James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

“Sorry,” St. Ives mumbled.

“S’nothing,” came the reply, and in moments both had turned their respective corners, two ships passing, as it were, in the afternoon.

The portly man tapped along, highly satisfied with the day’s adventure. He entered Rupert Street, Soho, and disappeared into the open doorway of the Bohemian Cigar Divan, patting his pockets absentmindedly as if searching for a cigar.

Willis Pule admired himself in the window of a bun shop on King Street. His was an intelligent face, uncoarsened by sunlight or wind and with a broad forehead that bespoke a substantial cranium. His complexion, it was true, was marred by an insidious acne, one that beggared all efforts to eradicate it. Pumice, lye, alcohol baths, nothing had diminished it. He’d abstained from eating aggravating foodstuffs, to no effect at all. The red lump on his cheek shone as if it were polished. He should have powdered it, but he sweated so fearfully that the powder might simply have dribbled away.

He pried his eyes away from his skin and regarded for a moment his profile. He’d seen the dusty storage rooms of European libraries thought to be fables by the common breed of historian, and he’d knowledge of alchemy that the likes of Ignacio Narbondo hadn’t dreamed of.

It was during his studies that he first learned of the existence of the homunculus. References to it and to its craft dated into antiquity, but were tiresomely sporadic and vague, linked by the most tenuous threads of pale suggestion until its sudden appearance in London some hundred years ago. The bottle imp, maligned by the dying sea captain whose log narrated the grim story of his own decline into madness and death, was without doubt the same creature sold some few years later to Joanna Southcote by an Abyssinian merchant, who followed the sea captain into an early and unnatural grave. There had been references to the thing’s having power over life and death, over motion and energy, over the transmutation of metals. It had been the source of the inspiration of Newton, of James Maxwell, the ruination of Sebastian Owlesby.

A trail of horror seemed to follow the thing. All a matter of ignorance, Pule was certain. Ignorance and bungling had squandered the thing’s powers, and Narbondo’s losing it was the greatest blunder of all. But the hunchback was useful. They would all be useful to Willis Pule before he was through.

And the stakes seemed to be growing. His discovery that the thing in the box had disappeared after Sebastian Owlesby’s murder had led him along a clear trail to William Keeble, and, he smiled to think of it, to his fetching daughter. And then there was the matter of a second box and the very interesting transaction between Owlesby and the West African Gem Company a month before Owlesby’s death. If there wasn’t profit to be made here, Pule was blind. Damn Keeble and the moronic Trismegistus Club. He’d deal with the lot of them.

Around the distant corner, right on time, came Dorothy Keeble, alone. Pule’s chest heaved. His days of patient observation hadn’t been for nought. His hand shook in his coat pocket, and he realized that he was breathing through his mouth. Fearing vertigo, he clutched at the iron railing across the window of the bun shop and attempted to whistle a nonchalant air.

“Dorothy Keeble?” he asked when the girl was some few feet off. Her jersey dress, dark red with ivory lace, narrowed in around her waist in such a way as to make Pule light-headed. She regarded him curiously. Her skin was almost transparent it was so light, and her hair, impossibly black, fell around her shoulders in loose curls. Pule was gripped by an urge to touch it, to fondle the skin of her face, which was, compared to his own, like ivory next to wormwood. He struggled to control himself. “We have, I believe, a mutual friend.”

“Have we?” she asked.

“Jack Owlesby,” said Pule, reciting his prepared lie. “We were in school together. Great friends.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr.…”

“Pule,” came the reply. “Willis Pule.”

“Shopping for buns, were you, Mr. Pule? I won’t keep you then. I’ll tell Jack I’ve met you.” She started on her way, and Pule turned to follow, suddenly angry at her obvious indifference.

“I’m a student of arcane history,” he said. “I studied at Leipzig and Munich.”

“I’m sure that’s very nice,” said Dorothy, hurrying along. “I’ll tell Jack. He’ll be happy to know what you’ve gotten up to. Don’t let me interfere with your errand.” She nodded at him and then ignored him. Pule fumed.

“Perhaps you’d take a cup of tea with me?”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“I’m afraid not. Thank you awfully.”

“Why not?”

Dorothy gave him a look of surprise. “What a question! Won’t my simple refusal suffice?”

“No, it won’t,” said Pule, clutching at her arm. Dorothy jerked away, prepared to slam him with her bag. His skin seemed to be writhing as he stood gaping at her on the sidewalk. He sputtered, unable to speak.

“Good day to you,” said Dorothy.

“You’ll see me again,” cried Pule at her back. “And so will your father.” She walked on more quickly, not taking the bait.

“Wait until I’ve played my hand!” Pule yelled. And then he caught himself. He gasped for air and leaned against the brick of a row house. It would do no good to lose his temper now. He would wait. In time — soon — she would see reason. He glanced at a dark window. The sight of his face reflected in it didn’t compose him. His hair was awry, and his mouth, normally sensitive and aloof, was contorted in a rictus of loathing. He made a conscious effort to relax, but his face seemed to have frozen in the grip of a maniacal passion.

A scrawny, half-hairless cat wandered out just then from under a fence. Pule stared at it, hating it. He snatched the cat up by the neck and held it kicking at arm’s length. He sloughed off his jacket, letting it fall down his right arm to envelop the struggling beast, then shoved the burden under his arm and strode away in the direction of Narbondo’s cabinet, visions of the cat dismembered flickering across his mind like etchings on a copper plate.

St. Ives let himself in through the front door of the Bertasso Hotel on Belgrave and tramped up two flights of carpeted steps to his room. The red wallpaper, rampant with stylized fleurs de-lis, almost made his hair stand on end. He despised the current fashion in gaudy furnishings. It was little wonder society was going to bits, surrounding itself as it did with fakery and ugliness. He was beginning to sound like his father. But it was entirely rational — empirical study would bear him out. Men were products of that with which they surrounded themselves. And men of substance could hardly spring from the cracker-box, factory-made trash they cluttered their homes and inns with. He was in a foul mood, he realized, having played the fool all afternoon. The clock gag probably wouldn’t work. He’d be beaten by hired toughs. He’d have been wise to solicit the help of the Captain, who was, admittedly, far more worldly wise than he.

St. Ives himself had strayed within the confines of a house of prostitution only once, when, as a student in Heidelberg, he and a friend wandered into a questionable district after a night of revelry. He hadn’t said a thing at the time. Drink had that effect on him — it thickened his tongue, made him mute. He’d merely grinned foolishly, and the grin had been correctly interpreted by an emaciated old woman in a robe who led him to a room full of painted women. “They were big girls,” his artist friend had said, accurately and with an air of satisfaction as the two of them had returned to their flat near the university. “Yes,” St. Ives had responded, able to add nothing to the pronouncement. Perhaps that was the key here. If he’d arrived drunk and leering on the doorstep of the house on Wardour Street he’d have been admitted. But now he’d have to depend upon masquerading as a clock repair man. The next morning would tell the tale.