Homunculus lsi-2

by James P. Blaylock

  “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.

  Godall shook his head at St. Ives and held a finger across pursed lips, as if to say that the Lord Bingley business hadn’t ought to be brought to light — that some few of the antics of humankind, when illuminated, were all the darker for the light cast upon them.

  Kraken failed to acknowledge St. Ives’ question anyway, but resumed his story instead. “I cut down the Stilton Lane Sewer and popped in through the trap, clean as a baby, speakin’ figural, of course. You seen what the sewer does to a man’s boots. And didn’t I see some visions.” Kraken paused and looked closely at the sleeping Keeble. “Dorothy Keeble’s safe, I can tell you again, though what makes her so ain’t what a man might choose. She’s got a fever, or such like, and Drake won’t let nobody near her, excepting, of course, the doctor.” With this last utterance Kraken waggled his eyes at the men around him, to let them know, perhaps, which doctor it was who looked on at Dorothy’s bedside.

  “The filthy scoundrel!” cried the Captain, heaving to his feet as if he were intending to thrash the hunchback there and then.

  Kraken held up his hand. “It ain’t like that, gentlemen. Drake won’t stand for it, for reasons of his own, if you follow me. He aims to clarify her of fever, or so he lets on. I was in a closet, top o’ the second-floor landing. Pule come in not a nickel’s worth after I slipped in unseen. Raging after the girl, he was. Had himself wound with sticking plaster, too. Another of his ‘cures’ as he called it that night when him and the hunchback was twisting the business of the master’s papers out of me. Anyway, there was Pule smelling to high heaven of chemical and his hands painted green. I never hope to see such a thing again. Well, they pitched him out — the bum’s rush. He swore he’d kill Narbondo. Then he swore he’d kill Drake. Then he swore he’d kill the whole blessed city. Then they showed him the road. Narbondo left directly, worried, if you ask me, gentlemen, that Pule would make trouble up on Pratlow. But little enough trouble it would be, alongside o’ what’s been done last night. The doctor was in for a peeper, I can tell you.”

  Kraken grinned at that, fancying Narbondo’s reaction when he witnessed the carnage at the Pratlow Street laboratory, Scotland Yard, perhaps, awaiting him on the stairs, the Keeble box long gone, Narbondo discovering that while he frolicked at Drake’s the slats were being generally kicked out of his best-laid plans.

  St. Ives struck his fist onto his open palm and leaped to his feet. “It’s through the sewer then!” he cried. “Can you take me there? We may as well get on with it. They’ve had the advantage of us since this business began. We’ll turn it round now.”

  “Whoa on,” said Kraken, grinning just a bit. “There’s more.”

  St. Ives stared at him. “What more?”

  “Your vehicle, guv’nor, it’s in the hall.”

  St. Ives was baffled. “My space vehicle is in Harrogate, locked away.”

  “The one you been looking about town for, is the one.”

  “The alien craft!”

  “Aye, that’s the one. Polished like a mirror, it is, lookin’ out at the dome o’ St. Paul’s like the two of them was cousins.”

  St. Ives was in a state. Here was news indeed. Was it possible that within the house on Wardour Street lay the cumulative ends of their search? That they could wade in, pistols drawn, and in minutes take back weeks worth of defeat? Well, by God they’d try. St. Ives clapped his hand onto the arm of the couch in a show of determination. “The report from Swansea forecast the blimp at mid-afternoon. How long for it to make London?”

  Kraken sneezed voluminously, waking Keeble up again. They put the question to him. “A few hours, I suppose,” he said. “Not longer. This evening, to be sure.”

  “Can we assume, then, that the fourth box will be aboard?”

  Keeble nodded. They might, of course, be fooled again, but it was odds on that when the ubiquitous Dr. Birdlip appeared in the sky overhead, he’d be carrying with him Jack Owlesby’s inheritance.

  “We’ve got to be on hand, of course,” said Godall.

  St. Ives nodded. There was no denying that. Jack’s emerald, after all. Unless they snatched it at the first crack, they’d likely lose it. They’d never wrestle it away from the authorities — that much was certain, not without compromising Nell.

  “There’s a half-dozen of us,” said Godall. “We’ll break into parties. There’s too much risk otherwise — we’ve too much ground to cover.”

  Godall was interrupted by a sound on the stairs. There stood Jack Owlesby, leaning on the banister. “Jack!” cried the Captain, limping over and offering the lad his arm.

  “Afternoon,” said Jack, grinning and stepping gamely but slowly down into the room. He took the Captain’s arm for the trip across the rug to the couch, and he sat down gingerly when he got there, grimacing just a bit. Nell Owle
sby and Winnifred Keeble followed. “I’m going with you to Drake’s,” said Jack.

