The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

by James P. Blaylock

  The entire business abruptly struck her as funny—the mad barrelers, the flying hats, Gilbert towed backwards up the alley, the policemen racing off after her phantom thief. She began to laugh, and she covered her mouth with her hand, unable to silence the laughter. Frightened at her own wild energy, she forced herself to stop before the laughter turned to weeping, and she kept it in a firm grip as she walked up Queen Street through Cheapside.

  As she approached the corner of St. Martin’s Street, she heard the ringing of the barrel bells and barrelers chanting, “To the River!” over and over again like a mantra. A train of twenty or so barrels moved straight toward her, the occupants wearing yellow hats, the Red Vests running like thoroughbreds. When they drew up to the nearby corner, she saw among them a tall, leggy, hatless, disheveled man who rode along with his head nodding. She could not see his face at all, turned downward as it was, but it came into her mind that it was Langdon—the man’s coat was very like Langdon’s—and her heart leapt into her throat, a gasp escaping from her open mouth. The train of barrels rounded the corner sharply, and the sudden turn whipped the rear-most barrels hard sideways. The tether parted, and two barrels, suddenly loosed from the rest, overturned and caromed off a low wall adjacent to a haberdashery shop, the barrels flying to pieces, the occupants flung out. The rest of the train hauled away along Cheapside as if nothing had happened.

  Seeing that a dozen people were surrounding the fallen barrelers, Alice stood on the pavement watching the train roll out of sight. It was patently impossible, she told herself, that Langdon was among them, reduced to such a condition. He had been himself yesterday evening—his intelligent, cheerful self. He could not have become someone else in such a short time. She repeated this thought firmly, resuming her trek toward Smithfield and berating herself for allowing her imagination to confound her.

  THE NOTE-BOOK

  I GAVE UNCLE’S BARREL to Larkin,” Tubby said in the taproom of the Half Toad, “and she sold it for a mere sixty pounds to someone on the street, after which she converted the money to coins and distributed half of it among her piratical cohorts. She was keen to have the coins jingling in her pocket, as was the rest of the gang. They’re all quite rich, but they’ll be paupers by the end of the week. She’s staked Uncle to a game of Old Maid.”

  “She had to sell the barrel cheap to be rid of it, I suppose,” Alice said, gratefully accepting a glass of shrub from Hopeful. “I’m surprised she wasn’t taken up by the police.” She looked across at Gilbert, who sat at a table staring roundabout him like a man who had lost his wits, which of course he had, half of them anyway. Larkin sat opposite Gilbert, her back to Alice, dealing cards. There were stacks of crown pieces and shillings in front of both of them.

  “They’re playing for high sums,” Alice said.

  “I believe Larkin’s money is safe at the moment, although Uncle is normally a wicked player. She was aware of your dodge with the police, by the way—knew just what you were up to. She quite approves of you.”

  “I’m flattered,” Alice said, “and I quite approve of her, although the poor girl will be hanged if nothing is done to rescue her from her piratical life.”

  “Look at your cards, then,” Larkin said loudly, perhaps thinking that Gilbert was partly deaf. When he failed to respond, she climbed to her knees on her chair and then reached across and looked at his cards, extracting pairs and discarding them into a pile. “You’ve got a good hand, Uncle. Wager five bob. Do you hear me?” Again he failed to respond, and she plucked up five of his shillings and put them into the middle of the table along with several coins that already sat there.

  Alice walked across to watch the game. She smiled at Larkin and put a hand on Gilbert’s arm. He sat morosely in his chair staring at his untouched tankard of ale, looking far past his age and pitifully unhappy. His clothes were disheveled and he had a high, fishy smell to him, having been encased in his barrel like salted cod.

  “He won’t attend,” Larkin complained aloud. “It’s the powders what does it. He wants his dose monstrous bad now that he can’t have it.”

  “We’ve put the powders down the loo,” Tubby said loudly. “It’s no use pining away over it. Drink your beer like a good fellow and do as Larkin asks.”

