Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  He would have slept somewhat later than usual if he had been given the chance, having had an unusually exhausting Sunday, but his jailers had a routine to observe. When he had finished washing, however, he lay back down on the bed and dozed, fully expecting Gregory Temple to come to his rescue at any moment.

  As things transpired, the moments dragged by while Bow Bells chimed seven, eight and nine, and Ned had almost begun to suspect that he had been cheated when the lock finally turned in his door and the great detective came in.

  “Get up, Master Knob,” the detective said. “We’ve no time to lose, and this is no time to be lazing in bed till mid-morning.”

  “I would have been glad to turn my hand and my head to more profitable occupations, Mr. Temple,” Ned said, in an aggrieved manner, as he was hustled up the stone steps and out into the yard where the armored wagons waited to carry prisoners to the court, “had you only seen fit to make such provision. I’ve been on tenterhooks for hours, eager to be off.”

  The carriage into which they climbed was no court-ferry, nor did it bear any official insignia. Evidently, Gregory Temple’s re-recruitment to the not-so-secret police did not inhibit him from traveling incognito. The bench inside was a good deal better upholstered than the bed on which Ned had been lying, and the cab was closed against the biting wind, so the journey promised to be a comfortable one.

  “To Purfleet, I suppose?” Ned murmured, as they headed down Kin William Street towards London Bridge.

  “Greenhithe,” Temple told him.

  “Not even Tilbury,” Ned said, pensively. “I suspected that Mortdieu was lying about that. Strange, is it not, that one can sense a lie even in a man who has come back from the dead?”

  “You’re a veritable genius, Master Knob,” Temple said, sarcastically. “Events have moved on, by the way, since we spoke last night. I sent men to investigate the house at Purfleet, but they arrived too late to prevent its destruction.”

  “Destruction!” Ned echoed. “John Devil survived the blast, then, and wasted no time in striking back at his ungrateful Lazarus?”

  “Not so far as my men could tell. The sinking of the Prometheus sparked another reaction, it seems. The harbormaster at Purfleet had been unhappy for some time, it seems, and all the dock-workers too. Business had declined sharply since certain rumors began to run along the shore regarding the cargoes brought into port by the unlucky vessel, and considerable resentment had built up against her master. No one, of course, saw fit to involve higher authorities in their anxieties–these are men used to taking care of their own problems. The explosion in the harbor was the last straw. In the old days, mobs used to give notice of their intentions with a few hours of rough music, but we live in precipitate times. The house in Purfleet was visited by an armed gang whose only purpose was to burn the owners out, and they did so with remarkable precision. The house–all of it, at least, that stood above ground level at the front–is now a blackened shell.”

  Ned considered this for a few moments. “Well,” he said, eventually, “if General Mortdieu had nothing against the living when he spoke to me, he has something against them now. Did he manage to get Germain Patou’s equipment out of the cellars, and the dead-alive out of their rooms, before the fire took hold?”

  “It seems so,” Temple told him. “My men found nothing in the cellars but a few dead bodies that were by no means fresh, and there were no obvious skeletons among the rubble of the main body of the house.”

  “And you think they took their plunder to Greenhithe?”

  “My agents were unable to determine where any material removed from the house might have been taken. Fortunately, my former colleagues had maintained their own surveillance at Sharper’s.”

  “What was fortunate about that?” Ned asked. “Jenny’s customers must have melted away like snow in June after your grand entrance. No one of interest to you could possibly have remained there.”

  “Indeed not,” Temple agreed. “Even your friend Sam Hopkey and his doxy decided to go home, though their lodgings are even less salubrious than your own. They did not even get as far as the end of Low Lane. There was a carriage waiting at the corner, and they were persuaded to get in.”

  Thus far, the porridge he had eaten for breakfast had sat in Ned’s stomach in a very satisfied manner, but now he felt suddenly queasy. “What do you mean, persuaded?” he demanded. “How? By whom? Why?”

