by K. W. Jeter
“But, Cyril—” The other protested this judgement. “We wouldn’t have all the modern conveniences we do, if it weren’t for incinerating a few people now and then. ’Tis a hard lot for them, of course, but that’s the price o’ progress, innit?”
“Hm. Not so sure ’bout that—”
“Please. You were saying . . .”
“Aye, the boneyard here. I must say, ye seem profoundly unfamil’ar with matters that are common knowledge for most.”
“Pray forgive me,” I said. “I have but recently arrived in London.”
“Do tell.” The man rubbed his dark- stubbled chin, regarding me as if he had never seen such a wonder before—and which he probably hadn’t. “Then as I were telling yez, this be where all manner of scrap metal and defunct machinery gets barged down the river to, then heaved out ’pon the banks. No doubt it ’pears to one of your cultured sensibilities as less than aesthetic and all, but it do provide some opportunities to resourceful types such as ourselves.”
“You rummage about here for discarded items of value?”
“Exactly so. Some bits o’ metal are more valuable than others, and are worth the labour o’ breaking apart from the rest. Takes a keen eye, it does, to know the diff’rence. And a strong back for the prying and wrestling about o’ the great lumps. Which is why I bring him along.” He smiled and pointed to his companion.
“Yer arse, Cyril.”
I decided that I had ascertained as much of specific value as I was likely to from the men. In addition, my garments had dried to a tolerable degree. This, plus the return of a small measure of my bodily strength, motivated a further resolve.
“You gentlemen are familiar with the streets and alleys of East London?”
“We’d bluidy well better be. Seeing as how we live here.”
I dug inside my coat, then produced the folded scrap of paper that had been given to me by Evangeline, just prior to the capsizing of the boat.
“Then perhaps you would be so kind . . .” I unfolded the damp paper and held it before them. The words were still legible upon it. “To direct me to this address.”
The lantern was brought lower, both men leaning into its glow to study the white square in my hand.
“Ye must be joking—” The first of the pair reared straight again, fixing an angry glare upon me. “Of all the . . .”
“I told ye to keep an eye on him!” His companion’s expression was that of wide-eyed horror. “Let’s away, Cyril—’fore summat worse happens!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” I stepped closer to the men, the paper still extended before me. “I have money—I can pay you to take me to this address.”
“Leave off—I’d no more take ye or anyone else there, for all the Chinee tea there is!”
“But why not?” Their responses had rendered me even more baffled than before. “Surely there is no danger to you, familiar as you are with these environs.”
“There’s danger, then there’s certain destruction! I’d just as soon not take that sort o’ risk, thank ye very much!”
“Of what are you speaking?”
“As if ye didn’t know!” The man’s fury increased. “Quite a fine show ye give, with all yer mummery of Where am I? and Be I alive or dead? More fools we, for having fallen for it! But it’s clear now that ye’re up to some sinister purpose, else ye wouldn’t be looking for a place such as that—” He pointed to the scrap of paper. “No doubt your diabol’cal confed’rates are waiting for ye there. Go and join them, then—and to hell with the lot o’ yez!”
Both men turned and retreated from me. Left alone in the darkness, I plaintively cried after them.
“Just tell me—tell me in which direction I should go—”
I could just discern one of the men’s outflung hand.
“That way!” He pointed opposite from where he and his companion were heading. “Ye’ll soon enough find all the trouble and misery ye wish!”
Then they were gone, the lantern’s glow vanished behind the mountainous piles of damaged metal.
For a moment, I stood gazing down at the piece of paper in my grasp. The temptation was strong to fling it away, the destination inscribed upon it left unsearched for. If the river was indeed close at hand, all I had to do was follow along its course until I reached some waterfront inn or village remote from London itself. From there, I would most likely be able to return to my rural haunts and that obscurity which now seemed more desirable than ever before.
