Entry #10: The Spirit of St. Louis (1932)

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974)

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Lindbergh had an early passion for motor vehicles, starting with cars and motorcycles and moving into airplanes. Following his college career, he became a journeyman barnstormer, then an airplane mechanic in Billings, Montana, and then a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Reserve Corps. After his military training, he became a pilot for the new U.S. Air Mail service and was one of its most vocal advocates.

When a French-born hotelier in New York named Raymond Orteig offered a prize in 1919 for the first person to pilot an airplane between New York City and Paris within ten years, Lindbergh set out to claim the prize, the pursuit of which had already claimed the lives of six well-known fliers. He took off on Friday, May 20, 1927, at 7:52 a.m. from Roosevelt Field on Long Island. He flew through fog, above storm clouds, and along the tops of waves, navigating only by the stars or by dead reckoning. He landed on Saturday, May 21, at 10:22 p.m. at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, and he was hoisted on the shoulders of 150,000 Parisians for more than twenty minutes. In 33 hours, he had achieved virtually instantaneous worldwide fame, and he was a public figure for the rest of his life.

*             *             *

The incident with Maria had earned me credibility among London’s occult crowd. The only people with a sense of my relationship with Maria were those who had been at the pub that night, and they were the only ones that understood the personal tragedy that had befallen me. Every other member of the local supernatural community simply knew that a nearly unstoppable, nearly indestructible entity had run amok through the streets of London, and that I had managed to both stop and destroy it through my ingenuity and resource. Even though I was an independent operator, not affiliated with any of the bodies that had a seat at the great occult table, I was now nonetheless respected by those in London who represented them. The firm of Cooper, Banks, and Mackenzie had gained a great deal of clout indeed, and the name of Dr. Israel St. James was now spoken with reverence by a great many people.

I used to spend my days compiling my notes, performing research, and simply passing the time while I waited for the Novoscope to notify me of work. Now that word of my expertise was spreading, though, I was seeing people in my office nearly every day. I was known as a man who dealt with unusual or aberrant objects, and so there was a steady flow of objects through my door. It reminded me of the early days of my tenure at Cambridge as the curator of the Abnormal Relics Collection, when people would send me anything that they couldn’t explain and didn’t want around their own offices. I needed to clarify for my visitors that I was primarily a gatherer and not an appraiser, but for the most part, they were satisfied to let me keep the various baubles that they brought me. On those occasions that their own continued custody of the items was desired, they were willing to pay a reasonable fee for my expert advice. Most of the time, my payment was in the form of favors or some other sort of quid pro quo, the occult world not being one that relied largely on currency.

The other side of my newfound renown was that I was now very easy to locate when I wasn’t out on a job. The supernatural community had beaten a wide enough path to my door that my office was no longer the den of relative anonymity that it had been when I established it. I had therefore invested in some security measures for my office, as well as a new aluminum carrying case for my standard kit of relics that was better organized and better secured than my old satchel. It enabled me to carry more relics on my missions than usual, ensuring that I was less likely to be caught unprepared. It even included compartments for the Rod of Asclepius and the Tesla Resonator that enabled them to be conveniently stored and quickly retrieved, which was no mean feat, since they were easily my two most cumbersome tools.

I got a chance to test out my new luggage when I arrived at work one morning to another late-night event. Sometimes I suspected the universe of deliberately arranging for these events to occur in the middle of the night. The coordinates pointed to a town in New Jersey called Hopewell. I loaded my new case with as many relics as it could hold, which was a large number, and I dialed the location into the Orrery. I hoped that the time difference would work in my favor, since the working day was beginning in London while the residents of the American east coast were still fast asleep, even taking the murderous Puritan work ethic into account. I maintained a certain amount of pride in the nation of my birth, but that was one thing I was glad of about Britain.

