemporal investigator’s remark might well have been a self-description. ‘And he would only ally himself with such a creature if it somehow suited his own schemes. Years ago, after he was rescued from secret police head-quarters in Belgrade, where he had been imprisoned and tortured for his resistance to the dictator, he gave me his solemn promise that he was renouncing his old ways and from then on would only steal from the thieves, as it were, and contribute most of his gains to excellent causes, some of which would founder completely if he didn’t help. And the Polish military will tell you how he equipped that electric tank division from his own funds!’

‘So you think he is planning a job in Paris?’ asked the commissioner. He allowed a small smile to flicker across his face. ‘After all, we are not short of the undeserving rich…’

‘Perhaps. Or he could be diverting himself here while all the time what he is doing at night is the important thing. Eh?’ From under his lowering, sardonic brow. Sir Seaton returned Lapointe’s smile. ‘Might he be making himself so public that all our attention is drawn to his flaneurism and we ignore his true activities?’

‘What do you suggest? We need to know details of Hitler’s plans soon, Sir Seaton. We must anticipate and counter whatever terror the Nazi insurgents intend to unleash.’

‘Naturally you must. What else can you tell me?’

‘Only that the adventuress Mrs Una Persson recently took rooms above the Arcades, shortly after I contacted you. For the last three days she has been seen in the gardens walking her two cats, a grey and a black Oriental shorthair. She is a known associate of Monsieur Zenith, is she not?’

‘Of him and others,’ agreed Begg, his eyes narrowing in an expression of reminisence. ‘And does she have a female companion, perhaps? A Miss Cornelius?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

Sinclair seemed surprised. His eyes darted from Lapointe to Begg and then to Bardot, who shrugged.

‘Mrs Persson has been seen talking to Zenith,’ Bardot offered. ‘Yesterday she had lunch with him at L’Albertine. We had a lip reader eating at a nearby table. Zenith mentioned Hitler and Rohm. He might have spoken of an explosive charge in Paris. Unfortunately we did not learn where. She said that she had investigated a site where a bomb would create the most damage. So certain of those among our superiors are now convinced they are working together for the Nazi insurgents.’

Lapointe interrupted rapidly. ‘Of course, I find that impossible to believe.’ He shrugged. ‘But I have, as we all have, certain bosses, owing their jobs more to their connections than to their native abilities, who insist on believing Zenith and Mrs Persson are in league with Hitler and his underground army. It could be, perhaps, that they are both working for themselves and that they have plans which Hitler’s activities will facilitate. My guess is that some treasure is involved, for it is not Zenith’s habit to dabble in civilian politics. At least, as far as I know. Not so, of course, Mrs Persson. Is there some way you could find out any more. Sir Seaton? Something I could take to my superiors which will let me get on with the real business Zenith has in Paris? Whatever that may be.’

Sir Seaton finished his café crème, smiling out at a group of little boys and girls running with fixed attention towards the pleasure of the carousel.

‘I could ask him,’ he said.

THE SECOND CHAPTER: A CONVERSATION AT L’ALBERTINE

Inevitably, Seaton Begg met his albino cousin close to the noon hour in the Arcades de L’Opéra where eight galleries branched off a central court, containing a paved piazza and an elaborate fountain. He appeared almost by magic, smiling courteously and lifting his hat in greeting. Impeccably well-mannered, Zenith, of course, was incapable of ignoring him.

‘Bonjour, cher cousin!’ The albino raised his own tall grey hat. ‘What a great pleasure to come upon you like this! We have a great deal to talk about since our last meeting. Perhaps you would be good enough to take a cup of coffee with me at L’Albertine?’

After they had dispensed with their hats and ordered, Count Zenith leaned back in his chair and moved his ebony cane in an elegant, economic gesture in the direction of a beautiful young woman wearing a long, military-style black coat, and with a helmet of raven-black hair, walking two cats, one a grey Oriental, the other a black, in the sunny gardens at the centre of the arcades. He gave no indication that he was already acquainted with the woman who was, of course, Mrs Una Persson, the famous European adventuress. ‘Has anyone, I wonder, ever really tried to imagine what it must be like to have the mind of a beast, even a domesticated beast like one of those exquisite cats? I think to enter such a brain, however small, would be utterly to go mad, don’t you, Sir Seaton?’

‘Quite.’ The Englishman smiled up at a pretty waitress (for which L’Albertine in the morning was famous) and thanked her as she laid out the coffee things. ‘I have heard of certain experiments, in which a beast’s brain has been exchanged with that of a human being, but I don’t believe they have ever been successful. Though,’ and in this he was far more direct than was his usual habit, ‘some say that Adolf Hitler, the deposed Chancellor of Germany, had succeeded and that he did indeed go quite mad as a result. Certainly his insolent folly at attacking three great empires at once would indicate the theory has some substance!’

Only by the slight movement of an eyebrow did Zenith indicate his surprise at Begg’s raising this subject. He said nothing for a moment before murmuring something about the Russo-Polish empire being already at the point of collapse. His own Romanian seat remained part of that sphere of influence, as Begg knew, and the fact was considered a source of some distress to the albino.

‘As one who showed such courage on their side during the war, you cannot be one of those who thinks Hitler should have been encouraged to attack the “alliance of eagles”?’ Begg offered. ‘The other Great Powers have since made an oath to protect the Slavic empire. Perhaps you feel that we have not been more resolute in tracking down the Hitler gang? I cannot believe you share their views.’

‘My dear Begg, the deposed Chancellor was a beerhall braggart supported by a frustrated military bully, a plump bore with aristocratic pretension and a third-rate broadcasting journalist!’ References to Röhm, to Göring and to Goebbels, whose popular radio programme was thought to have helped Hitler to power. ‘It was a matter of duty for anyone of taste to frustrate his ambitions. He was warned often enough by the Duma, the Assembly and your Parliament. His refusal to sign the articles of confederation were the last straw. He should have been stopped then, before he was ever allowed to marshal his land leviathans and aerial battleships. As it was, it should have taken three days, not a year, to defeat him. And now we have the current situation, where he and his riff-raff remain at large, doubtless somewhere in Bavaria, and far too many of our armed forces, as well as those of Germany herself, are engaged in putting a stop to his so-called Freikorps activities. I understand that it’s believed by some fools in the French foreign service that I yearn to ‘free’ my ancestral lands from the Pan-Slavic yoke, but believe me, I have no such dream. If I were to deceive myself that the people were free under the reign of my own family, I would deserve the contempt of every realist on the planet. And if there are, indeed, certain self-esteeming coxcombs on the Quai d’Orsay who believe I would ally myself with such degenerate opportunists, I shall soon discover their names and, in my own time, seek them out and challenge them to repeat their presumptions.’

Begg permitted himself a small smile of acquiescence. It was as he thought. He had needed only this statement by his cousin to confirm his understanding. But what was Zenith doing here in Paris, keeping such a strange, yet regular schedule? He knew that there was little chance of the albino offering him an explanation. All he had done was rule out the theory, as his French opposite number had hoped, of certain under-admired civil servants at the Quai d’Orsay. He regretted that he was not on terms of such intimacy with Mrs Persson. Although it was unlikely, she could be allying herself with the Hitler gang to further her own schemes.

Of course, Zenith had said nothing of any collaboration, though it was probably not the first time he and the Englishwoman had worked together, she for her political purposes, he for financial gain, Zenith required a great deal of money with which to maintain his lifestyle and finance the causes he favoured. It was known that he employed at least six Japanese servants of uncommon loyalty and proficiency and maintained several houses in the major cities of Europe as well as on the Côte d’Azur. For all that he had received an amnesty after the war, he remained wanted by the police of some Western countries, especially America, yet lived elegantly in such insouciant openness that he had rarely been captured. The opposite numbers of Begg and Lapointe preferred always to wait and watch rather than place him under arrest.

It was the secret of Zenith’s great success that he understood the psychology of his opponents marginally better than they understood his: thus his penchant for openness and his willingness to depend entirely on his own quick wits should he ever be in danger. One day, Begg hoped, that cool intelligence would be employed entirely on the side of the law. Meanwhile, he remained convinced of Zenith’s highly developed sense of honour, which meant he never lied to those he himself respected. Moreover, Zenith was as hated and feared by the criminal classes almost as much as he was sought by the police. That ebony stick of his hid a slender sword remarkable in that it, too, was black, and into it had been carved certain peculiar scarlet markings which a trick of the sword-smith’s art gave the appearance of seeming to move whenever the blade was unsheathed.

Begg had pursued the man across the multiverse more than once and knew that sometimes that sword became an altogether larger weapon, usually carried in an instrument case of some kind. Zenith was a skilled musician, as expert on the classical cello as he was with the popular guitar. Begg knew, also, that more than once Zenith’s opponents had been found dead, drained in some terrible way not of blood but of their very life force. Underworld legend had it that Zenith was a kind of vampire, drawing his considerable physical power from the very souls of his enemies.