And surely, I reasoned, Evangeline’s death by drowning had absolved me of any commitment I might have rashly made to her. And even if by some stretch of the moral imagination I were not, no-one but me knew of any such promise. Thus, there was no chance of anyone reproaching me for a failure to carry it out.
I looked at the paper for several minutes longer. Then at last I folded it up again and returned it to my jacket pocket. I started walking, not toward the river—but toward the yet darker streets of East London.
CHAPTER
19
Mr. Dower Arrives at a
Scene of Horror
AS a general rule of life, I find that my regrets increase in proportion to my efforts. I have little doubt that this is true for most people: the more we exert ourselves to achieve aims and desires, the nature of which we but dimly comprehend, the more we end up wishing we hadn’t bothered. Yet we try again and again, regardless.
Such was the nature of my foray into that district to which the pair of scavengers had directed me. In short order, my steps arrived at East London’s ill-lit streets and narrow, shabby courtyards, reeking of over-ripe refuse and promising an unpleasant welcome to any so foolhardy as to venture therein. Even here, though, the predations of Steam and the all-transforming Future it promised were apparent—the same hissing pipes, albeit of smaller diameter and a sadder state of repair, snaked chaotically along the close-set thoroughfares and up the flanks of the shuttered, soot-stained buildings. The predominant effect was of some unhygienic slum to which a monstrous form of external plumbing had been introduced, without having had a noticeable effect on the waste and filth accumulated over slothful, alcohol-sodden decades.
To my greater dismay, as I wandered through those dark streets, I found memories of them stirring within my thoughts. I realized that I had been here before, a circumstance for which I can hardly be blamed if I had managed to expunge it from my cherished recollections. To be precise, this was the foreboding district that I had come to years previously, when I had attempted to penetrate to the bottom of those mysteries surrounding my father’s creations in which I had first become enmeshed. At that time, I had found myself making an entirely unwanted acquaintance with the loathsome procuress named Mollie Maud, as well as her retinue of green girls, those revoltingly piscine jades who appealed to the lowest and most degenerate of carnal tastes. Or what had been so back then—I supposed it was a further indication of the progress that Mankind supposedly had made, that we seemed to have devised yet worse ones.
Such were the unbidden reflections that circulated within my brain. Once again, the notion rose within me that it would be better if I broke off this ill-advised expedition and fled posthaste from the scene. I had but little idea of what it was that I was attempting to accomplish by carrying out the tragically abbreviated instructions I had received from Lord Fusible’s daughter. Even if I were to locate at last the address she had given me, what would I find there? And what was I supposed to do with it? The laudable efforts on the part of Evangeline might well have rescued my bodily form, but only at the price of casting me further into overlapping confusions.
My memories of my earlier progress through East London became more distinct and complete in detail, the farther I slunk into the unprepossessing district. I kept close to the various structures’ dank and dirty walls, primarily as a method of reducing the chances of anyone spotting such a stranger and potential victim of brigandage. Similarly, I had no wish to engage in conversation with any of the pr
overbial ladies of easy virtue prowling about for trade. They might have been more normally visaged than those ghastly bauds that I had previously encountered here, but I doubted whether they would be of much more service in pointing my way to the address on the slip of paper contained in my jacket pocket. Indeed, given the manner in which the two boneyard scavengers had reacted to it, I was loath to ask directions from any honest citizen, were the highly unlikely circumstance of my stumbling upon one to come about.
At last, more by chance than design, I came upon what was presumably the courtyard I sought. By the dim light seeping through the ash-curtained windows of a low gin den, I took out the paper and attempted confirmation. Evangeline’s immaculate copperplate hand, the product no doubt of some finishing school far from these environs, oddly contrasted with the villainous surroundings to which I had made my way. As shrieks of inebriated laughter and the thumping collisions of furious blind combat seeped from the doorway of the drinking establishment, I established that I had indeed arrived at the street crossing described on the paper. There were of course no brass numbers mounted on the building’s wall, as one might have expected in more decorous neighbourhoods, but the alley close by my elbow was the only one that matched the rest of the note’s details.