  Gilbert turned his head and regarded Tubby as if he were a stranger, and Tubby looked sadly away.

  “Mayhaps the powders have turned him into a frog,” Larkin said quite seriously to Alice. “You might kiss him on the forehead, like the girl did to the frog in the well. It’s in the fairy book. Do you want a sweet?”

  “Yes, thank-you,” Alice said, taking a piece of Larkin’s molasses toffee from its packet and giving the parchment a twist. “I seem to remember that the girl in the fairy book cut the frog’s head off into the bargain,” Alice said. “I won’t do that, but I will kiss him if you advise it. Do you read books, then?”

  “Something like.”

  “Will you read to me sometime?”

  “Will you kiss the frog?”

  “Yes,” Alice said, and she leaned over and kissed Gilbert on the forehead and then looked into his face. For a moment his eyes focused, and his lips moved as if he meant to speak. He blinked and looked around quizzically, but then seemed to disappear into his own mind again.

  “Play a card, then, king frog,” Larkin told him, waiting half a moment before reaching across once again in order to play it for him. Gilbert seemed to follow Larkin’s fingers this time, and when she shifted backward into her chair, he leaned forward and plucked a piece of molasses toffee out of her bag. He began to put the entire wrapped sweet into his mouth, but Larkin snatched it away and informed him in a loud voice that he must unwrap it first, that he mustn’t be the dog that ate dirty pudding. He sat with his mouth agape, waiting for her to put the toffee into it, after which he chomped down on it and sat staring as the brown molasses drooled out of the corners of his mouth.

  “I believe he’s coming ’round,” Alice said to Larkin.

  “He’s a fat man is why. It’s the narrow ones go down like sticks.”

  The phrase “narrow ones” reminded her instantly of Langdon, and she remembered the morocco note-book, which had been out of her mind since breakfast. She hurried to the stairs and ascended with a newly-revived feeling of dread. The book was where she had left it, still damp, and she took it to the window to open it, carefully turning the pages, the first of which were covered with sketches of plants and fish and animals along with brief annotations in Langdon’s clear hand. There were dated barometer readings, rainfall totals, observations on the weather, on Johnson the elephant who lived in the barn, on the hops plants. There was a list of begonia species that had put out bloom spikes just last week—the color and size of the blooms, their curiously salty flavor, their lack of odor….

  She came upon the page with yesterday’s date, the time recorded as 8:18 p.m. Within thirty seconds’ reading she knew what he had done. Her chest felt empty and her breath came in gasps. She sat down hard on the bed, remaining still for a moment with her eyes closed, trying to compose herself. She looked at the increasingly strange ramblings—pages and pages of scattered observations and wild statements. The handwriting grew in size and illegibility as the phrasing grew more and more eccentric and the exclamation points and under-linings more numerous. It was written evidence of a descent into madness that had apparently been well along by the time he consumed the second two packets of powders, evidently with great glee. The page was stained with what smelled like beer and fish, and the pages that followed were increasingly alien and incoherent.

  She went back downstairs, taking the book with her. Larkin, she discovered, was speaking in low voices with Tubby, who arose when Alice walked in. The coins were gone from the card table, and Gilbert was asleep, snoring prodigiously with his head on the table.

  “Larkin would have a word with you, Alice,” Tubby said in a grim voice.

  “And I need to have a word with you, Tubby. What is it, Larkin?”
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  “It’s this, ma’am. Billy picked the man’s pocket what we sold the barrel to. He can’t help himself, can Billy, and it was dead simple because the man was an eel and stupid with the powders. I took the watch from Billy. The thing is ma’am…” She held the watch up, the case open. “It’s you. I just now saw it.”

  “Oh, God,” Alice said, grasping the back of a chair to steady herself. She recognized the watch. She herself had purchased it and given it to Langdon as a birthday present two years ago. He had put a photograph of her in the lid. “Yes, it’s a picture of me, Larkin. Thank heavens you brought it to me.”

