James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

St. Ives disengaged his arm, surprisingly easily as it turned out, and edged around a chair, holding the heavy clock in both hands.

“Get these scum out of here,” hissed the butler at the old man, who mewled helplessly, clinging to his turbaned friend for support. “Don’t bring them here again. Your privilege doesn’t extend that far.”

The old man pulled himself straight, threw his cloak back theatrically, and began to rage in a hoarse voice about damnation. St. Ives disappeared into the kitchen to the sound of the butler’s cursing and to shouts about who would teach whom about damnation. He sprinted for the back door, but met, halfway there, the leering figure of the toothless, befloured cook, slapping the flat edge of her cleaver onto her meaty palm.

St. Ives wasn’t inclined to chat. He bowled straightaway into her, and the hastily swung cleaver rang off the iron case of the clock, dead between St. Ives’ curled fingers. He shouted inadvertently, dashing the clock to the floor, and burst out into the yard, gathering the hem of his greatcoat with his right hand and leaping over the stile into the alley, loping toward its exit a hundred feet down, lost now in a swirl of fog. And as he ran, not daring to look back, thinking of the pistol in chimneypipe’s coat, he understood suddenly who the bully was — could see that same malevolent face outlined in Keeble’s garret window, a crack of lightning illuminating the rainy night sky around it.

Captain Powers’ shop was dense with tobacco smoke — indicative, thought St. Ives, of the serious nature of the night’s business. Quantity of pipe smoke, he mused, was proportionate to the nature and intensity of the thoughts of the smoker. The Captain, especially lost in deep musings, puffed so regularly at his pipe that smoke encircled his head like clouds around the moon. They were waiting for Godall, who arrived, finally, laden with beer. St. Ives had told no one of Birdlip’s newly discovered manuscript. There was too much to say to have to repeat the story singly to the members. At eight o’clock, by mutual, nodded consent, the Trismegistus Club came to order.

“I’ve gotten something interesting in the post,” said St. Ives, sipping from a pint glass and waving the sheaf of foolscap at his companions. “Owlesby’s notebooks, or part of them.”

Keeble, who until that moment had seemed peculiarly withdrawn, bent forward in anticipation. And Jack, sitting beside him, seemed to slump in his chair, fearful, perhaps, that some unwholesome revelation about his unfortunate father was in the offing. Kraken shook his bandaged head sadly. Only the Captain seemed unmoved, and St. Ives supposed that his being unacquainted with Owlesby explained his apparent indifference.

“It would be easiest,” St. Ives insisted, “if I merely read a bit of it aloud. I’m not the chemist or biologist that Owlesby was, and I was unacquainted with the peculiar hold that Narbondo apparently had on him. And that, I fear, was part and parcel of Owlesby’s death.”

Godall closed his left eye and squinted at him at the mention of Narbondo, and St. Ives was struck of a sudden with the peculiar notion that Godall’s look reminded him of something — of being elbowed into the gutter by the nameless old man in the cloak. St. Ives ignored it and went on, warming to his task. “So here it is, in Owlesby’s own hand. There’s too much of it altogether, but the last pages are the telling part. He cleared his throat and began:

“We’ve had the worst sort of luck all week: Short and Kraken brought in a fresh cadaver — took him off the gibbet themselves — and there he lies, full of fluids but stony dead despite it. If we can’t find a carp and a fresh gland, he’ll decompose before we have a chance at him. A terrible waste. My great fear is that all of this will come to nothing but murder and horror. But I’ve taken the first steps. That’s a lie. First steps be damned. I’m halfway along the road by now, and it’s twisted and turned so that there’s no chance of finding my way back.

“We ate in Limehouse last night. I wore a disguise — a putty nose and a wig — but Narbondo laughed it to ruin. There’s no hope of disguising that damned hump of his. I’m not much given to metaphor, but it seems harder by the day to disguise my own loathsome deformities. It’s the thing in the box, the bottle imp, that’s caused it. If a man weren’t tempted, he wouldn’t fall.

“But such talk is defeatist. That’s what it is. Eternal life is within my grasp. If only we hadn’t bungled so badly in Limehouse. The costerlad was a jewel — wicked as they come. It was a service to dispose of him. I swear it. Damn Narbondo’s bungling. We’ve had a tremendous pair of shears forged at Gleason’s (they think me a tree surgeon) and can snip the head off…”

“And there the narrative breaks,” said St. Ives.

“He was interrupted, perhaps,” said the Captain.

Godall shook his head. “He couldn’t bear it, gentlemen. He couldn’t write the word.”

St. Ives glanced up at Jack, who would have been a child himself at the time that his father had written the confessions. He might be better off not hearing this. God bless Sebastian Owlesby’s doubts, thought St. Ives. They’re at once the horror of this and the man’s only redemption.

“Read the rest,” said Jack stoutly.

St. Ives nodded and resumed the narrative:

“The lad couldn’t have been above seven or eight. There was a fog, and not enough light from the streetlamps to amount to a thing. He was bound for the corner of Lead Street and Drake, I think, to buy a bucket of beer — for someone. For his father, I suppose. He had a pumpkin jack o’lantern, of all things, in his left hand, and the bucket in his right. And we walked in shadow twenty paces behind. The street was silent as it was dark. Narbondo carried the shears from Gleasons. He’d have me along, he said, to share the glory, and would have none of my waiting in the alley off Lead Street in the dogcart, which was, I still insist, the only sensible course.

“So there we were, a musty wind cold as a fish blowing up off the Thames, and the mists swirling deeper by the moment, and the grinning face of that lit jack o’lantern swinging back and forth and back and forth, its face appearing with a dull orange glow at the top of the arc of each swing. There was a sudden gust out of an unsheltered alley, and the lad’s lantern blew out. He disappeared in the night, and we could hear his bucket clank against the cobbles. Narbondo hopped forward. I grasped at his cloak to stop him — I could see the black truth in it, as that yellow, toothy light had blinked out in the pumpkin and on in my head — in my soul.

“I flew after him, and the two of us surprised the lad in the act of relighting his unlikely lantern. He stood up, a scream clipped off by those ghastly shears.

“The rest of it is a nightmare. That I fled out of Limehouse and returned in safety to my cabinet is testimony to the existence of dumb luck (if surviving that night of horror can be considered in any way lucky) and to the all-obscuring darkness and fog. It was as if evil had precipitated out of the solution of night and hid me like a veil. Narbondo wasn’t so lucky, but the beating he took couldn’t have been a result of his crime. If they’d known it, he wouldn’t have been thrown into the river alive. Perhaps lie was beaten because of what he is, like a man kills a rat or a roach or a spider.

“So the murder was for nought. And the corpse from the gibbet lies mouldering on the slab. Narbondo will go out again tonight — we must have the serum.”