Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories Read online

  I rounded the corner and observed an orderly commotion.

  A crowd was gathered outside my house. Not a mob, but men in black coats and bowler hats, celluloid collars shiny, paper clutched in their hands. My first thought was that they were newspaper reporters. Was the Threadneedle Street Gang at large again?

  ‘It’s ’im,’ someone shouted, and they all turned.

  They rushed at me, thrusting out wax-sealed envelopes, ribbon-tied scrolls and telegrams. I was briefly in fear for my person, but to a man they handed over documents, raised hats politely, bade me good morning and departed. I was left alone outside my house, hands full of paper. I stuffed as much as I could into my pockets.

  My front door opened and my butler emerged, silverware sticking out of his coat pockets and a crystal punchbowl (full of pocket-watches, snuff-boxes and other portable items of value) in his embrace. He was followed by Cook and two maids, hefting between them a polished mahogany dining table with the linen still on, bumping alarmingly against the doorframe and scraping spiked railings as they came down my front steps.

  The butler saw me and did his best to bow without dropping anything.

  ‘In lieu of wages, Mr Quinn. Please accept my regret that we are unable to continue in your employ.’

  Lucy, the ‘tweeny’, sniffled a bit.

  I was too astonished to say anything.

  ‘If you would stand aside, sir,’ said my former butler. ‘So we might pass.’

  I did as he suggested and found myself holding the door open to effect the removal of my former dining table. Lucy, eyes downcast, muttered something about it being ‘a dreadful shame, sir’. I watched my entire staff struggle down the road, like a Whitechapel family doing a midnight flit.

  I did not have time to examine all the papers in my pockets before the bailiffs showed up.

  Within the hour, I realised that I did not have so much as a Knowe’s Black Biscuit to my name.

  * * *

  The Shoreditch facilities were besieged, but not by customers. That would come later. Creditors barred the gates, so that we could not even supply our own stall with the Tonic, let alone distribute as normal. I saw my secretary sprinting off into the fog, cased typewriter on her back like a snail’s shell.

  Varrable was on the phone, needlessly cranking the handle faster as his sentences sped up, hair awry. I gathered that he was talking with his stockbroker. A Flavering girl was perched on the divan, dead flowers in her hair like Ophelia, shivering as if in a rainstorm. Her colour was off, as if she were coming down with the flu.

  Windows smashed somewhere.

  ‘Sell some consortium stock,’ Varrable shouted. ‘Use the funds to cover… what funds? Why, that stock is worth fifty times what we ploughed into it. A hundred.’

  Varrable went white. He replaced the telephonic apparatus in its cradle.

  ‘Billy,’ he said, voice hollow. ‘I could do with a tonic.’

  The Flavering girl obediently sorted through empty bottles.

  ‘Not that tonic,’ Varrable said, with utter disgust. ‘There’s brandy around somewhere.’

  I found the decanter and poured a generous measure. Varrable snatched the glass from me and raised it to his mouth. Then he gasped in horror and set the glass down.

  ‘Billy, you nearly… No, the real brandy. It’s in the desk.’

  I found a bottle and filled two more glasses.

  Varrable and I both shocked ourselves with drink. The brandy hit the last of the Tivoli champagne, but did no good.

  ‘Just before close of trade yesterday,’ Varrable explained, ‘a vast amount of consortium stock went on sale. It went in small lots, to dozens, hundreds of buyers. There’s been clamour for the issue for months, but it’s simply not been available. When it was “up for grabs”, there was what my man called a “feeding frenzy”. A share worth fifty pounds yesterday isn’t worth five shillings this morning. And won’t be worth fivepence tomorrow.’

  ‘Dare-ing,’ I said.

  Varrable nodded, swallowing more brandy. ‘He sold at fifty pounds, Billy. Without telling us. We’re all ruined, you know. Except him.’

  I could not quite conceive of it.

  ‘There’s still the business,’ I said, ‘the Tonic. Money is pouring in. Buck up, Doc. We can cover debts in a day, costs in a week, and be in profit again by the end of the month.’

  Varrable shook his head.

  ‘Jekyll Tonic sells at a loss. Even at a shilling.’

  This was news.