At that moment, no casual customer of the salon would have seen anything but one elegant man of the world in amiable conversation with another. An observer might have noted that both seemed to be taking an admiring interest in the tall woman walking, à la Colette, her two Oriental shorthair cats in the noon sunlight, passing through the sparkling waters of the central fountain, with its classical marble merfolk doing homage to Neptune, whose trident was green with verdigris. The spraying water formed a blur of rainbow colour giving the woman an almost unearthly appearance as she entered it and stood for a while staring thoughtfully into the middle distance, seemingly utterly oblivious of the two men.

Begg smiled to himself, well aware that this was Mrs Persson’s characteristic way of taking stock of those she believed were watching her. It had the effect of disconcerting any observer and causing them to turn their gaze away. Even though she aroused no such response in Begg or Zenith, whom she recognised, nonetheless it seemed even to them that somehow she stepped through the shimmering wash of colour and, with her cats, disappeared.

’You are acquainted, I know, with Mrs Persson,’ murmured Begg. ‘The Quai d’Orsay, if not the Quai des Orfèvres, are convinced that she is working for the German insurgency. I would be surprised if it’s true, for I thought her nature too romantic to let her fall in with such a gang.’

’Mrs Persson is not usually in the habit of confiding in me.’ Monsieur Zenith raised his hand as a signal for the waiter to bring him a drink. ’Will you join me, Begg? Is it too early for an Armagnac?’

When the detective acquiesced, Zenith raised a second finger and made a small gesture. The waiter nodded. Almost immediately Zenith was watching with approval as the serviteur mixed his absinthe and placed two specially formed pieces of sugar in the saucer, while Begg received a generous measure of St-Aubin. It was rarely his habit to drink his favourite Special Reserve before lunch, but he was more than usually anxious to remain on agreeable terms with his old opponent. Zenith appeared to live chiefly on Turkish ovals and absinthe.

‘Would you permit me, cousin, to ask you a rather direct question?’ he asked after a couple of appreciative sips.

‘How could I refuse?’ A smile, almost a grin, appeared on Zenith’s handsome lips. Clearly, this unusual approach amused him. And Begg knew he desired amusement almost as much as he needed action to relieve his ennui.

‘I have to assume that your business in Paris has some association with the present situation in Germany. I am also curious to know what Mrs Persson’s association with the Germans might mean.’

‘I fear that any confidence Mrs Persson chooses to share with me must remain just that.’ Zenith’s voice sharpened a little. ‘Naturally the British and French are in haste to conclude their present business with Colonel Hitler, but, while I wish them well, you must know-’

’Of course.’ Begg regretted his directness. He believed he had offended his cousin, whose sense of decorum was if anything somewhat exaggerated. There was no retreat now. ‘I suppose I am asking your help. There is some suggestion that many innocent lives are at stake.’

’My dear Begg, why should you and I care if a few bourgeois more or less are gone from central Paris by next Sunday?’ Monsieur Zenith finished his absinthe. He removed a large, crisp note from his slender case, laying it on the table and standing up. ‘And now, if you will forgive me, I have some business which cannot wait.’

Begg rose, trying to frame some kind of apology or even protestation, but for once he was at a loss. With his usual litheness and speed, Zenith slipped his hat from the shelf and, with a perfunctory bow, strolled towards the exit.

Cursing himself for his uncharacteristic impatience, Begg watched his relation depart.

Only as he took up his own broad-brimmed hat did a small smile suddenly appear on his face and under his breath he murmured a heartfelt ‘Merci beaucoup’.

THE THIRD CHAPTER: INTO THE LABYRINTH

Of course, Commissaire Lapointe had set his men in waiting for Monsieur Zenith and the albino was followed, once again. Once again, as his old colleague was bound to admit to Begg, they had lost him. Mrs Persson, too, was gone. The four metatemporal detectives met that afternoon in Lapointe’s rather grand offices overlooking the Seine.

‘She was last seen visiting Caron’s print shop, in that section of the arcades known as La Galerie de I’Horloge. Three men, their faces obscured by wide-brimmed hats and turned-up collars, followed her in about ten minutes later. But she was never seen emerging. Two of our fellows entered on a pretext just as old Caron was closing for lunch. The shop is small. It has long been suspected as a place of illegal assignations concerning the Bourse and the arms trade. There is an even smaller room behind it. Neither Mrs Persson nor the trio of men were to be found. My chaps did, however, discover a good excuse for our making a further visit to Caron’s. He also specialises, it appears, in a particularly unsavoury form of pornography, in which Nazi insurgents are portrayed in acts of torture or worse with their victims. The photographs are almost certainly authentic. Caron made an error. He omitted to hide the photographs in his office when our men entered. So, although they pretended to notice nothing, it will be possible for us to stage a raid, ostensibly by that of the regular vice department, to see what else we can discover. Would you and Dr Sinclair care to accompany us?’

‘I would be unable to resist such an invitation,’ said Begg, while Sinclair assented by lowering his magnificent head.

’I think you are right, old friend, in your interpretation of Monsieur Zenith’s communication,’ added Lapointe. ‘Not only will Hitler’s plot be realised in a crowded part of Paris, it will occur before next Sunday.’

’So he suggested. But whether Mrs Persson is party to this plot, we still do not know. The sooner we can question her, I think, the better.’

’Precisely!’ Lapointe inspected his watch. ’Come, gentlemen, there is a powerful car awaiting us! Her batteries are charged and ready!’

So it was that the four men, accompanied by two uniformed sergeants, arrived at the Galerie de I’Horloge with its magnificent glass and wrought-iron roofs and ornate gas lamps, its rows of small shops on either side, and crowded into M. Caron’s little establishment carrying a search warrant, on the excuse that he was known to be selling forbidden material.

Begg felt almost sorry for the little plump, grey-haired print-seller, who visibly shivered in terror at the understanding he was threatened with arrest. When, however, the material which was the excuse for the raid was revealed, Begg’s sympathy disappeared. These were almost certainly pictures taken from the infamous Stadelheim fortress, where prisoners had been tortured, humiliated and subjected to unmentionable sexual horrors. Caron swore that he was not responsible for the material being in his office. ‘It was the woman, I assure you, gentlemen. The Englishwoman. She knows… she…’ And the little man broke down, weeping.

It did not take long to elicit from the print-shop proprietor the secret of Mrs Persson’s ability to vanish. Behind a large cabinet of prints, he revealed another door, with steps leading down into dank darkness which echoed as if into the infinite cosmos. ‘She… she insisted, Messieurs. She knew my shop had once been a gate into the labyrinth. It is by no means the only one leading from the arcades. As I am sure you are aware, the labyrinth has long served as a sanctuary for those who do not wish to be apprehended, for a variety of reasons. I wanted nothing to do with it, thus the cabinet pushed against the wall, but the Englishwoman – she knew what was hidden. She demanded to be shown the gate.’ Again he began to weep. ‘She knew about my – little business. She threatened to expose me. The photographs… I was greedy. I should have known not to trust such degenerates.’

Commissaire Lapointe was counting the large denomination banknotes he had discovered in the old man’s safe. ‘Degenerates who were apparently helping to make you rich, m’sieu! We also know about your arms brokering.’ He replaced the money in the safe and locked it pocketing the key. ‘Have you told us everything? Have the passages been used by members of the German so-called ”underground”? Is it they who gave you the photographs? In exchange for guns?’

’I don’t know who they were. They appeared in this room one day, having pushed aside the cabinet. It’s true they had come to know of me through my interest in perfectly legal discontinued ordnance. They gave me the photographs in return for using the door occasionally. They were foreign civilians, they assured me. They spoke poor French, but I could not recognise the accents. As for the woman, she came and went only by day. She never asked to use my premises out of normal hours. I never saw her with anyone else. She was never gone very long. This is, I promise you, the longest she has ever been d-down there…’ With a shudder he turned his back on the mysterious doorway.

’Well,’ Lapointe decided, ‘we shall have to wait for her, I think. For the moment you will be charged with distributing pornography. Take him away.’

After the proprietor had been led off, still snivelling, the metatemporal detectives settled down to await Mrs Persson’s return, having replaced the door and cabinet exactly as they had discovered it. But the afternoon turned to evening, long after the print-seller would have closed up, and still she made no appearance.

Eventually, Bardot was dispatched to Mrs Persson’s apartments and soon returned to report that her apartment was unoccupied, save for two somewhat hungry and outraged Siamese cats. ‘I fed them and changed their litter, of course, but…’ He shrugged.

This news brought a frown to Begg’s aquiline features. ‘I think I know Mrs Persson pretty well. She would not desert her cats, especially without making arrangements to feed them. She has not only broken her usual habits, but probably did not do so willingly.’

‘My God, Begg! Do you mean she has been captured by whoever it was she has been seeing behind that cabinet? Murdered? By Zenith, perhaps? Could he be playing a double game?’

