Infernal Devices Read online

  At the designated hour I hastened back to Fexton's abode. The street was still deserted, but that was to be expected, given the lateness.

  Once again I mounted the precarious steps and stood on the landing outside Fexton's door. I rapped upon it and called his name, but no answer came. But, leaning close, I could hear an anxious-sounding whine from the small dog within. Perhaps its master, returned from the secretive errand on which they had embarked, had fallen asleep.

  I pushed open the door and peered within. The candle on the table had burned level with the cracked dish that held it, the flame guttering in the pool of wax. By the flickering illumination I could see, not the coiner, but only the dog scratching at what I took to be an elongated bundle of old rags upon the floor. It renewed its whining, prodding with its sharp muzzle the object so much bigger than it. As I bent closer to see, the dog's efforts succeeded in rolling part of the bundle free: the blank face of its master, one eye hidden by the shattered glass of his spectacle lens, gaped up at me. The dog let loose of the grey shirt collar and nuzzled the unresponding visage.

  I stood back aghast, seeing for the first time the shining wet surface of the floor beneath the stricken man. The front of his shirt was imbued with the same scarlet, still oozing from the rents in the cloth and the flesh beneath. The prints of my boots remained in the puddled blood – as the sight drove me stumbling backwards.

  My heels caught on something soft; I only saved myself from falling by catching the edge of the table beside me. I looked behind me, and – with heart racing beyond excitement to fear – saw another form, as silent and motionless as that of Fexton.

  I knelt down, legs trembling, and found the man's upraised shoulder. The figure turned over on to its back, and I found myself staring into the burnished, scar-etched features of the Brown Leather Man. His chest was also slashed and wet, but the fluid mingling on the floor with Fexton's darkening blood was itself clear; the briny smell, sharp in my memory, came to my nostrils as I looked at my own glistening hand.

  The expiring candle blew out in a sudden rush of wind from the doorway. I scrambled upright as the light from a small hand lantern fell upon me. Dimly beyond its glare, I could make out the silhouettes of a pair of men.

  "What's this, then?" spoke one of them. "Who's this 'un?"

  "Mother o' Gawd. I told you we should've brought all the gear the first time." His companion leaned forward with the lantern. "Best give him a plumper 'n' bring 'm along."

  I gathered my scattered wits, having gained the impression that these men had no good will towards me, and were possibly the authors of the carnage that filled the room. "See here–"

  My argument went no further than that; the men were on either side; the larger of them stood a good head above me. Or so I thought: it suddenly seemed as if he were looking down at me from an even greater distance. "Give 'im another one," boomed a voice from miles away.

  There was no need; the first blow finally breached my senses, as if it had been a cannonball shattering a castle wall that remains seemingly intact a moment before it crumbles into bits. My cheek lay against the wet floor, betwixt the Brown Leather Man's corpse and my assailant's boots. For a moment, before I lost all awareness, I fancied that I was flying, as one of the men lifted me on to his shoulder.

  6

  A Church Service Goes Awry

  The robed sages of Arabia Felix have written: "There are two things without limit – the stupidity of Man and the mercy of God." (I have had time for religious studies since my retreat from the world's affairs.) I have not yet had proof of the latter, but the former was borne out by the fulfilment of my own lamentable desires.

  I had wished for Excitement, and an end to Boredom; these had been given me, and in abundant measure. But as I regained consciousness, my disordered thoughts reassembling inside my throbbing skull, I would have cried out for the return of every drab and predictable second of my previous existence, so foolishly despised and irrevocably lost. I would have cried thus, but for the rag wadded in my mouth, stoppering all speech.

  The precise nature of my confinement gradually became clear to me. The back of my head – seemingly intact, though I would have otherwise supposed that the blow to it had left fragments on the floor of Fexton's room jostled against the planks of a small cart, sparking a fresh throb of pain with each cobblestone under the creaking wheels. My hands were trussed behind me; against each shoulder another body was pressed tight – the cold forms of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man, I guessed them to be. A rough cover of sacking had been thrown across the faces of the living and the dead, to shield us from the inquiring eyes of any who might look out their windows upon us as we made our progress through the night-clad city. A few times I heard the abducting ruffians murmur to each other from their perch behind the reins.

  A softer murmur of lapping water, and a change in the air filtering through the stiff cloth over my face, signalled our approach to the riverside. The cart came to a halt, shifting slightly when the two men clambered down. From the hollow strike of their boots I surmised that we were on a wharf somewhere in the city's docklands.

  I was fully conscious by this point, my thoughts scurrying to find some exit from my predicament. Whatever curiosity I had once had concerning the affairs of either of the deceased who shared the cart-bed with me, was now extinguished entire. Though I had, through my amateur investigations, discovered less than nothing, with a net result of more mystification than that which I had commenced, I was now perfectly willing to accept continuing ignorance of these matters' explanations as my lot. Surely these men had no malice against me specifically; I was but an inconvenient witness to their unsavoury transactions. I desperately attempted to indicate my willingness to blank my mind of what I had seen, allowing them to go about their business with no fear of scrutiny from myself or any of the constabulary I might have otherwise alerted, but my assuring words were stifled by the wadded rag.