  “Don’t alarm yourself unduly, Master Knob,” Temple said. “By persuaded, I only meant to reassure you that they were not treated violently. They got into the carriage willingly, after a brief conversation with their former employer, Alexander Ross. How many people might have been waiting in the carriage the watcher could not tell–it was a capacious vehicle, and the curtains were drawn–but one other person got down: the large man who was with Germain Patou when he came to collect Ross on the previous night. Patou might have been inside, of course, but he was not seen. I had already been transferred, as you know, but the orders I had given before I was moved were still in force. The agent followed the carriage, which made slow enough progress to enable him to do so, until it was nearly to Deptford. He lost sight of it there, but found it again at Deptford Creek. There, for once in his life, he found witnesses ready and willing to talk–it’s not only the inhabitants of Purfleet who have taken alarm these last few days. The grey men and their companions went aboard a launch; the steamship to which it belongs is moored at Greenhithe.”

  “A steamship! It wouldn’t be the Deliverance, by any chance?”

  “No, it wouldn’t–but I’m not in a position to judge whether it might have borne that name in the past. Steamships are becoming a familiar sight on the Thames, but they still attract attention, especially if they are French. This one is called the Outremort. John Devil still has his sense of humor, you see.”

  Ned thought hard about that for more than a minute before saying: “No, Mr. Temple, it makes no sense. This carriage of which you speak arrived at Jenny’s after you had taken me into custody. You say that it was a slow vehicle, but I had to wait at the coach-stop for more than an hour before I could even begin my homeward journey. I did not see Sawney or the giant while I was in the house at Purfleet, but Patou was there, and I do not believe that he would have sent them out without his guardianship after what had happened on the previous night.

  “The carriage must have left the house after I spoke to Mortdieu–and it cannot have done so on John Devil’s orders. I can believe that Patou might have made his escape when the house was besieged by Mortdieu’s dead-alive, and that he would surely have taken Sawney and the giant with him if he could, but I cannot believe that he would have driven to Low Lane to see Sam Hopkey. Sawney might well have done that of his own accord, just as he had the previous eve, but if he acted under orders, those orders can only have come from...”

  He stopped, suddenly confused. When he resumed, it was to say: “No, surely that makes no better sense. Perhaps you’re right, after all, Mr. Temple, and the Outremort is John Devil’s. He always has more depth to his plans than he permits others to see, and it must be the Deliverance renamed... although it is hard to imagine how he reclaimed the vessel from his widow without exciting her suspicions. No matter... the real issue is that if Sawney has taken Sam and Jeanie there, it’s more like to be on John Devil’s business than Mortdieu’s. I wish I had a clearer idea of what each of them desires and intends to do with their secret, while it still remains secret.”

  “It had crossed my mind,” Gregory Temple observed, “that your friends might have been taken in order to exert pressure on you, once it was known that you had been arrested–to inhibit you from telling what you knew.”

  “If so, I was far too much of a blabbermouth to be so easily dissuaded,” Ned said. “I doubt it. Mortdieu intended me to speak, and the Comte was unworried by the knowledge that I would have to talk to you again. Had ether wished to silence me, he could have done so very easily. If Sawney came for Sam, it was likely for
his own reasons–he came to Jenny’s of his own accord the previous night, although he seemed very uncertain of what he wanted to say and do once he was there. I tried as hard as I could to jog his memory–I must have succeeded better than I thought.”

  “Perhaps it was as well that I arrested you,” Temple observed, “or he’d have collected you too.”

  “Sam and Jeanie went with him voluntarily,” Ned pointed out, “and I’d have done the same, even knowing that he really had been brought back from the dead. He’s neither a vampire nor a ghoul, but a walking miracle of science. Whatever he wants Sam and Jeanie for, it’s not to murder them.”

  “Are you certain about that, Master Knob?” Temple asked, with sudden intensity. “If he belongs to the ranks of the dead-alive now, he might be urgently desirous of sharing his condition with his old friends. He is no longer human, you must admit.”