Fearing imminent disaster, I cautiously proceeded into the narrow space, leaving what little illumination had been available beyond its entrance. A sleek bevy of rats scurried away from my steps, their red eyes glittering at me from atop mounds of unidentifiable rubbish, before they disappeared through the bars of the nearest sewer gratings.
A dilapidated wooden staircase terminated the alley. Standing at its foot, I gazed up toward the broken, treacherous-appearing landings above. Removed from the vicinity of the gin den, I perceived a troubling silence about the spot at which I had placed myself. From my prior excursions into East London, it had been my usual experience that such tenements were shockingly loud at all hours, one’s ears assaulted with all the clamorous discord of house holds overrun with ragged, barefoot children, their education consisting almost entirely of clouts from the heavy-knuckled fists of whatever ruffian had been installed as lord of such a squalid home. In such environments, the truth was forcefully borne upon one that the chief benefit of even a modicum of wealth was the purchasing of as much peace and quiet as one could afford. To be in the company of other human beings was to be forced to endure their ceaseless racket—and the more such were crammed into a small space, the louder that which one was made to suffer.
But not here. That fact installed a suspicious apprehension within my breast. I heard none of the shouts and threats and despairing wails that usually shivered the thin walls of such ramshackle buildings. The resulting quiet was of a more sinister nature than the sharpest razor displayed before one’s startled face.
With scant success, I argued with my own forebodings. I took the inward rhetorical position that I was frightening myself for no reason, that in fact there was nothing to be alarmed about in the darkened structure’s perceptible aspects. All my fears were groundless; without doubt, there were other such buildings scattered throughout East London and elsewhere, that had decayed to such an inhospitable condition that even the most wretched of the poor disdained their shelter.
None of these reasonings along these lines prevailed over the anxiety I felt as I set my foot upon the first of the steps. Flagellating myself as both a fool and a coward, I began making my way upward, testing each tread before putting my full weight upon it, as though that precaution would be sufficient to keep me from crashing through the rotted boards and falling precipitously to the rubbish-strewn earth below.
I reached the first landing and peered inside the doorless aperture I discovered there. There was naught to indicate that any human specimens resided within the lightless space. Not wishing to hazard further investigation, I resumed my progress to the next floor—
At which I was rewarded with at least some small sign of recent habitation. At the terminus of a dank, low-ceilinged corridor, a glimmer of yellow lamplight seeped through the wavering gap between a closed door and the sill below its bottom edge.
Perhaps this was where Evangeline had wished me to enquire, though as to what ultimate purpose I was still unsure. Summoning the last scraps of my resolve, I stepped from the rickety landing and toward the door ahead.
It opened with but the slightest touch of my hand, swinging inward on creaking hinges. Ducking my head, I peered inside—
Then wished I hadn’t.
My immediate impulse, prompted by that which was revealed to me in the room beyond, was to turn and run, clattering my way down the building’s exterior staircase as quickly as possible, all the sooner to set myself at rapid liberty in the streets beyond. Such was not merely an emotional response, but the best-reasoned one as well, given what I now beheld.
Indeed, it was my emotions, in the form of utter shock, that kept me rooted to the spot, one hand still pressed to the roughened wood of the door. If my brain had been fully in command of my limbs, there would have been no question as to how quickly I would have vacated the scene.
But I could not even induce the comfort of closing my eyes as a means of escape, so horridly fixated was I by that upon which the flickering lamp cast its tremulous glow.
The room was every bit the squalid, ramshackle space that I had anticipated. But it was rendered vastly more repulsive by the quantities of blood splashed about on the walls and floor, the light glinting upon the congealing red fluid. I might as well have stood in the alley doorway of some knacker’s enterprise, wherein whole carcasses were disjointed and stripped of their flesh, so inundating was the gore.