‘Possibly, old man… Instinct tells me that, if she is not found soon, she will be in no condition to help us with our enquiries.’

‘Her paymasters? They have turned against her? Or did Zenith betray her?’ Lapointe drew a deep breath.

‘Monsieur le commissaire, time is in all likelihood running out for Mrs Persson, if she still lives. We could be further away than we thought from discovering which public place is under threat. And we have, if Monsieur Zenith told me what I think he did, only three more days at most before they strike! Come on, gentlemen! Help me shift his cabinet.’

The doorway again revealed, Begg took a small but powerful electric lantern from his overcoat pocket and, a serviceable Webley.45 revolver in his other hand, led the way down into the echoing darkness. The two sergeants were left behind to guard the entrance.

From somewhere below there came a slow, rhythmic, almost tuneful booming as if of some great clock. It was a sound familiar to three of the detectives and there was not one in whom it did not cause a thrill of horror. For a second Begg hesitated, and then continued down the long flight of stone steps which revealed, by the marks in the mould which grew inches thick upon them, signs of recent usage.

Only Bardot had not heard the sound before. ‘What on earth is it?’ he enquired of Sinclair.

The pathologist frowned, clearly wondering if he should reply. Then he made up his mind, speaking rapidly and quietly: ‘Well, firstly, old man, it is not exactly of our earth. We believe it is a regulator of sorts. It is what we, who have travelled frequently between the worlds, sometimes refer to as the Cosmic Regulator. Others know it as the Grand Balance. I have heard it more than once, but never seen it. There are many conflicting descriptions. I have wondered if every person who has seen it has imposed their own image upon it. The Regulator is said to lie at the very centre of the multiverse, if the multiverse can be said to possess a centre.’

’Have you ever known anyone who has seen it?’ whispered Bardot, wiping cold sweat from his brow. He had only recently been transferred to the STP.

Sinclair nodded. ‘I believe Begg has set eyes on it, and perhaps Lapointe. But even they, articulate as they are, have never described it. It is often represented in mythological iconography as a kind of scale, with one side representing Chaos and the other Law, but nobody knows its true form, if it has one at all.’

‘Law and Chaos? Are those not Zoroastrian conceptions? The forces which war for control of the world?’

‘So far nobody has ever managed to gain power over the Balance, but should someone eventually succeed, it will mean the end of Time but not of consciousness. If Chaos or Law controls existence, we shall continue to live at the exact moment before the extinction of everything. For eternity! Or so the theory goes. But there will always be madmen to challenge that conception, to believe that by controlling the Cosmic Balance they can exert their own desired reality upon the multiverse. Heaven help us if Hitler and his lunatics are close to making such an attempt!’

Only half-comprehending this idea, Bardot firmed his shoulders and continued to follow Begg’s thin ray of light down into the sonorous darkness.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER: THE ROADS BETWEEN THE WORLDS

As they reached the bottom of the steps, they found themselves on uneven flagstones, peering through a series of vaults supported by ancient pillars.

‘No doubt,’ suggested Sinclair, ‘these are your famous Parisian catacombs?’

‘Possibly. I am not familiar with every aspect of them.’ Bardot peered into the rustling darkness.

The strange, distant booming continued. Whether the noise was mechanical or natural, it was impossible to determine. Lapointe and Begg both cocked their heads to listen. The echoes resounding through the vaults made it almost impossible to determine their source. At one moment Sinclair thought it might be water, at another some sort of engine. He was of a disposition to discount his own metaphysical speculation.

The vaults seemed endless and their darkness sucked the light from Begg’s lantern, yet the detective continued to lead the way as if he had some idea where the labyrinth offered an exit.

‘The arcades above us are a maze,’ remarked Lapointe, ‘which to some degree trace this other maze below.’

‘Remarkable,’ murmured Begg. ‘I had some idea of what to expect, but had no idea we were so close to the Regulator. This is not the first time I have used such a gate myself to move between one reality and another. But I have never before felt so near the centre. What about you, Lapointe?’

‘I must admit I have never heard it except as a very distant echo,’ replied the Frenchman. ‘Until now I have used mechanical means to negotiate the spaces between realities. We are issued with Roburian speedshells by the department. Naturally, old friend, I knew that you had not always taken advantage of such vehicles…’

‘One learns,’ the detective muttered, almost to himself. ‘One learns.’ His progress seemed almost erratic and without logic as he moved backwards and forwards, then side to side, keeping the mysterious sound constantly at a certain distance, treading a trail which only he could sense.

Now they made out a silvery light ahead.

‘Can it be possible that the Arcades de l’Opéra lead directly to the roads between the worlds?’

Hearing this, Sinclair gave an involuntary shudder.

Above them the great arches grew taller and taller until they were impossibly high, no longer structures of human architecture, but part of a natural vault which had become part of the night itself. And then all four men gasped, pausing in their tracks as Begg’s lantern revealed a long, twisting pathway which seemed to vanish into infinity. Above them, as well as below them, were other paths, all of them crossing and re-crossing. And on some could be distinguished tiny figures, not all of them human shapes, walking back and forth along these causeways.

When Sir Seaton Begg turned to address his fellow detectives his eyes might have been glistening with tears.

‘Gentlemen,’ he whispered, dousing the lantern, ‘I believe we have discovered the roads between the worlds!’

And now their eyes became used to the light which emanated from the moonbeam roads themselves. They stretched in every possible direction, both above and below. The legendary trails which led to all possible planes of the multiverse.

‘I have dreamed of this discovery,’ said Begg. ‘On occasions I have glimpsed these roads as I passed from one aspect of reality to another, but I never suspected I would ever discover access to them by accident. To think, the gateway to them has existed in Paris, presumably since the beginning of time, their patterns perhaps unconsciously imitated by the architect who designed the galleries above. Our mythologies and folktales have hinted, of course. There have been sensational tales. Yet they hardly prepare one for the reality. Is this Zenith’s and Mrs Persson’s secret, do you think?’

‘And is it also Hitler’s?’ asked Lapointe grimly. ‘Are his ambitions greater than we ever expected?’

Dwarfed by the vast network of moonbeam roads, the detectives were frozen in their uncertainty. There were no maps, no evident routes to follow. They had discovered an extraordinary, mysterious reality!

‘At least it is no longer a mystery as to how Zenith was able to evade our men. And Mrs Persson also. How long have they known of this route?’ Bardot wondered.

Begg shook his head slowly. ‘I believe Mrs Persson has probably been using these roads for a very long time. Yet it is my guess that she did not come this far voluntarily.’

‘How on earth can you make that supposition, Begg?’ enquired Lapointe.

‘Her cats,’ said Begg. ‘I know she would never have left her cats unattended. She would have brought them with her or she would have made arrangements for them to be looked after. No, gentlemen, if she was not faced with an overwhelming emergency, I believe Mrs Persson was lured down here and then made a prisoner.’

‘By Zenith?’

‘Possibly.’

‘If not by Zenith, then by whom?’

‘By Hitler. Or one of his people.’ Begg placed his foot firmly upon the road which led away into the darkness. There seemed nothing below them but other roads, on which those tiny wayfarers came and went.

‘How do you know she came this way, old man?’ Taffy Sinclair wished to know.

‘I have only instinct, Taffy. An instinct honed, I might say, by a lifetime spent travelling between the worlds.’

From somewhere, still unseen, came the booming of that unearthly balance.

THE FIFTH CHAPTER: AN UNEXPECTED NEWCOMER

With the familiar world far behind them, Begg and his fellow detectives were by now crossing a long, sinuous causeway from which gleamed a faint silvery light.

‘What surprises me,’ said Lapointe, is why so few people have reported finding this entrance to the moonbeam roads.’

‘I suspect because it is not always open,’ Begg suggested. ‘If Mrs Persson came this way but was abducted, perhaps she opened the gate but had no time to close it. My guess is that Hitler’s men, with whom she was clearly involved in some way, had stumbled on the road and bribed Caron, who had already sold them arms, with those filthy photographs. No doubt they also bribed M. Caron to let them know when she next planned to use his shop. Your men said they saw others enter the shop and not re-emerge, eh?’

‘Three of them. Isn’t it possible Mrs Persson unwittingly led them here?’

‘Impossible to say, Lapointe. I am hoping that mystery will shortly be solved!’

‘But how do you know we are even on the right road?’

Then Begg pointed downward. Stretching ahead of them the others now detected the faintest of pale traces, almost like ghostly drops of blood.

‘What is it?’ Lapointe wanted to know.

‘I believe those frauds of mystics like to call it ectoplasm,’ said Begg, ‘but I prefer to think of it as the traces left by every human soul as it passes through the world – or, in this case, between them. Only those “old souls” like Mrs Persson, who has moved for so long between one plane and another that she has developed a form of longevity we might even call immortality, leave such clear traces.’ His smile was grim. ‘We are still on her trail.’

