Part 17 (2/2)

Mother brought Bill a saw, handing it across to him just as the man opened his eyes and stared around himself, stupefied. ”Bluff,” she whispered, ”Or it'll be you that's looking at a rope, Bill. Hear me now.”

Kraken gave a curt nod, took the saw by the handle, and ran his finger along the blade to test it, immediately drawing a line of blood that he showed to the man as an ill.u.s.tration.

”What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l?” the man croaked.

”h.e.l.l is just the word for it,” Mother Laswell said, leaning over him and looking into his face. ”My companion wants very badly to saw your head off.”

The man stared up at her face, which was set like a stone mask, and she reached down and pinched him hard on the ear. ”That's meant to clear your mind,” she said. ”Alice St. Ives is she alive? Mind that you tell us the truth this time, as you value your neck.”

He managed to nod.

”I'm a-going to saw out his vocals,” Bill said. ”He's murdered Alice. It's nothing but lies with the likes of these here by-G.o.d cutthroats.” Then he laughed aloud. ”Did you catch that, Mother? A 'cutthroat' I called him!”

”That's wit for you,” Mother said, as Bill laid the saw across the man's throat, allowing gravity to bear it down so that small pinp.r.i.c.ks of blood rose beneath the teeth of the saw. The man lay deadly still, breathing hard and making small sounds in his throat.

”No, sir!” he gasped out. ”She's alive, by G.o.d. She ain't dead. He didn't want her dead.”

”Who didn't want her dead?” Mother Laswell asked. ”Who is this 'he'? The truth now!”

”Shadwell! Him who drove off in the wagon.”

”Where to?” Mother asked.

”I don't know!”

Bill pressed lightly on the saw, letting the weight of the instrument make his argument for him.

”It's a place over near Harley Street, and now I'm a dead man for saying it.”

”Give us an address, and we'll set you free.”

”Wimpole Street, top end, number fourteen, with a gatehouse on the street. Elysium Asylum, it's called, run by a man named Peavy. That's G.o.d's truth. It ain't the first time they've done it, neither.”

”With your help, they did it,” Mother Laswell said. ”Cut him down, Bill, and we'll heave him into one of these coffins and nail down the lid. If he's lied to us, he'll have time to consider his ways, as the Bible recommends. If he's told the truth, we'll come back and set him free.”

Bill sliced the rope with his clasp knife, and the man slammed to the ground.

”You won't put me in no box!” he shouted.

”On the contrary, that's just what we'll do,” Mother Laswell told him, ”as you did to our friend.”

Bill hauled an empty coffin beside the trussed up prisoner, who tried desperately to roll beneath the bench, but managed simply to jam his shoulder under it, his face in the dirt. Kraken tilted the coffin on its side, and he and Mother Laswell rolled the man easily into it and then heaved the box upright. Bill picked up the lid, at the sight of which the man jack-knifed upward, and Mother Laswell slapped him hard across the face. He slumped downward, startled by the blow, and Kraken put his foot on his neck.

”Here's the thing, cully,” Bill said. ”You lie still, and I'll put some holes into the box so's you won't smothercate. If you're a-lying, you won't never see us again. Mayhaps you can shout the lid open. If we find Mrs. St. Ives, and she's fit, we'll send word to the chapel, and you ain't dead after all.”

”You have our word on that, sir,” Mother Laswell said, and the man looked from one to the other of them, still shaking his head.

Kraken fitted the lid onto the top of the casket and pounded a half dozen nails into it. Then he drilled two holes through the lid with a heavy auger, cast the tools aside, and the two of them went straight out into the windy afternoon. The graves were cast in cloud shadow now, the wind blowing the high gra.s.s. Mother Laswell put the padlock through the hasp and locked the door. They heard a wooden thumping from within the shed now, along with a m.u.f.fled shouting, although from ten feet away it was scarcely audible.

The hansom cab carrying Hasbro and Tubby Frobisher rattled along, returning them to the Half Toad in Smithfield. The morning had been a waste, and Tubby stared bleakly out the window. ”Dead boys, forsooth,” he said. ”Klingheimer is shutting us out is what he's doing, and the Board of Works is abetting him. If boys were discovered with legs and necks broken, they were certainly pitched into the pit a-purpose to bring this to pa.s.s, although I'd bet a fiver there were no boys at all.”

”Certainly the thing was contrived,” Hasbro said, ”but unless I'm mistaken, Major Cantwell is doing his duty as he sees it.”