Two figures were there in the room, one lying face-down upon an equally blood-sodden bed, its thin, shabby mattress bowed with the woman’s disrobed weight. Her skin, what could still be seen of it, was rendered even more pallid by the bright, wet wounds that had so obviously brought about her demise.
The other figure was that of a man, seated in a broken-slatted chair, the room’s only other furnishing. His trousers and shirtfront were similarly emblazoned with red, as though he were either the initiator of whatever violent event had taken place here or had been close by enough to have been spattered during its commission. He was bent forward, face pressed tight to his cupped palms, as though he sought to expunge by sheer force the recollection of what had taken place.
Into the frozen muddle of my own stricken thoughts, a possibility lit up spark-like. I tentatively discerned the reason that Evangeline had directed me to this unsuspected abbatoir.
“Captain Crowcroft?” My voice was barely a whisper as I spoke the name. “Would that be you?”
The man raised his face and I saw that I had indeed been correct in my surmise. When I had seen him before, either at the helm of one of the awe-inspiring ambulatory lighthouses he commanded or as an honored guest at the fashionable soirée in Lord Fusible’s townhouse, he had cut a dashing figure, secured at the pinnacle of a fawning world. Now he was a trembling wreck, his fear-widened eyes staring in immense confusion at me.
“I know you. . . .” His voice a harsh croak, he peered even more intently toward the doorway in which I stood. “I’ve seen you before. . . .”
“Yes—of course you have.” I stepped cautiously into the room, attempting to avoid the largest of the pools of blood. “It’s George Dower—”
“Dower! Ah!” He flung his head back, hands clenched into trembling, white-knuckled fists at his knees. “You are responsible for all this!”
“Actually—I think not.” Even had he not made this remarkable statement, I would have been able to detect that Crowcroft was obviously maddened beyond endurance. “I’m reasonably sure that this is nothing that can be blamed upon me.”
“If not you, then your cursed father! And all your abominable lineage!”
“I beg your pardon—but it might be prudent to keep one’s voice down.” I had not experienced many occasions on which I had found myself in a room wit
h a hacked-up corpse, the blood from which was still dripping from the bedsheets to the floor, but it seemed a reasonable precaution to avoid drawing others’ attention to the scene. “I’m aware that you are upset, bu—”
“Upset?” He drew back in evident loathing. “Look about you! What kind of cold monster are you, that you are able to maintain your emotions in so placid a state, when surrounded by such atrocities as these?”
“Yes, well . . . I have been through rather a lot recently. So perhaps my responses are a bit blunted thereby. I assure you that I’ll try to react more appropriately, when I have more time and opportunity than we presently do. But at the present moment, I think that flight from these premises would have a rather higher priority—”
“I have no desire to flee from either discovery or the appropriate punishment for my wickedness.” Crowcroft wrung his hands in a perfect enactment of self-lacerating despair. “If the agents of the law were to burst upon us at this very moment, take one look around, then render summary judgement by throttling with their bare hands, I would have little disagreement with such an end to what my wretched life has become.”
“Be that as it may . . .” I refrained from informing him that while such a fate might have its attractions for him, I, however, had a few problems with it. “The authorities will, I am confident, be able to mete out all the appropriate punishment just as readily elsewhere as at the scene of the crime. That being the case, I see no need to enflame their passions by remaining any longer here.”
“Depart if you wish,” muttered Crowcroft. “My place is here or the Pit, in which I can sink no lower.”
I had been concerned that I would receive this sort of response from the obviously addled man. No doubt Evangeline had sent me here, with some intent on her part for me to rescue her fiancé. Very likely, she’d had only a partial notion of exactly what sort of contretemps into which her betrothed had fallen—if she had known the full particulars, she wouldn’t have enabled such a full and shameful discovery on my part or anyone else’s. Who would have blamed her if she had broken off the engagement? As a lifelong bachelor, I had small knowledge of matrimonial etiquette, but I felt it would be only reasonable to consider murder as sufficient cause to transfer one’s affections elsewhere.