It was indeed still dark when I arrived in New Jersey, but I could hear a commotion not far away. I walked a few blocks, following a steady stream of police cars and other government vehicles. When I arrived, I saw an ordinary house surrounded by dozens of cars and enough lights to create a second sun. I used the Badge to get as close to the scene as I could, but even with the Badge, I was outranked. Surrounding the official presence was a ring of reporters and photographers, and I pressed in among them to get a sense of what was going on. The information was varied and copious, but the prevailing wind was that Charles Lindbergh’s young son had been kidnapped.

This was truly a formidable event. I might have expected less of a hullaballoo if President Hoover’s son were taken. Charles Lindbergh was an American hero. Whoever had decided to twist his tail like this was either a juggernaut or a colossal fool, and with this massive law enforcement presence, a fool would have been caught by now.

Mr. Lindbergh had pulled out all the stops to ensure the safety of his son. At the moment, he was talking to three men in the uniforms of a U.S. Army Colonel. According to a local reporter I was talking with, he had made their acquaintance upon his own promotion to colonel in the Army Air Corps. One was the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf. Another was a Wall Street lawyer and former Olympic fencer named Henry Breckenridge. The third was one Colonel William Joseph “Wild Bill” Donovan, a First World War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient. The four of them were huddled around a piece of paper. It was obviously more important than the other evidence at the scene for it to command the attention of such illustrious men.

The Badge was not going to impress these men. If I was going to get a look at that paper, I needed to show them something they hadn’t seen yet. If this kidnapping had supernatural motives, then I was likely to be the only true expert on the scene, and I needed to tell them so.

I took my fate in my hands and approached the gathering. “Excuse me, Colonel?”

The four of them turned toward me, and I felt the gazes of four Army colonels. I was surprised my eyebrows didn’t sizzle. “And just who the hell are you?”

I faltered for a moment, but I managed to muster my courage. I had been traveling the globe seeking wonders when the eldest of these men had been the merest glint in his father’s eye. I had nothing to fear from them. “Dr. Israel St. James, with the firm of Cooper, Banks, and Mackenzie.” Lindbergh and the others looked at Breckenridge, but he shrugged his shoulders. The name clearly hadn’t become renowned among legitimate law firms. “I have a unique expertise in matters such as these. I’d like to help.”

“What help do you offer?” asked Lindbergh. “If you have anything to bring to the table, by all means share it.”

I had nothing but sympathy for the man. He was doing his best to remain calm and in control of the investigation, but I could see the pain he was in. He had just lost that which was most dear to him, and it was tearing him apart. I knew a little of what that felt like.

“May I see that paper, please?” He handed it over, and I took a look. It looked like a ransom note that had been written by a kindergarten child:

“Dear Sir!

Have 50.000$ redy 25,000$ in 20$ bills 15.000$ in 10$ bills and 10.000$ in 5$ bills After 2-4 days we will inform you were to deliver the mony.

We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police The child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are singnature and three holes.”

Beneath the text of the note was what I assumed to be the signature mentioned: two interlocked blue rings with a red circle in their intersection. A hole was punched in the middle of the red circle, and two more were punched to the left and right of the rings.

“Well, obviously this was written by someone with better command of German than English. I assume you’re looking into local criminals of German heritage?”

“Naturally,” said Col. Donovan. “We’re looking into a potential organized crime connection. What do you make of that symbol?”

I set down my case. “Nothing yet.” I opened the case and drew out the St. Jerome Reliquary. If this symbol represented any sort of language, the Reliquary would let me decipher it. On the other hand, if deciphering the symbol’s meaning took more than five minutes or so, my ability to distinguish languages and express myself intelligibly would begin to decay, and I would be bound for a madhouse for sure.

I prepared to put the Reliquary’s chain around my neck, and I turned to Lindbergh. “Give me four minutes, and then get this thing off my neck by any means necessary. Do you understand?” He nodded, and I fully donned the Reliquary. With the sight that it granted me, I saw the symbol nearly glow with renewed meaning. The shapes and colors danced, and I understood the meaning of the signature.

