Homunculus

EIGHTEEN ON WARDOUR STREET

Langdon St. Ives and William Keeble crouched in the darkness of an ill-lit hallway on the second floor of the house on Wardour Street. Their short journey through the sewers had been both unpleasant and uneventful. It had been such an easy business gaining access to the house, in fact, that last week’s song and dance with the clock crystal seemed an idiotically bad idea. Where they were to go now that they were inside, however, remained to be seen.

The air was almost unnaturally still and quiet. There had to have been any number of people within earshot, but in the heavy, somnolent atmosphere, it seemed as if most were asleep — not at all an unlikely thing, given that most of their business was transacted during the night. There was some stirring and banging downstairs, from the kitchen, possibly. Muted voices could be heard, one of which sounded as if it might be the voice of Winnifred Keeble, who, dressed as a washerwoman, might well have gained entrance through the back door. The thought of her confronting the flour-faced cook was bothersome, but Winnifred had insisted. And cleaver or no cleaver, the cook would find Winnifred Keeble a difficult case.

St. Ives and Keeble tiptoed down the hallway, half wondering which room to peer into. Opening the wrong door would be disastrous. Kraken had supposed that Dorothy was somewhere on the third floor, guarded, no doubt, by Drake’s toughs, perhaps by Drake himself. So there was no real need to start peeking into doorways on the second floor, except that the doors presented themselves. Who could say what lay behind them?

They approached the wooden balustrade that fronted the great open hall which St. Ives had been deprived of seeing on his previous visit. There, Kraken had said, lay the starship. Would it be merely an empty hull, stripped and rusted by the centuries? And what purpose did Drake put it to? Was it enough just to possess it, or was there, as rumor had it, some darker, foul purpose? St. Ives thought momentarily of the dreaded Marseilles Pinkle, wrapped in a shawl, lying in the Captain’s wagon on the street. There were, apparently, no limits to the perversions concocted by desperate men. What might such men do with the space vehicle of the homunculus? St. Ives couldn’t imagine.

A sudden sobbing erupted from beyond the door to their right, followed by the utterance of a low laugh. Keeble straightened, his eyes wide. “Dorothy,” he called, half aloud, reaching for the door handle.

St. Ives’ attempt to stop him was in vain. He grabbed the back of Keeble’s coat, whispered, “Wait!” and was pulled into the room along with the toymaker. On a narrow, unmade bed sat a pasty-faced woman wearing what appeared to be a fruit bowl for a hat. Crawling on his hands and knees on the floor was a man in kneebreeches and a striped topcoat, this last being hauled up over his head, the tails caught up and tied with a broad strip of dotted ribbon. On his feet were pointed, women’s shoes, turned around backward and wedged on awkwardly. It was the man on the floor who sobbed in girlish tones.

At the raging issuance of Keeble and St. Ives, the woman on the bed shrieked, and without a second’s hesitation, plucked up a glass vase full of wilted roses and pitched the entire affair at the horrorstruck Keeble. The man on the floor stopped his capering at the sound of the shriek and shouted: “What? Who is it!” He struggled, pinioned helplessly in his coat and shoes and bombarded by the fruit that cascaded from the woman’s hat. She shrieked again, even though her first shriek had driven Keeble halfway back out into the hallway.

Looking desperately for concealment, St. Ives hauled the toymaker along. Doors slammed on the floor below. Two half-dressed, bearded men thrust their heads through a suddenly opened door, then fled toward the stairs, perhaps assuming that St. Ives and Keeble, rushing at them along the hallway, were police officers. Another door shot open and out dashed an enormous gentleman in ventilated rubber trousers, a sheet of newspaper in front of his face. He too bowled away down the stairs toward the street.

Within moments, it seemed, the cry had gone round the house, and the air was full of shouts and pounding feet and the slamming of doors. Behind St. Ives raged the man with the coat over his head, shouting curses, threatening through a mouthful of tweed. His ridiculous twisted shoes lay on the carpet behind. A head, shouting a fearful string of venomous oaths, shot through the gathered coat, the dotted ribbon and coattails encircling his neck like a clown’s collar, his arms cocked up, trapped and thrashing as if he wore a makeshift straightjacket. It was Kelso Drake.