  Tubby said, “It was Langdon, then, who bought the barrel for sixty pounds—a little over an hour ago. Did you suspect that he was taking the powders?”

  “I feared it. My God, I saw him,” she said, knowing now that it was true. “There was a train of barrels coming down along Cheapside, headed for the river. I couldn’t believe it was he who was among them, but it was. It must have been.”

  “He’s bolting down the river like the rest of them, ma’am,” Larkin said, giving Alice the watch. “But we’ll fetch him back if we hurry. Listen, Tubby. We’ll have a boat at Pickle Herring Stairs. Do you know them?”

  “Near London Bridge I believe, just…”

  “Downriver. Dead across from the Tower. Two boats. I know where to borrow them. If he’s already in the river, we’ll have to follow him down. Hurry!” she said, and she dashed out the door, passing by the windows one after another at a run.

  ON THE RIVER

  FOR THE SECOND time that day Alice found herself bound for the Thames in a hansom cab. Not long past she had thought the barreling amusing in its way, or at least some elements of it. Now she thought of it as little less than satanic, and she had no patience for the late afternoon traffic. Just past Cheapside, at Bank Junction, the cab was at a dead stop. The sun was dropping down the sky, evening coming on. She thought of what Larkin had said about following Langdon downriver, and she envisioned doing such a thing in the darkness and of the river funneling out into the sea at Gravesend, impossibly broad and with the wide ocean beyond.

  “I can’t bear it,” she said to Tubby, and then opened the door, climbed down onto the street, hiked up her skirt, and set out at a run, dodging around past Mansion House toward King William Street. She heard Tubby holler something, and she looked back, happy to see that he was following. People stared as she ran along, and she prayed that no one would interfere with Tubby, perhaps thinking that his pursuit of her was ill meant. She dodged in and out, catching her heel on a curb, stumbling and nearly falling, taking to the road when the way was open and then onto the pavement again when the traffic closed in. Tubby caught up with her at Lower Thames Street, where they watched for a break in the crush of coaches and wagons and people on horseback. The way was suddenly open, and she took Tubby’s arm, the two of them making a dash for it, out onto London Bridge where they slowed down at last, the black smoke from passing steamships rising roundabout them as they took a precious moment to search the river for barrels.

  Watermen plied their boats to and fro, dwarfed by the steamships and colliers, which were in turn dwarfed by the tall-masted ships moored in the Pool of London. Barrels bobbed along between the boats and ships, the migration moving forward in earnest, and it seemed little short of miraculous that the barrels weren’t run down. She saw then that to the contrary there were empty barrels among them, some floating just beneath the surface, and she saw a man swimming tiredly, pawing the water like a dog, trying to reach one of the swamped barrels.

  There were yellow bowler hats among the barrelers, and she pointed them out to Tubby, but of course she had no idea whether they were the same yellow hats as those she had seen in Cheapside. It was utterly impossible to tell whether Langdon was among them or already moving past Greenwich on the tide. Pickle Herring Stairs lay somewhere on the right bank opposite the tower, but there were too many impediments—ships and wharves and the swerve of the shore itself—to see them.

  They moved on at a steady pace, glancing futilely at the river now and then, and soon arrived at the top of Borough High Street once more. It was evident that the migration was still in desperate progress. Many barrels had overturned, some occupants lying in a stupor, others crawling out and slogging down the bank, ankle deep in mud, or crawling toward the river on hands and knees. A profusion of police whistles were blowing along with a rising chorus of shouting and screaming.

  The Metropolitan Police had obviously been ordered to put an end to the barrel madness—too late by half, Alice thought. The stairs and causeways were a lumber of overturned barrels. Some of the barrelers made away unhindered, but some resisted with a sort of tired violence, mad with desire to get into the river. The Red Vests were nowhere to be seen, having scarpered before things went bad, no doubt along with Larkin’s friends Charley and Jack.

