James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“Yes, although I let my conscience guide me in that regard.”

“Then I advise you to be prudent. No unnecessary heroics. We leave none of us behind, alive or dead, and so it’s best for all of us if we walk out.” To the entire company St. Ives said, “As for the police, if something goes awry, we’ll want the same story – simply that we were set upon by a gang of thieves and undertook to defend ourselves. That should answer nicely, given the low neighborhood, although the police might wonder at our business there. Our adversaries will scarcely lodge a complaint in any event. Mr. Doyle, I’ll reveal to you that Dr. Narbondo has kidnapped my son and is threatening his life. Our only advantage, as Hasbro was just pointing out to me when you three walked in, is that the Doctor is particularly avaricious, always on the lookout for means with which to carry out his schemes. He has demanded a considerable sum of money as ransom. We very much hope that simple greed will preserve the life of my son, giving us time to act.”

The food arrived at the table – thick cuts of roast beef, boiled potatoes with butter, an immense turbot stuffed with an oyster hash, and a leek pastry with bacon. They fell to, eating with a will, St. Ives discovering that he was sharp set, that he relished the food and was vastly hungry, had rarely eaten better – a great contrast with his closed stomach earlier in the day. It was the pending battle that did it, the chance that it was a last meal, or perhaps simply some bodily demand for sustenance before going into dangerous territory.

“I strongly suspect that to Narbondo’s mind this is merely the prelude to further villainy,” St. Ives told them. “It’s quite possible that he means to draw us in, murder us, and have a clear field. Narbondo is rumored to be engaged in some larger, infinitely evil scheme, which we will thwart if ever we can, although thwarting that scheme is secondary to me tonight. Hasbro and I will go in first. They’ll be on the lookout for us, but they have no idea of the three of you. You’ll take no unwarranted chances, but if you can find a way to come around behind them, then between the surprise of the thing and the weight of our attack, we can dispatch them quickly and beard Narbondo in his den.”

“Quite so,” Tubby said, hefting his stick. “If I can’t lay them out like wheat before the scythe, I’m a damned humbug.” He was nearly apoplectic with anticipation, and Doyle looked at him with an expression that was something between admiring wonder and professional concern.

“But we must keep in sight of each other,” St. Ives said, “each looking out for the other.” He talked around the food, telling them what news they had got from Slocumb – the alley, the arched passage, the possibility of multiple exits. The rest they would discover in Spitalfields, come what may.

“One thing, gentlemen,” he said, when they were rising to leave. “If it is within my power to do so, I mean to end Narbondo’s career this evening, by whatever means are necessary, even if we are successful in securing my son unharmed. I have cold-blooded murder in my mind; I tell you that plainly and with no compunctions. If you have any objections to that, then by all means go about your business now; it’s far the more sensible course.”

Tubby laughed out loud, which startled Doyle once again, although he hesitated only a moment before putting out his hand for St. Ives to shake. “One for all, and all for one, as the saying goes.” He winked at Tubby, who slapped him manfully on the shoulder, hard enough to knock a smaller man out of his chair. St. Ives was heartened by the high spirits, but Eddie was ever on his mind, as was Alice, and his own spirits were something less than high. George had been dead right about one thing: St. Ives could not return to Aylesford and to Alice having failed again, not this time.

For an anxious time, Mother Laswell had thought that Mabel was dead – throttled by the immense psychic charge of Narbondo’s presence in the room. When her friend had come to, she was physically exhausted, barely able to stagger to bed, where she fell instantly into a fitful sleep, sitting up wild-eyed from time to time as if she saw some horror right there in the room. Mother Laswell had sat with her throughout the day, listening to her feverish ramblings and sponging her brow, returning time and again to study the torn, vellum map. The planchette needle had plowed a furrow straight into Spitalfields, stopping directly above Whitechapel Road in what appeared to be a warren of unnamed courtyards and alleyways. She wished that it had somehow been more exacting, but it would have to be enough. She would depend upon her senses to lead her on once she was near her destination.

In the evening she persuaded Mabel to drink a cup of tea, after which her friend passed into a more natural slumber. Mother Laswell had left her then, along with a note that expressed her gratitude but said nothing of her intentions. Mabel needn’t be a party to the pending horror, for a horror it would surely be. Mother Laswell had gone down the stairs, taking her parasol with her, unsure whether she would return, or whether her journey would simply end tonight.

A patchy fog hung in the dark streets now, the gas lamps glowing with a gauzy, yellow light, the buildings tolerably distinct close at hand, but ghostly across the road and vanishing utterly in the distances. The stones beneath her feet were solid enough, however. Figures loomed up out of the murk, their footfalls strangely loud for the space of a few moments and then passing away into silence. She recalled the bright sunlight of her morning trek across the bridge and the press of people going about their daily business, all of it seeming almost cheerful to her now. The city had been very much alive. There was a sinister quality to things tonight, though, and she wondered where it originated – whether it was mere atmospheric stagecraft, a product of fog and shadow, or was it the offspring of her own mind, made dark by what she had become and what she must accomplish? Perhaps it was a glamor of sorts, a spell emitted from the room in which Narbondo sat alone with the ghost of his brother, his mind drawing her along through the gloom, her own mind convinced of the dull-witted notion that it was she who acted out of rational necessity.

That Narbondo had been able to project himself, to intrude upon Mabel’s conjuring, had been a vast surprise, although she saw now that it oughtn’t to have been. Narbondo was her son, after all. She should have suspected that he had the gift. She should have warned Mabel so that Mabel might have guarded against his intrusion. But she had not, and her friend had paid dearly for the oversight. And yet for all that, now that she herself was forewarned it did her little good. Narbondo could murder her if he chose, and would no doubt do just that if he knew what she intended. When she searched her heart for motherly emotions that might stay her hand, she found mere darkness.

Well , she thought, so be it . She came to herself and discovered that she stood on the corner of Commercial Street and Flower and Dean without quite knowing how she had got there. She walked south, picturing Mabel’s vellum map in her mind, and, on impulse, turned the corner onto Wentworth Street, although Whitechapel lay another long stretch to the south. She abandoned the mental image of the map and pictured herself a living planchette, drawn forward now by a magnetic tugging in her second mind. Edward’s spirit was abroad, or had been; she sensed it clearly.

She slowed her pace, feeling her way with her mind more than with her eyes. Although Commercial Street had been a broad thoroughfare, Wentworth Street was narrow and crowded, and with a deviant personality, if a street could be said to have such a thing. A window opened now in the murk, and for a moment moonlight allowed her a view of a narrow byway – “Angel Alley,” a sign read – a street of mean lodging houses, the second and third stories jutting out over the first so that the street seemed narrower yet. A strumpet with a sweet face passed, clutching the arm of a sailor who was evidently drunk, the two of them entering a door that revealed a set of stairs in what was apparently a nameless lodging house. A sign in the window offered “couples beds” for eight pence. There was a reek of garbage and human filth and general decay roundabout now, but she went resolutely up the alley.