A Midnight & Blackstone Adventure
Patrick Midnight took a long drag on his cigarette. Once the smoke was out of his lungs, he reached across his chest and grabbed the mug of coffee that rested on the end table that just one hour before was loaded with expertly wrapped presents and mementos. The coffee was black and strong. Midnight had slipped the Turkish cook an extra two dollars to make sure that he got the good stuff for his all-night vigil.
Midnight leaned back in his chair and took stock of his environment. Most of the presents were still in the room, which explained his presence. In the center, underneath an ornate, crystal chandelier, sat the coffin. Its teakwood exterior had been polished to high gloss, and Midnight knew from the wake that its interior was spotless white satin. By all accounts, it was a beautiful and luxurious final resting place. The only problem was that it was empty.
Midnight had learned within one hour of meeting the Blassie family that they were an odd bunch. Fabulously wealthy, but stranger than a sermon on Saturday.
“We do things differently, Mr. Midnight,” informed Stephen Blassie, grieving grandson of the late Ebenezer Blassie. “I’d say that most families don’t hire a private detective for funerals.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Precisely. And most families do not host wakes where guests are expected to provide gifts, the more lavish the better.”
“That is also unusual.”
“Yes, yes. It’s not how they do things in Boston, as they say.”
“Well, we’re not in Boston, Mr. Blassie.”
“Quite so.”
The Blassie mansion sat on a lonely stretch of the New Hampshire seacoast halfway between Rye and Hampton. Although the lights of Portsmouth were visible from the home’s many windows, the four-story mansion seemed cut off from civilization. Its neighbors were the sea and scrubland. Even in daylight, the home bore an air of menace, almost as if ghosts haunted every nook and cranny of its white brick foundation. Midnight had brought this up offhandedly during his one and only meeting with his employer, and his concerns had been brushed away with the wave of a hand.
“A load of poppycock,” said Stephen Blassie. “My brother Morty fancies himself a Spiritualist, and my grandmother used to host seances here during the time of President Taft, but all that stuff is bunk to me.”
“I agree,” Midnight had lied.
“Good. I would never hire a superstitious man, especially not on a job like this.”
“I see. Is the idea that I am to prevent burglars instead of spirits?”
“Yes. Because of my family’s peculiar custom, this home will be well stocked with priceless jewels, expensive bottles of wine straight from Burgundy, and enough cheques to start a bank. Obviously, such a fortune requires vigilance, and you shall be that vigilance.”
“No sweat,” Midnight had said with a confident smile. “You’ll find me here tomorrow morning with everything safe and sound.”
“I have no doubt, Mr. Midnight. You came highly recommended. Stanley Hopkins, whom I’m sure you know, spoke highly of you a few months ago when I met him following a lecture at Colgate. Ever been? No? Beautiful campus, and a charming village too. Anyway, Mr. Hopkins gave me your name, and then Major Steptoe seconded the notion.” Stephen Blassie hung his head low. “Poor Nigel. I cannot believe he’s gone.”
“Yes, me neither. I heard that it was some form of sepsis.”
“I heard the same as well. My grandfather, whom we are honoring in absentia today, went to England to be with the major one last time. Then, well, you know what happened on the voyage back.”
Yes, Midnight and the rest of the United States knew all about the wreck of the Lady Belle. The German-owned liner had sunk off the coast of Greenland under mysterious circumstances. The official verdict was an iceberg, which caused the newshounds to make hay about a supposed “curse of the Titanic.” However, a vocal minority loudly proclaimed that the Lady Belle had been sunk by enemy agents, either Soviet, German, or Irish depending on who you asked. Christopher Blassie admitted to Midnight during their lone meeting that he suspected radical republicans in the employ of Dublin.
