Homunculus (16 page)

“I’ll trade you the woman for it,” said Shiloh, smiling for the first time that evening.

Narbondo shrugged. “What do I want with her? She’s a murderess. I haven’t any interest in a murderess, have I?”

“You’ve been asking after her around the city for a month. You’ve offered, in fact, nearly twice that sum for news of her. I’m prepared to let her go at a bargain.”

The hunchback shrugged. He turned to Nell, who sat as before, staring into the night. She had a faint idea of what brought the two villains together - what information Narbondo craved even after fifteen years.

“Where is the box?” the doctor asked abruptly.

“Ask the old man,” Nell said. “He knows.”

Narbondo spun round and faced the evangelist, who stood now with a look of satisfaction on his face. He shrugged. “This is,” he said slowly, as if contemplating each word, “a matter of mutual gain, is it not?”

Narbondo started to speak, apparently thought better of it, and fell silent. Then, after a pause, said: “Where is the box? I want it. Now.”

The old man shook his head. “I’ll pay for services rendered. I’ve seen no services yet.” Then, suddenly coming to himself, he gestured at the slab behind him. “Tonight,” he said. “Immediately.”

Pule groaned, slumping into a chair. Narbondo nodded, as if the request were simple enough, and plucked an apron from a hook, hissing at Pule to prepare for surgery.

“How…?” began Pule, but the hunchback cut him off with a curse. Shiloh backed toward a chair that sat opposite the fire, his face a mixture of reverence, satisfaction, and trepidation.

T
heophilus Godall hurried along through the rainy streets, listening to the receding footfalls of Langdon St. Ives, and pondering the strange state of Captain Powers, who had evidently suffered a loss of articles unknown to the rest of them. This business was difficult enough when the bits and pieces were apparent. When they were hidden, it grew frustrating indeed -interesting certainly, but frustrating.

He’d become accustomed to staying up nights. He hadn’t any business to speak of, so he could afford to nod off in pursuit of a couple of hours of sleep in the morning. It was close upon two o’clock. The night and the weather would cover his lack of disguise. He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, tapped his stick decisively on the cobbles, and set a course toward Pratlow Street, rounding the corner as a lit window midway down the block was thrown open and a cylindrical bundle sailed out, smashing to the pavement below, followed by a shout clipped off by the shutting of the window. Godall hurried along and bent over the thing in the street. It was a dead fish of indeterminate sort - its head and most of its body having been reduced to muck by its sudden collision with the roadway. Godall turned and strode away up the stairs into his bare, rented room, arranging the curtains so as to have his usual view of the cabinet of Ignacio Narbondo.

He could see, from his curtain, three men in the room, all of whom were familiar. Shiloh, the self-proclaimed messiah, exhorted the hunchback and his assistant. He seemed to be railing at them, and now and then Godall could make out bits of shouting over the wind and rain. The hunchback squirted yellow mist at a corpse on the slab - a skeleton on the slab - from a hand-held device fed by a coiled tube. A fire roared behind him in the grate. Encased within a heavy, glass, liquid-filled jar was a tiny object of some sort - too small to identify. Herbs burned in a stone chalice. The evangelist collapsed to his knees in the semblance of prayer, and Narbondo, apparently treading on the old man’s hand, stumbled and sprayed his yellow mist onto Pule, who staggered away retching. The hunchback paused to shout at the old man, who arose and stepped back a pace, out of the way of the window.

A fresh flurry of rain dimmed Godall’s vision for a moment, but he squinted through it, focusing on the thing that lay on the slab. Surely, thought the tobacconist - surely the hunchback wasn’t attempting to animate such a thing. But he was wrong. The machine generated mist that hovered in the air above the corpse. The chalice smoked. Narbondo fished out the business in the jar and, nodding to Pule, shoved it into something that resembled a garlic press and squeezed it into the gaping mouth of the corpse.

The old man fell back, his hands covering his face. Narbondo pumped at the machine. The thing on the slab lurched once, a scattering of debris falling from its tangle of hair, and seemed to rise as if by levitation. The shouts of Narbondo were audible but were reduced by the windy rain to gibberish.

