—
Nellie was not a stranger to fire. She had owned a club—the Lucky Cat, acquired not long after the Amethyst—that had burnt down to the ground shortly after it had closed for the night, several years ago now. The Lucky Cat was indeed lucky, because only a few weeks before its destruction Nellie had taken out an insurance policy against just such an eventuality. The fire was ruled an accident, Maddox had been an instrumental witness. (“I noticed faulty wiring.”) There had been no loss of life, except, ironically, the cat that lived on the premises to keep the rodent population in check. A few spindly bones were raked out of the ash. Nellie told her concerned girls that the cat had escaped and gone to live elsewhere. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” she said to Maddox. She did not believe that. What you didn’t know was almost bound to hurt you. Nellie liked to know everything.
Nellie continued to brood on the news from the Pixie in her cashier’s booth. It had been a clumsy assault, but nonetheless without Bertha’s quick wits everyone in the club could have been burnt to a cinder and Nellie would probably have been found guilty of negligence, if not manslaughter, even murder, and put out of business. Which was the whole point presumably. It was Maddox, wasn’t it?
* * *
—
Ramsay was about to leave the Sphinx for the night when there was a tremendous commotion. It was heralded by a klaxon, like a clown horn, from up the stairs (later he realized it was a signal from the doormen), followed by the floor juddering and shaking as if an earthquake were in progress. There was a grinding of gears and then the bar and all its bottles—along with Gerrit, who was still standing behind it—began to disappear.
It took Ramsay a good few seconds of readjusting his baffled brain to realize that the bar had in fact revolved, like a train engine on a turntable, or a theatre flat changing. It reminded him of a play he had recently seen where the whole stage had spun round to reveal a completely different set. The “earthquake” was the hidden engine that drove the mechanism. Now, where the bar once was, there was only a painted wall, and the bar—and Gerrit along with it—had disappeared. Ramsay felt an odd disappointment that the barman hadn’t waved farewell as he passed out of sight. Where had he gone? Would he come back?
While Ramsay was being transfixed by this cunning vanishing act, the girls and porters and waiters, not to mention the Sphinx’s own patrons, had been conducting a well-drilled performance, sweeping up glasses and bottles and any other signs of transgression against the licensing laws. By the time the police plodded clumsily into the club there was nothing illicit in sight, only a bogus air of virtue.
The red velvet curtain was pushed aside and Gerrit sauntered in from the storeroom like a bad actor coming on stage and said, “Is there a problem here, officers?” Ramsay stared at him, speechless. There was a secret door into the store cupboard? And no one had seen fit to tell him about the trick with the bar? What else didn’t he know? He was supposed to be in charge, for heaven’s sake.
“All right, my man?” Gerrit said, slapping him again (rather forcefully) between the shoulder blades. “Clever, eh?”
Within the space of an hour the disgruntled police had left, the bar had been wheeled back into position and the place was roistering once more. With a slight movement of his head, Gerrit indicated the red velvet curtain to Ramsay. Gerrit was right, Ramsay thought, he definitely needed something to steady his nerves.
* * *
—
The downward climb into the Sphinx must of necessity turn into an upward slog to exit it. The rake of the passageway was the wrong way around, surely? One should have to put some effort in at the beginning of an evening but be allowed to slip away easily at the end.
Ramsay moved slowly. The passageway was lit by yet more oriental-style lamps—these were gas with open flames, masquerading as torches. For Nellie’s “atmosphere,” no doubt. Ramsay was sure they must be dangerous. Would he be held responsible if the Sphinx caught fire, if all the wayward crowd inside were burnt alive or trampled each other to death while the band played “Ain’t We Got Fun”?
The quivering, ghastly flames illuminated the hieroglyphs. The gas from the lamps was making him feel nauseated again. He felt as if he were turning into a figment of himself. (Was that possible? Did that even make sense? Did anything make sense?)
A rush of cold air indicated that the doormen had let people in, and within seconds Ramsay was engulfed by a glittering tide of people and then left high and dry as they swept into the club. He must get some air. He passed beneath the mask of Tutankhamun again. He almost expected it to say something to him.
He had so much dope in his veins that he was beginning to separate into several Ramsays, different notes on a scale where he had been one harmonious chord. He must stop reaching for an image, it was making him want to vomit.
“Mr. Coker?” one of the doormen said. “Mr. Coker—are you all right?”
The two doormen, burly fellows with oxen shoulders that could have pulled a plough, were still in their bulky winter overcoats. Twenty-seven shillings for a winter one, twenty-five for summer, Ramsay heard Nellie say in his head. His mother was a living ledger. Everything had a price. If she could have pawned her children, she would have done. (No, only Kitty, she said.)
“Yes, quite all right, thank you,” Ramsay said stiffly, making a supreme effort to prevent himself from fragmenting completely and disappearing for ever. “I’m off to the Amethyst now. Good night.”
* * *
—
As he walked through the dimly lit back streets, Ramsay began to develop the uncomfortable feeling that he was being followed by someone. Or something. Something evil. What was the Shakespeare quote? Something wicked this way comes. Yes, that was what it felt like. By the pricking of my thumbs—rather a good title for a novel.
His agitation grew as he began to see shadows like smoke everywhere. A black cat crossed his path on its nightly rounds. Was that lucky or unlucky? He couldn’t remember. For some reason he thought of the mummified cat in the Sphinx, a thought that led to Egyptian mummies in general and from there very quickly back to Tutankhamun and his curse.
What had been in Gerrit’s syringe tonight, for heaven’s sake? He had presumed it was cocaine—Gerrit called it “joy dust” (pronouncing it “yoy dust,” which made it sound less happy)—it usually was, although sometimes Gerrit gave him morphine, which was lovely but impractical, and once heroin, which made him swoon with desire for more, but Gerrit refused. Cocaine didn’t make him feel jittery like this, it usually made him feel bright and alert, an improved version of himself, ready to be a willing adjutant in the Coker corps.
Niven had warned him that there was some “funny stuff” being sold and he should be careful what he took and who gave it to him. Ramsay had stoutly denied taking anything. His heart was pulsing very hard in his chest, an overwrought mechanism about to fail. Perhaps Niven had been right about the funny stuff.
He was quite sure now that he was being dogged, every step seemed to be echoed by another’s, yet whenever he turned to look there was no one in sight. The streets were deserted, even the nightly gauntlet of streetwalkers he usually had to run was absent. It felt unnatural, like something out of a story by Poe.