The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  Steel rang on steel, striking a blue spark of friction below the knuckle-guards. Jeffrey, sweating, parried with an outer wrist-turn and cross-lunged in riposte at the inside of the other’s sword-arm. He misjudged, but so did Hamnet Tawnish.

  Though it might have been an effect of the distorting light, an onlooker would have thought Mr. Tawnish suddenly uncertain, even clumsy, after a stab that had failed to pierce through Jeffrey’s lung. He caught the return thrust well enough; his fencing-style had the full flourish of ‘grace and deportment’ taught by Signor Malevolti Angelo at Carlisle Street in Soho. But his own riposte was slow, and his dart-back even slower for so agile a man.

  Jeffrey parried point downwards, whacking the blade aside, and again cross-lunged for the same target. His point ran upwards and stabbed deep through the inside of his adversary’s exposed right wrist.

  Hamnet Tawnish stood stupid, mouth open. The sword-with the gilded knuckle-guard rolled over and fell clattering from a useless right hand. A blackish-looking fluid, blood by moonlight, welled up over wrist and cuff.

  Mr. Tawnish stared at it The spasm that crossed his face was not one of fear; it was of shock, of outrage, of some deeper cause he himself may not have understood. But he turned and ran—towards a trap-opening now invisible. The cry he uttered, as his weight met nothingness above a staircase as steep as a ladder, went up in the same kind of bubbling shriek they had heard before. There was a crash from the passage downstairs, and then silence.

  Jeffrey stood motionless, head down. More sweat had started out on his body and under his wig. He did not speak; it was Peg who said the wrong thing.

  “You beat him,” she cried out, shivering and raising her elbows and with tears brimming over. “I like to have died because I was so afeared for you. But you did not run from him; you beat him.”

  “Peg, be silent!”

  “You took the hazard—”

  “Be silent, in all stupidity’s name! I took no hazard at all.”

  And he began to clean blood from his sword by wiping it on the inside of his coat-skirt.

  “That lout can’t fence, or at least mighty little. Have you never heard your uncle say most men know little of swordplay? That is wise: they want duels no more than I want ’em. Harnnet Tawnish has gained great repute by his sneer and his mighty bearing; none has challenged him. He may have had a lesson or two from Angelo, and come truly to think himself invincible. That is all.”

  “But you challenged him. You could not have known this.”

  “Not know it? I should have been a great dullard not to know it Tonight, at the Golden Cross, he lunged out and pulled hack his arm as if to throw a harmless cut at my head. No swordsman would have been fool enough to behave so. A man of knowledge could have drawn and thrust through him while his guard was open.”

  “Then you had no fear for your own skin?”

  “Pray believe me, I had great fear. A chance thrust from a novice may puncture Angelo himself.”

  “And I thought you had done something heroical. ’Fore God I did. Or, if you had not, could you not at least have pretended you had, and made me think of you the more highly?”

  “Peg, Peg, will you have done with this play-acting?”

  “Play-acting?” said the astounded girl.

  “Yes, madam. Make up your mind how you would have me be.”

  “No. Oh, no! Make up your mind how you would have me. I tried to be loving, as I desire to be; and you won’t bear it I try to provoke you; and you won’t bear that. I try to show I am most honest touched; and you’ll bear that least of all. What’s a poor loving dolt to do with such a fellow?”

  “I—I must own, Peg, I am not always easy.”

  “Easy? You are the hopelessest person that ever lived on this earth. And now you have killed a man; foh, you have murdered him; he lies dead down there; and here are two people dead or a-dying with us now.”

  Jeffrey’s expression changed.

  “Two!” he repeated. “Ay, two. It’s well done to remind me.”

  Moonlight drew wavy shadow-circles across his face as he craned from side to side. He might have been in desperate straits from a wound, and was in fact thinking of flint and steel to kindle a light. He returned the sword to its scabbard. His next actions seemed almost demented.

  He ran to the front of the room, tore down the sacking from its rope across the window, and wrapped the rotted fabric round his right fist. The crashing and falling of glass, as he drove his fist at the closed window, must have wakened any dwellers who still slept on London Bridge. The glass, old and bent and brittle inside lead circles, tumbled partly outwards and partly inwards at his feet.