  Alice held onto Tubby’s arm as they angled across toward Duke Street in order to make their way downriver, but half way across Tubby stopped and shouted, “There’s the scoundrel himself, absconding, by God!”

  Not thirty feet distant stood the man Diogenes, frantically closing up his barrel in the shadow of a tree outside the corner pub. His sign was still open, hanging from the mast lashed to the barrel. A surprisingly large man with a long mulish face stood with crossed arms, blocking the view and evidently intent on defending his master. He peered past the edge of the building, then turned and said something to Diogenes, who slammed a hinged lid and bent over to release what was apparently the brake on a wheel.

  Tubby reached beneath his coat and hauled out his heavy, blackthorn cudgel, which had been hidden, hanging by a cord. He slipped the cord over his wrist before hiding it behind his back. “I mean to put paid to their caper,” he said hastily to Alice. “Across the way, take the first left turning and around to the right and straight on for Pickle Herring Street, and pray that Larkin is waiting. I’ll be along directly.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “There’s a likely looking police sergeant just over there, judging from his uniform. He’d be thrilled to collar Diogenes. I’ll fetch him.”

  Before Tubby could protest she was off and running, covering the fifty yards with her hand waving. “The man Diogenes!” she shouted, pointing behind her. “He’s there behind the corner of the pub, just at Duke Street. He’s got a bully to defend him, so take care.”

  “Does he now?” the man said, blowing a long, double blast on his whistle as he started forward.

  Alice saw two constables break away from the milling crowd in order to follow, neither of them, she was happy to see, being the constables who had been her champions this morning. She hurried after the lot of them at a distance, slowing and looking back as she passed the corner, determined now to make for the river instead of passing the ruckus on Duke Street.

  Diogenes’ barrel stood canted over frontward onto its right-hand axle, the spoke wheel hammered to pieces. The big man sat on the ground, holding his left forearm and looking furious. Diogenes hung from the mast that bore his sign, his coat yanked over his head and he struggling and hollering. Tubby was nowhere to be seen. He had been quick with his cudgel, but his necessary haste might have prevented him from committing a more dangerous crime.

  At the river Alice stepped atop a narrow stone embankment that stood some six feet above the mud and moved along toward her destination, hurrying to catch up to Tubby, who had gone on to the stairs, no doubt. She trailed her right hand along a wall of old brick—the back of whatever buildings stood between Duke Street and the river. Just ahead, where the wall ended, were the Tooley Stairs. She dropped down upon the landing, finding herself amid fallen barrels and a score of worn-out barrelers slumped on the stairs, their migrations having ended at the edge of the river. Her embankment began again beyond the landing, and she went on, making her way to Pickle Herring Street where she nearly ran straight into Tubby. They continued straight on, Tubby glancing over his shoulder, thinking of constables, no do
ubt. There was no sign of pursuit, however, and Alice gladly took his arm again, the way clear ahead. They waited for a dray to pass in front of them at Battle Bridge Street, and then crossed Stoney Lane unhindered, Pickle Herring Stairs lying not twenty yards ahead. Alice saw Larkin and two of her crew heading toward the stairs in two boats. They were near in to shore and in the shadow of a tall ship. Larkin’s cohorts, a boy and a girl, sat side-by-side in a down-at-heels scow, each pulling on an oar. Larkin stood in the stern of a skiff, sculling her craft along at a rapid clip with a single oar over the transom.

  “Climb aboard!” Larkin shouted, when Tubby clapped onto the skiff’s mooring line. The two in the scow backed water and stood off ten feet. “Miss Alice with me,” Larkin ordered, “and Tubby into the scow!”

  Alice did as she was told, sitting on a thwart facing forward, realizing that they were already away, back into the shadow of the ship and heading downriver. She looked behind to see Tubby climbing nimbly aboard the scow as it bumped along the short landing, the bow heaving downward with his weight so that it nearly took on water. It righted again and came along in their wake, and soon they were into the sunlight once again, what was left of the sunlight. The shadows on the river were long, now, and the dome of St. Paul’s would soon hide the sun.