by K. W. Jeter
Another mystery – I fancied myself reasonably familiar with the districts of London, but had never heard of Wetwick before. (Would that I were innocent of that knowledge now!) I said as much to the numismatist.
"Nor I," he agreed. "As I said, perhaps his reason was impaired. Perhaps such a place only existed in his poor knackered brain, or at the weedy bottom of the Thames. Though I confess that my knowledge of the city is not encyclopaedic – here, why not hail a cabby, and ask him?"
"Yes; yes, of course." I dropped the coin back into the velvet bag. The drivers of hansoms were noted for their knowledge of London's byways; their trade depended on it. If anyone would know of such a district, it would be one of their number. "Thank you."
My investigations, fruitless as they might have been, had nevertheless taken all day to perform. Evening was already enveloping the city as I stepped from the numismatist's shop on to the thoroughfare. Within short order, I heard the creak of wheel and clop of hoof heralding the approach of a hansom cab. I raised my hand and bade it approach; the driver, from his lofty perch, adjusted the horse's progress with rein and whip, and was soon stopped in front of me.
I looked up at the caped, top-hatted figure. He seemed a good choice; his luxuriant moustache was flecked with grey of age and experience. "Do you know the city well?" I called up to him.
"Of course; get in, sir." His pride seemed somewhat nicked by my possible lack of confidence. "There's not a part I don't know, sir."
My hand reached up to the cab's handle. "Can you take me to the borough of Wetwick?" I asked.
His look of surprised indignation stayed my hand. He drew himself upright and glared down at me. "You didn't look to be that sort of gentlemen." His voice was harsh with barely suppressed outrage at my request. "You might find some other cabby who would take you there – but not this one. A good night to you, then." He snapped the reins and sent the vehicle moving off.
My puzzlement had reached its limit; my brain could encompass no more. Every attempt to penetrate a mystery had been like a lantern's beam down an endless shaft, that reveals only receding murk. My course around London had been a pointless chase; the velvet bag with its curious contents might as well have been tied on a stick to the top of my head for all that I had laid hold of them. Wearied, I turned my steps towards home.
4
The Way to Wetwick
I returned to my shop and discovered that, in my absence, my previous evening's visitors had returned to press their own inquiries with greater persistence.
The premises were still shuttered and dark when I let myself in. No light shone down the stairway leading to the rooms above; at the end of the hallway behind the shop itself spilled a faint glow from the lamp on the workbench. The complete. silence instilled in me a premonitory caution, as I stepped across to the counter. I called for Creff, but no answer came.
Perhaps, I reasoned, he had taken it upon himself to begin work upon the device left by the Brown Leather Man, and was too intent on his labours to respond to my voice. Or some other explanation accounted for the stillness; so I hoped as I made my way, with some trepidation, down the hallway.
I found in the workroom, not Creff, but utter chaos. The bench had been swept clean of all the projects and devices, in various stages of disassembly and reassembly, that had been ranged upon it. Only the burning lamp remained to cast its light over the tools and bits of intricate machinery scattered over the stone floor. As well, all of my father's materials, the great mass of gears, clock frameworks, lifeless mannikins, and other remnants of his fecund career, had been pulled away from the workroom's walls and gone through. Hands moving with burglars' haste had left the pieces in greater disorder than that into which I had let them lapse. Indeed, there was hardly a space remaining to set a foot on the wreckage-strewn floor.
Little caring to see if anything of value had been taken, I turned and ran back to the stairway, calling Creff's name once again. This time, to my ear came a muffled thumping from the floor above.
At the doorway of his small sleeping quarters, I found my assistant, trussed and gagged. He had managed to wriggle one foot from his bonds and thus give the percussive. signal that led me to him. I pulled the wadded handkerchief – a lady's, from the lace and scent on it from his mouth, as it seemed his reddened face was on the point of bursting from the attempt to vent his words.
"It was them!" Creff strained to look around at me as I loosened the knotted cords at his wrists. "Those murdering swine – they came back!"
