THE DIOGENES CLUB

Beauregard was admitted into the unexceptional foyer off Pall Mall. Through the doors of this institution passed the city's most unsociable and unclubbable men. The greatest collection of eccentrics, misanthropes, grotesques and unconfined lunatics outside the House of Lords was to be found on its membership lists. He handed over gloves, hat, cloak and cane to the silent valet, who arranged them on a rack in an alcove. While deferentially slipping off Beauregard's cloak, the valet subtly established that he was carrying no concealed revolver or dagger.

Ostensibly for the convenience of that species of individual who yearns to live in monied isolation from his fellows, this unassuming establishment on the fringes of Whitehall was actually much more. Absolute quiet was the rule; violators who so much as muttered under their breath while solving a crossword puzzle were mercilessly expelled without refund of their annual dues. A single squeak of marginally inferior boot-leather was enough to put a clubman on probation for five years. Members who had known each other by sight for sixty years were entirely unaware of one another's identity. It was, of course, absurd and impractical. Beauregard imagined the situation which would eventuate were a fire to break out in the reading room: members stubbornly sitting in the smoke, none daring to call out an alert as the flames rose around them.

Conversation was permitted in only two areas, the Strangers' Room, where clubmen occasionally entertained indispensable guests, and, far less famously, in the sound-proofed suite on the top floor. This was set aside for the use of the club's ruling cabal, a group of persons connected, mostly in minor official capacities, with Her Majesty's Government. The ruling cabal consisted of five worthies, each serving in rotation as chairman. In the fourteen years Beauregard had been at the disposal of the Diogenes Club, nine men had served on the cabal. When a member passed on and was discreetly replaced, it was always overnight.

As he was kept waiting, Beauregard was carefully watched by unseen eyes. During the Fenian Dynamite Campaign, Ivan Dragomiloff had penetrated the Club, intent on executing a commission to exterminate the entire ruling cabal. Detained in the foyer by a porter, the soi-disant ethical assassin had been noiselessly garrotted so as not to offend the sensibilities or excite the interest of the ordinary members. After a minute or two  -  no ticking clocks disturbed the peace  -  the valet, as if acting on telepathic command, lifted the purple rope that barred the unremarkable staircase leading directly to the top floor, and gave Beauregard the nod.

On the stairs, he remembered the several times he had been summoned before the ruling cabal. Such a call inevitably resulted in a voyage to some far corner of the world, and involved confidential matters affecting the interests of Great Britain. Beauregard supposed he was something between a diplomat and a courier, although he had at times been required to be an explorer, a burglar, an impostor, or a civil servant. Sometimes the business of the Diogenes Club was known in the outside world as the Great Game. The invisible business of government  -  conducted not in parliaments or palaces but in Bombay alleys and Riviera gambling hells  -  had afforded him a varied and intriguing career, even if it was of such a nature that he could hardly profit in his retirement by writing his memoirs.

While he had been away pursuing this Great Game, Vlad Dracula had taken London. Prince of Wallachia and King of Vampires, he had wooed and won Victoria, persuading her to abandon her widow's black. Then he had reshaped the greatest Empire on the globe to suit his tastes. Beauregard had vowed death would not interfere with his loyalty to the Queen's person, but he had thought he meant his own death.

The carpeted stairs did not creak. The thick walls admitted no noise from the bustling city without. Venturing into the Diogenes Club was like sampling deafness.

The Prince Consort, who had taken for himself the additional title of Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain now, his get executing his wishes and whims. An elite Carpathian Guard patrolled the grounds of Buckingham Palace and caroused throughout the West End like sacred terrors. The army, the navy, the diplomatic corps, the police and the church were all in Dracula's thrall, new-borns promoted over the warm at every opportunity. While much continued as always, there were changes: people vanished from public and private life, camps such as Devil's Dyke springing up in remote areas of the country, and the apparatus of a government  -  secret police, sudden arrests, casual executions  -  he associated not with the Queen but with Tsars and Shahs. There were Republican bands playing Robin Hood in the wilds of Scotland and Ireland, and cross-waving curates were always trying to brand new-born provincial mayors with the mark of Cain.

On the top landing was a man with a military moustache and a neck the thickness of his head, even in civvies the absolute image of a sergeant-major. Beauregard passed inspection and the guard opened the familiar green door, stepping aside to allow the clubman to enter. He was inside the suite sometimes referred to as 'the Star Chamber' before a realisation sank in: Sergeant Dravot, the man on guard, was a vampire, the first he had seen within the walls of the Diogenes Club. For a horrid, sinking moment, he assumed his eyes would get used to the gloom within the Star Chamber and alight upon five bloated leeches, sharp-fanged horrors ruddy with stolen blood. If the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club had fallen, the long reign of the living would genuinely be at an end.

'Beauregard,' came a voice, normally pitched but sounding, even after only a minute in the silence of the Club, like a thunderclap from God. His moment of fear passed, replaced by a mild puzzlement. There were no vampires in the room, but things were changed.

'Mr Chairman,' he acknowledged.

It was convention not to address any of the cabal by name or title in their suite, but Beauregard knew he faced Sir Mandeville Messervy, a supposedly retired admiral who had made his name in the suppression, twenty years earlier, of the Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean. Also present were Mycroft, an enormously corpulent gentleman who had been chairman on Beauregard's last visit, and Waverly, an avuncular figure Beauregard understood to be personally responsible for the downfall of Colonel Ahmad Arabi and the occupation of Cairo in 1882. There were two empty seats at the round table.

'Alas, you find us depleted. There have, as you know, been changes. The Diogenes Club is not what it was.'

'A cigarette?' offered Waverly, producing a silverwork case and offering it.

Beauregard declined but Waverly tossed him the case anyway. He was fast enough to catch it and return it. Waverly smiled as he slipped the case into his breast pocket.

'Cold silver,' he explained.

'There was no need for that,' said Messervy. 'I apologise. Still, it was an effective demonstration.'

'I am not a vampire,' Beauregard said, showing his unburned fingers. 'That much should be obvious.'

'They're tricky, Beauregard,' said Waverly.

'You have one outside, you know.'

'Dravot is a special case.'

Formerly, Beauregard had considered the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club impregnable, the ever-beating lion-heart of Britannia. Now, not for the first time since his return from abroad, he was forced to realise how radically the country was altered.

'That was a fine piece of work in Shanghai, Beauregard,' the chairman commented. 'Very deft. As we have come to expect of you.'

'Thank you, Mr Chairman.'

'It will be some years, I believe, before we hear again of those yellow devils in the Si-Fan.'

'I wish I shared your confidence.'

Messervy nodded sagely. The criminal tong was as impossible to root out and destroy as any other common weed.

Waverly had a small pile of folders in front of him. 'You're a well-travelled man,' he said. 'Afghanistan, Mexico, the Transvaal.'

Beauregard agreed, wondering where he was being led.

'You've been of great service to the Crown in many situations. But now we need you closer to home. Very close.'

Mycroft, who might have been sleeping with his eyes open for all the attention he seemed to pay, now leaned forwards. The current chairman was obviously so used to deferring to his colleague that he sat back and allowed him to take over.

'Beauregard,' said Mycroft, 'have you heard of the murders in Whitechapel? The so-called Silver Knife killings?'