  ‘Oh, in the long run, costs would have come down,’ said Varrable, bitterly. ‘But there is not going to be a “long run”. There were unforeseen expenses in development, you see. The original estimates were optimistic. We were moving too swiftly to revise them.’

  I understood. A harvest had been reaped, profit had been made. Leo Dare had taken his money out and moved on.

  ‘I borrowed against the stock,’ I admitted.

  ‘So did I,’ said Varrable.

  My pockets were still stuffed with writs of foreclosure, bills suddenly come due, summonses to court, notices of lien, announcements of garnishee and other such waste paper.

  A quiet knock came at the door. A doggy head poked around.

  ‘I realise this is an inconvenient time for you both,’ said Inspector Mist, ‘but I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the Yard.’

  * * *

  The thing of it is that if Jekyll Tonic had not worked, Leo Dare would have stayed in it longer. If it were just the coloured water he himself was prepared to drink, the horse might have been ridden for years. Then, there might have been enough gravy to keep us all fat. But, as Varrable had always said, the effects were dramatic but unpredictable, and that made the venture a long-term risk.

  The Threadneedle Street raiders inspired similar crimes, no more successful but equally as spectacular. Veiled ladies brought suit against the likes of Dr Hugo Varrable for artificial exploitation of affections, which had in more than one case led to Consequences. Every murderer and knock-down man in the land was purported to be under the influence of the Jekyll, though it is my belief that as many heroic rescues from burning buildings or sinking barges were carried out by persons temporarily not themselves as were homicidal rampages or outrages to the public decency. All manner of folk disclaimed responsibility for reprehensible actions by blaming the Tonic. Sermons were preached against Jekyll Tonic, and editorials – in the very same papers that had boosted us – were written in thunderous condemnation. Lawsuits beyond number were laid against the consortium, which no longer included Leo Dare. The simple duns for unpaid bills took precedence, driving us to bankruptcy. The criminal and frivolous matters dragged on, though many were dropped when it became apparent that the coffers were empty and that no financial settlement would be arrived at. A tearful Harry Button was booed off stage before he could give his infamous joke, and shortly thereafter found himself bought out of his contract and booted into the street by the management. Temperance organisations shifted the focus of their attention from the demon alcohol to the impious Jekyll Tonic.

  Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe made numberless attempts to get in touch with Leo Dare, but I recalled those cards he had made a pack of and ignored in Kettner’s and did not waste my efforts. A man with no fixed address finds it easy not to be at home to the most persistent callers. At length, both worthies departed from the stage in no more dignified a manner than ‘Brass’ Button. Sir Marmaduke, sadly, retained a gold-thread curtain cord from the fixtures transported away by the bailiffs and hanged himself in his empty Belgravia town house. Lady Knowe, perhaps surprisingly, married her Guardsman. The couple decamped for a posting in Calcutta, where she devoted her energies to improving the moral health of Her Majesty’s troops by campaigning against boy-brothels.

  The formula remained ours alone, our sole asset, but many competitors were working to reproduce its effects. A Royal Commission was established, and with uncharacteristic swiftness, made all such research illegal unle
ss conducted under government supervision. I suspected some in Pall Mall still maintained Major General Cogstaff-Blyth’s notions of a regiment of Hydes trampling over the Kaiser’s borders, chewing through Pickelhaubes with apelike fangs and rending uhlans limb from limb. Regulations closed around the Jekyll. An amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Acts insisted that the Tonic now could not be sold unless a customer signed the Poisons Book and waited until the signature was verified. By that time, it was a moot point since there was no Jekyll to be had anywhere. Our Shoreditch factory ceased manufacture when the stock crashed, and supplies dried up within the morning.

  Varrable and I spent some nights enjoying the hospitality of one of Her Majesty’s police stations, mostly through the good graces of Inspector Mist, who realised we had nowhere else to go and no funds to procure lodgings. A great many lines of inquiry were being pursued and we were told not to leave London. Questions would doubtless be asked of us on a great many matters, but no criminal charges were forthcoming as yet.

  We trudged, cabless, to Shoreditch.

  * * *

  The factory, thoroughly looted, was abandoned. Our bruisers, our pretty sales girls, our secretaries, our vat-stirrers, were all flown. And the fittings and furnishings with them. Even the prized telephones.