“The Lady Belle carried not just my grandfather, but also several British officers on holiday. Plus, one cannot forget the biggest name on that ship’s manifest. Lord Glenwarren, late Inspector-General of the RUC, had survived previous attempts on his life. Who is to say that the IRA or some other band of mick cutthroats did not plant dynamite on the vessel? From what I have read, the Lady Belle went to the drink fast and without warning. Mighty suspicious, Mr. Midnight.”
“Indeed.”
“Anyway, you need only concern yourself with guarding tonight’s gifts. Then, when the morning comes, you’ll be relieved of duty.”
“Excellent.”
“Oh, and Mr. Midnight?”
“Yes?”
“I know it’s ridiculous, and I know you have already told me that you do not believe in hocus-pocus, but my brother Morty has convinced himself that our grandfather’s ghost may appear tonight. If that should happen, could you please interrogate him? Morty was rather insistent on it.”
“And if the ghost does not appear?”
“Then I’ll win the wager, and Morty shall eat proverbial crow. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start greeting the guests. Please help yourself to the food in the kitchen, but the family would prefer that you stay among the staff. It is still considered unseemly to hire a private investigator in our circles, Mr. Midnight.”
Six or seven hours later, Midnight was left all alone in the Blassie mansion; even the cook and the charwoman had gone home for the evening. That was fine, Midnight thought to himself. So long as he had his cigarettes and coffee, he was content. Also, someone, most likely a guest, had left behind a pulp magazine—the latest issue of Dime Detective. Midnight found the magazine lying underneath a set of mauve curtains. The thrilling cover showed a policeman and plainclothes detective hunched over a black steam trunk. Inside, illuminated by the light of an electric torch, a beautiful young woman with bobbed brown hair appeared to be dead. The two stories emblazoned on the cover were entitled “Red Friday” and “Death on Delivery.” Of the two, Midnight found that he preferred the writing of Carroll John Daly, whom he remembered from Black Mask.
Midnight languidly perused the other stories in the magazine, finding most of them cheap and predictable. Maxwell Hawkins’s “Indian Trick” was not too bad, plus Midnight always got a kick out of the advertisements in the back. He doubled over with juvenile laughter at the sight of so many sex ads, from the “Hygiene for Men” cutout selling genuine Navy prophylactics to the one offering rare French photos, which every schoolboy knew was code for nudie cutie shots. Midnight turned the magazine over once more, looked at the date, and then threw it over his shoulder.
September 1934.
“Christ, I can’t believe it,” he said to himself. It had been a year and six months since the disbandment of the Society of Gentleman Geographers. Besides Hopkins, Midnight had lost contact with everyone, and most were so scared of the Roosevelt administration, which had publicly accused the Society of conspiring to pull off a fascist putsch, that they treated each other like ghosts. Midnight had been forced to make it as a shamus on his own. So far it hadn’t been terrible, but his wife Fay had a taste for Beacon Hill living, and Midnight hadn’t yet found the heart to tell her that his salary was more in line with Brighton, or, God forbid, Charlestown.
Midnight occupied his thoughts with sundry worries until, sometime around two a.m., he felt his eyelids grow heavy. He eased down his comfortable seat and told himself not to fall asleep, and yet his brief moment of rest (“I’m just resting my eyes,” he lied to himself) turned into ten minutes of uninterrupted slumber.
Then, with the sharpness of a stab wound, something pierced the side of Midnight’s cheek.
“Ow!” he screamed loud enough to wake the dead.
Standing before him, with his rapier in hand, was the scowling countenance of Reverend Blackstone.
“I should haft cut thee when thou spakest blasphemy! But rather now that thou make a mockery of thy contract, I haft roused thee.”
Midnight looked at his watch. “It was just a few minutes.”
“In that frame a thief couldst have absconded with the riches.”
Midnight had to admit that his ancestral ghost was correct. A good thief could have picked the room clean during his siesta.
“I’m sorry. Not used to being up this late.”