  Picking up one such fragment intact, he scrubbed dirt from it with the sacking. Then he hurried back and retrieved the fallen candle from beside Hamnet Tawnish’s sword. Though knocked askew when cut from the dish, it still showed an edge of wick.”

  “Remain here,” he said to Peg. “She must have struck a light; and in the bedchamber, to be sure, I recall …”

  In the bedchamber, groping through darkness, he found at the back a small bricked fire-place at a position corresponding to that of the rear window in the other room. His hands ran round the hearth until he found a small tinder-box. An oiled spark sprang up and caught. Carrying the crooked taper, he went to the old woman’s body and held the segment of glass close to her grimacing mouth.

  Then he stood unmoving, head down.

  Whether it had been illusion that he saw breath flutter through her lips he did not know now, and did not know until afterwards when he began to suspect everything. By that time he had still more reason to curse himself. Indubitably she was dead now.

  Peg stirred in the other room. Heavy footsteps, the sound of several men approaching, clumped along the arched thoroughfare of London Bridge towards the front of the house.

  Hot wax splashed across Jeffrey’s hand, rousing him. He had one act of concealment to perform here, and he did it hastily before he went back to the room where Peg waited.

  At the same moment a young and throaty voice, a voice he recognized, rose up from outside.

  “Hold, there!” the voice called. “Whoever’s within-doors, in the house with the burst window and the part-open door, hold as you are.— You, Johnson,” and here Captain Tobias Beresford, of the 1st Foot Guards, seemed to be speaking over his shoulder, “push the door full open. You, Macandrew, remain with me. Whoever’s within-doors, stand and give account of yourself. D’ye hear?”

  V

  Dilemma at the Magic Pen

  JEFFREY TURNED THE CATCH of the front window and pushed open its shattered right-hand casement.

  “You go too fast, Tubby,” he called back. “There are no lawbreakers here.”

  The light of two lanthorns made almost a dazzle round Tubby Beresford and two guardsmen in grenadier caps. These lanthorns were held by one of the guardsmen and by Tubby himself, his black tricorne hat and black jackboots contrasting with the scarlet and buff of the uniform. The second guardsman, a Brown Bess musket held level at waist-height, had jabbed open the door to the passage below.

  “Ecod,” said Tubby, looking up. “Ecod, I might ha’ known it.”

  Clearly he was ill at ease. His pouchy eyes kept turning round, almost as though he ware interested in the dingy shuttered shops across the way.

  “Now hark’ee, Jeff, I don’t know what you’re at. But I gave you warning not to tarry on the bridge. If you’ve been at what you shouldn’t, friend or no friend, you’ll pass the night in a watch-house.”

  “I trust not, Tubby.”

  “You do, hey? I am about my duty—”

  “So am I,” retorted Jeffrey, stretching the truth a little. “But you’re far from your post at the Southwark side, surely?”

  “That’s as may be. If Captain Mike Courtland—” and Tubby stabbed a finger northwards, presumably towards the gatehouse at the City end—“if Captain Mike Courtland is too slothful or too tender of poor people’s feelings to se
t proper sentries, I’ll not take the blame for it. Now what’s afoot, Jeff? Damme, you’re all a muck of dirt. What’s afoot?”

  “In the passage below you will find a man, quite probably stunned and insensible.”

  “Sir,” interrupted the guardsman with the musket. “Sir, or else Macandrew, that’s to say. Show a glim, can’t you?” And a moment later, as the lanthorn was held up: “There’s nobody in the passage, sir. But there’s blood-drops from the stairs to the street-door here.”

  “He crawled away, then” said Jeffrey. “I did not hear him. But I counted him more humiliated than harmed.”

  “Who crawled away?” demanded Captain Beresford. “For the last time, Jeff, what occurred here?”

  “A certain man forced a quarrel despite all attempt to prevent him. I ran him through the wrist; I had no choice.”

  “A sword-brawl, hey? And that’s not against the law? Damme, Jeff, this means Newgate. I’m the man who has no choice.”

