‘There would be many pennies to be made in that calling, should a man pursue it with sufficient knowledge at his fingertips.’
‘Which is to say,’ the count said, ‘that it is a profession guarded by much secrecy. As, though, is any other.’
George felt that perhaps he should withdraw now to the promenade deck in the company of his gin. This conversation, he felt, was not likely to become particularly interesting. A yawn escaped George’s lips and George apologised for it.
‘Methinks,’ said the count, ‘that your charge finds my profession dull.’
‘I am just tired,’ said George. Who was not.
‘Yet I could tell you things and show you things that would make your hair stand on end.’
‘Really?’ said George. Who doubted this.
The count smiled hugely upon George, who noted that he wore a great deal of face powder. And upon closer inspection, there was something of the museum mummy about him.
‘Have you ever heard of the Scent of Unknowing?’ the count asked of George.
George shook his head.
‘It is a legendary perfume,’ said Professor Coffin, who appeared to know something about most things. ‘A perfume that, once sniffed, puts the sniffer into a state of trance, making them suggestible to almost anything.’
‘To absolutely anything,’ said the count. ‘One sniff and you fall under its spell. The dream of every man is to have such a cologne, or any woman such a perfume.’
‘And such a thing exists?’ asked George.
‘I seek it,’ said the count. ‘The Holy Grail of perfumes, one might say.’
George almost said that he and the professor were on a likewise quest, but recalling the professor’s earlier words, he did not.
‘I think you would become very rich indeed if you could make such a perfume,’ said George. ‘But I find it hard to believe that such a magical thing could really exist.’
‘Really?’ The Count de Saint-Germain raised a powdered eyebrow. ‘So have you never heard of the Evil Breath?’
George shook his head and said, ‘I have had such a thing upon a morning after too much drinking, I believe.’
‘Not such as this,’ said the count. ‘Would you care for me to explain? And when I have done so, demonstrate?’
George now felt somewhat uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps I might,’ he said. ‘I do not really know.’
‘This boy must come to no harm,’ said Professor Coffin to the count. ‘I have heard of the Evil Breath, but I have never seen it demonstrated. I was informed that the effects can prove fatal.’
‘Your charge will come to no harm,’ said the count. ‘Although he might experience some mild discomfort.’
And then he went on to tell a tale that put the wind up George.
13
‘You must know,’ said the Count de Saint-Germain, folding his arms in their quilted sleeves across his sparkling chest, ‘that I have travelled greatly during my lifetime and fetched up upon many a foreign shore. I have wandered in the wastelands, jaunted through the jungles, mooched about the marshes, high-stepped o’er the hinterlands and tripped the light fantastic in the Garden of Earthly Delights.’
George Fox glanced towards the door and thought about the sunshine.
‘And you must know,’ the count continued, ‘that the world traveller must be capable of defending himself against footpads, pirates, brigands and sundry rap-scallions. ’
‘Which is why I acquired for us a brace of pistols,’ said Professor Coffin to George.
‘Which would be why I observed a gunsmith’s wagon tearing towards us as the airship ascended,’ said George. ‘Although I did not comment on this at the time.’
‘Might I continue?’ asked the count. Receiving nods in the affirmative from his companions, he continued, ‘Then it is this way. I have studied many forms of the martial arts. I have mastered samurai swordsmanship, Baritso stick fighting and Irish Knobkerrie-Knocking-All-About. I learned Kung Fu, which means literally “empty hand”, at a Shaolin temple in China. The monks there have developed a system of self-defence which involves no weaponry, for they are forbidden to carry such. Their techniques allow them to disarm even the most skilled swordsman. It is remarkable what they are capable of. Word reached me of secret techniques that did not involve strenuous punches or kicks, rather light but significant touches to the body that effected a complete collapse upon the part of the attacker. The system is known as Dimac, or the Death-Touch. One trained in Dimac can skilfully touch a person, thereby causing them to react fatally to this touch several days later.’
‘That would not be much good if you were actually having a fight with them,’ said George.
‘I am leading to my point,’ said the count. ‘I learned also that there are certain practitioners of Dimac who claim to be able to disable an opponent without actually touching him at all, so adept have they become.’
‘That would surely be impossible,’ said George. ‘You cannot affect someone like that without actually touching them.’
‘So you might think. But it is indeed the case. The professor here will probably recall how popular mesmerism became some years ago.’
Professor Coffin nodded. ‘It was doubted at the time,’ said he, ‘but now it has been refined into hypnotism. And, as the count says, one certainly can influence someone without actually touching them through the use of hypnotism.’
George nodded thoughtfully. He had watched a hypnotist’s act at one of the popular music halls. He was not altogether certain, however, as to whether he truly believed in it or not.