Only when he looked back did Taffy Sinclair see, not unexpectedly, similar glowing traces running behind them. And he knew for certain who had left them.

After a further passage of time, when the booming of that ghostly balance seemed somewhat closer, Sinclair realised they had left the moonbeam roads and were again passing through a more earthly sequence of vaulted chambers. Again the electric lamp was in Begg’s left hand. Again his right hand gripped his service revolver. Was it his imagination, the Home Office pathologist asked himself, or was there something almost familiar about the smell of the air? Pine trees? Impossible.

‘Where are we?’ enquired Lapointe, still in a whisper.

‘If I am not mistaken, my old friend,’ answered the Englishman, ‘we are somewhere in the Bavarian mountains. Probably near a place called Berchtesgaden. Either that, or my nose deceives me!’

‘So we were right!’ Bardot exclaimed. ‘Mrs Persson is working for the German insurgents!’

‘That, Inspector Bardot,’ responded Begg, ‘remains to be discovered.’

Soon the ground began to slope upward and they heard the sound of voices, almost drowning that of the mysterious balance. They were unmistakeably speaking German and the loudest of them had a distinct Austrian accent.

Sir Seaton doused his lamp. But he did not return his revolver to his pocket.

The unseen Austrian’s voice rose with excitement. ‘Victory is in our grasp, my friends. Almost our entire army is passing through the Eagle Gate as we speak, to assemble in the Great Siegfried Cavern, awaiting our signal. Those degenerate fools thought they had defeated us, reduced us to a mere rabble. But they reckoned without our heritage, the ancient Nordic secrets locked deep within our Bavarian homeland. The Hollow Earth theory has been proven a scientific fact. You have done well, Frau Persson, by voluntarily showing us this road. We should have been sad if you were to become the subject of the next set of pictures sold in Paris by Herr Caron. By next Saturday the course of history will be changed forever. We shall strike a blow against the Jewish race from which it will never recover. If you continue to cooperate, you shall witness my becoming world leader, master of time and space. You will make a fitting consort. We shall rule the universe together!’

They heard only a murmured reply. But the Austrian, evidently Colonel Hitler, continued his monologue unchecked. He hardly understood the nature of his own situation, so blinded was he by petty dreams of power and banal notions of his own superiority. A typical megalomaniac. Yet why on earth would a woman of Una Persson’s intelligence and integrity lend herself to such evil folly?

Using the ancient columns as cover, the four crept closer. Now, in a circle of light, they could make out the figures of a short fat man, a squat military type with a hideously disfigured face, another with gaunt, almost skeletal features, a black medical boot. To one side of these stood a tall, lugubrious-looking individual and another man of medium height with a lock of greasy hair falling over one eye and a short, dark Charlie Chaplin moustache. They recognised them at once from the ‘Wanted’ posters. Here was the entire upper hierarchy of the Hitler insurgents. Now all four detectives drew their revolvers and advanced. This was their chance to capture all the leaders of the German insurgency at once.

Mrs Persson, seated at ease on a chair to one side of the main group, was the first to notice them.

‘Raise your hands!’ Begg barked in German, motioning with his Webley. ‘You are all under arrest.’

’Thunder and lightning!’ The tall man, whom they recognised as Captain Hess, one of Hitler’s closest co-conspirators, made a movement to his belt. But Lapointe crossed quickly and placed his hand on the man’s arm.

Colonel Hitler glowered, his tiny blue eyes points of almost insane range. ‘How did you-?’

’Cross from one plane of the multiverse to another? The same way Mrs Persson did. Indeed, she led us to you…’

’But only a few of us knew the secret!’ Herman Goering, the fat Nazi, looked rapidly from face to face. ‘Zenith swore-’

’So Zenith is in league with you!’ Lapointe looked almost disappointed. ‘Well, he will be arrested in good time.’

’But I am surprised, Mrs Persson, that you should associate yourself with such scum. Enemies of all that is civilised…’ Begg shook his head.

Una Persson stood up. Her beautiful face was a mask of coldness and her eyes showed no expression. ‘Ah, Sir Seaton.’ Her voice mocked him. ‘So you are, like so many of your kind, the sole arbiter of what is civilised.’

‘Englishman, we are the ones who will save everything valuable in civilisation!’The gaunt man with the medical boot was Herr Goebbels, the journalist. ‘There would be no civilisation if there were no Germany. No music, no art, no poetry. All that is best in your own country is the creation of the Nordic soul. And that threatens you, from without and within, is also Jewish. By saving Europe from the Jews, we shall establish a new Golden Age across our Continent. Even the Slavs will welcome this renaissance and willingly join in. Soon we shall be able to manipulate the very stuff of creation.’

Unthinkingly, a furious Taffy Sinclair took a step closer to the crazed creature. ‘I find you unconvincing, Colonel Hitler. How would you establish this new civilisation by blowing up innocents and throwing the whole of our world into turmoil?’

The hideously scarred soldier, Captain Erich Röhm, laughed in Sinclair’s face. ‘Only through blood and iron will Europe be cleansed. I am a soldier. I know only the art of battle. But even I understand how the Jews continue to corrupt political and cultural life! Martin Luther warned us. So, too, have a succession of popes and bishops. Not only do Jews refuse the true Messiah, they wish to wipe all trace of Jesus Christ from the world! Once the warriors of Europe rose up to save Christendom from destruction. Now we rise again to mount our great crusade against the sons of Shem. By working against us, gentlemen, you are making a terrible mistake. Join us! The Holy Grail itself will soon be in our hands. He who holds the Grail controls the Balance and therefore the universe itself!’

’You are as mad as I understood you to be, Messieurs.’ Lapointe drew a set of handcuffs from his overcoat pocket and advanced towards the glowering Hitler. ‘Now, if you will kindly-’

And then a shot rang out from the shadows and the revolver went spinning from Lapointe’s grasp. Another shot and Bardot clutched his right shoulder. Blood began to seep through his fingers.

‘Drop your weapons!’ came a cold commanding voice. ‘Drop them or you shall all die immediately.’

And strolling out into the circle of light came a tall, stiff-backed man wearing a black domino obscuring the upper half of his face. He was dressed in perfect evening clothes. In his right hand was a smoking 9mm Sabatini automatic.

Begg recognised him immediately. ‘So it was a true,’ he murmured. ‘I have been guilty of underestimating you, mein Herr. I knew that if Monsieur Zenith was not helping this gang, it had to be someone as knowledgeable in the ways of the multiverse.’

The newcomer’s thin lips formed a mocking smile of triumph. ‘You had thought me defeated, Sir Seaton, in the matter of the Corsican Collar. Then your life was saved by my old enemy, your cousin, who calls himself Zenith. But you knew I would return to continue with my quest.’

Lowering his revolver, Begg turned at once to Colonel Hitler. ‘Believe me, if you think to link your interests with this creature’s you are mistaken. He will betray you as he has betrayed every other man, woman or spirit whom he has persuaded to act in his interest. You might know him by another name, but I can tell you his real identity, for he is the master of lies. His name is Johannes Klosterheim. Some believe him a fallen angel expelled from Hell itself. I do know that he was once a member of the Society of Jesus, before he was expelled not only from that order, but excommunicated by the Pope himself.’

‘Klosterheim!’ Captain Goering’s plum features shook with amusement. ‘What nonsense! This is Herr Johan Cornelius. You would have us believe that we have linked our fortunes with a figure from folklore – the infamous Gaynor the Damned!’

‘As he is called in the opera,’ said Begg quietly, ‘but Wagner took certain liberties with the old legends, as before him did Milton.’

Even Lapointe, Sinclair and the pale, wounded Bardot looked at him as if he were mad. All knew the stories from the opera, if not from their school-books. The enemy of Parsifal, who had sought the Grail and found it, only to be cursed with eternal damnation, to wander the earth until the end of time for the crime of attempting to drink Christ’s very blood.

‘Drop your weapons, gentlemen, or this time I shoot your colleague in his heart and not his shoulder,’ was Klosterheim’s icy response.

And now the Nazi colonel himself was staring a little nervously at the masked man, as if wondering whether any bargain he might have made with him could possibly any longer be to his advantage.

Then Mrs Persson stepped out of the circle and went to join Klosterheim, standing close beside him, making it clear she was the fiend’s ally.

‘It’s said that promise of the Grail’s power will corrupt even the noblest of human creatures,’ declared Begg. ‘Had I realised exactly what we were up against, my friends, I promise I would never have led you here! This will be forever on my conscience.’

‘Fear not, Sir Seaton,’ came Klosterheim’s hollow, terrible voice. ‘You will not have to suffer for very much longer. Meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will drop your weapons at your feet.’

And as their revolvers clattered down, he uttered a mirthless laugh which echoed on and on through the vaulted chambers and chilled the blood of all who heard it.