The symbol was a pictograph in a language used by goblins and other low-level fairy flunkies from Tír na nÓg. I recognized a reference to Krampus, the ancient German counterpart to Father Christmas who stole away naughty children on Christmas Eve. It was common practice for fairies to kidnap children and replace them with doppelgangers to exert their influence on the world, like a spy assuming a role to infiltrate a rival organization. The changeling would be raised as a human to act as a secret operative of Titania, and the child would be brought to her court to serve as entertainment, ornamentation, or quarry.

From the German slant of the message’s idiom, the culprits were probably kobolds, German sprites that often appeared as children. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could start a proper search. I took off the Reliquary and replaced it in my case.

“Well? What is the symbol?” said Lindbergh.

“It’s a good start,” I said. “May I see the crime scene, please?”

“It won’t do you any good,” said Superintendent Schwarzkopf. “We swept the room already, and we didn’t find a single print, not even from the nursemaid.”

“I understand. I still need to see the room.”

The three colonels were confused, but Lindbergh overruled them and led me to the nursery. I swept the room with the Mary Celeste Sextant and saw a line of faint glimmers in the carpet, like drops of water from a leaky bucket. The line led out the open window. I followed the trail through the house to its source, a display case on the wall with broken glass around it. The case was full of the awards and accolades Mr. Lindbergh had been given after his historic flight, but there was a gap where a couple of the trophies ought to have been. I examined the glass on the floor, and some of the pieces had more glowing flecks on them. Some sort of magical creature had broken the case and removed some of the contents, and it had cut itself on the broken glass and left a trail.

“Mr. Lindbergh, was this case full last night?”

He took a look at the case and made a quick check of the contents. “Yes. Two of the awards are missing.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Certainly. They were the Key to the City awards that I was given from London and New York. Why would the kidnappers have taken them and not any of the others?”

That sounded like my relic. I picked up my case and made for the front door. “I intend to ask them that myself. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Lindbergh, I think I’ve seen everything I need here. The next time you see me, God willing, I will have your son with me.” We shook hands, and I walked out of the house. I went around the nursery window, reacquired the blood trail with the Sextant, and I got to work.

There had been a tire track behind the house, but the fairy blood trail led off in a different direction. There was no chance that a band of kobolds would use something with that much iron in it. Iron isn’t exactly poisonous to fairies, but they definitely don’t like being too near it. It feels to them like the sound of nails on a chalkboard in their brains. They would never want to sit inside a giant cage of steel for any length of time. They must have carried the child away on foot, which at least meant that they couldn’t have gone far. According to Lindbergh, the kidnapping had occurred at around 9:30 that night, and I had arrived at between 3 and 4 a.m., which gave the kidnappers about a 30-mile head start.

I followed the trail to a small grove of trees about five miles from the house. I examined the area with the Sextant from a safe distance, and there was a strong fairy presence there. I had to assume that they had the child with them. If I wasn’t careful in my approach, they might harm the child to keep me back. I put away the Sextant and took the Titania’s Kiss from my case, tucking it into an inside pocket of my waistcoat. Thus armed, I walked toward the grove to confront the kidnappers.

I got all the way into the middle of the grove before I saw anyone. I spotted a glimpse of a kobold, and then the trees spewed them out around me. There were between six and nine of them, all no more than three feet tall and armed with crude stone-bladed knifes and spears. They were dressed in clothes seemingly made from old sacking and rags, and they stared at me with impish, toothy grins. They might have stepped out of a Disney cartoon, if not for the smell.

“Declare yourself, trespasser,” said one of them, in a strong German accent. He may have been the leader, but I couldn’t tell.”

“You took a child this night,” I said. “I have come to negotiate for his return.”

“There is no child here,” said another one of them. The ring of kobolds began to giggle.

“What happened to the child?”

“The emissary of our Lady has come and gone,” said one of them. “The child has gone from this world.”

