K Jeter - Infernal Devices

Little caring to see if anything of value had been taken, I turned and ran back to the stairway, calling Creff's name once again. This time, to my ear came a muffled thumping from the floor above.

At the doorway of his small sleeping quarters, I found my assistant, trussed and gagged. He had managed to wriggle one foot from his bonds and thus give the percussive. signal that led me to him. I pulled the wadded handkerchief – a lady's, from the lace and scent on it from his mouth, as it seemed his reddened face was on the point of bursting from the attempt to vent his words.

"It was them!" Creff strained to look around at me as I loosened the knotted cords at his wrists. "Those murdering swine – they came back!"

"That fellow Scape?" I said.

"The very one, the scoundrel." He began rubbing the circulation back into his bloodless hands before turning his attention to the bonds at his ankles. "And the fine lady that was with him – she were the worse of them; vicious as a cat, she were."

I stood up, helping Creff to rise as well, with my hand at his elbow. "How did they get in?"

"No idea, sir; very clever, they were. I heard nary a thing, until a great crashing blow on my skull – I'm surprised my brains aren't scattered all over the floor, they struck me so cruel – and while things were all a swimming about me, I saw their faces looking into mine, and her laughing as she trussed me up like a goose. A fine lady, that one!"

The mystery of their entrance was soon cleared away. Leaving Creff in his room to await the restoration of strength in his wobbly legs, I made a tour of the premises. I soon found the scullery window jemmied open expertly, it seemed, from the small amount of damage to the surrounding wooden frame – and two pairs of footprints, dark with the alley's muck, across to the door.

In the wreckage of the workroom, it was difficult to ascertain if anything of value had been taken. I knew, however, what had been the likely intent of their search. Clearing away a toppled clock frame and gears strewn like brass coins, I uncovered my father's secret cache. Lifting the stone that served as its unobtrusive lid, I peered into its depths: the mahogany casket was still there. I tilted back the wooden lid: the device that my father had built, and that the Brown Leather Man had brought to me for repair, lay inside. The raid on my shop had been unsuccessful.

Kneeling on the cold floor of the workroom, gazing down at the intricate machinery in the hole as if it were some faery gold newly unearthed, yet without seeing it as my own thoughts moved in their courses, I contemplated this latest event. The proper course of action, I knew full well, would be to hail the nearest constable in the street and report the attack on my servant and the burglary attempted, if not consummated – on my shop and stock. I would thus set into motion against these malefactors all the weight of English justice. Which, I believed then in my yet-innocent state, was fully capable of bringing any miscreant to trial and well-deserved punishment. The Law, in its majesty and the power of its representatives, would take the matter out of my hands and, most important, beyond any chance of further harm coming to me or to the persons and objects within my sphere of responsibility. That was what the Law, in its constabulary and bewigged judges, was for; business such as this business had become, was their business now. Certainly not mine; the sooner the whole affair, with all its attendant apparatus of puzzling clockwork device, peculiar forged coin, and retinue of bizarre personages, was turned over to the authorities, the sooner I would be able to return to my own proper activities. The careful tending of my small shop through day after uneventful day, towards whatever small sufficiency or bankruptcy awaited me at the end that was my appointed lot.

So the thoughts marched through my head, in proper order. I cannot excuse my later actions with the plea that I had no idea of what course I should have followed. All men, reaching back to Adam in the Garden, plead Ignorance as their defence; when, if we were but honest, we would admit that the apple was hedged with every warning imaginable. So I too fell; perhaps all sins are not causes but effects, being the result of that first sin, Boredom.

I gazed down into that dark hole and the glittering machinery that had been hidden there, as though I were gazing into the secret workings of my own heart. Some new thing had entered into my existence; I was spellbound by it, reckless of any consequence. That which should have set my pulse trembling with a natural apprehension, instead hastened it with excitement. I put the thought of constables out of my mind. The Law would have to wait; as though already a fellow criminal, I found it to my advantage to let the authorities' ignorance continue. I resolved to take just a few more small steps – as all progress along a slippery path is initiated – towards penetrating these enticing mysteries.

My blood was up; why wait further? Once restraint is loosened, the chase is afoot. I replaced the concealing stone over the Brown Leather Man's device, then supervised the revivified Creff in boarding up the scullery window. With no explanation to him, I was out to the street, the fever in my brain warming me as much as my greatcoat against the night's damp air.

As I strode along, shouldering my way past the evening's revellers, I recalled the words spoken to me before I had returned to the shop: "You might find some other cabby who would take you there – but not this one." True enough; I was evidently engaged in a dark business; matters that one person might be squeamish about, others might find to their taste.

I had, in the course of my day-to-day errands, noted the particular clientele gathered at one of the Clerkenwell public houses. A former coaching inn, it was now given over completely to the furnishing of drink, the only sleeping accommodations offered being the stone kerb outside as a pillow for the total inebriate. It still retained its yard, which provided ample space for the deposit of cab and horse while the driver was inside slaking his thirst. At no time of day or night were there ever fewer than a dozen such vehicles thus cooped about the welcoming door. No place better, I had decided, for finding the intrepid guide I desired.

Once there, I made my way past the ranked hansoms and the patient horses, their large, blinkered heads lowered in sleep, hooves now and then pawing the cobblestones as if their dreams had restored them from the grey city to pastures greener. The steam of their breaths mingled with the fog blurring the public house's yellow windows. I pushed open the door and entered, passing from the cold into the warm stench of spilled ale and stale tobacco.

The smoke from the clay pipes present at every table was thick enough to hide the low ceiling in a haze of grey. As I pushed my way through the murk, I felt pairs of eyes turn and silently watch my progress. The cut of my clothing, though far from the finest and unobtrusively patched where necessary, was enough to mark my position; the cabbies' own cloaks and highcrowned hats were mired and darkened with long exposure to the inclement weather in which they were forced to make their livings. A gentleman such as they presumed me to be was a rare sight in this, their den.

Standing between the turned backs of two cabbies pointedly maintaining their conversations with their fellows, I laid a shilling on the raw planks that formed the serving bar. The aproned landlord produced a small glass of some vile-smelling clear liquid, presumably gin. The shilling disappeared, leaving no progeny.

Setting the glass down, I stepped back from the counter and cleared my throat ostentatiously. Upon repeat of this performance at a more insistent pitch, I was rewarded with the cabbies on either side breaking off their talk and turning to look at me.