At the sight of Keeble and St. Ives, Drake blanched. His mouth writhed. He flailed away within the confines of his woolen prison. Keeble stopped, dumbstruck. He hesitated a quarter of a second, pondering Drake’s bound state, then slid past St. Ives in a rush and struck the industrialist on the nose. Drake was propelled backward, struggling in his coat, in fear now as well as anger. Keeble struck him again. He grasped a handful of coat front, slapped Drake three or four times on the cheek, then tweaked both his ears. Keeble capered and yodeled before his helpless victim as St. Ives, anxious to conclude their business and be away, hauled at the toymaker’s collar.

With a rip of rending material, Drake was suddenly free of the restricting garment, and, with the cry of a madman, he launched himself at Keeble, punching and flailing at the toymaker, who, with a deliberation and sobriety that startled St. Ives, pulled from his coat a leather truncheon, and slammed the industrialist on the side of the head, felling him to the carpet. Keeble replaced the truncheon, apparently satisfied, and turned toward St. Ives a face pale and beaded with sweat. “I don’t suppose I should kill him,” he said slowly.

“No!” cried St. Ives, hauling Keeble once again along the hallway toward the stairs. Jolting up from the ground floor raged two men, obviously not customers. One, St. Ives realized with a shock of horror, was the man with the chimney pot hat, who held in his hand a carving knife. His companion scrabbled in his coat, perhaps after a gun.

“The bench!” cried St. Ives, grappling with the end of the carved Jacobean trestle bench that sat on the landing. Keeble went for the opposite end. The two men swung it in a quick arch, then let it go, Keeble a second or so ahead of St. Ives. Chimney pot flattened himself against the balustrade as Keeble’s end of the heavy bench swung round, grazing his forehead, plowing into the neck and chest of his companion, who had, to his own great misfortune, been peering into his coat. The man screamed and pitched over backward, he and the bench skidding together down the stairs. Chimney pot was after them, waving the knife.

St. Ives skipped up the stairs, Keeble beside him, both men running headlong into a surprised Winnifred Keeble who supported Dorothy around the shoulders with her left arm. In her right hand she clutched a revolver. “Where on earth…” she began before catching sight of the murderous chimney-pipe. “I have your gun!” she cried, pointing the weapon in his general direction.

He slowed momentarily, cocked his head as if debating the extent of the threat, then rushed heedlessly on. Winnifred pushed Dorothy in William’s direction, grasped the revolver with both hands, and fired off three or four shots, one after the other, eyes closed. St. Ives dove onto his chest, rolling against the wall of the stairwell, as he watched Billy Deener sail over backward and tumble to the floor below, then roll six feet toward the center of the room, his hands over his head, before scrambling away toward the kitchen. The back door slammed in his wake. Kelso Drake staggered into the room below, then abruptly disappeared after he looked up to see the smoking pistol in the hands of Winnifred Keeble.

The Keebles ushered a stumbling and bewildered Dorothy along to the now empty room, all of them intent only on reaching the street. Fearful that they wouldn’t be quick enough, Keeble bent over and scooped the drugged girl into his arms, tilting dangerously for a moment before tossing her just a bit so that she settled in and balanced. St. Ives crouched halfway up the second-floor stairs, watching the toymaker and his wife disappear below. He turned, bolted for the top landing, and burst out onto a deserted corridor, lit dimly by gaslamps in the shape of brass cupids, clinging at intervals along the wall.

Twenty feet along, the corridor opened onto the great hall that St. Ives had been denied a look at ten days earlier. He stepped toward it, wafering himself against the wall to peer out over the high, open room, fearful that he’d be seen from below. No one, however, was in the room save Kelso Drake, who limped along across the floor, his head now swathed in bandages. A low murmur arose, as if he were cursing under his breath. Then he shouted at someone unseen about bringing the brougham around. There sounded an answering shout, then a grunt from Drake, then another shout about Deener having “taken the other box.”

“Good!” cried Drake, struggling to open a leather bag, the clasp of which refused to cooperate. The millionaire flung it against the back of a velvet couch with a fury that astonished St. Ives, and set to kicking the bag about the room like a football, dancing atop it until he’d stomped the clasp into submission. Then, yanking open the bag, he tore apart the doors of a broad, mirrored buffet, and yanked out a Keeble box, dropping it into the bag and hurrying out of sight. A moment later the front door banged shut and silence reigned. The house, no doubt, contained any number of people, hidden away from daylight and activity like bats in caves.