THE SIXTH CHAPTER: THE ULTIMATE POWER

Begg felt physically sick as he stood with his hands raised, watching the Nazi gangster gloat over his reversal. He had underestimated not only Hitler and Company but everyone he had opposed. He had been foolish to assume that he alone, save for Mrs Persson and Monsieur Zenith, knew the secret of the moonbeam roads. He had wanted too badly to trust that pair. Cursing himself for not considering his old enemy Klosterheim’s ambitions, he refused to believe he might have been forgiven for thinking him dead. Klosterheim was generally considered by almost everyone to have met his end in Mirenburg a decade or more earlier. Not that Begg himself had been there to witness the evil eternal’s demise, but it had been none other than Zenith who had given him the information.

From his earliest appearance as a Satanic angel expelled from Hell in the myths and legends of the seventeenth century, Klosterheim had been said to die more than once. But his antipathy to Begg’s family – or at least the German side of the family, the von Beks – was well known. He had survived one apparent death after another through the years, remaining alive for two things only – to kill all who carried the blood of his old enemy, Ulrich von Bek, and to lay his hands upon the Holy Grail and thus control, in his understanding, the very nature of reality. Yet here he was in alliance with Una Persson, Countess von Bek!

More than once Begg had narrowly escaped terrible death at the hands of this near-immortal and now, it seemed, there was no hope of escape at all.

Klosterheim’s sunken sockets hid eyes which burned within like the unquenched flames of Hell. He pocketed his revolver while the triumphant Nazis trained their own weapons on the detectives. Then the masked man bent and placed his thin lips upon those of Mrs Persson. Begg was astonished. Klosterheim had never shown warmth, let alone passion, for another, least of all a woman. And Mrs Persson smiled admiringly back at the deathless devil with whom she had cast her lot. Colonel Hitler meanwhile glowered jealously, clearly furious that the woman had collaborated with him because Klosterheim had instructed her to do so. Noting all these ramifications, Begg now believed himself thoroughly outwitted. Was it possible that Zenith also allied himself with his old rival?

‘I cannot believe this of you, Mrs Persson!’ exclaimed Taffy, still shocked and clearly unable to accept this turn of events. Like all his colleagues save the wounded Bardot, his hands were now firmly tied behind him by Herr Hess. It was just possible that a tear gleamed in his eye. ‘How can any decent Englishwoman possibly ally herself with such riff-raff?’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find it’s quite commonly done, Mr Sinclair.’ Mrs Persson seemed almost drunk as she leaned against the gaunt skeleton who was not only her ally but apparently also her paramour, even her master. ‘We women are silly creatures, eh, thoroughly addicted to powerful men! There’s a larger interest here, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Very few of us are privileged to know one of Satan’s own angels…’

But Sinclair, his mouth set in a hard, disapproving line, was unable to answer.

Now the Nazis began to push their captives back towards the moonbeam roads.

‘We await only Count Zenith,’ chuckled Captain Goering. ‘And our plan will be complete. On Saturday, the Hindenburg brings from America the Jewish Palestinian deputation to Munich. They intend to discuss an obscenity with Comrade von Hugenberg, chairman of the Munich Supreme Soviet – the establishment of a new Jewish state in the Bavarian lake district! Can you imagine a worse insult to the Christian community? But it will never take place. Our man Zenith will introduce a bomb on board while the Hindenburg refuels overnight at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He will take the Star of Judea in exchange. That is the priceless emerald which the Jews intend to use as down payment on the land they buy from the treacherous Bavarian soviet. The Hindenburg will blow up. The French will be blamed for their sabotage and a wedge will be driven between the various allies. Jews, Frenchmen and Bavarian communists will all he implicated by the British and Americans. Chaos will ensue. Meanwhile, we will be ready, as soon as news of the Hindenburg’s destruction comes through, to announce a new National Socialist Bavarian state. But the Freikorps will already be through the Eagle Gate and crossing the moonbeam roads into the Arcades of the Opéra, a stone’s throw from the Arc deTriomphe. We shall announce our victory there. Our guns will by that time command the whole of Paris. Germans will rise to our victorious standard and this time the British and French will find it impossible to subdue us. For Paris will already be hostage to our cannon!’

‘But this is madness!’ gasped Lapointe. ‘All you will succeed in doing is harming hundreds of innocent people. You will be defeated again. Your logic is entirely flawed. Captain Goering.’

‘Nonsense. You are addressing the cream of the Nazi elite!’ put in Herr Goebbels. ‘Our plan is flawless!’

‘Has Herr Klosterheim talked you into this?’ asked Bardot, through gritted teeth. His wound had, for the moment, stopped bleeding. He assured his friends that he had only sustained a flesh wound. Slowly the group had come to a halt at the very edge of the silvery road through the multiverse.

‘We have perfected this plan together with Herr Klosterheim’s involvement,’ said Hess, his strange eyes shifting from one to the other. ‘By Sunday Europe will have accepted the reality of a new Germany. We already know that many Frenchmen as well as English aristocrats will flock to our standard!’

‘Klosterheim uses you for his own purposes,’ said Begg quietly. ‘He has beguiled you, as he has beguiled so many others. He has no interest in reviving Nazi Germany or, indeed, doing anything but gaining control of the Cosmic Balance. Mrs Persson, you know this to be true!’

‘I have no reason to disbelieve him, Sir Seaton.’ With a low laugh the adventuress turned away.

Now again came the rhythmic booming as of some great drum. Most of them shivered as they heard it, standing at the beginning of the moonbeam roads. Motioning again with their pistols, the Nazis forced Begg and Co. to move ahead. By the second, the noise of the great regulator came closer. And the vision of the multiverse grew more vivid, the roads more colourful and complex.

The detectives gasped. Below, above, on every side of them, the distance was filled with glowing silvery roads, twisting in all directions and forming an extraordinary labyrinth. On this spiderweb of pathways, unconscious of the drama being played between the Nazis and their enemies, travellers walked between a million and more realities.

‘Where are they going, Begg?’ murmured Dr Sinclair.

Begg’s own face was alive with wonderment. ‘I had heard of this… Sinclair, old friend, these people are walking the moonbeam roads between the worlds. Simply – walking across the multiverse!’

Klosterheim read the bewilderment in Taffy’s eyes. ‘Do not fear, doctor. You will soon have the whole of eternity to contemplate this puzzle. Now – move on. There are still more wonders to greet you…’

Bardot groaned, evidently believing himself feverish. He was the only one of the prisoners not to be bound. His arm hung limp at his side and his right hand staunched the blood from his wounded shoulder. He seemed dazed, unable to accept the actuality of these events. He looked up through the swirling, scintillating colour which filled the great ether, the shimmering lines of light cutting between them, the distant figures, the immense beauty of it all. Then he looked back at the grotesquely grinning uniformed men training their Lugers on the captured detectives. Behind them, removing the black diamond mask he affected, Klosterheim stood stock still. He had wrapped his great cloak around him, as if against a chill, though the temperature was moderate. From within the head the cold eyes shifted from face to face, offering no expression, no sense of any humanity.

To Begg’s certain knowledge, the former priest was virtually indestructible. Like Zenith, like Mrs Persson herself, he was an eternal, one of those whose longevity was considerably greater than that of an ordinary human being. He was accustomed to life in the semi-finite. Some said they sustained their long lives by dreaming a thousand years for every day of their ordinary existence and that what we witnessed were dream projections, not the actual person. That most of them lived forever was, in Begg’s opinion, debatable. Yet those who had encountered Klosterheim over the centuries came to believe that he had truly been one of Satan’s favourite accomplices, until the time when Satan himself sought reconciliation with their former lord. Then Klosterheim had turned against Satan, too. As he perceived it, he had been betrayed by the two mightiest masters in his universe. For all his well-hidden spirituality, Begg was not a man to accept superstition or supernatural explanation, but he could almost believe the stories as he stared back at Klosterheim. Begg’s own face was expressionless as he considered ways and means of turning the tables on their captors.

Step by remorseless step they moved along the opaque, silvery causeway towards that sonorous booming until at last the road ended abruptly, upon the edge of the void, its silver falling away like mist. For the first time a smile crossed Klosterheim’s thin, bloodless lips. And he looked down.

Begg was the first to follow his gaze.

The detective’s first instinct was to step back. He stifled a sound. There, immediately below them, its blade pointing down into the dancing, obscuring mist, he made out the shape of a gigantic black sword fashioned to resemble a balance, with a cup depending from either arm. Within the metal of the black blade scarlet characters writhed and twisted while the cups moved slowly, gleaming like jewelled gold. It was as if they measured the weight of the world’s pain. Multicoloured strands of ectoplasm swirled from the cups and Begg knew in his soul that he did indeed look upon the legendary Cosmic Balance, which regulated the entire multiverse, weighing Law and Chaos, good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death, love and hate, maintaining all the equilibrium and therefore the existence of all man created matter.

