James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

There was a sudden pounding at the door. Narbondo cursed aloud. The door swung open to reveal Shiloh the evangelist, cloaked and holding his leather bag. Narbondo ignored him utterly, prodding a little pulsing, bean-shaped gland out of the organ cavity of the carp. He nipped through the threads that held it, slid a thin spatula under it, and lifted it into a vial of amber liquid, corking it and setting it alongside the fetuses. He yanked the gutted carp from the cork board and dropped it into the box below, kicking it under the table. He leered up at the old man, who watched the affair with a mixture of wonder and loathing. “Cat food,” said Narbondo, nodding at the dead fish.

“A tragic waste,” said Shiloh. “God’s children starve for want of bread.”

“Feed the multitude with it, then,” cried Narbondo, suddenly enraged at the old man’s hypocrisy. He yanked the fish out by the tail and waved it in the air, droplets of blood spattering the floor. “A half-dozen more of these and you can feed Greater London.”

Shiloh stood silent, grimacing at the blasphemy. “People hunger on this very street — hunger and die.”

“And I,” croaked Narbondo, “make them walk again. But you’re right. It’s a filthy shame. There but for fortune, and all.”

He stepped across and unlatched the casement that faced the street, swung the window open, and tossed the carp onto the pavement below, the fish bursting in a shower of silver scales. Narbondo emptied the box of entrails after it, nearly onto the head of two men and an ancient old woman who had already begun to fight over the fish. Cries and curses rose from the street. Narbondo cut them short by slamming closed the window. He turned contemptuously and without warning snatched the leather bag from the old man’s hand.

The evangelist cried out in surprise, caught himself, and shrugged. “Who is this poor brother?” he asked, nodding at the corpse.

“One Stephanus Biddle. Run over two weeks back by a hansom cab. Stomped to bits by the horses, poor bastard. But dead is dead, I always say. We’ll enliven the slacker. He’ll be passing round tracts with the best of them by midday tomorrow, if you’ll kindly trot along and leave me alone.” Narbondo emptied the bag onto the table, then inspected one of the coins. “You’d make money by selling these to the utterer yourself instead of making me do it. You pay dearly for my time, you know.”

“I pay for the speedy recovery of God’s kingdom,” came the reply, “and as for selling the coin myself, I have neither the desire for risk nor the inclination to hobnob with criminals of that sort. I…”

But Narbondo cut him short with a hollow laugh. He shook his head. “Come round tomorrow noon,” he said, nodding toward the door. And just as he did so, it swung to and in walked Willis Pule with an armload of books, nodding ingratiatingly at Shiloh and holding out a moist hand that had, a moment earlier, been fingering a promising boil on Pule’s cheek. The evangelist strode through the open door, disre-garding the proffered hand, a look of superiority and disgust on his face.

The window curtains in the second floor of the building across the courtyard slid shut, unseen by Pule and Narbondo, who bent over the still form on the table. A moment later the street door of that same building opened, and the man in the eyepatch tapped down the half-dozen stairs of the stoop and into the street, hurrying away in the wake of the receding evangelist, who pursued a course toward Wardour Street, bound for the West End.

Langdon St. Ives trudged along through the evening gloom. The enlivening effects of the oysters and champagne he’d foolishly consumed for lunch had diminished and been replaced by a general despair, magnified by his fruitless search for a brothel, of all things, that he wouldn’t be able to recognize if he stumbled upon it. And he had undertaken the embarrassing errand on the advice of a man addled by years of drink, who understood the earth to wear a belt for the purpose of supporting a pair of equatorial trousers.

It was the song and dance of getting round to the nub that was most bothersome — of making the proprietor understand that it wasn’t just casual satiation that he desired, that the act must somehow involve machinery — a particular machine, in fact. Lord knows what conclusions were drawn, what criminal excesses were even at that moment being heaped onto the doorstep of technology. More champagne would, perhaps, have been desirable. Halfway measures weren’t doing the trick. If he were drunk, staggering, then his ears wouldn’t burn quite so savagely at each theatrical and idiotic encounter. And if, in the future, he were to run across one of his would-be hosts in public, he could blame the entire sordid affair on drink. But here he was sober.

On the advice of a cabbie he approached a door with a little sliding window, knocking thrice and stepping back a foot or two so as not to seem unnaturally anxious. The door swung open ponderously and a jacketed butler peered out, slightly offended, apparently. The man looked overmuch like Hasbro, who St. Ives heartily wished were along on this adventure. The look on the man’s face seemed to suggest that St. Ives, with his pipe and tweed coat, should be knocking on the rear door off the alley. “Yes?” he said, drawing the word out into a sort of monologue.

St. Ives inadvertently pushed at the false beard glued to his chin, a beard which perpetually threatened to succumb to the pull of gravity and drop ignominiously to the ground. It seemed firm enough. He smashed his eye socket around his monocle, squinting up his free eye and staring through the clear lens of the glass. He affected a look of removed and distinguished condescension.

“The cab driver,” he said, “advised me that I might find some satisfaction here.” He harrumphed into his fist, regretting almost at once his choice of words. What in the world would the man make of his desire for satisfaction? A challenge, perhaps, to a duel? A coarse reference to satisfied lusts?

“Satisfaction, sir?”

“That’s correct,” said St. Ives, brassing it out. “Not to put too fine a point on it, it was suggested to me that you could put me in the way of, shall we say, a particular machine.”

“Machine, sir?” The man was maddening. With a suspicion that at once became certainty, St. Ives understood that he was being had on, either by the cabbie or by this leering, mule-faced man, whose chin appeared to have been yanked double with a tongs. The man stood silent, peering at St. Ives through the half-shut door.

“Perhaps you’re unaware, my good fellow, to whom you speak.” Silence followed this. “I have certain…desires, shall we say, involving mechanical apparatus. Do you grasp my meaning?” St. Ives squinted at aim, losing his monocle in the process. It clanked against a coat button on his chest. He shoved at his beard.

“Ah,” said the suddenly voluble man in the doorway. “If you’ll use the alley door next time. Wait a moment.” The door eased shut. Footsteps receded. The door once again swung open and the butler handed out a parcel. St. Ives took it, and opened it unable to think of anything else to do, and found himself possessed of an eight-hour clock sporting a pair of iron gargoyles on either side of a cracked oval glass.

“I’m not,” began St. Ives, when he was struck from behind and shouldered into the street. An old man in a cloak ascended the stairs, brushed past the butler and disappeared growling into the recesses of the house. The door slammed shut.

Damn me, thought St. Ives, staring first at the clock, then at the house. He began once again to ascend the stairs, but was struck halfway up with a sudden fit of inspiration. He turned, tucked the broken clock under his arm, fixed his monocle in his eye, and set out down the road, determined to give up his quest for the moment and to seek out a clock-maker instead. In his haste he nearly collided with a round, eyepatched man tapping along with a stick in the opposite direction.