  “I admit no such thing,” Ned retorted, fiercely. “Though he has something other than blood in his veins, he is as human as you or I. This is the Age of Enlightenment, Mr. Temple; we should no longer fear demonic possession, and need no longer assume that anyone returned from the grave must be a thirsty vampire eager to suck the blood of those he once loved. We must put superstition behind us now that we live in an age of vital electricity and mutable species. If only we would open our eyes wider, and clear away the fog of ancient childish terrors, we would understand that every living creature is engaged in a ceaseless quest for improvement. I have been to the Jardin des Plantes, you see, as well as the Royal Institution. I have heard Monsieur Lamarck speak. Even though he is old and blind, he is more clear-sighted than any other man alive, for he knows that our humankind was a long time in the making, and is not yet complete. Sawney is not a monster, Mr. Temple–he is Sawney still, with a second lease of life. We must understand that, if we are to serve the ends of progress in this matter.”

  “And this Mortdieu?” Temple challenged him. “Is he too an angel of progress rather than a demon of destruction?”

  “Yes,” said Ned, firmly. “He has nothing against the living, he says, and he will be tolerant of their misunderstandings, at least for a little while.”

  “He is fortunate to have chosen such a willing messenger,” Temple observed, “although he cannot understand the living very well if he thought that they might listen to a worm like you.”

  “I remind you once again that you should not call me that, Mr. Temple,” Ned told him, flatly. “I am a man like you, though short of stature and born to poverty. I have committed crimes in the past, I admit–but I did so because I was not content to live as I was, and wanted to be better. And you should not insult worms either–in Monsieur Lamarck’s great scheme, every worm is striving to evolve, just as every man and woman is striving, in opposition to every obstacle. Every insect and spider, every slug and snail, every scorpion and serpent is on the path of progress. A man as clever as you should know that, Mr. Temple, in spite of the fact that you have lately been employed to set such obstacles in the course of your own kind, exerting all your might to oppose a change that will prove irresistible in the end. Perhaps I think better of you than you think of yourself, but I cannot believe that a man like you would have fired on the crowd at Peterloo had you been on duty that day, or delivered a false verdict against Tom Wooler had you served on his jury. Or are we going to Greenhithe merely to raise a mob to burn out the grey men wherever they might be hiding, in houses or on steamships, lest they pollute our glorious lives by bringing us back from the dead when our need arises?”

  “You do not have the right to criticize me, Master Knob,” Temple said, flatly.

  “I do,” Ned informed him, stoutly. “Why should I not?”

  “Sam Hopkey and Janie Bird gave false evidence in the trial of Richard Thompson,” Temple said, spitting out the words as if they were venom. “Recruited by Alexander Ross and paid by you, on behalf of the real murderer. You all did your level best to hang a honest man, and were all so proud of what you did that the doxy even kept the name in which you baptized her for her court appearance.”

  “And you fed liquor to my pretty Molly in order to trick her into telling you what happened in Paris on the night that Noll Green and Lochaber Dick turned on one another,” Ned retorted, “and were only too anxious to believe what she said, in spite of her maudlin condition. But Richard Thompson did not hang for the crime he did not commit, did he? Are you really bitter because he was convicted on false evidence, or because he had already been liberated when you arrived to save him? If you value him as a friend and a son-in-law, why have you not visited him for four years? Perhaps you’re angry with me because I have–because I’ve sat your grandson on my knee, and laughed in delight with his mother and father.”

  Gregory Temple hammered on the partition with the head of his stick, and cried; “Stop the carriage! This ungrateful whelp is getting down here, in order to make his own way to Greenhithe, London or the Devil!”

  The carriage stopped, but Temple did not throw the door open. Ned sat where he was, waiting–but he could not resist peeping out of the window to see where they were. He did not know the south shore of the Thames at all well, but he did not think that they could be any further away from the point opposite Tower Hill than the region across from Greenwich. They still had a long way to go to Greenhithe.

  In the end, Temple rapped on the pane again, and told the driver to move on.

  “You do not know what that man said to me that night,” he murmured. “You do not know how he tried to drive me mad.”

  “I know how wholeheartedly he plays his roles,” Ned said. “I know what he can do, when he sets his mind.”