”And I must do my duty to Uncle Gilbert. If Klingheimer has closed this pa.s.sage, then there's a pa.s.sage that he has not closed. I don't for a moment believe that he has shut himself out of the underworld. I want to know where it is, this other pa.s.sage. I'm incapable of cooling my heels at the Half Toad when the answer to the mystery lies with Klingheimer and his minions.”

”Wait until St. Ives joins us and we can reconnoiter,” Hasbro said.

”You have a duty to St. Ives and Alice,” Tubby told him. ”My duty is to my uncle. Every hour that pa.s.ses lessens the odds of finding him alive, or so I fear.”

They turned up Fingal Street now, and the cabby reined in the horses outside the inn. Hasbro opened the door and climbed down onto the street, and Tubby leaned across to speak through the door. ”I won't play the fool,” he said, although he had a hard, desperate look about him. ”If there's nothing to be discovered, I'll return straightaway. Leave word with Billson if the lot of you go out again, and I'll follow.”

Hasbro nodded curtly, gave the driver further instructions, and shut the door as the coach moved out into the traffic.

THIRTY-ONE.

THREE SEVERED HEADS.

The portable vivarium had been rolled out of the way, but Narbondo sat in it as ever, looking out like an ape in a tree, his eyes open and filled with unmistakable loathing. The box sat on a wheeled cart, and Dr. Peavy ordered Pule to take it out the back now and load it into the van, not forgetting to lock the van door afterward. He would want it again later, but in the meantime Narbondo could sit in the darkness, Peavy said, rather than foul the air in the surgery with his dirty looks.

The surgical theater was scrupulously clean and neatly arranged, most of the equipment on wheels, which would make it easier to scrub the floors and walls. The floor was constructed of large marble tiles, each some three-feet square and snowy white. St. Ives had been in a number of surgeries in his time, both privately and publicly funded, but he had never seen such extravagance. There were drops of blood on the floor where Clara had sat, but otherwise the floor was pristine. Even as this came into his mind, Peavy himself wiped away the blood with the same cloth that he had used to clean Clara's arm, and then without speaking a word he went out through the door, leaving St. Ives alone with Jimmy, Pule, and Klingheimer.

Electric lamps behind red shades went on as if by magic along the wall to St. Ives's right. The red glow illuminated a confusion of bubbling apparatus bladders, aerators, India-rubber tubing, enormous gla.s.s bottles full of the green fluid much of it resting atop a long wooden bench. He was startled to see that three human heads sat on barbers' basins on that same bench, the green fungal elixir running from their mouths and nostrils. The severed necks were fixed upon thick cross-sections of luminous mushroom stem, each stem apparently regenerating a cap becoming whole again so that the heads seemed to wear collars.

The heads were in various states of preservation, two men and a woman. There were two other basins, empty of heads, although with a piece of stem mounted in each, a plinth waiting for a statue, and the fluids bathing them. Hanging from pendant rings nearby were three empty, wire bird-cages each of which might have held a large parrot, but without perches and with broad doors. Evidently they were used to transport the barbers' basins, and were the same that he had seen being unloaded from the van earlier.

”I told you that you would see wonders, Professor,” Klingheimer said. He had obviously regained his self-possession, and he appeared to be gratified by the unhappy scowl that was fixed on St. Ives's face. Klingheimer produced a pair of aura goggles from within his coat and put them on, gazing for a moment at a nearby lamp. ”I'll introduce you to our charges, although I see now that one of them has expired. With the aid of these very interesting goggles I can tell you that his inner light has quite gone out.”

He gestured at the first of the heads a woman's head. The flesh, with its telltale green tone, was remarkably preserved, and the eyes were shut. Although he had never seen her or at least her face St. Ives had no doubt that it was Sarah Wright. There was nothing of the death mask about her features, however. Clearly a semblance of life was preserved by the fluids.

”I see that you know the woman, sir Sarah Wright, as you have ascertained. I also see that after your initial distaste you reacted with intellectual interest. It is a marvel, is it not? The gentleman in the middle is James Harrow, dead beyond recovery, as I said. You recognize him, no doubt.”

”Of course I do,” St. Ives said. ”I expected as much.”

”There was too little life left in him when Peavy removed his head, and the fungi have apparently failed to revive him.”

St. Ives said nothing.

”He had a first-rate mind, or at least an excellent memory. I was anxious to look into it, perhaps to engage with it, although I have little interest in natural philosophy, except as a means to an end. The third head is a terrible creature, once married to your friend Harriet Laswell and stepfather to our mutual friend Narbondo one Maurice De Salles. His is a long and interesting history. Would you like to hear it?”

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