The body jerked twice, stiffened, and very slowly began to pull itself up onto the elbow of its handless arm, as if it would slide from its slab and walk, It turned its leathery head back and forth, blind, barely animate, an unholy, rusted machine. Its other arm rose and followed the swiveling head as it rotated on its axis toward the window. For one gut-clutching moment Godall was certain the thing was looking at
him,
but the head rotated farther, settling its vacant gaze on the trembling evangelical, its pointing hand hovering in the air, as if in accusation or, just as easily, supplication. The old man clutched his robes, his hands opening and shutting in a gesture of fear and wonder. Then, like a card house tumbling, the corpse dropped straightaway to the table, and the pointing hand clacked to the floor. The old man gasped and reeled forward. Narbondo clouded the room with his vaporizer, casting it down, finally, and plucking up a fallen hand. He fought off the old man’s efforts to wrestle it away, then stopped, shrugged, and tossed it onto the slab beside the heaped bones.

The mist still clouded the room. Through it, striding toward the courtyard window, came a woman who appeared to Godall to be about forty. Supposing, perhaps, that she would attempt to meddle with the corpse, the old man rushed at her, protesting. She slammed him in the side of the head with her clenched fist, burst past him, and flung open the casement, leaning out, either for a breath of air or to throw herself from the window. Godall squashed the instinctive urge to drop the curtain and duck back into his darkened room. Instead, he looked straight at her, and, as if he were passing her on the pavement at midday, he tipped his hat to her, then slid round so that he could just barely see beyond the casing.

All three of the men in the room opposite dragged her back from the window, mortally fearful, it seemed to Godall, that she would indeed tumble out and fall the three stories to the dark stones of the courtyard below. Godall carefully slid the latch on his own window and shoved it open a crack. He was met by a rush of wet air and a cacophony of voices, accusing and shouting oaths. The men tugged on the woman as if she were a money-filled purse in the hands of thieves, until, with a lurch that threw the hunchback against his aquarium, she yanked herself free. Pule reached for her, and she kicked him in the leg.

The short, uneasy truce that followed was interrupted by the old man, who seemed to suffer a sudden fit of remorse over the state of his fallen mother. “You’ve ruined her!” he cried, waving at the corpse and turning suddenly on Narbondo. “You’ll… you’ll…
pay!”

The hunchback shrugged, suddenly seeming calm. “No,” he said, straightening his coat and winking at the woman.
“You’ll
pay.” And with that he jerked open the door and nodded toward the black hallway without. “I’m not done with your mother. This is something of a success. If our carp hadn’t been so thoroughly dealt with, she’d be dancing us a minuet at the moment.” And with that he brought his hand down onto the keys of the open piano by the door, dragging his hand along them in a rush of heightening notes.

Shiloh looked from Narbondo to Pule and from Pule to Narbondo, not moving when the hunchback jerked his head toward the door. In the hallway stood two men, one in a turban, the other with a mutilated face. The woman shrank back toward the window once again but was grasped by a frightened Pule. The man in the turban bowed to the old man and produced a pistol from his waistcoat, pointing it at the hunchback.

“Come, my dear,” said the evangelist, waving a hand at the woman. Godall could barely hear his suddenly softened voice. The turbaned man leveled the gun across his upraised forearm, directly into the gaping Pule, who shoved the woman into the waiting arms of the old man. “My offer still stands. Each of us wants a particular woman alive. We haven’t long, have we?” And not waiting for an answer, Shiloh, the woman, and the toughs stepped through the door and were swallowed by darkness.

Godall took the stairs two at a time and was on the street before them. St. Ives’ story of the two men in the house of prostitution left little doubt in his mind of the identity and nature of Shiloh’s accomplices. He hoped they were as feeble as St. Ives supposed. On the strength of the brougham parked around the corner on Old Compton Street, Godall crouched in the dark alcove of the doorway, supposing the party would pass him going out.

A door slammed, footfalls clattered on the steps of the house next door, and a moment later four dim figures hurried past, the woman dragged along unceremoniously by the old evangelical, who made a sort of unidentifiable mewling sound - something between a titter and a groan. Godall stepped silently to the walk behind them, his own footsteps lost in theirs. With no attempt at stealth, he grasped the coat of the turbaned man, jerked it back, and in the instant the man turned toward him in surprise, Godall plucked the revolver from a belt about the man’s waist.

