you think he's trying to keep our relationship alive?"
"Such as it is. Still sleeping with that artist?"
She smiled. "He bored me. Détourned symbols are so very yesterday. How do you take something seriously when every scruffy teenager can do it? Let him play with his futurehead friends." She finished her coffee, looking through lowered lashes at the lumpen proletariats milling around their table. "No, the most fabulous thing to do now is believe in something utterly and completely, without restraint."
"Like Warhol? He's going senile." Crane's lip curled, approaching a sneer. He had little time for dreampunk.
"Like the war on crime, darling." Her green eyes flashed dangerously as her smirk widened.
Crane nodded. He was bored of this game. "Give me the message. I'll see that it gets to him."
"If he reads the paper, he has it already. That industrialist everyone thought was dead - Heinrich Donner. He's turned up again."
"Donner's alive?" Crane's eyes narrowed. Why hadn't he heard about this?
"Not quite. Stabbed through the heart, poor man. With a sword. It's very unusual. The sort of thing you-know-who might be interested in."
Crane frowned, thinking for a long moment, then stood. "Go home. Wait by the phone. He'll want to get moving at sunset, no later." Absently, he pulled out fifty dollars and left it on the table.
Marlene raised an eyebrow. "You'll give the waitress a heart attack. Or is that for me?"
"I'm sure you'll think of a way to earn it." He nodded a cursory goodbye, then turned away.
"It's a date." Marlene smiled, then snapped her fingers at the waitress for a second cup.
Jonah greeted Crane on his return with a barely-perceptible raised eyebrow. Crane checked his pocket-watch, noting that enough time had passed to allow him some plausible deniability with Marlene, then gave Jonah the slightest of nods.
Jonah took a small copper key from his pocket and moved to unlock the door to the lower library.
In the Jameson Club, there were two libraries. The upper library was one of the club's great treasures - a repository of famous first editions culled from private collections, including a folio of Marlowe's Faustus Redeemed and the original manuscript for Edwin Drood, complete with the famous epilogue . Had the Jameson Club been a museum, visitors would have flocked to see such exhibits. As it was, most of the members saw these priceless artefacts of literary history only as decorative touches, adding a touch of class to the room where they went to do the daily crossword. The books simply sat and looked pretty, in the manner of a trophy wife or a set of elephant's tusks.
The lower library, meanwhile, was all but forgotten. While there were several first editions stored there, they were the kind of thing you'd find on the bookshelves of any dedicated collector with money to spend, and thus their value as items of decadence was next to worthless. Since the building of the upper library, the room had fallen into disuse, and now it was used as a junk room by the serving staff, a place of dust, cobwebs and bric-a-brac, forgotten by all. Crane was the only member who ever bothered to go inside, and if the other members noticed, they dismissed it as a minor eccentricity. If Crane wanted to poke around amongst piles of dusty old ephemera, they thought, then it was his business.
Surely there was no harm in it.
In one corner of the lower library, underneath a bust of Catullus, there was a locked trunk, to which Parker Crane had the only key.
Inside the trunk, there were three black slouch hats, two black trenchcoats, three pairs of black shirts and slacks, five pairs of strangely-patterned black rubber gloves, three pairs of black shoes with the same intricate pattern on their soles and one pair of black automatic pistols, which were kept in perfect condition.
There was also a mask.
It was made of leather and designed to fit over the whole head, with a blood-red metal plate in the front that covered the
"Such as it is. Still sleeping with that artist?"
She smiled. "He bored me. Détourned symbols are so very yesterday. How do you take something seriously when every scruffy teenager can do it? Let him play with his futurehead friends." She finished her coffee, looking through lowered lashes at the lumpen proletariats milling around their table. "No, the most fabulous thing to do now is believe in something utterly and completely, without restraint."
"Like Warhol? He's going senile." Crane's lip curled, approaching a sneer. He had little time for dreampunk.
"Like the war on crime, darling." Her green eyes flashed dangerously as her smirk widened.
Crane nodded. He was bored of this game. "Give me the message. I'll see that it gets to him."
"If he reads the paper, he has it already. That industrialist everyone thought was dead - Heinrich Donner. He's turned up again."
"Donner's alive?" Crane's eyes narrowed. Why hadn't he heard about this?
"Not quite. Stabbed through the heart, poor man. With a sword. It's very unusual. The sort of thing you-know-who might be interested in."
Crane frowned, thinking for a long moment, then stood. "Go home. Wait by the phone. He'll want to get moving at sunset, no later." Absently, he pulled out fifty dollars and left it on the table.
Marlene raised an eyebrow. "You'll give the waitress a heart attack. Or is that for me?"
"I'm sure you'll think of a way to earn it." He nodded a cursory goodbye, then turned away.
"It's a date." Marlene smiled, then snapped her fingers at the waitress for a second cup.
Jonah greeted Crane on his return with a barely-perceptible raised eyebrow. Crane checked his pocket-watch, noting that enough time had passed to allow him some plausible deniability with Marlene, then gave Jonah the slightest of nods.
Jonah took a small copper key from his pocket and moved to unlock the door to the lower library.
In the Jameson Club, there were two libraries. The upper library was one of the club's great treasures - a repository of famous first editions culled from private collections, including a folio of Marlowe's Faustus Redeemed and the original manuscript for Edwin Drood, complete with the famous epilogue . Had the Jameson Club been a museum, visitors would have flocked to see such exhibits. As it was, most of the members saw these priceless artefacts of literary history only as decorative touches, adding a touch of class to the room where they went to do the daily crossword. The books simply sat and looked pretty, in the manner of a trophy wife or a set of elephant's tusks.
The lower library, meanwhile, was all but forgotten. While there were several first editions stored there, they were the kind of thing you'd find on the bookshelves of any dedicated collector with money to spend, and thus their value as items of decadence was next to worthless. Since the building of the upper library, the room had fallen into disuse, and now it was used as a junk room by the serving staff, a place of dust, cobwebs and bric-a-brac, forgotten by all. Crane was the only member who ever bothered to go inside, and if the other members noticed, they dismissed it as a minor eccentricity. If Crane wanted to poke around amongst piles of dusty old ephemera, they thought, then it was his business.
Surely there was no harm in it.
In one corner of the lower library, underneath a bust of Catullus, there was a locked trunk, to which Parker Crane had the only key.
Inside the trunk, there were three black slouch hats, two black trenchcoats, three pairs of black shirts and slacks, five pairs of strangely-patterned black rubber gloves, three pairs of black shoes with the same intricate pattern on their soles and one pair of black automatic pistols, which were kept in perfect condition.
There was also a mask.
It was made of leather and designed to fit over the whole head, with a blood-red metal plate in the front that covered the
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