James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

“I can lead you to them.” I was clutching at straws, hoping wasn’t as utterly obvious as it seemed to be.

She nodded. The son peered at me slyly.

“But I want some assurances,” I said.

“An affidavit?” she asked, cackling with sudden laughter. “ I’ll give you assurances, Mr. High-and-mighty.”

“And I’ll give you this !” cried the son, leaping up as if spring-driven and waving his straight razor in the air like an Afghani assassin. In a sudden fit he flailed away with it at the remains of the elephant, chopping it like an onion, carving great gashes in the tabletop and banging the razor against the little gear mechanism inside the ruined toy, the several gears wobbling away to fall off the table and onto the floor. Then he cast down the razor, and, snarling and drooling, he plucked up the little jumbo trousers and tore them in half, throwing them to the carpet, alternately trodding on them and spitting at them in a furious spastic dance, and meaning to say, I guess, that the torn pants would be my head if I didn’t look sharp.

His mother turned around and slammed him with the paddle again, shouting “Behavior!” very loud, her face red as a zinnia. He yipped across the room and sank into the chair, sitting on his hands and glowering at me.

“Where?” asked the woman. “And no games.”

“At the Crown and Apple,” I said. “In my room.”

“ Your room.” She squinted at me.

“That’s correct. I can lead you there now. Quickly.”

“You won’t lead us anywhere,” she said. “We’ll lead ourselves. You’ll stay here. There’s not another living soul on this floor, Mr. Who-bloody-is-it, and everyone on the floor below has been told there’s a madman spending the night, given to fits. Keep your lip shut, and if we come back with the notebooks, we’ll go easy on you.”

Willis Pule nodded happily. “Mummy says I can cut out your tripes,” he assured me enthusiastically, “and feed them to the bats.”

“The bats,” I said, wondering why in the world he had chosen the definite article, and watching him pocket the razor. So it was the notebooks…Both of them donned webby-looking shawls and toddled out the door like the Bedlam Twins, she covering me all the time with the revolver. The door shut and the key clanked in the lock.

I was up and searching the place for a window, for another key, for a vent of some sort — for anything. The room was on the inside of the hallway, though, and without a window. And although both of them were lunatics, they were far too canny to leave spare keys roundabout. I sat down and thought. The Crown and Apple wasn’t five minutes’ walk. They’d get into my room right enough, search it in another five minutes, and then hurry back to cut my tripes out. Revolver or no revolver, they’d get a surprise when they pushed in through the door. She would make him come through first, of course, to take the blow…I studied out a plan.

What the room lacked was weapons. She had even taken the wooden paddle with her. There were a couple of chairs that would do in a pinch, but I wanted something better. I had worked myself into a bloodthirsty sort of state, and I was thinking in terms of clubbing people insensible. Chairs were too spindly and cumbersome for that.

I went to town on the bedstead — a loose-jointed wooden affair that wanted glue. Yanking the headboard loose from the side rails, I listened with satisfaction as the mattress and rails bumped to the floor, loud enough to alert anyone below that visiting lunatic was doing his work. Then I leaned on one of the posts of the headboard itself, smashing the headboard sideways, the posts straining to tear away from the cross-members. Dowels snapped, wood groaned, and after a little bit of playing ram-it-against-the-floorboards the whole thing went to smash, leaving the turned post free in my hands. I hefted it; I would have liked it shorter, but it would do the trick,

The doorknob rattled just then. They were back, and quick, too. Either that or else maybe the landlady, noticing that the lunatic had been doing his job too well, had come round to investigate. I slid across to stand by the door, thinking that I wouldn’t smash the landlady with my club, but would simply push past her instead, and away down the stairs. If it was a man, though…

Whoever it was was having a terrible time with the lock. It seemed like an eternity of metallic clicking before the door swung to. I tensed, the club over my shoulder. A man’s face poked in from the dark hallway, the rest of the head following, I closed my eyes, stepped away from the wall, and pounded him one, slamming the club down against the back of his head, and knowing straight out that it wasn’t Willis Pule at all, but someone perhaps even more deadly: it was Higgins, the academician-gone-to-seed, still gripping a skeleton key in his right hand.

The blow left him half senseless, knocking him onto his face on the floor. He lay writhing. I stepped across, thinking to give him another one, a sort of cricket swing to the cranium, but he was already down and I couldn’t bring myself to do it — something I’m happy about today, but which took all my civilized instincts at the time.

The door lay open before me, and I was out of it quick, bolting for the stairs, throwing the post onto the floor of the hallway, and wondering about Higgins sneaking around like that. He wasn’t expected; that was certain. He had seen them both go out, perhaps, and had crept in, no doubt searching for the very notebooks that they were off ransacking my room for. They weren’t in league, then, but were probably deadly enemies. The Pules would take good care of him if they found him on the floor of their room.

I peered cautiously down the dark and empty stairwell, and then leaped down the stairs three at a time toward the second-floor landing, thinking to charge into the foyer at a run, knocking down anyone between me and the door and maybe shouting something clever at the landlady to regain some lost dignity. I fairly spun around the baluster and onto the bottom flight of stairs, straight into the faces of the two Pules, who puffed along like engines, coming up, she holding the revolver under her shawl and he going along before, both of them with a deadly resolve.

“Here now!” piped the son, clutching my arm in the devil’s own grip.

“Hold him!” she cried. “ We’ll make him sing! Up the stairs, Bucko!”

I kicked him on the shin as hard as I could, my momentum lending it some mustard. He howled and slammed backward against the railing, nearly knocking his mother down. He didn’t let go of my arm, though, but pulled me over with him, both of us flailing and rolling and me jerking free and scrabbling back up toward the landing like an anxious crab, expecting to be shot. I was on my feet and jumping up the stairs three at a time toward the third floor, listening to the curses and slaps and yips behind me as Mrs. Pule rallied her son.

There was no shot, despite the way being clear for it and the range close, but I ducked and danced down the third-floor hall anyway, trying to convince myself that she was loathe to fire the gun in public and bring about the collapse of her plans. I should have thought of that an hour ago, when she collared me at the window, but I didn’t, and wasn’t convinced of it now.

I blasted past the room again, its door still open and Higgins on his hands and knees on the floor, ruminating. The sight of him brought the Pules up short as they came racing along behind me, and for the moment they let me go in order to attend to him. I headed straight toward a French window, grappled with the latch, pulled it open, and looked out, not onto three stories of empty air, thank heaven, but onto a little dormer balcony. There was a hooting from the open door of the room, and a grunt, and then an outright shriek, as the Pules visited the sins of Jack Owlesby onto the head of poor Higgins.