‘I see doubt once more upon your face, Your young Lordship,’ said the count. ‘But we shall see what we shall see. The Japanese masters created a martial system known as Kiai-jutsu or the Shout. As a soprano can shatter a champagne glass through the projection of a high-register note, so can one of these deadly fellows injure an assailant with a properly attuned cry.’
George’s face looked no less doubtful.
‘Then if you doubt that, Your Lordship, I have no reason to believe that you will not doubt me when I inform you that it is possible for an adept who has learned a secret technique to disable an opponent simply by breathing upon him.’
George sought to get up and take his leave. The professor suggested he stay.
‘The Evil Breath,’ said the Count de Saint-Germain. ‘It took me seven years to develop, but I am now the master – indeed the only master – of this particular technique. I sought to create a breath so terrible that any man it struck would sink instantly into unconsciousness. I experimented with herbs and spices that I had collected upon my world travels, refining the combinations into my daily meals. I found that I could disable first a canary, then later rodents, and later still a fully grown mastiff. My problem, however, was that I could never tell exactly when I might be attacked on the road and could hardly gulp down herbs and spices at the approach of every suspicious-looking fellow.
‘I continued with my experimentation, using certain breathing techniques I had learned in the Orient and adding the herbs and spices daily to my meals. At long last I have perfected the technique. I can summon the Evil Breath from deep within myself and project it over a distance of six or more feet, to the distress and disablement of any who would mean me harm.’
George Fox shook his head slowly. The thoughts now moving through his mind were to the effect of, Is there any chance at all that one single word of any of that is true? George concluded that, No, there probably is not.
The count grinned at the professor, who made a pained expression. Then the count drew back in his seat, inhaled a mighty breath, held it for but a moment, then breathed upon George.
George became instantly aware of the arrival at his nasal openings of the rankest, foulest, vilest, most foetid and disgusting stink that it had ever been his gravest misfortune to experience. It far outranked the pong of the pickled Martian and inhabited a cursèd kingdom of rotting corpses, sewerage scrapings and dog excrement.
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George gasped, gagged, clawed at the air and fainted dead away. Professor Coffin caught him as he sank towards the table. ‘That was a bitter lemon,’ he told the count. ‘From a detached point of view an amusing one. But if you have injured my charge it will be the worse for you, Evil Breath or no, believe me on this.’
‘You clearly hold this young fellow in the highest regard,’ said the count, removing from his waistcoat pocket a slim phial of liquid and carefully unscrewing its cap. ‘I projected but the mildest of breaths. This will aid his recovery.’
‘A smelling bottle?’ said Professor Coffin.
‘Not as such,’ said the count.
He waggled the uncapped bottle beneath the nose of George, who all of a sudden jerked once more into consciousness.
‘You have experienced nothing but pleasure,’ the count told him. ‘You have no recollection of an Evil Breath, nor indeed any conversation concerning it. You fancy a nice stroll upon the promenade deck. Goodbye to you now, my boy, it was a pleasure to meet you.’
George Fox rose, placed his topper once more onto his head, bowed slightly towards the count, said, ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, sir,’ then left the gentlemen’s bar.
Professor Coffin gazed at the phial of liquid as the Count de Saint-Germain rescrewed its cap.
‘The Scent of Unknowing,’ he said to the count.
‘The same,’ the other replied.
The Empress of Mars was travelling steadily west. The gentle murmur of the electric turbines, Mr Tesla’s invaluable contribution to the craft, did nothing to mar the enjoyment of the exalted folk who strolled the promenade deck.
George Fox strolled amongst them, topper tipped at that angle known as rakish, dandy cane a-twirl between gloved fingers. George took in great breaths of healthy air. How perfect was this indeed. He experienced a certain queasiness of stomach, but attributed this to altitude sickness as this was his first time aboard a sky-going craft. George straightened his shoulders and grinned a little grin. No one was staring at him, or sniffing at him as they had done upon his ill-fated visit to the Crystal Palace. He looked the part and felt the part and folk thought him one of their own.
George took himself to the guardrail and leaned upon it, gazing down upon England. Below was Bath, its streets and buildings laid out in a pattern only understood by high-ranking Freemasons. George did sighings at the beauty.
This was the life for him. It was, it really was. George recalled a line of Oscar Wilde’s, to the effect that ‘every man eventually finds his true position in life, whether it is above or below the one he was born into’.
And George gave the moment to thought.
All this had happened so suddenly. His encounter with Macmoyster Farl, ‘the Apocalyptical Examiner’, who had made his prediction to George. A prediction that George remembered word for word. ‘The Book of Sayito will be opened unto you. You will find Her, young George Fox. Upon your shoulders will rest the future of the planets.’