St. Ives wasted no time. He had no desire to confront murderers or to hide behind potted plants. He would find a way into the strange ship that sat toadlike in the center of the room below. It was apparently nothing more than a curious ornament, like a china vase or a marble cupid, the peculiar bric-a-brac of a millionaire, polished, no doubt, by a cleaning woman with a rag, who assumed it to be some sort of inexplicable and filthy contrivance for the gratification of the abhorrent appetites of wealthy customers. It was thought to be a sort of giant Pinkle, perhaps, the uses of which were veiled from the sight of the uncorrupted.

St. Ives stared at the machine for a long minute, peering at the little crenelations along its fins, its emerald-tinted ports, the silver sheen of its globular bulk. All in all it wasn’t vastly different in character from his own ship — they weren’t brothers, to be sure, but they bore each other an unmistakable family resemblance. Curious, thought St. Ives, how two vehicles that hailed from galaxies so immensely distant from each other should have such an obvious affinity. There was a metaphysic there that bore contemplation, but it seemed a good idea to wait until later to contemplate it. He turned and made off down the stairs, pushing through two doors and under a tremendous arch into the hall.

He grasped the rope that hung behind the drawn curtains and gave it a yank, the curtains swinging back and the room flooding with midafternoon sunlight. The vast, unshuttered window looked out onto Wardour Street, obscured partly from view by a scattering of junipers and boxwoods that grew up close along the walls of the house, entangled in the creeping tendrils of climbing fig. It might easily have been years since the foliage had been trimmed, and easily as long since the drape had been drawn to illuminate the dim and unwholesome room with sunlight.

At the sound of a crashing upstairs and what sounded like the whispering of furtive voices, St. Ives hastily manipulated what seemed to him to be the hatch — a circular panel that popped open like the stone door of Aladdin’s cave, emitting a little airy chirp as if startled, perhaps, by the touch of the scientist’s hand.

At the sudden sight of the interior of the ship, St. Ives found himself trembling so that he could hardly command his hands and feet. He attempted to scale the side, but his foot slid from a protruding bit of polished metal and his hands could find no purchase on the slippery arched edge of the open hatch. His breath whooshed out by the lungful. He felt suddenly giddy and faint, faced, as he was, by the object of a long and sometimes desperate search and fired by the fear that at any moment he’d hear the click of a pistol hammer drawn back or the rough shout of one of Drake’s men. He hauled on the arm of a nearby upholstered chair, drawing it up next to the spacecraft, climbing up onto the seat and nearly sinking at once to the level of the floor in the soft, lack-springed cushion. He stepped up onto an arm, teetered back and forth, and slid head first in at the hatch. After yanking the hatch shut, he settled into a cushioned seat and surveyed the interior of the ship.

Before him were a plethora of dials and gauges. He’d wage a sum on his being able to guess out the nature of half a dozen of them, but others were a mystery. The dials were mounted under clock crystals, filled, it seemed, with violet liquid. Scattered in between and roundabout were buttons that one might push, fabricated of what appeared to be ivory and ebony. St. Ives had the sudden urge to jab away at them, like a man with no musical training might poke at the keys of a piano. But the discordant result might easily mean his doom — probably would mean his doom. He calculated, trusting to his earlier conclusions about the peculiar but telling affinity of related objects in the universe. His fingers wandered from one switch to the next. Nothing ventured… he told himself, stopping before an ivory button beside which was a sort of hieroglyphic depiction of a sun. He stabbed at it. The dials glowed suddenly through the violet liquid. Emboldened, he pushed another, this one next to a little picture of an aeolus-faced puff of wind. A humming ensued. St. Ives braced himself, then felt, against the back of his neck, a little rush of air. An oxygenator, he thought, smiling at his pair of successes. He jabbed another button and the hatch opened.