  “Tubby, will you attend to me? Unless martial law be declared, which it is not, all breaches of the peace are under authority of. the magistrate-in-chief at Bow Street. The military must aid and obey if called upon by him or by an appointed deputy. You are aware of this, are you not?”

  “Ay, it’s true enough. Still …”

  “And upon this occasion,” said Jeffrey, again stretching the truth, “I am his appointed deputy. Sure you know this too? Or, from your acquaintance with me, at least you had divined it?”

  Across Captain Beresford’s darkish brows went a shade of what might have been relief.

  “Now, why a pox couldn’t you ha’ said this before?” he asked. “I suspected, it may be. I couldn’t know. You’ll take upon yourself the burden of responsibility?”

  “I will.”

  “And make report to old Fielding?”

  “‘Old’ Fielding? Justice Fielding is thirty-six: no more.”

  “Is it so, split my bottom?” asked the other, momentarily impressed. “And not so young either, though he carries himself like a man of fifty and a court-chamberlain at the very least”

  “He is blind, Tubby. Justice Fielding is not the least vainglorious of men, or the most lovable. But he is honest; he has wits in his head, and more charity than he will permit to be seen.”

  “Charity? Oh, ay, charity. Well, have it as you please. What’s to our purpose is that I have no mind to meddle if you render yourself responsible.”

  “I do. Not only for Hamnet Tawnish—”

  “For … who?”

  “Hamnet Tawnish. The man with whom I was embroiled. Why, Tubby, are you acquainted with him? Have you played at cards with him? And lost money to him, as so many have?”

  It seemed as though some ripple passed across the lanthorn-light; an illusion, since both flames remained steady. But Captain Beresford swung up his own lanthorn, illuminating his face while he tried to illuminate Jeffrey’s. The latter would always remember afterwards a cluster of shop-signs opposite: the Two Bibles, a book-seller’s long abandoned because so few sought books on London Bridge; a mirror-maker’s called the Dear Vanity, also deserted; and one of the pin-and-needle makers’ shops, this one called the Knitting-Needle, still open for trade by day but fast-shuttered now. The signs, rusted and in need of paint, made a sombre background for Tubby Beresford’s bright uniform.

  “What’s my affair, Jeff,” he snapped, “is my affair.”

  “Well, that’s unanswerable.”

  “Ay, and more. If ’twas Hamnet Tawnish and no other you say you ran through the wrist: if it was Hamnet Tawnish, I say …”

  “He is only a bully-rook, Tubby, a sham swordsman and not to be feared.”

  “That may be. Some have suspected it. But a friend of his named Major Skelly, the one who smiles and smiles, is no sham swordsman at all. He’ll carve your guts as soon as look at you. Have a care, Jeff.”

  “I have worse cares, Tubby, and worse luck.”

  “As how? What else is up there?”

  “A dead woman is up here. I have great need of medical counsel. If the old woman did not die of any wound, then she died of fright at what visited her, or at what some might call the Visitation of God.”

  Tubby Beresford uttered a ringing oath. The guardsman with the musket drew back from the door. Momentarily Jeffrey missed Tubby’s response in turn of eye; for some time he had been listening to more footsteps approaching, on this occasion from the London side. Jeffrey raised his voice to speak the last words just as Dr. Abel emerged into the lanthorn-light and stopped short.

  Though Dr. Abel carried both the long brass-headed cane and the wooden box of instruments and phials which marked his calling, Captain Beresford was from one cause or another too off-balance to remark this.

  “Now here’s a pretty kettle o’ fish, upon my soul,” he bawled. “Is all the world walking on London Bridge at this hour? Who are you, fellow? What are you doing here, fellow?”

  “Sir,” replied the newcomer, “I dwell here. My house is some hundred yards farther on. I am a doctor of physic, as you may observe.”

  “Oh, ay?”

  “You need not remind me, Captain,” said Dr. Abel, correctly interpreting the other’s look and speaking with bitterness, “that my trade is a somewhat low one. I beg also that you will spare me any jests concerning it. This night, believe me, I have had a surfeit of such jests from a clergyman who desired to accompany me. However, low trade or not, I pursue it as best I can.”