In spite of the booming voice of the swaying arm, Klosterheim’s cold tones could be heard clearly. ’If the multiverse has a centre, then this can be said to be it. I have sought it for many years and across many universes. And you, gentlemen, will have the privilege of seeing it before you die. Indeed,’ and now he chuckled to himself, ‘you will always see it before you die…’

Now it was Lapointe’s turn to speak. ‘You are a dangerous fool, M’sieu Klosterheim, if you believe you can control that symbol of eternal justice. Only God Almighty has any way of altering the scales maintaining the balance between Law and Chaos. What you see is doubtless only one manifestation of the Cosmic Balance. Can you control a symbol?’

’Perhaps not,’ came the sweet, calm voice of Mrs Persson. She had turned up the collar of her long, military coat. Framed by her helmet of dark hair, her beautiful, pale, oval face shone with the reflected light of the great scale. Her indigo eyes were sardonic. ‘But the one who gives power to the symbol can sometimes control what it controls…’

Lapointe turned away from her with an expression of disgust.

Hitler, Hess, Goering, Röhm and Goebbels had crowded to the edge of the road to stare down at the great balance. ‘All we need now is to set into that hilt the Star of Judea,’ said the Nazi colonel.

‘Which you will not receive until next Saturday as I understand it,’ said Begg, genuinely puzzled. ‘Tomorrow is that?’

Hitler became suddenly alert. He turned questioning eyes to Klosterheim.

‘I brought you here, where Time has no end and no beginning, merely to show you why and for what you will die,’ declared Klosterheim. ‘A small offering to the Gods of Chaos who will soon be serving my cause.’

‘And what is the chief price you pay for their compliance?’ Begg enquired coolly. ‘The souls of four mortals could hardly be enough.’

‘Oh, they are scarcely ordinary mortals. Their crimes have resonated across the entire multiverse. Their souls have far greater weight than yours, Sir Seaton, certainly in that respect. Yet will the Balance accept them? We still await the one who brings us the Star of Judea. The Hindenburg docked an hour ago by his time and now stands ready at Eiffel’s great mooring mast.’ Klosterheim’s cold voice was almost amused. ‘With that great and ancient jewel, I will make my true offering and in return shall have control of the Balance.’

‘How could a mere jewel – any jewel – have value here?’ demanded Dr Sinclair, his eyes half-mad with what they had seen.

‘The Star of Judea is of immense value to the Lords of Chaos, Taffy,’ murmured Begg. ‘They’ll reward any being who brings it to them. It will even seem to give that being control of the Cosmic Balance. Meanwhile…’ He noted an opportunity and gestured, drawing the Nazis’ attention away from his friends…

Suddenly, a revolver appeared in Bardot’s left hand. Begg had anticipated this and deliberately and distracted their enemies, giving Bardot time to act. The Frenchman’s eyes were a mixture of contempt and pain. ‘You poor, unimaginative brutes could not imagine one of us owning a second weapon. Throw up your hands and drop your guns, gentlemen.’

The startled Germans swung round, staring into the barrel of Bardot’s serviceable Hachette.38. They looked from him to Klosterheim to Mrs Persson. Only the woman found some amusement in this reversal. Yet she did not move, either to comply or to resist.

At Bardot’s demand, Captain Hess drew his elaborate, ornamental dagger from the scabbard at his belt and cut the ropes binding the metatemporal detectives. His deep-set eyes were dreamy, as if he believed himself the victim of an hallucination. Constantly his gaze returned to the great scintillating scales moving gently in constant balance, their movement continuing to create the deep booming, like the heartbeat of the multiverse.

Klosterheim snarled. ‘How do you think you can defeat my plans now, merely by turning the tables on my servants?’ And then, without warning, he rushed at Hess, pushing the startled Nazi to the edge of the moonbeam road. Before the detectives could reach him, he shoved again and this time Hess’s arms flailed as he fought to keep his balance. He reached towards Klosterheim, yelling something unintelligible, and then he fell backwards.

They watched him drop, spinning and waving his awkward arms, like a scarecrow, falling, falling down towards the Balance, passing the swaying beam until he disappeared in the pulsing light coming up from one of the cups. They heard him scream, a high-pitched and terrible noise, and then he had been swallowed into the light which flared suddenly scarlet.

Klosterheim stepped to the edge and watched with an air of satisfaction. ‘A sign of my good faith, I hope.’

Colonel Hitler swore in German. ‘You killed him. You killed my closest friend!’

Klosterheim shrugged. ‘It’s disputable that he’s actually dead, but my master needs blood and souls.’ He shrugged then. ‘The Grail-’

‘That thing is not the Grail!’ growled Röhm. ‘There cannot be two grails!’

Now Klosterheim smiled. ‘Not in your mythology, perhaps. But one cup holds the stuff of Chaos, the other holds the stuff of Law. That is what regulates the multiverse. That is why they are in constant conflict.’

Still cursing, the Nazi colonel reached down and picked up his fallen Luger. In one movement he pointed and pulled the trigger, firing shot after shot into the mocking figure. Again came that cold, humourless chuckle. Klosterheim spread his arms and looked down at his unwounded body. ’I am not so easily killed, Colonel Hitler. How can you take away the soul of a man who has no soul?’

Still Una Persson did not move. It was as if she were waiting, perhaps to watch the opposed groups destroy one another. Still that enigmatic amusement filled her indigo eyes.

Only when Röhm retrieved his own automatic pistol and pointed it at her did she frown. Begg was sure, eternal though she might be, that she was not invulnerable.

’Arioch! Arioch! Aid me now!’ called Klosterheim in that strange voice which seemed to deaden the air it filled.

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER: OLD SOULS

Begg acted. He knew he could not kill Klosterheim easily, but the Nazis would soon return their attention to the detectives. He raised his Webley and, taking careful aim, shot Röhm between the eyes. The captain’s expression changed from anger to surprise. And then he, too, lost his balance and fell, his body spinning downwards to stop suddenly, as if in the grip of some powerful magnetic force which held him spreadeagled and screaming silently in space above the Balance.

Another shot. And this time it was Lapointe who sent Captain Goering into the void, to hang in the air immediately above the cup which held the weight of Chaos.

‘No!’ cried Una Persson suddenly. ‘No! Don’t kill them! Not yet! You don’t know what you’re doing. There’s a plan-’

But Begg had no choice, for the malevolent club-footed Goebbels screamed something about betrayal and turned his gun on her. The Webley’s bullet found its target in Goebbels’ heart and another Nazi went down, whirling and shrieking, to come to a sudden halt just before he was swallowed by the cup which now boiled with smoky scarlet and black.

‘You fool, Sir Seaton!’ cried Mrs Persson. ‘No more shooting, I beg you. Don’t you realise you’re aiding Klosterheim? Their souls are already pledged to Chaos. They are the blood sacrifice they intended to make of you. One last action and he can use them to destroy everything. Everything!’

Begg was confused. He kept his Webley levelled at the remaining Nazi, the slavering, terrified Hitler, who whispered in his lisping Austrian: ‘She’s right. Nothing but harm will come from killing me.’

‘Then get on your knees and keep your hands above your head,’ snapped Begg. Slowly, every part of his body trembling, Hitler obeyed. Taffy Sinclair knew his old friend well enough to understand that Begg accepted that he had, inadvertently, done Klosterheim’s work. The beat of the balance changed subtly. Now it was as if they heard distant wildfire, like the crackling and snapping of burning timber.

Una Persson came to stand beside Begg. He stepped backward as if she threatened him, but instead her expression was one of mixed anger and fear. ‘I did not believe you could follow me,’ she said. ‘Oh, Seaton, your courage is now likely to lose us the fight – even perhaps destroy the multiverse! Do you understand what this means?’

And still the massive, sword-like balance, its cups swaying and groaning, continued to beat and pulse and the light around its hilt was like a golden halo surrounding metal of a blackness greater than the void. From somewhere below, Begg thought he heard the murmur of distant laughter.

Klosterheim’s voice joined in that laughter. It was the bleakest, most desolate sound Sir Seaton Begg had ever heard. He lowered his gun, looking helplessly from Mrs Persson, to Klosterheim, to the kneeling, gibbering Hitler and to his friends.

‘Oh, by Jupiter!’ he whispered as realisation dawned. ‘Oh, my good Lord! What have I done?’

The booming of the great balance had now taken on a different, arrhythmic note. Under its deep, masculine voice, Begg thought he could hear the thin screams of the Nazis. The gulf surrounding the not-dead men apparently boiled with blood and black smoke.

‘We would have mastered creation and moulded it in our desired image until the end of time,’ wept Hitler. Begg did not care that he now lowered his hands and buried his face in them. ‘Klosterheim! That was what you promised me!’