  ‘What if he didn’t drink coloured water that time?’ said Varrable, with his now-habitual look of wide-eyed frenzy. ‘I’d brewed up the first test batch. It could have been the real Tonic. He could have changed?’

  ‘Leo Dare has no Hyde side,’ I said. ‘He was always himself.’

  Varrable admitted it, smashing a beaker too cracked to steal.

  We were in the stables, where vats stood overturned and empty, the flagstones stained with chemicals. The stinks still clung to the place. The gates had been torn down and taken away.

  ‘Look,’ said Varrable, ‘the cabbies are back.’

  Opposite the factory was a knot of loitering fellows, despondent and jittery, as I remembered them.

  ‘I imagine not a few of our employees will be joining them,’ I said. ‘It was all over too swiftly for them to draw more than a week’s wages.’

  ‘It’s breathtaking, Billy. He sucked all the money out, like you’d suck the juice from an orange, then tossed away the pith and peel. No one else saw anything from the Jekyll bubble.’

  The loiterers formed a deputation and crossed the road. They marched into the factory.

  ‘This might be it, Doc. Prepare to repel boarders.’

  ‘They don’t look angry.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving.’

  In the gloom, we were surrounded. I made out fallen faces, worn clothing, postures of desolation and resentment.

  ‘D-d-d-doctor V-V-V-Varr…’ stammered one of the louts.

  From his shabby clothes and battered face, it would have been impossible to recognise the exquisite aesthete but the voice was unmistakable. The Hon. Hilary Belligo.

  ‘Is there anything left over?’ asked one of Hilary’s fellows.

  I shook my head. ‘We are at a financial embarrassment,’ I said. ‘All in the same boat.’

  ‘N-n-n-not m-money!’

  ‘Tonic.’

  I remembered a happier day and Varrable’s declaration that the likes of Hilary Belligo would be happy to pay five pounds a thimble for the Jekyll. I wished I had a crate of Tonic in a safe store somewhere, but it was all gone. Shipped out and drunk. There wasn’t a bottle left on a shelf in London. When supplies stopped coming from the factory, devotees haunted the most out-of-the-way shops and tracked down every last drop. There had been fearful brawls before the counters to get hold of it, as devotees paid whatever canny chemists asked. Even Jickle Juice and Jeckell Tonik, supposedly withdrawn from sale, was snapped up and drunk down. Fools had forked over ten guineas for empty Tonic bottles refilled with Thames water.

  I shrugged, showing empty hands.

  ‘I might know where some Tonic remains,’ said Varrable, smoothing his hair with stained hands. ‘But we’ll need to see, ah, expenses up front.’

  The desperate souls all had money about them. Not much, and not in good condition – torn banknotes, filthy coins, bloody sovereigns. I cupped my hands, and they were filled.

  ‘Be here tomorrow, at ten,’ said Varrable. ‘And keep it quiet.’

  They scurried away, possessed with a strange excitement, a promise that took the edge off sufferings.

  ‘Have we a secret reserve, Doc?’

  Varrable shook his head, disarranging his hair again. ‘No, but I still have the formula,’ tapping his temple. ‘Some of the ingredients must remain here. Few would want to loot chemicals. I can brew up Jekyll in the laboratory, rougher than the stuff we bottled but stronger as well.’

  ‘The demand is still there.’

  I knew Hilary Belligo’s crew would ignore Varrable’s order to keep quiet. By tomorrow, word would be out. In two short weeks, a great many people had become used to a spoonful of Jekyll every day. The business was gone, the consortium collapsed, but that didn’t mean the need had evaporated.

  ‘It’ll be illegal,’ I ventured. ‘Under the Dangerous Drugs Act.’

  ‘All the better,’ Varrable snorted. ‘We can ask for a higher price. That lot’ll slit their grannies’ throats for a drop of the Jekyll. And we’re sole suppliers, Billy. Do you understand?’

  Varrable was as possessed as the Hon. Hilary. With another kind of need.

  Leo Dare had passed from the story. He left us all with new needs, but also new opportunities.