  "Here, you," said one of them, prodding me through the sacking. "Stop gargling about like that."

  I did not heed this admonishment, instead redoubling my thrashing efforts at communication. The ensuing noises earned me a clout on the head that left me dazed and silent, but still cognizant of events around me.

  "Where is he, then?" muttered one of the men.

  "Hang on – here he comes." A third set of footsteps sounded faint against the far end of the wharf's timbers, growing louder as they strode closer.

  A servile anxiety had sounded in my captors' twin voices. This gave rise to the hope that the awaited figure now approaching was their master, or in some other relationship of authority over them. Doubtless, if I could present my case to him, he would correct his underlings' mistake and have me set free, not wishing to compound whatever iniquities had been involved in the deaths of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man. The vow of a gentleman to keep a discreet silence would surely be bond enough to warrant my safe passage out of their keeping.

  The new footsteps stopped at the side of the cart. All three men drew a small distance away, their hushed tones mingling in a hurried conference. I strained at the cords around my wrists, anxious to be free again and away from the grisly freight on either side of me.

  The murmuring voices lapsed into silence; I could hear the trio returning to the cart; the obscuring sackcloth was snatched away from my face. Past the glare of a lantern held above by one of the ruffians, I could barely discern the aspect of the gang's captain. Taller and more slender than his squat and heavy-muscled minions, cloaked and top-hatted as if freshly arrived from opera or ballroom ; all but his eyes were hidden behind a silk scarf that he raised with a gloved hand to prevent any possible recognition.

  I returned the man's inspecting gaze, my muffled voice striving to impart to him that I had information of an urgent nature to communicate, when he drew back from the lantern's circle of light. "Yes." I heard his voice in the darkness, the one word sufficient to indicate the speaker's high degree of cultivation. "Take him out with th
e others," he instructed the two ruffians.

  A moment passed before I realised that I was to share whatever disposition had been decided upon for the two cadavers nestled with me in the cart. I shouted, producing only a gagging cough through the rag in my mouth, and banged my heels against the wood, but to no avail: the gentleman who had so offhandedly sealed my fate could be heard striding away down the wharf. I was roughly seized and slung between the two others' hands as though I were a hundredweight of potatoes, then just as roughly deposited in the damp bottom of a small boat bobbing alongside the dock pilings. My breath was knocked from my lungs by the inert forms of the two corpses landing one after another on top of me.

  The boat tilted as the two men clambered down into it. Over the top of Fexton's skull, the strands of his lank, greasy hair plastered tendril-like against my own face, I could see the edge of the wharf sliding away to reveal the stars overhead, as the self-appointed Charon used an oar to push away from the pilings.

  "Leave off your be-damned snuffling and croaking." The other ruffian gave me a kick from where he sat at the prow of the tiny craft. "Save your breath; you'll be swimming soon enough." The slap of the oars against the dark water provided a dismal counterpoint to his ill-tempered growl, as his companion rowed farther into a deserted stretch of the Thames.

  "This'll do," came the pronouncement. "Likely no deeper than hereabouts."

  "Shouldn't we have weighted them?" The second brought the oars inside. "They'll come up again, now won't they?"

  A grisly consideration: "The tide's running. If they come bobbing up, it'll be miles downriver."

  As I view my hobbled actions with the grace of hindsight, I realise now I would have been better occupied with prayer and silent contemplation of eternity than with attempting to mouth words past the cloth in my mouth. I entreated the men; offered fabulous sums for my release; threatened them with legions of the constabulary – the rag reduced all to a choking mumble.

  The deadweight on my chest was more than halved, as the men lifted Brown Leather's corpse from on top – "Come along, you great ugly bastard," said one, between grunts of effort – and, swinging it by the feet and under the arms, threw it clear of the tottering boat. The impact of the body on the water threw a spray across my own face.

  "And you now–" The ruffians were in a quite jocular mood as they picked up Fexton's lighter weight. "Faugh! Couldn't be bothered with a bath when you was alive, from the smell of you – well, you'll have a long one, if a cold one, now, me boy. Count of three, now – one – two in you go!" Another splash followed the first.

  "Mubble, mubble, mubble," mocked one of the men, as he brought his grinning face close to mine. "Wordy sod, aren't you just?"

  "He can tell it all to his mates," joined the other, indicating the river's dark water with a thumb over his shoulder.

  "Now, let's not be hasty." The two of them crouched at my head and feet, the first tapping my forehead with one broad finger. "Seems a very likeable sort of fellow – very likeable, indeed."

  "Here, what are you on about?" Lifting my head, I could just see the other's scowl.

  "Well, I just thinks a likeable sort of gentleman such as this 'un – prosperous, too, from the looks of that watch we took off him – seems a shame to just pitch him into the drink without so much as giving him a chance to express a proper sort of gratitude to us, if you know what I'm getting at."

  I nodded my head vigorously, striking the still-aching back of my head against the boat's bottom, and attempted to signal with my eyes that I was in complete accord with these sentiments.