‘Like you, my friend, I have made many promises in my long career.’ Klosterheim’s toneless voice betrayed no emotion. ‘And like you, Colonel Hitler, I have broken many promises. I helped you and your followers because it suited me. Now you have failed me. It no longer suits me. Your actions brought my enemies to me and we have reached this pass. Only the blood and souls of your colleagues will compensate for your clumsiness.’ He turned to the metatemporal detective. ‘My master has his initial sacrifices, thanks to you, Sir Seaton. Now he will come to my aid, as he said he would…’

Begg could not disguise his own self-disgust. He was about to speak when a new voice, light and mocking, sounded from out of the scarlet mist behind them. He recognised the voice at once.

‘Oh, do not count on Lord Arioch turning up just yet, Herr Klosterheim.’ The newcomer’s tone held mockery, amusement, a kind of courage which could belong, Begg knew, only to one man. He looked in surprise back down the road which had brought them here. Strolling towards them, swinging his cane, for all the world as if he were still the insouciant flâneur of the Arcades de l’Opéra, wearing full evening dress, including a silk-lined cape and a silk hat, which emphasised the bone whiteness of his skin, the glittering crimson of his eyes, was Monsieur Zenith. ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’ He lifted his top hat. ‘Mrs Persson. This is not quite the scene I imagined I would find. Where, for instance, are Herr Hitler’s friends?’

’I fear they have become at least a potential blood-offering to whatever demon of Chaos Johannes Klosterheim obeys,’ replied Begg in chastened tones. ‘I believe I have made the greatest mistake of my life. Can it possibly be reversed, cousin?’

Still the elegant boulevardier, Zenith paused and selected one of his opium cigarettes from his slender, silver case. He lit it with an equally elegant silver Dunhill. ‘I must be truthful with you. Sir Seaton. I am not sure. Theoretically, if Chaos or Law achieves total ascendancy, then Time stops. Like those fellows down there, we shall be frozen forever at the moment before our deaths. Scarcely a palatable fate.’

’Indeed.’ Begg looked about him and then down again at the great balance below. ‘What is this gem they said you’d steal?’

’It is already stolen.’ Zenith smiled almost to himself ‘That is what brought me here. I possessed it before the ship ever left Jerusalem. Their perception of time remains, as ever, very crude. The gem emits both light and vibrations and acts as a kind of compass. Madame Persson understood this. It was what we discussed before the situation grew less controllable. My object remains the Da Vinci in the Louvre, which I expected to possess by now. They have absolutely no right to it, you know. I had not reckoned, however, on Herr Klosterheim’s involvement. The rules of this game seem significantly changed. I had underestimated its nature. Madame Persson suggested..

‘I regret that I misled you a little, old friend.’ Mrs Persson still stood close to the expressionless Klosterheim. ‘Self-interest demands a fresh strategy. A new reality.’

‘The Nazis continue to be useful,’ said Klosterheim. ‘Whether their souls go to Chaos or their bodies serve my cause, it matters not. Like all women, Mrs Persson understands where her loyalties are best placed.’

‘Great heavens, man! Does life have no value to you?’ Taffy Sinclair broke away from his fellow investigators and strode towards the cadaverous creature. ‘How on earth can you allow such infamy?’

Klosterheim’s dreadful laughter whispered into the void. ‘You speak to one who has defied both God and Lucifer and now stands ready to control the nature of reality itself. I am not the first to try. But I shall be the first to succeed.’

‘Such confidence is reassuring in these uncertain times.’ Zenith seemed almost amused. ‘I envy you, Herr Klosterheim. When do you expect my lord Arioch?’

’He will come imminently. He promised.’ Klosterheim turned those hollow eyes on the albino. ’He shares my impatience and my ambition.’

’Some would say he is already with us.’ Monsieur Zenith motioned with his sword stick. Klosterheim’s eyes followed it, as if he thought Zenith pointed out the powerful Chaos Lord. He saw nothing but the Balance below and four bodies suspended above one of the cups, an instant from being absorbed into the cause of Entropy.

Behind Begg. Commissaire Lapointe was forcing Hitler to his feet and handcuffing him. ‘It is my duty, gentlemen, to get this fellow back to the authorities in Berlin. As to the rest of the matter, I fear it is far beyond my competence. So if you will permit me…’ He began to push the whimpering insurgent colonel ahead of him, followed by his wounded assistant, whose expression was one of regret and embarrassment. ‘Duty demands,’ murmured Bardot.

‘Of course,’ agreed Begg. ‘I have no objection. Were the situation a little less complicated, I would be with you. Can you find your own way back?’

‘I hope so. With good fortune, we will meet again to in Paris very shortly.’

‘You may count on it, Commissaire.’ Monsieur Zenith bowed and again raised his hat. ‘I will take the most conscientious care of your colleague.’

Herr Klosterheim however would have none of this. ‘I cannot permit any of you to leave. Not now. Your souls are the price of my success.’ When Bardot’s pistol was again turned to aim at his chest he let out a laugh that was almost humorous. ‘Oh, fire away, my dear policeman. Have you any idea how many times I have been killed by the likes of you? Your lives are mine, just as those others belong to me. They are already promised to my patron…’

‘My dear Klosterheim,’ drawled Zenith, ‘are you truly so ignorant of the change in your situation that you believe you can threaten these good officers and stop them performing their duty? I believe the clinical term for your condition is ‘denial’. You no longer possess any power to speak of.’ And, smiling, he pressed a silver stud in his ebony cane and swiftly withdrew the slender blade.

Sinclair had expected to see polished silver steel. He gasped as instead he saw that the sword in Zenith’s hand was actually darker than the ebony which had contained it and along its slim, vibrating length writhed bloody scarlet characters, the runes of some long-forgotten lexicon. He turned, questioning Begg, and to his astonishment he saw his colleague laughing, the Webley held so loosely in his hand it threatened to fall into the void.

‘Aha!’ exclaimed Begg, almost in delight. ‘Here is your sought-for demonic aid, my dear Klosterheim! What a jest! What a jest!’ And he stepped back as his cousin advanced, the thrumming blade, which seemed to cry with its own voice, held before him, advancing on Klosterheim who looked from Mrs Persson to Zenith, to the sword, and was bewildered at last.

’Mrs Persson, you assured me…’

’I told you that the black broadsword you call Stormbringer was no longer in Monsieur Zenith’s possession. I said nothing of any other blade, bearing similar characteristics, which he finds convenient to carry in a more modern form under a different name.’ The English adventuress was grinning like a lioness who had just made a kill. ’You must know, Herr Klosterheim, that just as the wielder of the sword takes many guises, so does the sword itself. And even that creature which inhabits the sword has more than one identity!’

Now she stepped aside as Klosterheim began to back away from the advancing albino. ‘I shall not be threatened, Monsieur! Arioch! Lord Arioch of the Seven Darks! Aid me, I beg thee. Arioch, thou promised me…’

’Lord Arioch’s promises are of a practical and volatile nature, also,’ declared Zenith, the slender sword still pointed at Klosterheim’s throat. ‘It surprises me that you did not consider this when laying out your equation for this particular adventure. There are only a few for whose blood and souls he has no appetite at all.’

’But you forget, monsieur. That blade and your master feed on souls as well as blood.’ Klosterheim’s smile was bitterly sardonic. ‘Nein?’ With a quavering laugh, somehow even more disgusting than any previous expression he had given, he folded his arms and challenged Zenith to stab him.

If anything, the albino’s smile chilled the onlookers’ blood more than the other eternal’s laughter. Without hesitation, Monsieur Zenith stepped forward in an elegant fencer’s movement and his delicate black blade took Klosterheim in the throat.

For a second the ex-priest continued to laugh and then his eyes widened. He clutched at himself, at the shivering blade. He gasped. He groaned. He staggered backwards towards the very edge of the moonbeam road and hung there, swaying, as blood bubbled from the wound Zenith had made. ’Nein!’ he said again, this time without any form of irony, only with the most appalling fear. ‘Nein!’

He realised suddenly where he stood and made an attempt to regain his balance, but it was too late. His deep-set eyes burned with terror, lighting that cadaverous head with an unholy fire. Begg and the others could not tell what emotion they witnessed, but they would agree that it was emotion.

‘How can this be?’ Klosterheim spoke in the old High German of his youth. ‘How-?’

‘You forgot, Herr Klosterheim.’ With a lithe, sudden movement Zenith resheathed the black blade. ‘My sword is capable of conferring souls as well as stealing them.’ He stepped forward again and his hand was light on Klosterheim’s chest as he tipped him, gently, off into the void above the pulsing Balance. ‘And only a creature with a human soul, no matter how corrupt, can enjoy that moment of forever, poised between eternity and oblivion, which comes with the end of everything. Meanwhile, I send you to consider that thought for as long as you shall last. Which, of course, shall be until the end of Time.’

And then Klosterheim was falling backwards screaming, to join those others who hung in the void, like flies in a web, conscious and frozen in the instant before their deaths.

