James Blaylock - Homunculus

“Wipe your disgusting face!” shouted the evangelist, watching in horror as the man smeared at his blood-caked lips. The old man shuddered involuntarily, looked straight ahead, and sank into himself as the brougham clattered along into Soho, bound for Pratlow Street.

“Idon’t intend to sue them,” said St. Ives heatedly, “I intend to beat them senseless. What would a lawsuit avail us? What, for God’s sake, would we claim?”

“It bears contemplation, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Breaking into a man’s house is ill advised, regardless of its location or the motivation of the burglar. The law, I’m afraid, sir, is adamant on that point. Your own argument is solid. What would we claim, sir, if we were apprehended as common thieves?”

St. Ives strode on without speaking. They’d taken a cab to Charing Cross Road — far enough away, thought St. Ives, so that not even the most scrupulous detective would connect them to any ill doings on Pratlow Street — supposing, that is, that the authorities were concerned with what was happening on Pratlow Street, which they almost certainly weren’t.

He wished heartily that either Godall or the Captain had been in that evening, but neither had — off on some mutual business, no doubt. Scouring Limehouse, perhaps, for the absconded Bill Kraken. St. Ives would have to act without them. This wasn’t their affair anyway, this aerator business. It was his — his and Keeble’s, who would be imposed upon to build another if St. Ives failed. He could hardly, though, drag the toymaker into it. It had been St. Ives’ own idiotic fault that the silo door had been left unbolted, that Pule had been allowed to escape them twice, first at the manor, then later on the train. They must strike while the proverbial iron was still hot. Peculiar events were fast sliding toward possibly dangerous conclusions. Narbondo and Pule sailed in the current of some sort of hellish, swiftly moving stream, which would carry the villains out of reach if St. Ives weren’t brisk.

“Toynbee and Koontz would accomplish little,” he said to Hasbro, repealing his disinclination to carry the issue to the authorities.

“There aren’t a sharper pair of investigators in the Yard,” insisted Hasbro. “Koontz is a legend — feared in the London underworld. It’s the peculiar look in his eye, if you ask me, that throws the fear into them. That and the cut of his suit. If he can’t come it across this Pule, then no one can. He was involved in the Isadora Persano affair, do you recall — the business with the worm and the inside-out pouch of tobacco. His aunt is a fast friend of my sister. We could look him up tonight, I don’t doubt. Lay the case before him.”

The dim corner of Old Compton Street loomed ahead of them, the sorry buildings disguised by darkness, the pavements in utter shadow. St. Ives slowed his pace and asked himself for the first time exactly what it was he intended to do. And the more he thought on it, the more he recalled the faith he held in the remarkable Hasbro, a faith which his headstrong determination to retrieve the aerating device and deal with Pule had momentarily effaced. Hasbro, in fact, was not altogether wrong. If this man Koontz could be prevailed upon to take the case…

He stopped altogether and stepped back into the darkness of an overhanging gable that shadowed a ruined front stoop. This is decidedly unwise, thought St. Ives. The least he should do was wait for Godall and the Captain. The aerator box was their affair in a roundabout way. What was it Godall had said three nights ago in the rain? “The collective spirit,” or some such thing. There was truth in that. No good would come from them each hacking out his own path, only to go blundering into one another in some secret, foliage-obscured crossroad.

“Hasbro,” whispered St. Ives, the very atmosphere of the dilapidated neighborhood dampening his voice.

“Sir?”

“You’re quite right, of course. This man Koontz — can we find him?”

“He’s said to have an almost legendary passion for crustaceans, sir, and might conceivably be engaged even now in a late supper in the environs of Regent Street, at a club with the unlikely appellation of Bistro Shrimp-o-Dandy. He’s infamous, I’m afraid, for keeping cooks and waiters up until dawn.”

“We’ll have a look in, then, at this Shrimp-o-Dandy. I’ve seen reason, Hasbro.”

But at that moment, St. Ives saw something more — the running shadow of a man that slipped in and out of darkness across the street, crossing toward the laboratory of Dr. Ignacio Narbondo.

St. Ives and Hasbro stepped as one into a dim corner, the Shrimp-o-Dandy forgotten, and crept along up the pavement toward where the mysterious figure had vanished into a doorway. Neither of them spoke. There was no use pointing out that something was afoot, or that they were duty-bound to follow. They’d gone out that evening on the trail of mystery, and here it was, wearing a placard. There was nothing to do but investigate.

Bill Kraken, trembling with fear and animated by determination. found himself alone within the dark confines of the cabinet of Dr. Narbondo. Odd noises assailed him — the languid splashing of lazy carp in the tank on the floor, the sound of his own labored breathing, and the tremendous pounding of his heart which might, it seemed, burst like a piece of ripe fruit before he found what it was he sought. And at random intervals came the brief clatter of what sounded like a handful of ivory dominoes being dropped into a sack.

There was nothing either on the slab or on the table — no corpses to leap up or pea hens to dash at him. And there, atop the piano, lay the Keeble box; he could just see the outline of it in the faint light of the flickering candle he carried. He slipped across toward it, walking on tiptoe. This was no time to dillydally. There was nothing in the accursed laboratory that attracted him. He’d just pluck up the box and nip out the way he’d come. If he heard the doctor or Pule ascending the stairs, he’d simply backtrack to an upper floor and wait for them to enter the laboratory, then bolt for the street.

He squinted into the darkness, fearful that Narbondo would surprise him again by entering through the passage in the wainscot. It wouldn’t do to actually confront the doctor or, for that matter, his loathsome accomplice. He hauled a chair from beneath the table of the pea hen and jammed it under the door latch, wiggling it for good measure.

Waving the candle in the direction of the box, he sent shadows leaping and flickering up the walls in the yellow light. Before him, lying in the pile where they’d fallen, were the grisly, skull-less remains of Joanna Southcote. The sight of them petrified Kraken, froze him into a wide-eyed, half-bent statue. For while he watched, the bones seemed to shudder and collect themselves, half rise, and then collapse again into a disordered pile, making the clacking sound of dominoes.

Quaking, Kraken groped inside his coat for a flask of gin, half of which he poured down his open throat in a hot, leafy rush. The bones made another effort, no more successful than the last, one of the backward hands skittering around the floor like a crab before the whole loose business went limp.

Kraken vowed not to look at it. That was best. If it managed to stand, he could outrun it, or beat it to pieces with the poker that lay now atop the hearth. He was damned if he would allow a heap of bones to frighten him off. He took a last, healthy gulp of the gin, grimaced, and snatched the box from atop the piano. He turned, took a step toward the door, and discovered in horror that the door latch, very softly and slowly, was turning. He heard a shuffling of feet, and saw the faint orange glow of a hooded lantern cast across the threshold.