"That fellow Scape?" I said.
"The very one, the scoundrel." He began rubbing the circulation back into his bloodless hands before turning his attention to the bonds at his ankles. "And the fine lady that was with him – she were the worse of them; vicious as a cat, she were."
I stood up, helping Creff to rise as well, with my hand at his elbow. "How did they get in?"
"No idea, sir; very clever, they were. I heard nary a thing, until a great crashing blow on my skull – I'm surprised my brains aren't scattered all over the floor, they struck me so cruel – and while things were all a swimming about me, I saw their faces looking into mine, and her laughing as she trussed me up like a goose. A fine lady, that one!"
The mystery of their entrance was soon cleared away. Leaving Creff in his room to await the restoration of strength in his wobbly legs, I made a tour of the premises. I soon found the scullery window jemmied open expertly, it seemed, from the small amount of damage to the surrounding wooden frame – and two pairs of footprints, dark with the alley's muck, across to the door.
In the wreckage of the workroom, it was difficult to ascertain if anything of value had been taken. I knew, however, what had been the likely intent of their search. Clearing away a toppled clock frame and gears strewn like brass coins, I uncovered my father's secret cache. Lifting the stone that served as its unobtrusive lid, I peered into its depths: the mahogany casket was still there. I tilted back the wooden lid: the device that my father had built, and that the Brown Leather Man had brought to me for repair, lay inside. The raid on my shop had been unsuccessful.
Kneeling on the cold floor of the workroom, gazing down at the intricate machinery in the hole as if it were some faery gold newly unearthed, yet without seeing it as my own thoughts moved in their courses, I contemplated this latest event. The proper course of action, I knew full well, would be to hail the nearest constable in the street and report the attack on my servant and the burglary attempted, if not consummated – on my shop and stock. I would thus set into motion against these malefactors all the weight of English justice. Which, I believed then in my yet-innocent state, was fully capable of bringing any miscreant to trial and well-deserved punishment. The Law, in its majesty and the power of its representatives, would take the matter out of my hands and, most important, beyond any chance of further harm coming to me or to the persons and objects within my sphere of responsibility. That was what the Law, in its constabulary and bewigged judges, was for; business such as this business had become, was their business now. Certainly not mine; the sooner the whole affair, with all its attendant apparatus of puzzling clockwork device, peculiar forged coin, and retinue of bizarre personages, was turned over to the authorities, the sooner I would be able to return to my own proper activities. The careful tending of my small shop through day after uneventful day, towards whatever small sufficiency or bankruptcy awaited me at the end that was my appointed lot.
So the thoughts marched through my head, in proper order. I cannot excuse my later actions with the plea that I had no idea of what course I should have followed. All men, reaching back to Adam in the Garden, plead Ignorance as their defence; when, if we were but honest, we would admit that the apple was hedged with every warning imaginable. So I too fell; perhaps all sins are not causes but effects, being the result of that first sin, Boredom.
I gazed down into that dark hole and the glittering machinery that had been hidden there, as though I were gazing into the secret workings of
my own heart. Some new thing had entered into my existence; I was spellbound by it, reckless of any consequence. That which should have set my pulse trembling with a natural apprehension, instead hastened it with excitement. I put the thought of constables out of my mind. The Law would have to wait; as though already a fellow criminal, I found it to my advantage to let the authorities' ignorance continue. I resolved to take just a few more small steps – as all progress along a slippery path is initiated – towards penetrating these enticing mysteries.
My blood was up; why wait further? Once restraint is loosened, the chase is afoot. I replaced the concealing stone over the Brown Leather Man's device, then supervised the revivified Creff in boarding up the scullery window. With no explanation to him, I was out to the street, the fever in my brain warming me as much as my greatcoat against the night's damp air.