  “Well, well,” growled Captain Beresford, recovering some-thing of his usual good manners, “no offence was meant. ’Tis not as low a trade as a surgeon’s, at all events. And, if Jeff Wynne thinks he has need of a physician—why, in God’s name go to him! There’s a clergyman with you, you say?”

  “Not now.” Here Dr. Abel glanced up and saw Jeffrey at the window. “That, young sir, is the reason for my lateness.”

  “Doctor, Doctor, there is no need for apology.”

  “I fear there is. The Reverend Mr. Sterne first insisted we must take still another bottle: to give us both courage, so he said, to venture here. Whereupon he recalled, or said he recalled, still a second appointment this night to visit his frisky widow in Cheapside, and went reeling off to find a sedan-chair. Therefore, though I had promised most faithfully to follow you and the young lady—”

  “Young lady?” demanded Captain Beresford. “What young lady?”

  “Under favour, sir,” asked the guardsman with the Brown Bess, “had we not best return to our post?”

  “Under favour, sir,” said the guardsman with the second lanthorn, “may I say that’s good advice?”

  “It is indeed good advice, Tubby,” said Jeffrey, whose nerves had begun to crawl again. “There was a young lady here, but she is gone long ago. It’s of no consequence. I have promised to assume responsibility.”

  Captain Beresford clapped his hand on his sword, looking round narrowly.

  “Ay, but can you assume it? Hark’ee, Jeff, if you think I am satisfied with the tales of what’s happening here, I tell you in your teeth I am not. I’ll go, yes; but not back to my post. I’ll go and have a word with Captain Courtland, to find if he knows one word of what I ought to know. Johnson, Macandrew, accompany me.”

  “As you please, Tubby. Before you go, though, may I humbly request that you will leave one of those lanthorns with Dr. Abel?”

  “One of the lanthorns? No, I’ll not! Why should I?”

  “That also is as you please. But I had not thought you too frightened of ghosts to cross London Bridge with only one light.”

  “Afraid, am I? Macandrew! Give the doctor your light.”

  “Sir …”

  “D’ye hear me, man?”

  From the guardsman Tubby Beresford snatched the lanthorn with such haste that the hot metal burnt his fingers. He thrust it at Dr. Abel, who, after an impassive glance at the window, received it in the same hand that held the cane.

  While two lights danced wildly outside, Jeffrey backed away. A
cold draught between the windows, one half open and one shattered, had already blown out the taper he carried. He backed away through shadow and moonlight to where Peg was waiting, rigid, and shushed her to a whisper when she would have cried aloud.

  “Wait!” he said. “They are going now. When you can no longer hear their footsteps, follow me down the stairs to the passage.”

  “Dear God!” Peg whispered. “Am I a fugitive from justice, that you still hide me away like one?”

  “Yes. You may well be. I doubt we have finished with Hamnet Tawnish.”

  “But you defeated him. You made him run.”

  “And does that end all things, as in some happy tale for a ladies’ drawing-room? Depend on it, it does not—Now, Peg!”

  In the passage below, his back to the open street-door, Dr. George Abel stood holding up the lanthorn. He held it still higher, stiffening, when he saw the bloodstains that spattered the floor.

  “Sir,” began Dr. Abel, and cleared his throat, “sure I heard you say the old woman of this house is dead?”

  “She is dead.”

  “And that she died of fright?”

  “I believe so; I can’t tell.”

  “Then how come this blood in the passage?”

  “It is not her blood. Doctor, may I make you known to Miss Ralston here? The two of you spoke together at the Grapes, or so you told me. And you lent her sympathy when she was much in need of it.”

  “Young sir, sympathy is my trade. Often enough, God knows, I have little else to give. But you may believe me, madam, to be your most obedient servant.”

  “I believe it, Doctor,” said Jeffrey. “Well, then—”

  He strode past the other man and closed the door. He picked up the wooden bar and dropped it into the sockets. If he had not left that door unbarred, he was reflecting bitterly, tonight’s course might not have turned towards ruin.

  “At the Grapes, also,” he went on, “I told you something of the story. If I told you little then and must tell you little now, that is partly because we have small time at our disposal.”