  “Can you guess, then, how he intends to use the secret of resurrection, if he can retain control of it against opposition from his own creations?” Temple demanded. “Can you guess what kind of empire he dreams of building this time?”

  “Not exactly,” Ned admitted, “but I think he has had his fill of Napoleonic dreams. He did say that this was a more important matter than empire-building in India. I suspect that his plans are still ill-formed, because he does not know as yet what capabilities the dead-alive might have.”

  “And this Mortdieu?” Temple countered. “What sort of dreams do you suppose he entertains?”

  “I don’t know,” Ned admitted, “but I suspect that his situation is exactly the same. He does not know, as yet, exactly what he is, or what he might make of himself. What he and his rival both desire, for the time being, is time. Each, in his unwisdom, wants to retain control of his research for himself–what each wants is to be the new Prometheus, the titan and the demigod. However young they may be, each of them is still bound to the assumptions of the old order. Patou might be different, given the chance, but he has been working thus far in their shadow. As I said before, it does not matter how hard they strive for selfish monopoly; they cannot keep it. What the scientific method produces once, it will produce again and again. Mr. Davy understands that, if they do not–I mean Humphry Davy, of course, not the false James Davy who cheated you.”

  “But what if either or them does harbor dreams of world domination, and of the enslavement of the living to the dead-alive?” Temple demanded. “You spoke in those terms yourself, while you were listing your points–indeed, you spoke as if the dead-alive are certain, in the end, to become the world’s rulers. If that is their ambition, what should we humans do, little man? Should we stand aside, in the holy name of progress, and wish the Outremort and her master–whoever he might be–bon voyage and the best of luck?”

  “I know that we should not act like superstitious fools,” Ned said. “We are not children to panic at the idea of the bogey-man. We must use our heads, Mr. Temple, and calm our rough-hewn instincts. If humans have found the secret of resurrection, we should be ready and willing to employ it–just as Jesus was, and did, if the scriptures are to be believed. Jesus was selfish in the end, rising from the dead himself but leaving his fellow to wait in vain for a different rede
mption, but we might be better than that, Mr. Temple, if only we were prepared to try.”

  “That’s blasphemy!” was Temple’s response

  “Indeed it is,” was Ned Knob’s calm reply. “Time has moved on, Mr. Temple–we are no longer living in the mythic past. Perhaps the dead-alive will be better fitted to rule the world than the living, if only they can recover the wisdom of their first lives to add to the wisdom of their second. Perhaps they will be kinder to my kind than your kind ever were. You fear enslavement, as fervently as any slavemaster must, but it is not such a bugbear to those whose servitude has ever been immiseration and degradation. I would rather hope for a Republic, even in a world ruled by the dead-alive–but no, Mr. Temple, I do not think we should stand aside. I think we should do exactly what we are doing now. We should try to find out the truth of the matter, so that we can make a reasoned decision as to how to act.”

  “I thought you might be useful to me,” Temple said, “because I thought you would be anxious to rescue your friends. You are forcing me to doubt my judgment.”

  “I am anxious to discover whether my friends are in need of rescue,” Ned replied. “If that turns out to be the case, I shall be glad to do what I can in that cause–but as for being useful to you, that I cannot and will not guarantee. I see no need for us to be enemies, but in matters political, we are not allies and I shall make no pretense that we are.”

  Ned remembered, as he concluded this speech, that the ci-devant Comte Henri de Belcamp had commented on the fact that he had changed. He complimented himself on the fact that the renegade aristocrat had spoken more truthfully than he knew.

  “Be careful,” Temple advised him gruffly. “You might easily end up in jail again.”

  “As poor Tom Wooler did, even though Shepherd could not pervert a second jury. I could doubtless end up in the pillory just as easily, like valiant Dan Eaton, or be cut down by a saber wielded from horseback like so many innocents in St. Peter’s Fields. You cannot frighten us in that fashion any more, Mr. Temple. We are too many, and too fervent in the business of making progress. We are poorly armed as yet, but science, the new Prometheus, is stealing new fire even as we speak. You cannot hold back that tide.”