I was too late. Damn it. Well, if I couldn’t do anything for the Lindberghs, I could at least fulfill the goal I came for in the first place. “Is your only job to kidnap children for your Lady?”

“What mean you by this?”

“You took more than a child. You also took a pair of keys from a glass case. What interest are they to you?”

“The Keys are no concern of yours!” said one of them.

“The Keys are a fine prize for our Lady!” said another.

“What is it to you about the Keys?” said the first one, the one who might have been the leader.

“The keys are why I came here,” I said. “It is my business to gather such relics.”

The supposed leader thought for a moment. “What are you called, human?”

“My name is Dr. Israel St. James.”

The kobolds were in an uproar. “It is the Israel Doctor!” “The trinket gatherer!” They seemed very excited to meet me. I felt honored.

“Tell me something,” I said. “If you were the ones who took the child, whose are the tire tracks behind the house?”

“The wheels belong to the human called Bruno Hauptmann,” said the leader. “He was our agent in this world. He is our trickery for the mortal policemen. But never you mind this,” he said, digging into a pouch on his belt. “You are the Israel Doctor. You should have the trinkets.” He drew from his pouch a pair of large brass keys, and he tossed them to me. As my fingers tightened around them, the knowledge of the relics flowed into my brain.

The Keys to the City awarded to Charles Lindbergh by the cities of London and New York had been imbued with the spirit of their recipient. After his flight, he had been an icon of humanity. No door had been closed to him. This, combined with the nature of a Key to the City as a symbol of freedom of passage, had given the Keys the ability to unlock any lock in their path. Lucky Lindy’s Keys gave their holder the power to pass through any door in the world. Each key could unlock a different kind of door. The Key to Old London Town was attuned to “old” locks, and the Key to New York to “new” locks. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but I was sure that these relics were the ultimate thief’s tool. The holder of these keys could go anywhere and take anything they liked.

So why had this band of kobolds been so eager to hand them over?

When I recovered from the information shock, the kobolds were pointing their weapons at me.

“We only took the Keys to gain favor with our Lady,” said the leader. “Such a prize would grant great power to our Lady’s emissaries and agents in this world. But you did our Lady a great insult many summers past. You tore her servant from her and stole her sleeping stone. She will grant us many fine boons when we deliver you. You may hold the Keys while we bring you to her court, and then you will dance for our Lady at long last, Israel Doctor.”

Oh, dear. Apparently, Titania had not forgiven me for my little dalliance in the Adirondacks sixty years ago. One of her emissaries had been sending railroad workers to sleep so their minds could be sent to Tír na nÓg for Titania’s pleasure, and I put a stop to it. I wound up keeping the Titania’s Kiss stone for myself, concealed in the handle of the letter opener in my inside pocket, and the emissary had been exiled to the world. I hadn’t anticipated the level of offense that Titania had taken to my actions, but it must have been considerable. She obviously wasn’t accustomed to being bested by a mere mortal.

I took a look around the circle of kobolds. Their weapons had flint edges that looked handmade. A steel blade was much sturdier than stone, but a well-knapped flint edge was much sharper, like a broken pane of glass. The era when early humans were first able to conquer the beasts of the field wasn’t called the Stone Age for nothing. On the other hand, the heads of their spears were very close to me, and I had trained in stick fighting after my first violent encounter. I got ready to grab at one of them when I saw a faint oily sheen on one of the spearheads. It looked like some kind of poison. It could have had any of a number of effects, but not one of them was worse than being brought to Titania’s court.

I took my fate in my hands and lunged for one of the spears. Its wielder jabbed at me, but I managed to dodge his thrust and took the spear in hand. I spun it around and swung the blunt end at his head. The shaft was made of a good, heavy hardwood, and the little kobold went down on the ground clutching his head. One of the others stuck out his spear and cut a little furrow in my arm, tearing the sleeve of my shirt. I could feel the poison on his spear start to take effect as a warm, prickling feeling spread from the wound, and I knew that I had no time to waste. I swung the spear around madly in an attempt to parry any further incoming attacks, and I kicked at any kobolds that tried to get close.

