Medi-Evil 3

Contents

The Gaff

To Walk On Thorny Paths

A Plague
On
Both Your Houses

The Destroyers

Colossus

Sources

 
THE GAFF

 
‘Professor
Feltencraft’s
Penny-Gaff

Wondrous Entertainment ... Thrills and Fun

See ... The Indian Rubber Man

See ... The Amazing
Mandelsons

See ... The Singing Violet

See ... Exotic dancers, Dora and Fanny

See ... Professor
Feltencraft

genius
, comic singer and famous impresario’

The notice hung under a gas-jet on a corner of Drury Lane. Ketch and Bobber regarded it blank-faced, before taking the narrow thoroughfare which led to the tiny theatre.

 
A great crowd was already jostling to get inside, and a peeler on hand to maintain order. Ketch and Bobber watched him carefully as they took their places at the back, but he was too distracted to notice them let alone associate their faces with the very poor likenesses scrawled on the wanted posters.

 
Inside the red-brick building, which had once been a small warehouse, a piano was playing wildly and raucous shouts and laughter could be heard. Friday night was a good night for entertainment, of course. The women and girls in the crowd wore their best, though in most cases this amounted to patched, ankle-length frocks, French boots and feathered hats. Many of the men and boys were still in their work-clothes, coated with dust or ash, and puffing hard on their pipes as they thrust their way inside. All were in a frenzy of excitement.

 
Except for Ketch and Bobber.

 
They waited quietly. And the reason was simple. Under Bobber’s long coat, a pistol and cutlass were concealed. Under Ketch’s there was a blunderbuss loaded with nails. They never hesitated to go on the job armed. Why should they? The two of them already faced several death-sentences each, if caught.

 
Just inside the door to the theatre, there a notice on an easel read:

Price one penny. Places at the front,
tuppence

 
Beyond
it,
seated in front of a tatty curtain of crimson baize, a slatternly-dressed woman with a butterfly-mask covering her face, collected money. She was admitting the audience, one by one, through a large rip in the material and dropping their coins into a wooden box by her stool.

 
Ketch and Bobber gazed at the box as they shuffled closer. It was brimming with copper. The thought crossed their minds to do the job there and then, and probably get away with minimum fuss, but they knew that several boxfuls would already have been taken through to the back-rooms. At this late stage, it was pointless to throw away the greater prize for something so much smaller.

 
The two bandits had been trawling penny-gaffs all over London, but none they’d found turned half as much business as this one. Six houses a night, it played to, and with this the last of the evening the takings would now be awesome. Neither Bobber nor Ketch knew much about the theatre’s owner, this so-called Professor
Feltencraft
, but they’d heard he entertained as many as three-hundred persons a show. No-one had ever known a penny-gaff as popular as that, but apparently this
Feltencraft
offered performers of energy if not quality.

 
“It’s them two flash-dancers, I’ve come for,” a lad said, as the thieves followed him through the curtain.
“Fanny and Dora.
Dance like wild things, they do. Leave their drawers off, too!
Strewth
, mate ... you can see everything!”

 
Neither man was interested. When this job was over, they’d be able to buy as much of that as they wanted. Maybe even the high priced whores on Haymarket.

 
If it had been push-and-shove on the other side of the curtain, on this side it was a virtual brawl. They found themselves in the ‘pit’ area, jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with drunken ruffians and their women. To one side, narrow stairs led up to the gallery, but this was already dangerously crowded, its timber frame creaking and sagging under the weight of jostling people. The decor was of the poorest quality; the ceiling bare plaster and riddled with cracks, the walls draped with old material so torn and ingrained with filth it was impossible to make out the once cheerful images emblazoned on it. So loud was the uproar that the pianist at the front, struggled to be heard, though his determined efforts were impressive. The room stank of gin and was filled with pipe-smoke.

 
Neither of the thieves
were
of a mind to worry about that.

 
“An hour or so,” Bobber said. “I reckon we can handle that.”

 
“Aye,” Ketch replied. “Soon as this lot’s cleared.”

 
So they waited patiently, two motionless figures in the chaos.

 
At length, the pianist’s efforts rose to a crescendo, and the stage curtain was drawn back. Rowdy applause accompanied this. The stage was ten feet square at the most, with several gas-bulbs along the front to illuminate it. Its drab rear wall was stained where eggs and fruit had been thrown in the past. In fact, someone flung something now – just for good measure. It didn’t seem to bother Professor
Feltencraft
, who came stumbling to the front in the garb of a gentleman gone to the dogs. He wore a crumpled topper and a ridiculously large flower in his dusty lapel. He was short and round, with a huge belly and a broad, sallow face, blotched from excessive drinking. He might have been under the influence at this moment.

 
“
Ladeeeeez
and gentlemen,” he began. “Welcome to my palace of pulchritude, my mansion of miracles,
my
chateau of
shenanigens
...”

 
Roars of laughter followed, and coarse cries of ‘get on with it!’ Another egg flew. Professor
Feltencraft
wasted no more time, but quickly went into a comic song, accompanied by the pianist. It extolled the virtues of other men’s wives, and was essentially a stream of innuendos. The crowd hooted, whistled and shrieked hysterically. Bobber and Ketch watched in silence. Of the two, Bobber was the brains. He it was who identified jobs and planned them down to the final detail. That didn’t mean he wasn’t at least as vicious as his partner. Leg-irons and regular floggings on the prison-ships had eroded the few fragments of decency left in him after a fatherless childhood in the tar-black sprawls of
Southwark
and Rotherhithe. As he stared at
Feltencraft
, his hand tightened on the hilt of his cutlass. This drink-sodden buffoon made hundreds of quid a night for doing nothing.
Hundreds of quid that by rights belonged to Bobber.
He only hoped the bloody old sot would try and stop him.

 
Eventually, the master of ceremonies gave way to
Alab
Abbab
, the Indian Rubber Man.
He
waddled on in turban and loincloth but in a sitting posture, walking on his hands. Hisses and cries of derision accompanied the act throughout, though
Abbab
managed to contort himself into some astonishing positions. It seemed that every bone in his body must be hinged or jointed. One very curious thing about him was the
greyish
tinge of his skin.
And his bland expression.
Didn’t he feel anything from his twisting and warping?