Read Shalaby and Fecklace Spend the Night in an Unnatural Manor Page 2
Part II: If it Ain’t Brocken
After taking a moment to admire my admittedly-counterfeit but still quite sharp new hat, I leaned back out onto the front steps of the Traveller’s Club. “Sorry about that, old fellow, I—” But Shalaby was nowhere to be seen. I hurried out onto the street, only to find him stationed on a bench outside a cobbler’s shop across the way. I ducked my head as I grabbed Shalaby by the elbow and tugged him into the street—this was not a cobbler by whom I could conveniently be seen at the moment. “I am dashed sorry about Effingstoke coming off so rude.”
“Was he being particularly rude for a baronet?” asked Shalaby with stiff dignity. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well I’m sorry I took so long. I’m six months in arrears on my Traveller’s Club dues, and the Paddle of Justice spares neither brains nor beauty.” I rubbed my sore bottom. “However, we’ve a train to catch. To Finchley, as a matter of fact.”
He brightened. “To Effingstoke Manor, dare I hope?”
“Did you ever doubt me?” I grinned. “Sir Norton never stays there himself, and he says none of the family ever go, since his uncle Sir Magnus Effingstoke died abroad in Austria-Hungary.”
Shalaby narrowed his eyes in sudden interest. “Austria-Hungary, eh? Where German is spoken, as anyone knows.”
“Restrain yourself, Shalaby. I positively can’t have you dragging the Effingstoke family into this. I only gained entrée to the manor in the first place on rather a false pretense. I bet Sir Norton I couldn’t spend the night in the haunted family estate.”
“Ah. Deep cover, then.” He nodded.
I pursed my lips. “Something like that. Listen, I know how it sounds but Sir Norton and my friends at the club mustn’t know I keep company with…”
“With the likes of me?” Shalaby supplied, stony.
With a threadbare, balding, occasionally ridiculous private detective who saw demonic possession in every vagrant who shouted obscenities on the train and German spooks behind every fashion forgery. I’d never hear the end of it. We walked on in silence. “In whatever case, it should at least be the ideal place in which to look for your vaunted Germanic phantasmagoria. Which, by the bye, do you care to expand upon?”
He set a brisk pace toward the railway station, rousing himself from the gloom into which recent incidents seemed to have cast him. “My investigations lead me to suspect that the hats are not merely being counterfeited. The facsimile is so flawless—perfect, in point of fact—that it cannot be merely the work of common criminals. I believe it to be the doing of a Brocken spectre.”
“Ah, ‘the apparition of the Brocken’, De Quincey’s Dark Interpreter who ‘witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries’. Well, Shalaby, I never took you for such a Gothically-minded chap.”
“Gothically-minded indeed!” he blustered, in high dudgeon. “Diluted German fluff and nonsense, no better than that hackneyed serial in your pocket. If De Quincey had known what he was about, he would have spoken—that is, written—in hushed tones about such things as the Brocken spectre. I am speaking of documented phenomena that would rightly chill the blood of the sturdiest Englishman. A material threat—that is, an immaterial threat—a scourge, as it were, upon the peace of decent folk in Germany and now—here. What it wants with us,” he continued darkly, “I do not yet know.”
“Presumably, to break into the lucrative business of knock-off hats.” I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “To Finchley, then, and we’ll see about this scourge.”