James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

St. Ives stopped and shrugged when he saw Bill Kraken, grimed with oil and wearing the clothes of a workman, step out from behind a heap of broken crates and straw stuffing. Without so much as a sideways glance at his employer, Kraken hurried to where Lord Kelvin fiddled with the brass tube. Kraken grasped the opposite end of it and in a moment was wrestling with the thing, hauling it this way and that to the apparent approval of his lordship, and managing to tip St. Ives a broad wink in the process.

“Well, well,” said St. Ives in a defeated tone, “I’m saddened by this, Parsons. Saddened. I’d hoped to lend a hand.”

Parsons seemed mightily relieved all of a sudden. He cast St. Ives a wide smile. “We thank you, sir,” he said, limping toward the scientist, his hand outstretched. “If this project were in the developmental stages, I assure you we’d welcome your expertise. But it’s really a matter of nuts and bolts now, isn’t it? And your genius, I’m afraid, would be wasted.” He ushered the three of them out into the sunlight, smiling hospitably now and watching until he was certain the threat had passed and the three were beyond the gate. Then he called round to have the gate guard relieved. He couldn’t, he supposed, have the man flogged, but he could see to it that he spent an enterprising year patrolling the thoroughfares of Dublin.

It was late evening along Fleet Street, and the London night was clear and unseasonably warm, as if the moon that swam in the purple sky beyond the dome of St. Paul’s were radiating a thin white heat. The very luminosity of the moon paled the surrounding stars, but as the night deepened farther away into space, the stars were bright and thick enough to remind St. Ives that the universe wasn’t an empty place after all. And out there among the planets, hurtling toward earth, was the vast comet, its curved tail comprising a hundred million miles of showering ice, blown by solar wind along the uncharted byways of the void. Tomorrow or the next day the man in the street, peering skyward to admire the stars, would see it there. Would it be a thing of startling beauty, a wash of fire across the canvas of heaven? Or would it send a thrill of fear through a populace still veined with the superstitious dread of the medieval church?

The shuffle of footsteps behind him brought St. Ives to himself. He wrinkled hisface up, feeling the gluey pull of the horsehair eyebrows and beard, which, along with a putty nose and monk’s wig, made up a very suitable disguise. Coming along toward him was Beezer the journalist, talking animatedly to a man in shirtsleeves. Beezer chewed the end of a tiny cigar and waved his arms to illustrate a story that he told with particular venom. He seemed unnaturally excited, although St. Ives had to remind himself that he was almost entirely unfamiliar with the man — perhaps he always gestured and railed so.

St. Ives fell in behind the two, making no effort to conceal himself. Hasbro and Jack Owlesby stood in the shadows two blocks farther along, in an alley past Whitefriars. There was precious little time to waste. Occasional strollers passed; the abduction would have to be quick and subtle. “Excuse me,” St. Ives said at the man’s back. “Mr. Beezer is it, the journalist?”

The two men stopped, looking back at St. Ives. Beezer’s hands fell to his side. “At’s right, Pappy,” came the reply. Beezer squinted at him, as if ready to doubt the existence of such a wild figure on the evening street.

“My name, actually, is Penrod,” said St. Ives. “Jules Penrod. You’ve apparently mistaken me for someone else. I have one of the twelve common faces.”

Beezer’s companion burst into abrupt laughter at the idea. Beezer, however, seemed impatient at the interruption. “Face like yours is a pity,” he said, nudging his companion in the abdomen with his elbow. “Suits a beggar, though. I haven’t got a thing for you, Pappy. Go scrub yourself with a sponge.” And with that the two of them turned and made away, the second man laughing again and Beezer gesturing.

“One moment, sir!” cried St. Ives, pursuing the pair. “We’ve got a mutual friend.”

Beezer turned and scowled, chewing his cigar slowly and thoughtfully now. He stared carefully at St. Ives’s unlikely visage and shook his head. “No, we don’t,” he said, “unless it’s the devil. Any other friend of yours would’ve hung himself by now out of regret. Why don’t you disappear into the night, Pappy, before I show you the shine on my boot?”

“You’re right, as far as it goes,” said St. Ives, grinning inwardly.

“I’m a friend of Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, in fact. He’s sent me round with another communication.”

Beezer squinted at him. The word another hadn’t jarred him.

“Is that right?” he said.

St. Ives bowed, clapping a hand hastily onto the top of his head to hold his wig on.

“Bugger off, will you, Clyde?” Beezer said to his friend.

“That drink…” came the reply.

“Stow your drink. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll drink two. Now get along.”

The man turned away regretfully, despondent over the lost drink perhaps, and St. Ives waited to speak until he had crossed Whitefriars and his footsteps faded. Then he nodded to the still-scowling Beezer and set out on the sidewalk again, looking up and down the street as if to discern anything suspicious or threatening. Beezer fell in beside him. “It’s about the money,” said St. Ives.

“The money?”

“Narbondo fears that he promised you too much of it.”

“He’s a filthy cheat!” cried Beezer, eliminating any doubts that St. Ives might have had about Beezer’s having received Narbondo’s message, mailed days past from Dover.

“He’s discovered,” continued St. Ives, “that there are any of a number of journalists who will sell out the people of London for half the sum. Peabody at the Herald , for instance, has agreed to cooperate.”

“The filthy scum-sucking cheat!” Beezer shouted, waving a fist at St. Ives’s nose. “Peabody!”

“Tut, tut,” admonished St. Ives, noting with a surge of anxious anticipation the darkened mouth of the alley some thirty feet distant. “We haven’t contracted with Peabody yet. It was merely a matter of feeling out the temperature of the water, so to speak. You understand. You’re a businessman yourself in a way.” St. Ives gestured broadly with his left hand as if to signify that a man like Beezer could be expected to take the long view. With his right he reached across and snatched the lapels of Beezer’s coat, yanking him sideways. Simultaneously he whipped his left hand around and slammed the startled journalist square in the back, catapulting him into the ill-lit alley.

“Hey!” shouted Beezer, tripping forward into the waiting arms of Jack Owlesby, who leaped in to pinion the man’s wrists. Hasbro, waving an enormous burlap bag, appeared from the shadows and flung the bag like a gill net over Beezer’s head, St. Ives yanking it down across the man’s back and pushing him forward off his feet. Hasbro snatched at the drawrope, grasped Beezer’s shoulders, and hissed through the canvas, “Cry out and you’re a dead man!”

The struggling Beezer collapsed like a sprung balloon, having an antipathy, apparently, to being a dead man. Jack clambered up onto the bed of a wagon, hauled open the lid of a steamer trunk, and, along with St. Ives and Hasbro, yanked and shoved and grappled the feebly struggling journalist into the wood and leather prison. He banged ineffectively a half-dozen times at the sides of the trunk, mewling miserably, then fell silent as the wagon rattled and bounced along the alley, exiting on Salisbury Court and making away south toward the Thames.