  ‘I understand. You’re the chemist, I’m the salesman. We’ll need a place to work. Several, to keep on the move. Mist won’t just forget us, and he’s no fool. We can no longer afford fixed addresses. We’ll need folk for the distribution, lads to stand on street corners, fellows to sit in taverns. Servants, perhaps, to get to the customers with the folding money. We’ll need places to hide the profits. Not under mattresses, in investments. Respectable, above board. We’ll have to see off the opium tongs. Maybe those East End roughs are still interested in the Jekyll trade. We could pitch in with them. The law of the land will not be with us, just the law of the market. We’ll need new names.’

  ‘I have mine. Harold Rose.’

  ‘And I’m Billy Brass. Do you know, ah, Harold, I think that this way we shall wind up richer than before.’

  I had the strangest impression that Leo Dare was smiling down upon me.

  And so your friends Dr Rose and Mr Brass embarked upon a new venture.

  ILLIMITABLE DOMINION

  OKAY, YOU COULD say it was my fault.

  I’m the one. Me, Walter Paisley, agent to stars without stars on Hollywood Boulevard. I said ‘spare a thought for Eddy’ and the Poe Plague got started…

  It’s 1959 and you know the montage. Cars have shark fins. Jukeboxes blare The Platters and Frankie Lymon. Ike’s a back number, but JFK hasn’t yet broken big. The commies have put Sputnik in orbit, starting a war of the satellites. Coffee houses are full of beards and bad poetry. Boomba the Chimp, my biggest client, has a kiddie series cancelled out from under him. Every TV channel is showing some Western, but my pitches for The Cherokee Chimp, The Monkey Marshal of Mesa City and Boomba Goes West fall on stony ground. The only network I have an ‘in’ with is DuMont, which shows how low the Paisley Agency has sunk since the heyday of Jungle Jillian and Her Gorilla Guerrillas (with Boomba as the platoon’s comedy relief mascot) and The Champ, the Chimp and the Imp (a washed-up boxer is friends with a cigar-smoking chimpanzee and a leprechaun).

  American International Pictures is a fancy name for James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff sharing an office. They call themselves a studio, but you can’t find an AIP backlot. They rent abandoned aircraft hangars for soundstages and shoot as much as possible out of doors and without permits. At the end of the fifties, AIP are cranking out thirty, forty pictures a year, double features shoved into ozoners and grindhouses catering to the Clearasil crowd. They peddle twofers on low-budget juvenile delinquen
cy (Reform School Girl with Runaway Daughters), affordable science fiction (Terror From the Year 5000 with The Brain Eaters), inexpensive chart music (Rock All Night with Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow), cheapskate creatures (I Was a Teenage Werewolf with The Undead), frugal combat (Suicide Battalion with Paratroop Command) or cut-price exotica (She Gods of Shark Reef with Teenage Cave Man). When Jim and Sam try for epic, they hope a marquee-filling title – The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent – distracts the hot-rodders from sub-minimal production values and a ninety-cent sea serpent filmed in choppy bathwater.

  The AIP racket is that Jim thinks up a title – say, The Beast with a Million Eyes or The Cool and the Crazy – and commissions lurid ad art which he buries in hard-sell slogans. He shows ads to exhibitors, who chip in modest production coin. Then, a producer is put on the project. Said producer gets a writer in over the weekend and forces out a script by shoving peanuts through the bars. Someone has to direct the picture and be in it, but so long as a teenage doll in a tight sweater screams on the poster – at a monster, a switchblade or a guitar-player – no one thinks too much about them. Sam puts fine-print into contracts which make sure no one sees profit participation and puff cigars at trade gatherings.

  Roger Corman is only one of a corral of producers – Bert I. Gordon and Alex Gordon are others – on AIP’s string, but he’s youngest, busiest and cheapest. After, to his mind, wasting half his budget hiring a director named Wyott Ordung on a 1954 masterpiece called Monster from the Ocean Floor, Roger trims the budgets by directing most of his films himself. He seldom does a worse job than Wyott Ordung. Five critics in France and two in England say Roger is more interesting than Cukor or Zinnemann – though unaccountably It Conquered the World misses out on a Best Picture nomination. Then again, Mike Todd wins for Around the World in 80 Days. I’d rather watch Lee Van Cleef blowtorch a snarling turnip from Venus for sixty-eight minutes than David Niven smarm over two hundred smug cameo players in far-flung locations for three or four hours. You don’t have to be a contributor to Cayenne du Cinéma or Sight & Sound to agree.