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“This is an unexpected pleasure.”
The two men stood in the grand reception room of the mansion, facing each other warily. D’Arcy, fearing he would lose control of his own temper, kept his clenched hands thrust into his trouser pockets, while he noticed that Tuttle had not bothered to remove his coat.
“You are a master of disingenuousness, young Hammer, a trait I will not pretend to admire,” Tuttle, abandoning any semblance of etiquette, observed. It was a reply that sent a surge of fury through the young biographer, who immediately went to open the door, indicating that his rival should leave.
“Oh, I don’t think you shall be so eager to see me leave, once you have heard me out,” Tuttle protested, not moving an inch.
“You have three minutes to interest me, but I suggest you save your argument for our great debate tomorrow, sir.” D’Arcy stayed by the open door, gripping the handle. Smiling, Tuttle threw down his cane and strolled into the center of the room.
“Three minutes, eh?” To D’Arcy’s intense annoyance, Tuttle produced a small gold case and lit up a cigar. “Well, I promise it will be a devastating three minutes.” He exhaled a plume of cigar smoke with an air of smug triumph. “D’Arcy, it was I who hired Harry Jones, the chimney sweep. A wonderful thespian for a working man, do you not agree, and so easy on the eye. . . .” Tuttle watched D’Arcy with the callousness of the hunter studying his prey as it dies in the trap. Shocked, the young biographer let the door handle slip from his grasp and the door swung shut with a bang.
“What do you mean, sir?” Ashen-faced, he turned to face his nemesis.
“I mean, Hammer, that the so-called secret journal of Sir Joseph Banks, the ritual to Atanua, was all fabricated by myself and planted as bait. Biography, young man, is a war—a war that you have proven yourself to be unfit to engage in. And if you don’t expose yourself as having fictionalized Banks’s memoir, I shall do it myself. You are ruined.”
“But it cannot be a fake!”
“I tell you, after studying Banks’s handwriting, and his phraseology, I wrote it myself.”
“But the ritual works!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyhow, how could you possibly know that?”
“Because, Tuttle, I executed it myself, with the assistance of three other people—poor Harry and two ladies of the night, one of whom is a regular amour of mine. . . .”
Behind him the door clicked open, but D’Arcy was too impassioned to notice that a third party had entered the room. Instead he stepped closer to Horace Tuttle.
“I duplicated every movement of the orgy. I caught the sun in the cup and summoned up the goddess. I tell you the ritual works!”
“D’Arcy, how could you!” Clementine’s voice rang clearly through the room. D’Arcy swung about and faced his estranged fiancée for the first time in months. He felt nothing but revulsion. “How could you betray me like that?” the young woman continued, her voice thick
with outrage. “Why, you are nothing but a disgusting libertine.”
“You have no right to take the moral high ground with me, Clementine, and if you both care to sit down for a moment I shall explain why.”
Both Horace and his niece reluctantly sat, and, for the first time, D’Arcy noticed the familial resemblance between them.
“Mr. Tuttle, you are lying, sir. I suggest you did not fabricate the ritual.”
“You’re right; I copied it out of an old grimoires, an old magic book I found in my collection. I merely changed the nature of the artifacts, but what of it? It was all nonsense anyway,” Tuttle barked back, flushing with indignation.
“I thought that must have been the case, because you see, my dear man, when I was possessed, when I was empowered with the magic ability promised from that ritual, whose eyes do you suppose I could see through?” An expression of horror slowly began to creep across Tuttle’s face as he started to comprehend. Savoring the moment, D’Arcy continued. “Your own, sir, and what I saw both appalled and disgusted me.” Now he noticed that Clementine had paled and the hand that held her parasol was visibly trembling. Determined to sink the dagger in, he did not falter for a moment.
“Uncle and niece making vile, unnatural love. And so my original instinct was confirmed, that you, Clementine, had betrayed me and smuggled my manuscript to your lover—”
“You have no proof!” she screamed, abandoning all semblance of decorum.
“That night you both spoke of your first encounter only two years ago. I can tell you the place, day, even the name of the hotel at the time—”
“Enough!” Clementine shrieked, now holding her hands over her ears.
“What do you want?” Tuttle’s voice was now little more than a broken whisper.
“A deal, Tuttle—a devil’s pact, if you like. You withdraw your accusation and publicly endorse my biography tomorrow and in return I shall never expose either yourself or Clementine. That way my literary success is assured, and you will never see the inside of Newgate. Do I have a deal?”
“You have a deal.”
And that, my dear reader, is the end of my little moral fable. Tuttle, of course, never recovered, and as for Mr. D’Arcy Hammer, well, that chapter isn’t quite closed. Of course, you’d never read a tale of such moral depravity in one of my books.