“Loafer,” Blackstone said. The long-dead Puritan told Midnight to refill his coffee cup, which the private detective did following a long sojourn in the kitchen. When he returned to his seat, Blackstone was waiting for him with a Bible in his hands. Midnight wanted to groan but kept it to himself.
“The Good Book shall be thy guide till the morn,” Blackstone said. He ordered Midnight to sit and listen as he started reading from the Gospel of Luke, the Reverend’s favorite book.
“Forasmuch,” Blackstone intoned, “as many have taken in hand to outline in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word…”
Midnight tried to take a sip of coffee but failed to bring the mug to his lips. The heaviness of his eyelids, plus the droning timbre of Blackstone’s voice, put the private detective right back into dreamland. This time around, Blackstone was far too enraptured with his own reading and sermonizing to notice his young charge snoring.
“Awake thyself,” Blackstone whispered. The ghost gently shook Midnight until the private detective’s eyes were open. The first thing Midnight did was check his wristwatch. It read 3:51 a.m.
“What goes on now?” Midnight asked crankily. When Blackstone refused to answer him, and in fact pressed his forefinger to his lips, Midnight stopped talking and perked up his ears. The mansion sounded quiet at first, then, from some shadowy corner of the room, Midnight started to hear the distinct sound of light footfalls.
Someone was in the room with him and Blackstone.
Midnight did his best to keep still. He did not want to alert the intruder to his presence, so he mimicked the motions of slumber. He slowed his breathing down and kept his eyes closed. It was all for naught, however, as the footfalls eventually ended right at Midnight’s chair and a cold pistol was shoved under the private eye’s nose.
“Do not be alarmed, Mr. Midnight,” said the soft voice. “Just hand me your gun, and we shall finalize our business without injury.”
Midnight could not see the man in the darkness, but he recognized his voice. It sounded like Stephen Blassie pantomiming a falsetto singer. Midnight did as he was ordered. He removed the Browning .25 automatic from his breast pocket and handed it over.
“That’s good, Mr. Midnight. Now put your hands out in front of you.”
The assailant produced several stout ropes which he used to bind Midnight to his chair. The private detective noticed that the man tied nautical knots at his wrists and ankles.
Once Midnight was secured to the chair, the man moved quickly in the darkness. Packages were opened willy-nilly, and even the coffin was ransacked for unknown trinkets. The mysterious man moved furiously, but with a purpose. He was no random crook, but rather someone with an intimate knowledge of the mourning room.
“I’m about finished, Mr. Midnight,” the man taunted after fifteen minutes of ransacking. “I’ve enough loot in my pockets to start a new life in South America.”
“Is that the plan then?” Midnight asked.
“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you, but yes, the plan is to find my way south to Brazil or Uruguay and turn this American money into land and cattle and a new name. You may curse me for theft, but you should know that most of this wealth was to be buried with my grandfather’s empty coffin. A perverse and pagan custom in normal times, but downright obscene in this age of breadlines. Don’t you agree?”
Midnight stayed silent.
“Your opinion does not particularly matter, Mr. Midnight, for I’m leaving for good as a rich man.”
“You’ve got one problem, though.”
“And what is that, Mr. Midnight?”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh really? Who am I?”
“Christopher Blassie.”
The unseen man laughed. “If you say so, then I am Christopher Blassie. Boy, he’ll get a kick out of that one!”
Midnight heard the man continue laughing as he walked towards the doors leading into the main foyer. The jolliness in his step ceased precisely at the same moment that something heavy pounded on the outside window, the window directly behind Ebenezer Blassie’s empty coffin.
“What the devil was that?” the man asked.
The pounding erupted again, and this time Midnight could guess the origin of the noise: It sounded like a pair of fists angrily beating on the glass.
“Someone’s outside,” Midnight said.
“But that’s impossible. It’s only you and me here; the guests are all home or at their hotels in Portsmouth.”
“Be that as it may be, but there’s definitely someone…or something…banging on that window.”
