Elvis looked at me blankly.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right, it was rubbish. I promise I’ll never do it again.’
Elvis looked at me some more. Even more blankly this time.
‘Right,’ I said. And then our drinks arrived.
‘Shall I put these on your bar tab, Laz?’ asked Fangio.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Take the cost out of the one hundred dollars you owe me. I give up on these cocktails. I have no idea what’s in them.’
‘And you never will,’ said Fangio. And chuckling once more he took himself off to the cash register.
‘Were you just talking the toot, sir?’ asked Elvis. ‘Only I read about that, in the Lazlo Woodbine Thrillers.’
‘You’ve read those, have you?’
‘Well, no, sir, not really. I have them read to me.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘But you need my help. You have a worried mind. And a problem that only Lazlo Woodbine can solve for you. Am I correct?’
‘You are, sir, yes.’
I was really rather taken with the way Elvis spoke. He didn’t just smell nice, but he was so polite, too. So well mannered. All right, he was rather fat. And I didn’t mention this at the beginning of the chapter, although perhaps I should have, because he had put on weight. He was now a bit of a bloater. But I didn’t mention it, and what with him being so sweetly smelling and so polite, I am not going to mention it. Not even in passing. No.
‘So,’ I said to Elvis Presley, ‘what can I do for you?’
‘Well, sir, I gotta problem. I been playing Vegas, six nights a week, two shows a day, practising for my big tour. This tour is going to take me all over the world. I never left America before, except to go to Germany for my call-up, and now I’m going to England. And through Europe. And Africa. To Sumeria.’
‘Sumeria?’ I said. ‘Why Sumeria?’
‘I don’t know, sir. It’s on the tour list – New Begrem, Sumeria.’
‘Begrem?’
‘Yes, sir. But that ain’t the problem.’
‘You might need me to accompany you on that leg of the tour,’ I said. ‘In fact, we should probably write out a contract to that effect right now.’ And you do have to understand that me saying this was not going against the Tyler Technique even before I’d had a chance to put it into operation. Because, come on, I really did have to get to the Lost Golden City of Begrem if there was any chance at all. Didn’t I! ‘Fangio, fetch paper and pen,’ I said.
‘Coming right up, sir,’ said Fangio. But he didn’t move an inch.
‘So what, exactly, is the problem?’ I asked Elvis.
‘It’s my brother,’ said Elvis.
To which I said, ‘Your brother?’
‘Not so loud, sir, if you please.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. But your brother – I didn’t know that you had a brother.’
‘I was born one of twins,’ said Elvis.
‘Yes, well, I know that. But your twin died in childbirth. I know that, too. Very sad.’
‘He didn’t die,’ said Elvis. ‘They took him away. He was a special boy. He is a special boy.’
‘Have you ever heard of the Ministry of Serendipity?’ I asked Elvis.
‘Yes, sir, I have. And that Doctor McMahon ain’t no brother of mine.’
‘But you do know of him?’
‘Certainly, sir. He was part of the experiment.’
And yes, I confess, I was warming to this. Elvis Presley’s twin brother. The Ministry of Serendipity. Part of the experiment. Oh yes, I was certainly warming to this.
‘I will have to ask you to tell me everything as clearly and precisely as possible,’ I told Elvis. ‘The facts are the most important thing to a detective. Oh, and one more thing-’
‘Yes, sir?’ said Elvis.
‘Not you,’ I told him. ‘Fange.’
‘Yes?’ said Fange the barman.
‘Clear off,’ I said to Fange. ‘This is private.’
And Fangio stumped away in a right old grump and a battered tricorn and I spoke on with Elvis.
‘Tell me everything,’ I said. And he told me everything.
‘You must understand, sir,’ said he, ‘that I only know what I am going to tell you because my daddy told it all to me. After my mummy died-’ and Elvis crossed himself, though I never thought he was Catholic ‘- my daddy took me aside and said, “Son, I have things to say to you, and you’d better listen when I say them.” And I listened and so I’m telling them to you now.’
‘And very well, too,’ I said. And Elvis continued.
‘You see, sir, there’s a war going on. And I don’t mean a war like Vietnam. This war has been going on for ever. Between Good and Evil, God and the Devil.’ And I thought back to Captain Lynch and all he had told me when I was young. And I thought that I knew what was coming. And I did. To some degree.
‘Good and Evil, God and the Devil,’ said Elvis. ‘But God, He doesn’t war too much Himself. Though the Devil keeps right on. And the bad guys who work for the Devil – black magicians, I tell you, sir, real black magicians.’ And Elvis looked at me. Deeply, right into my eyes.
And, if I had been gay, well…
‘Please carry on,’ I told him.
‘Powerful bad magic, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘And every century the most powerful black magician performs the most powerful spell there is and causes the Homunculus to be born – a human being with the soul of an unholy one. He’s kinda the Devil in human form, but not quite.’
‘And how do you and your brother, and indeed Doctor McMahon, fit into this?’ I asked.
‘It was meant to be me,’ said Elvis. ‘I was supposed to be the Homunculus.’
‘Golly!’ I said.
‘Where?’ said Elvis.
‘Never mind. Please continue. Please.’
‘I don’t know what you know about the Second World War,’ said Elvis, ‘but it wasn’t all fought with tanks and bombs. It was fought with magic, too. And Adolf Hitler got raised into power by black magicians and the SS was a black-magic cult.’
‘I have read of such things,’ I said. ‘And you believe this to be true?’
‘I know it to be true, sir. The Nazi magicians were trying to create the twentieth-century Homunculus, Hitler being the nineteenth-century Homunculus. The new one was to be his unholy son. But there were other magicians, all around the world, all waging war in their own ways. And the most powerful of all was in England. Have you ever heard of a guy named Aleister Crowley?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and I nodded also. ‘My father met him once.’
‘Your daddy met the Great Beast of the Apocalypse?’ And Elvis had awe in his voice and he crossed once more at himself.
And I felt rather good that I had impressed him.
‘The British Government,’ Elvis continued, ‘a secret department of war in the British Government – the Ministry of Serendipity – recruited Crowley to beat the German occult war machine by raising the Homunculus before they could.’
I looked on as Elvis spoke all these words. And I admit that I was pretty slack-jawed. Because you really wouldn’t have expected such stuff to come out of the mouth of Elvis Presley.
Would you?
‘Mr Crowley was an old man,’ Elvis continued, ‘but still strong with spells. They brought to him a woman who would be mother to the Homunculus. My mummy. Their idea was simply to beat the Germans to it. And once they had brought the Homunculus into being, they would then kill it straight away, and so void the chance of another being created for another one hundred years.’
‘Rather clever,’ I said. ‘If a little horrid.’
‘So, Mr Crowley – he-’
‘Had sex with your mum?’ I asked.
‘Please keep your voice down, sir.’
‘So you are the son of Aleister Crowley?’
Elvis looked to the right and the left, then nodded. ‘Through magical invocation.’
‘Well, damn me!’ I said.
‘That’s not really my line, sir,’ said Elvis.
‘Go on, please.’
‘I was one of twins, sir, like I told you. The English magicians beat the German magicians in the race to create the Homunculus. And eventually they managed to kill Hitler also and end the war. The Americans did that, sir, not the Brits.’