‘We’re all for Fal Vale, then,’ I ventured.
Yes, an extraordinarily stupid thing to say. It often helps to give an impression of extraordinary stupidity. Folk think so little of you they don’t pay attention when you’re standing behind them with a handy shiv.
‘Indeed,’ the parson said, in a high-pitched voice. ‘The Special only stops there.’
‘That is why it’s called a “Special”, don’t you know,’ drawled the man-about-town type. Too much hair oil for a proper Englishman. ‘I’m Lucas, by the way. Eduardo of that ilk. I’m in it, too. Psychical research.’
The little Frenchman shrugged ‘nom de’ something. He continued to make squiggly notations in the margins of an article on ectoplasmic manifestations.
‘I suppose you’ve heard of the Fal Vale Worm,’ I said.
Lucas nodded. ‘I imagine we all have. It’s why we’re here.’
‘I was not given to understand that this would be a tourist excursion,’ the gaunt pipe smoker said. ‘I took this for a serious investigation.’
‘Who might you be, old bean?’ Lucas asked.
‘Thomas Carnacki,’ the fellow replied.
The little Frenchman, impressed, muttered ‘nom de’ something else.
‘The Ghost Finder,’ the parson observed. ‘Celebrated investigator of the Whistling Room, the Horse of the Invisible and the Dwellers in the Abyss? This is quite a pleasure…’ [44]
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I should like to shake the hand of the famous Mr Carnacki.’
‘I imagine you would, ah…?’ Carnacki asked, making no attempt to stick out a hand to be shaken.
‘Sebastian Moran,’ I said.
‘Colonel Moran, the big-game hunter,’ the parson said. Plainly, he was handily up on his Who’s Who. I waited for him to list my medals, distinctions and tiger bags, but he didn’t.
The celebrated psychic sleuth fiddled with his pipe.
‘My name is Cursitor Doone,’ the parson said, with a curt little nod as if acknowledging a salute. ‘I am a ghost finder myself, in an amateur manner of speaking. Our friends the spirits are much misunderstood, I believe.’
‘Sabin,’ the Frenchman said. ‘I take a sceptic’s interest. All can be explained by the light of reason and logic. You will see — yes, you will — I am correct. There is no worm.’
The Reverend Doone seemed on the point of rebutting the sceptic, but Lucas spoke over him…
‘Miss…?’ he said, raising a hopeful eyebrow at the lady.
‘Madame… Madame Gabrielle Valladon,’ the woman said. ‘I am Belgian zoologist.’
Which was odd, since she had a German accent.
But not as odd as someone who wasn’t Thomas Carnacki claiming to be him. The hollow-cheeked, pipe-puffing lookalike might have fooled someone who’d seen a picture in the rotogravure, but I know Carnacki. I’d fallen asleep during one of the Ghost Finder’s interminable tale-telling evenings in Cheyne Walk, and was booted out for having the temerity to snore during an account of his encounter with the Persistent Poltergeist of Penge.
During the Affair of the Mountaineer’s Bum, a tale for which the world will never be ready, the Firm secured Carnacki’s services to establish the supernatural bona fides of a public convenience in Tooting we wished to convince Inspector Patterson of Scotland Yard was haunted. Given his reputation as the least credulous of his profession — the dimwitted Flaxman Low, for instance, is eager to credit every twitching curtain and damp patch to phantoms from beyond the veil — a Carnacki verdict is respected. It is one of the Professor’s greatest triumphs that he was able to pull the wool over such perspicacious eyes.
This gaunt stranger was someone else. A disguise merchant. That narrowed the field down a little, even if men of a thousand faces were becoming ten a penny. Sometimes — as on this train — you couldn’t toss a bottle without beaning a detective made up as a ruffian, a crook posing as a toff, a swell larking about as a disfigured beggar, or a swindler in a dog collar and surplice. But I couldn’t put a name to this particular mask.
I didn’t let on that I’d tumbled the imposter and kept smiling like a fathead.
‘Oh,’ I said, as if remembering there was one more introduction to be made. ‘This is Professor Moriarty.’
Moriarty didn’t come out of his thought fugue.
‘The mathematician?’ the parson said. ‘Author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid?’
‘No, the master criminal, author of ransom notes and blackmail demands,’ I didn’t say — though it did spring to mind.
‘Yes. He’s one of your cold fire of logic boys, too, Monsieur Sabin,’ I said instead. ‘Between the party of us, we’ll soon have this worm in its place.’
‘If place it has, Colonel,’ the parson responded, as if that meant something. ‘If place it has.’
There were two others with us. It was peculiar that a single-carriage Special should need two conductors, especially since one took the trouble to stay away from the passengers. The jowly Berkins, who had gouged us for our ‘gratis’ travel, passed regularly down the aisle, offering ‘refreshments’ which also turned out not to be complementary. While another person in the black, silver-trimmed tunic and cap of the GS&W line spent the journey sat at the rear of the carriage, peak pulled low over a face further obscured by several bandagelike strips of sticking plaster. Yes, another play-actor — though an uncommon shapely one. Despite a sparse moustache and thick eyebrows, this conductor was — as the swell of the tunic-front told my practiced eye — a woman.
‘I say, let’s pass the time with a hand or two,’ Lucas said, producing a deck of cards from his top pocket and pretending to be clumsy as he shuffled. ‘Sixpenny stakes, to make it more interesting, eh what?’
That was blood in the water to this old shark.
By Fal Vale Junction, I would have earned back the train fare and more. I could feel it in my cracking knuckles.
IV
I arrived at Fal Vale a little poorer, but much wiser. Lucas was a lamentable cheat, almost ostentatiously… but lost, consistently. Sabin could have won most hands, but folded early… not bothered by winning or losing, and putting on a show as a distracted, exasperated logician. By the second deal, I knew Reverend Doone and Madame Valladon were playing as secret partners. I kept my losses down, resisting subtle suggestions that stakes be upped just when I held a surprisingly strong (but not winning) hand.
The fake Carnacki did not play with us, but took out a deck of tarot cards and laid out a patience I swear he invented on the spot just to look mystic. The real ghost finder wouldn’t have wasted a captive audience, the whole carriage would have been regaled with his exploits. The Incident of the Boiling Kettle, The Mystery of the House of the Improbable, The Dreadful Affair of the Slug — I’ve heard them all.
The gaunt fellow watched the game through his tobacco fug. He couldn’t have kept a closer eye on us if he’d produced a magnifying glass.
After rattling along the main line at speed — when an engine only has to pull a single carriage, it can beat timetabled trains by hours — we slowed down and chuffed along a Cornish branch which wound through deep cuttings and past tiny stations. Finally, we stopped at one of these neglected halts.
‘Fal Vale Junction,’ ’Ubert Berkins announced, needlessly. ‘All change yurr.’