The unseen man growled and walked over to the noisome window. Using two hands, he threw back the curtains. He let out a sudden gasp and anguished cry, and Midnight heard him drop to the floor. Standing there, backlit by several strikes of heat lightning, was a grim-faced, wide-eyed old man with his mouth agape. Midnight could see even in the gloom that the man was crazed—his dark eyes were as large as saucers, and through the glass the private detective could hear his nonsensical moans.
“Christopher, Christopher,” Midnight pleaded. “Untie me. Untie now, and I’ll take care of that…that…thing out there.”
The man writhed on the ground and whimpered to himself. “No, no, he’s supposed to be locked away. He’s supposed to be far, far away.”
“Who is he?” Midnight asked. “Who is that man outside?”
“Grandfather,” the man on the floor moaned. “My grandfather Ebenezer Blassie.”
“Ebenezer Blassise? Didn’t he drown on the Lady Belle?”
“No, no, not supposed to be free,” the young man agonized to himself. Midnight opened his mouth for more questions, but the calm, cold hand of Reverend Blackstone stopped him.
“Save thy breath, lad,” the ghost whispered. Blackstone quickly cut through the knots binding Midnight’s wrists and ankles. Once free, the private detective grabbed his attacker’s lapels and twisted them into a jiu-jitsu choke. His aim was not to kill the man but rather incapacitate him.
“Look, lad,” Blackstone demanded. Midnight followed the specter’s gaze and looked out of the window. The horrific old man was gone.
“Let’s take care of this fellow first, then see about corralling the dead Ebenezer Blassie.”
“Aye, lad.” Blackstone’s ectoplasmic finger found a nearby lamp. The bright, electric illumination brought a cry of surprise to Midnight’s lips.
“This is not Christopher Blassie,” he said. The man looked and sounded like Christopher Blassie, but not only was his hair a shade darker, but a cruel, lightning-shaped scar bisected his chin in two. Midnight reached into the unconscious man’s jacket and found a leather wallet. Little was inside save for a few dollar bills and a singular note written in a feminine hand.
Morty—don’t forget the boat leaves at seven a.m. Love, June
“Ah, I see,” Midnight said. “This must be the Spiritualist, Mortimer Blassie. Now I wonder who June is.”
“No time to dawdle, lad,” Blackstone said. “I shall stay with this brigand. Thou quarry awaits in the night.”
Midnight did not need further instruction; he fled from the house and raced out into the stormy night. A heavy shower of rain coated his hair and clothing, and within a minute he was utterly soaked to the skin.
“Going to catch pneumonia,” Midnight groused.
The landscape around the Blassie mansion was a sea of mud. Midnight’s leather dress shoes soon became caked in the stuff, and more than once the private detective had to free himself from a quicksand of earth. He was miserable and looked even worse. Eventually, after sliding down a hill and reaching a beach, Midnight saw the dark outline of a man standing right by the ocean.
“Ebenezer Blassie?” he called. “If that is you, then I want you to know that I’m a friend. My name’s Pat Midnight.”
The shadow did not move. Midnight watched it for a while. Never once did the man twitch or shift his weight. For all intents and purposes, he was as still as a statue.
Midnight crept up behind the man and eventually got control of his wrist.
“It’s time to go inside and get warm, Mr. Blassie,” he said. The moment he tugged him back towards the home, the old man howled and scratched a large chunk out of Midnight’s hand. The wound was not serious, but it stung. Midnight cursed and punched the old man solidly in his face. The blow had the force of a Jack Dempsey hook, but Ebenezer Blassie refused to go down.
“Good God almighty!”
Midnight dropped his head and reached behind the old man’s knees. The well-executed takedown lasted only seconds, for Ebenezer Blassie managed to wiggle out from underneath the private detective. Midnight had to tackle the man again, this time suffocating him with his chest until he felt the old man’s body go limp. Midnight used his right forearm to deliver one slicing shot for good measure.