Monsieur Zenith turned with a bow. Reaching out, he kissed Mrs Persson’s hand. ‘Well played, madam. Our plan was almost foiled by these good-hearted fellows.’ He inclined his head towards Begg and Sinclair.

‘You two had planned all this?’ Sinclair found himself torn between rage and relief. ‘All of it?’

‘Most of it,’ declared Mrs Persson, advancing towards the famous pathologist. ‘Really, Doctor Sinclair, we had no intention of deceiving you or your colleagues. Neither did I expect to be detained by them, so very likely you saved my life by arriving when you did. From then on I thought it the best strategy to pretend to ally myself with Klosterheim, at least until Monsieur Zenith made his somewhat belated appearance. We really did not know you would have either the powers of deduction or the sheer courage to reach this place. Then, when you did turn up, I for one was rather baffled. It seemed that everything Monsieur Zenith and myself had worked out was threatened.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Happily, as you see-’

‘Klosterheim, for all his evil, did not deserve such a fate,’ declared Begg gravely. ‘And neither did those others.’

‘Oh, I assure you, dear cousin, they do indeed deserve everything.’ Zenith looked down into the void to where the great Balance still swayed. ‘And this affair is probably not yet over, though your part is certainly done.’ Then, with a casual movement of his wrist, he threw his swordstick after the man on whom he had just conferred life and a kind of death at the same moment, and turned to guide the two men back in the direction from which they had come. ‘Quickly. The thing that is my sword is not so easily defeated in its ambitions.’

Begg hesitated, demurring, and Zenith’s face became a mask of urgency. ‘Hurry, man! Hurry! If you value your soul!’

From somewhere below there now sounded a voice more terrifying than anything they had yet heard and, blossoming upwards, they saw a huge, bloody black cloud rising, rising like a wave which, instinctively, Begg knew must soon engulf them. The noise grew until it deafened them, causing bile to rise in their throats, and at last Begg obeyed his cousin. Grabbing Dr Sinclair’s arm, he turned and ran, Mrs Persson and Zenith the Albino immediately behind him.

The moonbeam road quivered and trembled beneath their feet, as if they experienced a powerful earthquake. Still they ran, knowing that not only their lives but their eternal souls must be the price of any further hesitation…

… Until suddenly a deep calm settled over them and a silvery whiteness had sprung up, forming a kind of wall, and they were once again in the catacombs they had left behind for what seemed millennia.

Monsieur Zenith straightened his silk hat on his head. ‘I shall miss that cane,’ he said. ‘But I know the exact place I can buy another in the Galerie du Baromètre. Come, Mrs Persson, gentlemen. Shall we return to the Arcades de l’Opéra? I think we have a rather extraordinary adventure to celebrate.’

EPILOGUE

His shoulder thoroughly bandaged, Bardot was the last to join the four men and one woman who shared an outside table at L’Albertine the following day. He was received with a great sense of celebration as the hero of the hour. ‘Without you, my dear Bardot, we should perhaps even now be enjoying the fate of our Nazi antagonists. As it is, the arrest of Colonel Hitler took the wind out of the Freikorps insurgents, who were indeed massing to enter the tunnel to take them directly into Paris. The Hindenburg made a successful mooring at the Eiffel Tower and spent a tranquil night there. The Star of Judea was returned. Even now negotiations to found a new Jewish homeland in Bavaria are proceeding and it is fully expected the exodus to Southern Germany will begin some time towards the end of next year!’ Seaton Begg clapped his French colleague on his good shoulder and ordered him an Armagnac.

The autumn sun was rising high in a golden sky and the great fountain in the centre of the arcade was falling in dark blue and green sheets against the verdigris, marble and tile of the statuary. There was a tranquil, leisurely quality to the day which Begg agreed he had not experienced for some time. It was as if the atmosphere were created by the capture of Hitler and his men.

‘Illusion though it might be, my friends,’ murmured Commissaire Lapointe, ‘it seems to me as if our world is about to embark upon a new era of peace and prosperity. Call me superstitious, if you will, but I believe in our defeat of the Nazi gang and their subsequent fate, we achieved something. Do you follow my meaning, Sir Seaton?’

Begg permitted himself a small smile. ‘We can hope you are right, my dear commissioner. But you are of another opinion, I think, Taffy.’

Dr Sinclair did his best to make light of his own thoughts. ‘It was that Balance,’ he said. ‘Something was going on down there which terrified me. And the manner of Klosterheim’s death – well, I still have difficulty sleeping when I think about it.’ He glanced almost shyly at Monsieur Zenith, who leaned back, taking a long puff on his Afghan cigarette.

‘I am sorry you were forced to witness that, Dr Sinclair. If I had had any other choice, of course I would not have done what I had to do. But Klosterheim was the force behind Hitler and his men. He has lived for a very long time. Some will tell you he counselled Martin Luther. Others say he was the angel who stood with Duke Arioch at Lucifer’s right hand during the great war in Heaven. He had no soul. That is what gave him such confidence. Having no soul, he was almost impossible to destroy. By conferring a soul upon him, I could kill him. Or, at least, I hope I killed him…’

‘But I think what is concerning my old friend Sinclair,’ interrupted Bardot, ‘is a very important question.’

‘Which is?’ Zenith seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘Taffy and I have both wondered about it,’ put in Begg, leaning forward to address his cousin. ‘Our question would be – where did that soul come from? Whose did you use? You can surely see why we would be wondering…’

‘Aha!’ Monsieur Zenith turned, laughing, to Mrs Persson. She clearly knew the answer. She leaned down and petted her two Orientals, who lay, perfectly behaved, at her feet. ‘I think I will leave that to you, Mrs Persson.’

The exquisitely beautiful adventuress straightened up and reached for her glass of absinthe. ‘It was the last soul the sword drank. It has been many years, if I am not mistaken, since you have unsheathed that particular weapon, Monsieur Zenith?’

‘Oh, many. I suppose, my friends, I will have to let you into a secret I have kept for rather a long time. While I have in the course of the past two thousand years sired children and indeed founded a dynasty which is familiar to anyone who knows the history of the province of Waldenstein and her capital Mirenburg, I am not truly of this world or indeed this universe. It is fair to say that I have, in the way some of you will know to be possible, been dreaming, as it were, myself. I have another body, as solid as this one, which as I speak lies on a ‘dream couch’ in a city more ancient than the world itself.’ He paused almost in sympathy as he observed their expressions.

‘The civilisation to which I belong is neither truly human nor truly of this universe. Its rulers are men and women who are capable of manipulating the forces of nature and, if you like, super-nature to serve their own ends. They are sometimes, in this world, called sorcerers. How they learn their sorcery is by making use of their dream couches, sleeping sometimes for thousands of years while they live other lives. In those other lives they learn all kinds of arcane wisdom. Upon waking, they forget most of the lives they have ‘dreamed’ save for the skills of sorcery, which they employ to rule the world of which their land is the imperial centre. I am one of those aristocrats. The island where I dwell is known, as far as I can pronounce it in your language, as Melnibone. We are not natives of that world, either, but were driven to inhabit it during a terrible upheaval in our history which ultimately turned us from peaceful beings into the cruel rulers of a planet.

’The demonic archangel upon whom of Klosterheim called to aid him is our own patron Lord of Chaos. His name is Arioch. Both your Bible and the poet Milton mention him. On occasions, he inhabits that black blade you saw me use. On other occasions, the sword contains the souls of those its wielder has killed. Some part of those souls are transferred to whoever uses the blade. Other parts go to placate Arioch. When Satan attempted, hundreds of years ago, on this plane – or one very much like it – to be reconciled with God, neither Klosterheim nor Arioch accepted this and have, across many planes of the multiverse, sought not only the destruction of God himself, but also of Satan – or whatever manifestations of those forces exist here.’

’You have still not explained whose soul Klosterheim’s body drank,’ pointed out Sinclair.

‘Why, the last soul it took,’ said Monsieur Zenith in some surprise. ‘I thought that is what you understood.’

‘And whose was that-?’

Monsieur Zenith had risen swiftly and elegantly and was kissing Mrs Persson’s hand, moving towards the shelf where he had placed his silk hat and gloves. ‘You must forgive me. I have some unfinished business at a nearby art gallery.’

Almost instinctively, Commissaire Lapointe rose as if to apprehend him but then sat down again suddenly.

Sir Seaton Begg, with dawning comprehension, laid his hand on his old friend’s arm, but Taffy Sinclair was insistent. ‘Whose, Monsieur Zenith? Whose?’

Monsieur Zenith slipped gracefully from the table and seemed to disappear, merging with the sunlit spray of the fountain.

‘Whose?’ Sinclair turned baffled to look at Mrs Persson, who had taken her two cats into her lap and was stroking them gently. ‘Do you know?’

She inclined her head and looked questioningly, intimately at Sir Seaton Begg, whose nod was scarcely perceptible.

‘It was his own, of course,’ she said.