  There was a general silence in the room. It was a heroic offer, under the circumstances, but of course was out of the question. No one, however, wanted to deny Jack his part.

  Captain Powers, having just that moment sat down, lay down his pipe with exaggerated care and stood up once again.

  “Now see here,” he said, looking at each one of them in turn. “I sailed a bit in my day — forty years of it, in truth, and commanded who knows how many lads from the Straits o’ Magellan to the China Sea. It seems natural to me then to step lively here. We got too many officers and not enough hands, and that’s been the long and short of her these last weeks, me bein’ guiltier than the rest of you.”

  St. Ives’ protest to this last statement was cut short. “Hear me out,” said the Captain, poking his pipe stem in the scientist’s direction. “Don’t buck me, lad. I’m an old man, but I know what I’m about. Time’s drawin’ on. That ere blimp’s got to be circumvented, as they say. And the hunchback doctor — we’ll go for him straightaway. There’s going to be half o’ London out on Hampstead Heath tonight, blow me if there ain’t, and it won’t do to have any more scuffle than we can avoid, if you see my point. We square things away with the doctor now, is what I mean. Tie him up fast and lay him out in that there closet o’ his. We can fetch him out in a week or so if we recalls it. So here’s what I say, mates:

  “I’m the blasted Captain here, so I’ll point and you’ll jump, and we’ll all run aground out on the Heath when the sun goes down, for that’s when we’ll need the lot of us and to spare. For now, Professor, you and Keeble here will slide into Drakes’ through the sewer. I’d get hold of a couple pair o’ India rubber boots for the job.”

  St. Ives looked at Keeble. Did he have the stuff for it? It was clear he had to be given the chance. Keeble seemed to make a visible effort to pull himself together, to haul in loose limbs and slap some color into his face. He picked up his glass, thought better of it, and set it down hard on the table.

  “I’m going with them,” said Jack staunchly.

  “You’re going with me,” cried the Captain, puffing like an engine on his pipe.

  “I’m…” began Jack.

  “Enough! You’ll take orders or by heaven you’ll stay home and scrub the slime out o’ Kraken’s boots! You and Nell, as I was saying, will lie low outside o’ Wardour Street with a wagon. We’ll be ready to fly when the Professor and Keeble steps out wi’ the girl. It’s action enough you’ll see then, my lad. Can you fire a pistol?”

  Jack nodded silently.

  “One thing,” interrupted St. Ives. He considered for a moment, his face brightening, his eyes gleaming. “In the event,” he said, “that I don’t come out — through the door that is — look sharp for me in the sky. I mean to get the starship out of Drake’s just as soon as we’ve got Dorothy safe. Be ready, then, to make for Hampstead without me.”

  The Captain shrugged. That was St. Ives’ affair. Certainly there would be no way of going back in after the ship, not after the confrontation that would likely occur that afternoon. “And we’ll leave ye too, mate. Don’t think we won’t. I aim to be on hand when Birdlip heaves to. The em’rald’s been in my hands these long years, if you follow me, whether it’s been in my sea chest or aboard that ’ere blimp. Yes, sir, starship or no, I’m for Hampstead when I see the black of that girl’s hair.”

  St. Ives nodded.

  “And you two,” he said, nodding first to Hasbro and then to Kraken. “You swabs will take care of this here doctor, like I said.”

  Kraken chortled and rubbed his hands. “That we will,” he said.

  Hasbro was more eloquent. “Since his ruffians,” said the starchy gentleman’s gentleman, “tore the manor to bits and shattered the visage of poor Kepler, I’ve wanted nothing more than to have words with the good doctor, strong words, perhaps.”

  “Aye,” cried Kraken, leaping up in a rush and whirling away with his fists at phantoms, then sitting down in a rush when he remembered that he wasn’t wearing trousers. “Mighty strong words,” he said squinting.

  “That’s the spirit,” said the Captain. “Don’t take no.”

  “Not us, sir,” replied Hasbro, nodding obediently. “Am I to understand, then, that Mr. Kraken and myself are to rendezvous with the rest of you on the green at Hampstead?”

  The Captain nodded vigorously. “That’s it in a nut. And mind you, it’s the blimp we want. This ain’t no social affair. First one in grabs the box. Don’t be shy. Don’t wait for slackards. Lord knows which of us will get in first.”

  “Well it won’t be me,” said Winnifred Keeble, frowning at the Captain. “Apparently I’m to stay home, am I? Well I’m not, and you, sir, can smoke that if you’d like. I’m going in after Dorothy.”

  “As you say, ma’am,” replied the Captain humbly. “The more hands the better when foul weather blows up.”