The private detective rolled off his quarry and sighed to himself. “Jesus, what a night.” Panic set in, and Midnight looked up and expected to see an aggrieved Reverend Blackstone ready to denounce his blasphemy, but the ghost was not there. This relaxed Midnight enough that he took five minutes of sleep for himself with the falling rain and rolling waves as his music.
“Tough luck with the Blassie brood, Pat.”
Three days later, Stanley Hopkins met Midnight for lunch in Boston. The man whom Midnight had rescued from a Luciferian cult in Sicily, and who served as his direct supervisor for the majority of his time at the Society of Gentlemen Geographers, now smirked from the corner of a table in a North End eatery.
“Yes, it was,” Midnight said. “I was paid for my efforts, though.”
“Technically speaking.”
“Yes, technically speaking. Christopher Blassie was happy that I apprehended his renegade brother but was not happy about the bruising on his grandfather’s face. Threatened me with a lawsuit until I forked over sixty percent of my wages to him.”
Hopkins laughed. “What a chiseler! He never wanted to pay your fee in the first place.”
“Likely true. That whole family is full of flim-flam men.”
Hopkins laughed again. “Indeed. Some plan, though, right? Have to give Morty Blassie some credit. He engineered that ‘death’ of his grandfather and almost absconded with close to a million dollars.”
“And all for the love of a sideshow woman,” Midnight sneered.
Hopkins shivered. “I’ve heard that the criminal Blassie is not a looker, but when I saw that June woman’s mugshot in the Globe, I couldn’t help but think about my neighborhood’s dogs.”
“In the eye of the beholder, Stan.”
“Right, right. But I’m still wrapped up in the genius of it all.”
“Yes. When Morty Blassie learned of his grandfather’s decision to be by the side of Major Steptoe, he secretly booked a second-class passage to Liverpool onboard a Canadian steamer that left out of Portland a day before Ebenezer Blassie’s ship. Then, when it came time to board the Lady Belle, Morty shanghaied some Limehouse wretch, put him in his grandfather’s clothes, and placed the ticket in his pocket. That poor, unknown fellow is buried at the bottom of the Atlantic with the rest of the unfortunates.”
“Morty and his grandfather made it back to America in another fashion, then?”
“Private monoplane,” Midnight said. “Not only did I find the plane parked in a vacant field some eighteen miles from the Blassie mansion, but a small airfield in Seabrook produced a record of the plane’s arrival several hours before the Lady Belle sank.”
“And is it true that the grandfather was kept isolated in a boat?”
Midnight finished his cup of espresso and told a nearby waiter to make him another. “Yes. That’s what caused the old devil to go insane. Morty left him tied up in a canoe, secured with a leather tarp, and left it to drift in the ocean. Can you imagine spending weeks at a time in total darkness, with only the sound of the waves to keep you company?”
“Utter torture.”
Midnight agreed. “It’s why the old man attacked me the moment I tried to drag him away from the ocean. It was the only familiar thing left in his battered brain. It was his final comfort. Still have no clue how he managed to escape his prison. It involved swimming. That’s about all I know.”
“Terrible.” Hopkins shook his head. While he and Patrick Midnight continued their conversation, turning to more cheerful matters, elsewhere, near the restaurant’s kitchen, Reverend Blackstone growled in rage at the sight of a porcelain Virgin Mary statue.
“Curs,” he bemoaned. “Popish curs, and all within sight of Master Mather’s Second Church.”
Blackstone’s angry litany continued but was heard by no one. Life within the restaurant carried on as normal, with patrons conversing in English and Italian. Little did they know or care that a dead seventeenth-century Puritan cursed them and their progeny.
-- Arbogast is the owner and chief editor of 1325 Publishing. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Bizarchives. He is the author of over ten books, including three in the Patrick Midnight & Reverend Blackstone series. His latest work is The Sad, Violent Life of Sandy Preston.