As I strode along, shouldering my way past the evening's revellers, I recalled the words spoken to me before I had returned to the shop: "You might find some other cabby who would take you there – but not this one." True enough; I was evidently engaged in a dark business; matters that one person might be squeamish about, others might find to their taste.
I had, in the course of my day-to-day errands, noted the particular clientele gathered at one of the Clerkenwell public houses. A former coaching inn, it was now given over completely to the furnishing of drink, the only sleeping accommodations offered being the stone kerb outside as a pillow for the total inebriate. It still retained its yard, which provided ample space for the deposit of cab and horse while the driver was inside slaking his thirst. At no time of day or night were there ever fewer than a dozen such vehicles thus cooped about the welcoming door. No place better, I had decided, for finding the intrepid guide I desired.
Once there, I made my way past the ranked hansoms and the patient horses, their large, blinkered heads lowered in sleep, hooves now and then pawing the cobblestones as if their dreams had restored them from the grey city to pastures greener. The steam of their breaths mingled with the fog blurring the public house's yellow windows. I pushed open the door and entered, passing from the cold into the warm stench of spilled ale and stale tobacco.
The smoke from the clay pipes present at every table was thick enough to hide the low ceiling in a haze of grey. As I pushed my way through the murk, I felt pairs of eyes turn and silently watch my progress. The cut of my clothing, though far from the finest and unobtrusively patched where necessary, was enough to mark my position; the cabbies' own cloaks and highcrowned hats were mired and darkened with long exposure to the inclement weather in which they were forced to make their livings. A gentleman such as they presumed me to be was a rare sight in this, their den.
Standing between the turned backs of two cabbies pointedly maintaining their conversations with their fellows, I laid a shilling on the raw planks that formed the serving bar. The aproned landlord produced a small glass of some vile-smelling clear liquid, presumably gin. The shilling disappeared, leaving no progeny.
Setting the glass down, I stepped back from the counter and cleared my throat ostentatiously. Upon repeat of this performance at a more insistent pitch, I was rewarded with the cabbies on either side breaking off their talk and turning to look at me.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," I said. "I require some small assistance, and perhaps the hire of a vehicle and driver, for which suitable recompense will be made." Their eyes brightened at the mention of payment. "I seek transportation to a certain borough of the city. I am, however, ignorant of its exact location. Therefore, I must trust to the expertise of one of your number in these matters of navigation."
One of the men nodded gravely, gathering the intended flattery more from the tone of my voice than the actual words. "Right enough," muttered a cabby beyond him, having listened along with the others nearby.
"Here," said the cabby on my right hand. "What's this borough you want to go to? Just you name it, and we're off."
"Wetwick," I said.
The man straightened up, raising his gaze from the dregs in his glass in order to train his slitted eyes at me from a greater height. On either side, and in back, I felt the others draw back a fraction of an inch. The room fell quiet, all conversations ceasing in circles around me, as the ripples from a stone dropped in water die out and are still."
For a few moments longer, the cabby stared at me, then turned away. I looked about: every face was averted from me. The noise of voices grew again, as broken conversations resumed, but subdued from their previous level.
"Pardon?" My voice fell as if against brick walls. None of them responded as if they'd heard.
I looked down to see the house's landlord snatch up my glass from in front of me and fling it, contents and all, into a slop bucket behind the counter.
"Now see here; this is very extraordinary." I felt justifiably annoyed at the general treatment I had received. "I demand-"
"Eh, bugger 'em all." Another voice broke in, from close at my elbow. "Fine lot they think 'emselves, but I warrant cheese wouldn't choke 'em, if you get my meaning."
I turned about, adjusting the level of my gaze to the height of the one who had addressed me; the brim of his tall hat, a battered piece even shabbier than the usual cabby's gear, barely came up to my shoulder. Underneath it was a face wizened with age and visibly lewd thoughts, winking and grinning at me. "What was that?" I said. "I don't quite follow-"
The brown-toothed leer grew wider. "'Follow', aye, that's good. Follow me you haven't yet, perhaps, but follow me you might – if I just happened to be going where you wanted to go. Eh?"