  “And I, gentlemen,” said Godall, rising and picking up his stick, “intend to confront our evangelist. He has, if I’m not mistaken, one of the boxes in question. Which might it be again?”

  St. Ives looked at Hasbro for help. “That would be the aerator box, sir, if I remember aright, which Pule possessed when he leaped from the train. And there will be two of the boxes at Drake’s, sir, if you’ll allow a gentle reminder — the little man inhabiting the one and the clockwork alligator in the other — both, I believe, of some value to us.”

  “Quite,” said St. Ives, itching to be off. “What detains us then?”

  The Captain knocked his ashes out into a glass ashtray. He blew through his pipe, shoved it into his coat pocket, and stood up. “Not a blessed thing,” he said.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE FLIGHT OF NARBONDO

  It was very little presence of mind that Willis Pule had left. Outrage after outrage had been heaped upon him. And now this last business at Drake’s… He strode along down alleys and byways out of the way of the London populace, grimacing at each jarring step at the pain of the chemical bath that heated his face beneath the sticking plaster. There was a good chance that the mixture would quite simply explode, reducing his head to rubble. Well so be it. He grinned at the thought of him strolling with a will into the presence of his collected enemies and, in the midst of a fine speech, detonating, as if his head were a bomb. It would have been a very nice effect, taken altogether. He laughed outright. He hadn’t lost his sense of humor, had he? It was a sign that he would prevail. He was a man who could keep his head, he thought, while everyone else was… no, that wouldn’t work. He giggled through his bandages, thinking about it, unable to stop giggling. Finally he was whooping and reeling, as if in a drunken passion, laughing down on the occasional loiterer like a madman, sending people scurrying for open doorways.

  A mile of shouting and laughing, however, took it out of him, and he fell into a deepening despair, intermittent giggles turning to sobs until, wretched, homeless, and corroded by active chemicals, he stumbled into the dark public house for which he’d been bound.

  Some few morose and shifty-eyed customers drank at long tables, looking as if they were ready to rise and flee at the slightest provocation. Pule was enough provocation to cause three unrelated loungers to drop their cups and start up, but upon seeing that he was obviously bound for the curtained doorway that communicated with a rear room, they slid back down onto their benches and simply regarded him with hostility.

  The head of a newsboy, just then, was thrust in through the open street door, shouting incoherently the latest horrors that littered the front page of the Times and the Morning Herald. “Corpses!” he yelled. “Viversuction in Soho.”

  Pule slipped beneath the curtain, thinking darkly of corpses and vivisection. If it was corpses the public called for, then by God it was corpses they’d have. He descended a steep, broad stairs into a sub-street shop lit only by sunlight through high transom windows around the perimeter. An enormous man with a beard
like that of a Nordic berserker pounded away with a hammer at what looked like an iron sausage casing. Dismantled clocks cluttered the bench around him. He wore on his face such a look of loathing and cynical contempt for the world in general that he was immediately recognizable as a revolutionary of the sort with no fixed philosophy beyond explosions. He built, however, what Pule sought — a dynamite bomb, of the spherical sort, cast of iron and with a short fuse. A “roll ’n’ run” as they were called by the purveyors of such things. It took a little less than ten minutes before Pule strode along once again, a box under his arm, he and his device bound for Pratlow Street where, if he was lucky, he’d find Narbondo in among his instruments.

  Pule stared at the pavement as he walked, his nostrils flaring, his eyes squinting, counting the bits and pieces of abuse he’d countenanced in the months he’d known Narbondo, raging within at the demise of the well-laid plans he’d carried into London. It wouldn’t do, he thought, to be careless. He must have his revenge on all of them — there wasn’t a one among them who wouldn’t feel his wrath. He would settle Narbondo first, and Drake if he were able. And if he weren’t, then he’d be on hand when the precious blimp landed, and he’d have his pickings then, wouldn’t he? Somehow the chemical preparation vaporized beneath the bandages, and the rising fumes smarted his eyes, generating a steady stream of tears. He mopped at his face. The bandages were loose, unraveling even as he walked along.

  Another newsboy chanted past. Rarely had there been as much news. The headlines were wild with it. “Blimp to land!” shouted the boy, waving a newspaper as if it were a banner. “Man from Mars inside! Alien threat! Harmergideon!”

  Here, thought Pule, what’s this? In a moment he owned a paper, the front page of which was given over equally to the story of the Pratlow Street corpses and the story of the approaching blimp, this last replete with predictions from the Royal Academy itself that the blimp would touch down in Hampstead. The minister of a popular religious sect insisted that aboard the blimp flew an alien creature who would “usher in Armageddon.”