  "Bugger that." The hinted proposition was rudely greeted. "Worth our flaming heads, it is – he said pitch this one in, too, so in he goes, I says."

  No! I shouted – or tried to. Listen to your friend!

  "Keep your braces on. I was just toying with the poor devil. See how big his eyes are! – he thought I wanted to let him go."

  "Leave off – bleeding cold it is out here."

  My tormentor grasped me under the arms. "Right enough. Sorry, me fine gent – it's us for the gin-shop, but we won't be seeing you there."

  I felt myself raised up between them into the air, with the first swing to impart the distance necessary for clearing the side of the boat. My brain seemed to rock in identical motion inside its confines as the pin-point stars above streaked, held, then reversed their direction.

  Water erupted around me, yet I oddly felt myself rising a bit higher in the chill air. I realised that the two ruffians, shouting in terror and releasing their grip on my limbs, were falling with me as the boat lifted on a sudden upwelling from beneath, tipping all of its occupants out into the river.

  I struck the water, parting the thin layer of mist cloaking it, and felt the chill darkness flood upward over my face. The cloth was fortuitously dislodged from my mouth; gasping for breath, I bobbed to the surface, still bound at wrist and ankle. In the thin, spectral light I saw the overturned boat, its keel now a shattered, gaping hole.

  A few feet away from me, the river murk was lashed into foam by the struggling figures of the two ruffians. Their faces were contorted with fright as a third form, a man, rose behind them. Gripping each one's shoulder, disdainful of the flailing arms, the dark shape thrust them churning under the dark water, as though they were but two stanchions by which he could thrust himself bodily clear of the river.

  A moment's glimpse was all that was afforded to me. In the panic and shock that the sudden immersion had induced in me, I thought I saw the face of the Brown Leather Man, grimly terrible as the stars glinted off the wet-shining visage. his scarred grimace rigid as he drowned his murderers.

  I slid under the water again. My breath burned in my lungs – briefly; then the water became yet darker, and, just before my consciousness dissolved entire, the cold drained away my own blood. .

  Slowly, as a dreamer recognizes the contours of his pillow, I became aware that my face was pressed against a gravelly muck. At first, I believed this to be the river bottom, and that I had come to rest upon it; my thoughts were but a last flicker before the final extinguishing, or else the beginning of that new, incorporeal nature promised to us in the teachings of the Church. I would, I hoped dimly, be shortly ascending to a higher abode.

  My theological musings were interrupted by a gagging fit that disgorged a considerable amount of river water on to the damp field on which I lay. Lifting my head, I found myself shivering in the chill night air, my sodden clothes clinging about my frame; I took this to mean I was not yet dead. By some means I had been restored from what had been meant to be my watery grave, to a place of comparative safety.

  Safety, if not comfort: the taste of the water was foul in my mouth; and I felt distinctly nauseated from whatever amount I had swallowed while immersed in it. Drenched to the marrow, and in the teeth of the wind that scudded the dark clouds overhead, I would soon have my trembling limbs palsied with a severe ague if I did not find some warmth soon. I pushed myself upright, and realised that my wrists were no longer bound together. My ankles were likewise free; feeling the cords dangling from me, I found them snapped in twain, rather than unknotted or cut. I quickly disentangled the pieces from me and tossed them away. I heard the bits of cord splash into water; kneeling on the wet muck, I saw now that it sloped down to the river's edge. My eyes had become adjusted to the dark, simultaneously with the sorting out of my disordered thoughts; I looked about to assess my situation.

  I appeared to be quite alone; neither my captors, nor the silent forms of my fellow victims, had washed up on this strand with me. (The matter of the Brown Leather Man's murdered status was without doubt, as I had seen the stiffening corpse myself in Fexton's rooms; the apparition that had accompanied the overturning of the ruffians' boat I ascribed to the temporary collapse of my reason, my senses having been overwhelmed by the fearsome circumstances I had endured.) Dark forms, the straight edges and squared corners of unlit buildings, overlapped their silhouettes against the night sky, some
distance from my dismal station. These were the warehouses, chandlers' offices, and other such furnishings to the river trade; various ships could be discerned, moored to the wharves and extending from the banks. All were seemly uninhabited at this late hour, the sailors and docksmen given over to sleep or carouse at the appointed establishments farther into the city. Whatever notion I entertained of calling out to these sources of aid and shelter was quickly dispelled by another consideration: the raising of my voice might also signal my location to either or both of the two ruffians, the tide having possibly drifted them ashore some distance beyond my immediate perception.

  My solitary condition, I soon realised, applied only to the absence of other human beings. I felt the hem of my sodden coat tugged at by a smaller creature, then, when its sharp teeth let go, heard its sharp yapping. A dog, and specifically, Fexton's shabby terrier; I recognised its skipping gait as it circled excitedly around me, barking its delight at my resurrection. How had it come to this spot? The simplest explanation being that it had followed the cart bearing its dead master, faithful as the canine race is to undeserving humanity, and had undertaken a vigil at the edges of the waters where that personage had finally disappeared. It now seemed as if the dog's affections had been transferred to me; perhaps its small mind remembered my intervention against Fexton's cruelty.