His words barely concealed their true intent. "To Wetwick, then?" I said. "You know the district?"
"Hold your clapper, for Christ's sake. I know this place as well, and I believe our welcome's at an end." He nodded towards the landlord, who was advancing along the length of serving bar, rolling his sleeves up over his thickly muscled arms. "I'm only in here to collect a wager; lucky for you – you'd have got no help from this tight-arsed bunch. Bozzimacoo!" The last was said to the landlord leaning threateningly over the counter. "I wouldn't touch the billy stink you push here, anyway! Come on." He tugged me away by the arm. "It'll take that thick Yorkshireman a good hour to remember his own filthy words – then he'll be hopping."
Outside, in the public house's yard, a small dog gave a welcoming yip when the cabby emerged with me in tow. "Shut up, you," growled the cabby. The dog, a mongrel resembling a ratting terrier more than anything else, nevertheless danced around the man's boots, only favouring the limp in one of its hind legs.
"Come along, then." The cabby motioned for me to follow as he weaved, somewhat unsteadily, between the hansoms. "There's a much friendlier jerry-shop down the way – my usual bin."
The cellar he led me to was scarcely better lit than the alley on to which its gap-planked door opened. A horse, its ribs showing beneath the harness of a singularly shabby cab, stood outside – the property of my guide, I assumed.
The cabby spread his black-nailed hands across a table so rickety that every touch sent the flame of the guttering candle in its middle wavering. "Arduous work, it'd be," he said, winking again, thin leather sliding over the blood-specked eye. "All the way to Wetwick – a long trip, that; very long, and parching, if you understand me."
I did indeed; an aproned figure stood next to the table. I handed over another coin, and the person shuffled away to the cellar's far side. While I awaited the bringing of drink, I gazed about the space, my eyes having adjusted to the gloom. Only a few men ringed the walls, either hunched over the half-empty jars in front of them or sprawled back in their chairs, boot heels slid into the puddles dripping off the table on to the dirt floor. One of the latter was young, a gentleman of position far above mine, as evidenced by the fineness of his coat; his youthful cheek, stretched in open-mouthed slumber, was already hollowed by the habits of dissipation into which he had fallen. In stale beer shops such as these he had hastened his destiny, pennyworth by pennyworth. A
cadaverous woman in one of the room's corners slumped forward, grey-streaked hair tangling over her face; at her feet, an infant lay silent in its basket, stricken as if by laudanum or its mother's tainted milk.
Two mugs were deposited on the table, slopping over and nearly drowning the candle. My guide pulled heartily at the frothless murk, rolling his eyes at me over the rim of the vessel. "Very tasty, that," he pronounced, setting it down, a quarter drained.
I left mine untouched. "Now, as to Wetwick-"
"Wetwick," he interrupted. "Yes, indeed; Wetwick; all in good time, sir, all in good time." The word that had raised such abhorrence in the public house, here brought no gaze around to examine the speaker, though the room was small enough for all to overhear us. The sodden drinkers went on staring into the dark spaces that held the residue of their thoughts. "Here, you; leave off that." The small dog had followed us into the cellar, and was now whining and scratching at the cabby's knee. "Leave off, I say, mange-bait; what's got into you?" He looked around to the door and saw a figure making its way down the damp stone steps, balancing an awkward weight across the shoulders. "So that's it, then?" he addressed the dog. "Hungry, are you? Well, well, a bite would not be amiss – for beast or master." He shot another of his slyly calculating glances at me.
The hawking butcher – for such a one it was that had entered – worked his circuit around the cellar, tilting his basket in front of each drinker to expose his bloody merchandise. He found scant trade among a crowd that had lost all appetite except for drink; each inebriate shook his head in turn or continued gazing dully before him. The cabby whistled and signalled the man over. The dog's whining became frenzied as the dark-stained basket approached. My own stomach clenched at the smell of the gone-high meat.
