Homunculus (31 page)

“And wait just a minute,” cried St. Ives, furrowing his brow. “These corpses were just lying about until you came in?”

“That’s it, guv’nor. Dead as herrings, then all of them jumped to it like they heard the last trumpet. Damn me if they didn’t.”

“And this business of the dancing skeleton,” asked St. Ives of Godall, “and the piano playing and the chicken bones or whatever sort of bird it was…”

“How’d yer know about that?” asked Kraken, amazed.

St. Ives nodded at Godall by way of explanation, as if to indicate that there was little or nothing that the man didn’t know. “Where was this box when all of that business was transpiring?”

“On the piano,” put in Kraken. “I tried for it, too, but the humpback nearly killed me with a spade.”

“By Christ!” whispered St. Ives, striking the table before him with his fist. “What if... what if... Wake up Keeble! Straightaway.”

Waking the toymaker took a full minute, either because he was so enormously fatigued or because the very spark of life within him had begun to fade, but in time he was conscious and listening to St. Ives. Yes, he said, the emerald box and the homunculus box were identical, beyond the eccentricities of carving and painting that went with that sort of handiwork. Might Nell Owlesby, in her agitated state, have crossed them up? Of course she might. Nell was summoned. She admitted that such an error was possible. Birdlip, she said, might indeed have the emerald. She paused, frowning. “I beg of you,” she said, looking particularly at Captain Powers, “not to think me mad for asking this. But could the little man speak?”

“Absolutely,” said St. Ives immediately. “According to your brother’s manuscript, it was rarely silent - kept up a night and day harangue, an utterly tiresome performance, in any of a number of languages, not all of them of earthly origin.”

Nell nodded. “I never read his papers,” she said simply, assuming that her reasoning would be apparent. “I only ask because I suffered in Jamaica the certainty that the emerald spoke to me - the fear, that is, that I was going mad. I was feverish. I’d hidden the box in a table beside my bed. And in the night I awoke in a sweat, tossing, certain that a voice had issued from the box in the darkness, and had uttered the name of the false prophet that we’re daily more familiar with. I sought this man out, revealed that I’d heard his name in a dream, and, I fear, confessed all, going so far as to tell him that the homunculus - a creature he took an unwarranted interest in - was with Dr. Birdlip. I’ve told no one of this but Captain Powers. It was part of those shameful and dreadful early years. And I’m afraid, dear,” she said, addressing the Captain particularly, “that I omitted any reference to the box having spoken. It seemed those long months later to be a product of fever.”

Kraken had sat stony-faced through Nell’s speech, but he could sit still no longer. “If it please your honor,” he said to St. Ives, “I’ve heard the blasted thing speak too. I’m damned if I haven’t. Last Thursday night, it was. Lord knows what it said, buried in the floor there while you gentlemen carried on in the next room. Yes, sir, I’ve heard it talk, and I didn’t have the horrors neither.”

“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 Owlesby 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.”