A shudder passed up George’s spine. A tiny chill ran through him. Macmoyster Farl had been hauled from his levitation by police minions under the command of the Gentlemen in Black. George wondered what had become of him. Nothing good, he concluded. But then he smiled a little. There was nothing that he, personally, could do for Macmoyster Farl. Other than to travel on this quest with the professor. It might lead to great things, or indeed terrible things, but that was for the future. A future that included several exciting destinations.
The Empress of Mars would be docking in New York as its first port of call. Then San Francisco. Then Hawaii. Then Tokyo. And there they might find the Japanese Devil Fish Girl. Who could say? But this was the journey of a lifetime. Aboard the most amazing craft ever built upon Earth, in the company of London’s most glamorous folk, George was surely one ‘blessed of God’. George’s smile spread wider.
So George did twirlings of his cane and further perambulations. He acquired a plan of the sky-ship and wandered here and there, taking in the great dining hall, the casino, the concert auditorium, the mixed bathing pool, the absinthe boudoir, the Grand Salon and finally his own cabin. An ‘Aristocratic Cabin’. George found each and every thing very much to his liking.
He closed the cabin door, flung his topper onto a faux marble washstand and flung himself fully clothed onto his bed.
The bed dipped to one side and George was cast to the floor.
Regaining his feet, if not entirely his dignity, George now viewed his bed with suspicion. Then noted that it swung hammock-like from four aluminium chains, each affixed to a separate bedpost and each meeting at a central ceiling stanchion.
‘No doubt for comfort in rough weather,’ said George, carefully mounting his bed.
Suitably settled, George Fox put his hands behind his head and, smiling contentedly, took to an afternoon nap.
14
George Fox dreamed of a terrible stench and awoke with a terrible start. It was evening now and pale moonlight showed beyond his cabin porthole. George arose and straightened himself, smoothing down the crumpled parts and dusting at his shoulders. He took himself over to the washstand, turned a brass stopcock and took pleasure from the cool water that splashed between his outstretched fingers. He flicked some onto the face of him and dried with the towel provided. George felt a growing sense of excitement. His first night upon the wondrous sky-ship, what exotic pleasures awaited him? Professor Coffin had whispered that there was a Nympharium on board, but George had his doubts about that. There would be dinner of course, in the great dining hall. But George had worries for this. There was bound to be considerable cutlery involved and George had no idea as to the appropriate etiquette, knife and fork and strangely dimpled spoon-wise. The Empress of Mars was bound to offer room service. Perhaps it would be safer to dine in his cabin, rather than risk some social gaffe that would reveal his humble status to this world amongst the clouds.
George examined his reflection in the full-length cheval glass. He certainly did look the part, even if he was unsure, in so many ways, of exactly how to act it.
But he would learn.
George returned his topper to his head and with his dandy cane once more in kid-gloved hands he left the cabin.
The promenade deck was deserted. Grand folk were dressing for dinner. George took joy in the sudden solitude of the vast expanse of decking. He dawdled along the rows of steamer chairs, past the tennis court and the shuttlecock area, sauntered to the edge of the deck and ran his gloved fingers along the guardrail. Chancing to look over, he viewed the lifeboats slung beneath, each canvas-covered and tethered by hawsers. George Fox cocked his head upon one side.
‘Lifeboats?’ he said to no one but himself. ‘If this mighty craft was to plummet suddenly from the heavens, I am not quite certain how the lifeboats would help.’
Then George caught a glimpse of something untoward. A flicker of movement above one of the lifeboats. The canvas covering was being rolled back by someone within. George looked on as a colourful head emerged into vision, followed by naked shapely shoulders. Then George saw a washing bowl being lifted and tipped over the side. George’s heart gave a tiny little jump. A stowaway on board!
George crouched down lest he be seen and peeped over the edge of the deck. The stowaway was clearly a rather attractive young woman with bright-red hair in swirling ringlets, sporting a jaunty little topper with a pair of evening goggles.
And nothing whatsoever more.
The stowaway was naked as could be.
George’s mouth hung open and his eyes grew round and starey.
The stowaway was naughty Ada Lovelace.
George ducked back and rose to his feet and smiled very broadly. Ada Lovelace, who had used him so wickedly to gain entrance to the Crystal Palace. She had told George that she had arrived in London upon the Empress of Mars, but in the light of her wickedness he had come to doubt this. It would never have crossed his mind that she travelled upon the airship as a stowaway.
George took
himself over to the nearest steamer chair and settled himself into it. This was indeed a ‘situation’, and one, George considered, that might in some way be turned to his advantage. He was not a vindictive lad, far from it. The concept of vengeance was alien to him. But perhaps some tiny punishment might be meted out, to teach the errant young woman to pursue less evil ways.
‘The promenade deck is deserted,’ said George to himself. ‘I could perhaps do a wee-wee down upon her.’
But then, appalled that such a terrible thought had entered his head, he modified it to the emptying of an ice bucket. But then considering that this would be rather cruel, George took to wondering what else he might do.