James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

Godall nodded. “I should, I suppose, put a bullet into you, mad dog that you are…”

“On the contrary, sir,” began Shiloh, interrupting.

“Silence!” cried Godall. “Now, sir. As I say, I’d just as soon drill a hole in your forehead with this pistol as shake your hand. In fact, I’d gladly do the one and wouldn’t consider the other. But it’s not my place to judge another man…”

“Judge not!” cried the evangelist, waving both hands about his head as if suffering a fit, “lest ye be judged!”

Godall eyed him coolly. “Don’t press me, villain, or you’ll find yourself respiring through the top of your head. Hear me out. And save your breath; you have a trek before you, carrying all that gear along. You may, I suppose, be mad — I’ve no reason to believe otherwise — and a madman, though he might commit vile acts, can hardly be held entirely accountable for them. The extent of your crimes, moreover, can only be measured by an examination of the damage done in the infection of innocent people with your dubious proclamations. Such people, perhaps, would have fallen prey to someone else had you not been handy. The judging of the thing, then, is beyond my powers. It will have to be the unpleasant duty of a higher authority.

“But hear me, sir. I have very powerful acquaintances. Your perversions at the house on Wardour Street haven’t gone unnoticed, and the coin you so liberally sprinkle about on your own behalf is transparent, to speak figuratively. If you continue, then, to practice your chicanery publicly, to delude the London innocent, then, sir, you’ll be called out, the disparity between our ages notwithstanding.”

The evangelist stood rigid as a post, his face purple, his eyes squeezed almost shut. Had he been a jack-in-the-box his lid would have blown off in the next moment. “D-d-do you!” he cried, breathing heavily thereafter and scooping up from the leaves on the ground the foolish head. “Do you know, sir, that you’ve unalterably called down upon you your own vile damnation!” And this last syllable was uttered with such ferocity that Theophilus Godall was certain for a moment that the old man’s tongue would fly out, like the poisonous tongue of a newt. The display, all in all, confirmed Godall’s suspicion that the old man was the most deluded of his entire flock, if the shepherd can be said to occupy such a position.

Time was wasting. Light was failing. He was an hour and a half out of Hampstead in the borrowed wagon. And if the roads were clogged yet with sightseers, then it would be odds on that the blimp would descend without him. He’d had enough of the old man, and was tempted to tie him to the tree to prevent the possibility of his following along to the heath. But such a course might well burst the man’s head. So without another word, Godall took up the ribands, flicked at the horses with the whip, and set off up the road at a canter followed by the receding figure of Shiloh the New Messiah, who struggled cursing along, toting in one hand the Gladstone coffin and in the other the encased skull, and hoping heartily that some few of his congregation might have followed them out of the city.

The partly shaded lantern threw an amazingly bright shaft of light across the floor of the cupboard. Hasbro and Kraken had carried it up the passage from the street, finding themselves, finally, beyond the wall of Narbondo’s laboratory. The lantern did nothing, however, to generally illuminate the close quarters, and Kraken, bending across to whisper into his companion’s ear, smashed his nose against Hasbro’s shoulder in the process. “Ugh’ whispered Kraken, putting a hand to his face.

“Ssshh!” said Hasbro, who made an effort to peer through a wire-thin crack that ran along the edge of the moving panel. Lamplight shone from beyond, and every now and then someone — the hunchback surely — passed across in front of the crack.

“Shall we clip it open and throttle him, then?” whispered Kraken.

“Patience, sir.”

“He’s a bad’n, is the doctor. Not a man o’ science, mind you. A different sort. A devil. I’m agoing to pummel him,” whispered Kraken, jolting around for a moment, perhaps practicing his pummeling. Hasbro peered through the crack, undisturbed. “Science don’t slice up dead men,” insisted Kraken in a stage whisper of increasing vehemence. “Science don’t…” he began, but a noise on the stairs behind interrupted him.

“Sh!” whispered Hasbro, jiggling the covered lamp so that the cloth fell and nipped off the light altogether. The two held their breath. A tramp, scrape, tramp sounded on the stairs. Someone, something approached, ascended toward them. Hasbro squeezed Kraken’s shoulder twice, as if signaling that action was imminent. “As silent as possible,” he murmured into Kraken’s ear.

“Aye,” breathed Kraken.

A sputtering light appeared, preceding low giggling and a muffled cough. The light flickered across the landing at the top of the narrow stairs. Both men half expected the appearance on the landing of a ghoul, of one of the walking dead who would shuffle round to face them up the dark corridor. With a last scrape and thud, a knee and a foot appeared; then a head bent into view — the grinning, open-mouthed head of Willis Pule, lit by the unnaturally white light of a sputtering fuse that curled up out of the bowels of an infernal device. He turned and crept toward them, the circle of light cast by the fuse approaching along the floor.

Hasbro crouched there, waiting, ready to spring the moment they were revealed. Kraken shook beside him, his teeth rattling audibly. Pule stopped, canted his head, squinting through the gloom, suspicious.

“Lord!” howled Kraken. “He’ll blow us to finders!” And with that he launched himself at the horrified Pule, who made as if to heave the bomb full into Kraken’s face. The two went down in a heap of arms and legs, both shouting, Kraken rolling astride Pule and flailing away at him with both fists. The bomb bounced on the wooden floorboards, Hasbro scooping it up and pinching at the fuse, which, despite his efforts, sputtered continually to life.

“This won’t do,” he said aloud, and he pitched the bomb along the corridor. It bounced, rolled, caromed off the wall and down the stairs, bump, bump, humping along. The corridor was cast into sudden darkness.

“Ow!” cried Kraken. “Filthy animal!”

Hasbro whipped the cloth from atop the lamp and punched at the oak panel before him. Expecting an explosion that would literally bring the house down, he stepped through into an empty laboratory, the door standing ajar. Kraken sprang in beside him, blood pouring down his arm.

“You’ve been injured, sir,” said Hasbro as he strode toward the gaping door.

“Filthy blighter bit me,” heaved Kraken, laboring for breath. “So I kicked him down the well.”

“Bravo!” cried Hasbro, leaping up the stairs two at a time toward the upper floors.

“He went up, did he?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” shouted Hasbro over his shoulder. “But the house might, if it’s going up you want.”

“Oh Lord, yes!” hooted Kraken, close at Hasbro’s heels. In a trice they found the door to the roof, and without slackening pace, leaped across to the next roof, neither pausing to question the possibility of slowing up, but leaping instead to a third just as the expected explosion boomed up from the street. Both men dropped instinctively; then, realizing that the roof they stood on was yet solid, they crept across and peered between chimney pots. In the center of Pratlow Street was a smoking crater. Half a block down, high-stepping toward Holborn as if pursued by goblins, flew a desperate Willis Pule, foiled once again.

“It must ha’ gone out the door,” observed Kraken.