A couple of them climbed trees and pounced on my shoulders and back and forced me to the ground. While I was briefly pinned, two more of them moved in on my ankles and tried to hamstring me, but I kicked as hard as I could and knocked both of them unconscious. The two on my back drew their own knives, but I caught their arms and flung them at a pair of tree trunks. They hit hard and fell to the ground, barely moving.

There were less than half a dozen of them left, and they were definitely playing for keeps now. They started darting in and out, trying to get in their licks with their own blades. I threw the spear away into the trees and pulled out the Titania’s Kiss from my pocket. I doubted that the stone would have any effect on fairy folk, but it was contained in the handle of a steel letter opener, and though the opener’s blade would not have worried a human assailant, the steel would do just fine against a fairy. As soon as the next kobold moved in for an attack, I drove the blade between his ribs, and he screamed as a dark green fluid oozed from the wound. Another one leapt at me from the opposite direction, and he got the same treatment.

This kobold snatch crew was not prepared for combat against anything more formidable than an 18-month-old infant, and they were definitely not expecting someone like me to put up a fight. I spun around to catch any further attackers, but they were beginning to back away and look to their leader for guidance.

“Well?! Do you still mean to bring me to your Lady?!” The feel of the poison had spread to nearly my entire arm, but I was still drunk on adrenalin. I could have fought off twenty more kobolds at that point without slowing down.

“Please!” said the leader. “Cease your fight! We surrender!” He lowered his weapons and gave a shudder. I saw his skin shift and his clothes change color, and he transformed into the spitting image of a human child. He seemed to be the one who would have taken the Lindbergh child’s place in the crib. He looked up at me and pleaded. “Please do not harm me, sir.”

He must have thought that metamorphosing into the shape of his victim would endear me to him.

I have encountered fairies on several occasions, and I have never truly known them to show the slightest understanding of human nature.

I wiped the blade of the letter opener off on the grass and replaced it in my pocket. I then picked up my case and struck him in the head, not stopping until I could see the dents in his skull.

The others stood around behind me, shocked.

“Now you run back to your Lady,” I told them, as calm as I could manage, “and you tell her that the children of this world are protected. You tell her not to provoke me again, unless she wants to incur more losses like those she suffered today. Because every time I am threatened, I grow stronger, and I will meet many more challenges before she hears of me again. And you tell her that if she continues to prod at this world, I will hear about it, and when that time comes, I may get angry.”

The remaining kobolds, bruised and bleeding, gathered their fallen and ran off. I opened my case and put the Titania’s Kiss away, along with the Keys. I then took out the Rod of Asclepius and took it in hand as I propped myself up against a tree. The snake untwined from the rod and sank its fangs into my wounded arm, knitting the wound closed and counteracting the effect of the poison.

As the sun rose, I made my way out of the grove of trees, covered in dirt and with one sleeve torn. The kobolds, in their panic, had left behind the transformed body of their leader, and it still lay where it had fallen.

Eventually, the police would discover the body of what appeared to be Charles Lindbergh’s missing son. The family would be inconsolable, but there was little to be done. The child was already long gone, off to serve in Titania’s court until he died or managed to escape.

I judged that the situation was bad, but the best had been made of it. Better that the Lindberghs discover their child’s corpse than a fairy in human guise, and so invite the tendrils of Titania into their home. I had known many families to recover from a tragic loss, but I had never known one to recover from such a cruel deception and betrayal as that. The family would grieve and mourn, but in the end they would trim sails and survive, and they would be stronger for it.

And as far as young Charles Jr. was concerned, his father had flown a pile of steel, wood, and canvas across thousands of miles of ocean because he thought it ought to be done. If the boy was anything like that, he’d be just fine.