It seemed likely that threatening two walking dead men with a revolver would avail him little, so he leaped past both of them, clutched Shiloh by the front of his cloak, and shoved the revolver against the side of his head, holding his stick under his arm.

“I’ll thank you to release the woman,” said Godall.

The old man let her go without hesitation, waggling both hands over his head as if to demonstrate that he had no intention of arguing.

Godall released the old man’s cloak and handed Nell his stick. “Theophilus Godall,” he said, bowing, “at your service.”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Nell Owlesby, sir,” and watched Godall’s face, which made an incomplete effort to disguise its surprise.

Turning again to the old man, who stared nervously at the gun, Godall said: “You’ll accompany us for a way. Your friends will remain here.”

“Of course they will. That’s just what they’ll do. They’ll stay very well put. Won’t you, my sons?”

The two were silent. Godall edged backward along the pavement, fearing suddenly that the man with the ruined face might also be armed. But he made no movement at all. They stepped from the curb and hurried along toward the end of the street. The east was gray with dawn light, and the city was awakening. Clouds overhead were breaking up, and the moon blinked through, pale as a ghost. The morning was lightening the neighborhood dangerously. If they could slip round the corner and down a block or two, they’d leave the old man to shift for himself and would make away toward Jermyn Street.

The evangelist began to utter monosyllabic spiritual doggerel about damnation and pain, and, still walking backward, he smashed his eyes shut, as if praying or as if clamping out the sight of a world too coarse and evil to be tolerated. He stumbled, nearly precipitating the three of them into the gutter. Godall, hesitating out of general chivalry to cuff an old man, said simply, “Walk, will you!” They rounded the corner and approached the parked brougham.

A horse whinnied. Godall spun toward it, surprised at the sudden noise. A curse rang out from directly over his head, and before he had time to sort the curse from the whinny, someone had dropped like an ape onto his back from the roof of the brougham.

The driver. There had been a driver, thought Godall wildly and ineffectually as he was borne down onto the wet street. His gun clattered away along the cobbles. He grappled with his attacker, striking at the man whose arms encircled his neck. But the backhand blows were worth nothing, and the man slid his forearm in beneath Godall’s shoulder and around the back of his neck. Godall’s head pressed against his own chest. His right foot kicked back and found the curb. He pushed, rising to his knees. His assailant was curiously light, but light or not, the pressure he exerted on Godall’s neck sharpened. His hat had been shoved down half over his eyes and somehow clung there as tenaciously as the man on his back, unwilling to let go. Below the brim he could see the two thugs rounding the corner, loping toward them, and the old evangelist stooping to pick up the fallen pistol.

Godall stamped once in that direction, but accomplished nothing. He stood up, the man clinging like a bug, and ran backward into the side of the brougham. The wagon lurched on its springs; the horse bolted forward. There was a guttural shriek in Godall’s ear as the man on his back twisted away, jerking Godall after him and off balance. As he fell he saw Shiloh recoiling from a blow. It was Nell with Godall’s stick. She held it by the tip, and, when Shiloh made another feeble attempt to grasp the fallen pistol, she cracked him in the ear with the ivory moon handle, then turned to thrust the tip into the throat of the turbaned man, who sailed in to aid his fallen comrades.

Godall leaped on the pistol, rolled heavily onto his side, and waved it menacingly. The turbaned man kneeled in a huddle, gagging. The evangelist sat dripping blood along the line of his scalp, shaking his head slowly, casting Nell a dark look of pain and rage. The driver of the brougham lay entangled in the spokes of the rear wheel, which had caught his foot when the horse leaped forward, and had spun him from his perch on Godall’s back.

The battle, clearly, was over. Godall hesitated. Should he take the old man with him? But Nell was already hurrying away, carrying his stick. The sky was clear and gray. An approaching wagon jangled in the silent morning. Godall gave the pistol a final wave, turned, and jogged after Nell Owlesby. When he passed Lexington two blocks down he looked back to see the ghouls bent over their hunched saviour.

NINE