James Blaylock - Homunculus

And with that he nodded at St. Ives, who did, indeed, know the house. They tried to waken Keeble, who snored in his chair, oblivious to Kraken’s timely return. He slept so profoundly, however, that their efforts were in vain. Kraken was in a state — much more the old Kraken, thought St. Ives, than the tired, morose Kraken who had drifted in and out of the front room in Captain Powers’ shop Thursday last. St. Ives listened in astonishment to Kraken’s strange tale — how when crouched in the passage off Narbondo’s laboratory he had overheard Pule and Shiloh exchanging words, Pule offering to give up his Keeble box if the old evangelist would see him right in the business of Dorothy Keeble — would use his influence to get Pule an audience with her, so to speak, at Drake’s house on Wardour Street. The old man had raged about sin and damnation. Shots had been fired and Shiloh had said that he’d just take the box, thank you. Then out Kraken had gone, into the depths of the passage where there was no end of dead men, dirt from the grave in their hair, and the lot of them stirring there in the candlelight and rising up and starting for him until he’d just about gone mad, and…

“And wait just a minute,” cried St. Ives, furrowing his brow. “These corpses were just lying about until you came in?”

“That’s it, guv’nor. Dead as herrings, then all of them jumped to it like they heard the last trumpet. Damn me if they didn’t.”

“And this business of the dancing skeleton,” asked St. Ives of Godall, “and the piano playing and the chicken bones or whatever sort of bird it was…”

“How’d yer know about that?” asked Kraken, amazed.

St. Ives nodded at Godall by way of explanation, as if to indicate that there was little or nothing that the man didn’t know. “Where was this box when all of that business was transpiring?”

“On the piano,” put in Kraken. “I tried for it, too, but the humpback nearly killed me with a spade.”

“By Christ!” whispered St. Ives, striking the table before him with his fist. “What if… what if… Wake up Keeble! Straightaway.”

Waking the toymaker took a full minute, either because he was so enormously fatigued or because the very spark of life within him had begun to fade, but in time he was conscious and listening to St. Ives. Yes, he said, the emerald box and the homunculus box were identical, beyond the eccentricities of carving and painting that went with that sort of handiwork. Might Nell Owlesby, in her agitated state, have crossed them up? Of course she might. Nell was summoned. She admitted that such an error was possible. Birdlip, she said, might indeed have the emerald. She paused, frowning. “I beg of you,” she said, looking particularly at Captain Powers, “not to think me mad for asking this. But could the little man speak?”

“Absolutely,” said St. Ives immediately. “According to your brother’s manuscript, it was rarely silent — kept up a night and day harangue, an utterly tiresome performance, in any of a number of languages, not all of them of earthly origin.”

Nell nodded. “I never read his papers,” she said simply, assuming that her reasoning would be apparent. “I only ask because I suffered in Jamaica the certainty that the emerald spoke to me — the fear, that is, that I was going mad. I was feverish. I’d hidden the box in a table beside my bed. And in the night I awoke in a sweat, tossing, certain that a voice had issued from the box in the darkness, and had uttered the name of the false prophet that we’re daily more familiar with. I sought this man out, revealed that I’d heard his name in a dream, and, I fear, confessed all, going so far as to tell him that the homunculus — a creature he took an unwarranted interest in — was with Dr. Birdlip. I’ve told no one of this but Captain Powers. It was part of those shameful and dreadful early years. And I’m afraid, dear,” she said, addressing the Captain particularly, “that I omitted any reference to the box having spoken. It seemed those long months later to be a product of fever.”

Kraken had sat stony-faced through Nell’s speech, but he could sit still no longer. “If it please your honor,” he said to St. Ives, “I’ve heard the blasted thing speak too. I’m damned if I haven’t. Last Thursday night, it was. Lord knows what it said, buried in the floor there while you gentlemen carried on in the next room. Yes, sir, I’ve heard it talk, and I didn’t have the horrors neither.”

“I rather believe, gentlemen,” said St. Ives, “that this plays a new light over the page. We’re in a less dangerous fix than we thought, barring, of course, the problem of Dorothy. The box, then, what did you do with it?”

“Well, sir,” said Kraken, peering into the bottom of a snifter gone empty. “I made straight off for Wardour Street when I left the George and Pigmy, aiming to do my part. I could see, there at Narbondo’s, that you lads didn’t have what they call the upper hand.”

“Right you are there,” interrupted Godall, who poured Kraken a generous dollop of spirit.

“Thankee, sir, I’m sure. So I… Well… The long and short of it is, I ain’t got the box. I had it, to be sure, but I ain’t got it now.”

“Where is it, man!” cried St. Ives.

“Billy Deener with the chimney pot hat’s got it. Leastways he had it. Murderous villain, too, is what I’m telling you. If I’d have been sharp, I’d have left it with a pal o’ mine in Farthing Alley, but I warn’t sharp. I was uncommon dull from that bonk on the conk — I could see straight, you understand, but I couldn’t hardly see clear.

“Well, chimney pot cleared me right out. I seen him before. And pardon me, yer honors, that I didn’t care to see him again. So when he ’costed me with that ’ere pistol of his, why I give him the box and run, assumin’, in my haste, you see, that he’d let me slide and make away with the prize. And so he did. I blushes to tell it, too. But we can fetch it back, and the girl with it, if you’ll give me a chance to say on.”

And with that he inhaled hugely and drained his glass again, trusting to the element of suspense to keep the rest of them listening.

“Fetch it back!” cried the Captain. “How, lad? Oil yourself, for the love of God! Don’t dry out on us now.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” agreed Kraken, tilting the handy bottle. St. Ives poured an ounce for himself, noting that it was past noon. It was close to the truth to say that it was smack in the middle of a long damned day, a day that would grow a good sight longer before it was played out.

Kraken set in again: “Sewers, is what I said to myself. I worked for Drake; you know that. What I did I daren’t say. It don’t make no difference now. After the last year with the poor master, Drake’s little jobs looked uncommon genteel. We used the sewers, is what we did, for the delicate operations — and not a few of them there is too, when you’re in that line o’ business.”

With that Kraken appeared to see for the first time the instrument that lay beside Keeble’s chair, fallen from the toy-maker’s fingers when he’d once again drifted off to sleep. “Holy Mother of God,” uttered Kraken, turning pale. “Where did that infernal contraption appear from?”

“Drake,” said Godall simply, tossing a shawl over the thing.

Kraken shook his head slowly and took a conscientious sip of brandy, cut, now, with water. “If you’ve seen what Lord Bingley done to himself with such an article up on Wardour Street…” Kraken paused in his shaking and shut his eyes, trying, perhaps, to crush out the memory of Lord Bingley’s demise. He didn’t speak for thirty seconds by the clock.

“Lord Bingley?” asked St. Ives, exercising his scientific curiosity.