“Damn,” he said, half aloud. He stooped up through the hiatus, grasped the hatch in order to haul it back down, and looked straight into the ruined face of a ghoul, who stood precariously on the upholstered chair. St. Ives shrieked at it, dropping into the craft, bounding up again to clutch at the hatch, the ghoul meanwhile endeavoring to hoist itself in. Its gaping face, hair tumbling over its forehead, loomed in above St. Ives, who pressed his right hand against the thing’s nose and forehead, shoving with all his strength, his feet braced against the deck of the craft. The ghoul stared out stupidly from beneath St. Ives’ fingers, its own hands stubbornly clutching the edges of the circular hatch opening. St. Ives banged at the fingers with the fist of his free hand, then reached past, grasped the hatch, and slammed it down on the back of the thing’s head.

It lurched forward, eyes widening, then jerked its head out, throwing the hatch open with it. A third hand joined the pair still clutching the ship — another ghoul endeavoring to clamber in. St. Ives banged the hatch down onto the fingers, mashing at them once, then twice, then a third time, grimacing at each blow, expecting a rain of severed fingers. He shut his eyes and slammed the hatch again. It settled into place. Outside were the two ghouls, examining their hands with looks of wonder on their faces, as if having already forgotten how they’d come to be in such a state. Beyond them was another ghoul. Two more slumped in through the door.

St. Ives gritted his teeth and poked an ebony button. The ship lurched and lay still. He poked another. Nothing at all happened. Two ghouls pushed a sofa toward the craft. Another hauled at an oak secretary. Three more wandered into the room and tugged at a piano, inching it forward, intent upon… what? Scuttling St. Ives’ ship by burying it in furniture? The scientist settled to his work. A heavy rope end flicked past the window. They were tying the craft to the leg of the upholstered chair, then winding it around the leg of the piano. He’d been wrong about the cleaning woman again. Apparently it was common knowledge, even among ghouls, that the craft was a ship of some sort — not at all a bad thing, thought St. Ives. It argued that the craft worked, that Drake had given orders to prevent its being hijacked.

At the pressing of a button next to the drawing of a spiralling arrow, the ship spun suddenly on its axis, dragging with it the stuffed chair and tearing the rope from the hands of a bent and ragged zombie that crept about under the piano. St. Ives pressed the same button and the movement stopped. He pressed again and the craft resumed its revolution. When he faced the window straight on, he pushed it once again. Then, throwing caution onto the dust heap, he stabbed away at a succession of buttons.

The ship shuddered, lurched, slid forward a foot. The chair in which he sat tilted back, nearly dumping him onto the floor. A wild hum erupted as the craft lurched again, skittered across the floor, and, in an avalanche of cascading glass and tearing vines, rose in a sudden escalating rush, hauling with it the stuffed chair and a single dangling ghoul whose face, smitten with wonder and confusion, pressed against one of the starboard ports for a quick second or so before sliding away and disappearing.

St. Ives, hands flying over the controls in a wild effort to steady the craft, had no time to be concerned with attached zombies. The ship cartwheeled. St. Ives watched in a whirling rush the topsy turvy dome of St. Paul’s spin past, followed by a brief glimpse of the spiraling armchair, lost almost immediately to sight and giving way to what was almost certainly a split-second view of the Kennington Oval. The ship shot away to the south and west, bound, it seemed, for the Channel.

He was moving prodigiously fast in an utterly uncontrolled flight, pinned to his seat by the laws of physics on a voyage that, he was suddenly certain, was making him sick at his stomach. It would end in disaster. He knew it. He could picture himself catapulting out of hand into the sea. He couldn’t, in fact, picture anything else. It was evident that the slightest manipulation of a pair of curved levers at dead center in front of him would cause the ship to tumble or swerve or skip or in some way run mad. Hesitantly, he prodded one. But he succeeded only in once again cavorting along end over end. There was the sea, the lying chair, what appeared briefly to be a pantleg with a shoeless foot dangling from it, this last entangled in the swinging rope. A prod at the other lever sent him plummeting breathlessly toward the sea, his stomach at once in his throat, the chair rising weirdly past the ports followed by the staring face of the zombie, whose ankle was fouled in the line. The gray swell of the Channel hurtled toward him as he edged the lever back, ever so slowly. The craft swung round in a slow arc, leveling off, then rising once again. It was slow deliberation that was called for — the mere consideration of pressure on a lever was nearly sufficient for a change of course.

His stomach returned to its rightful position, the blood in his veins ceased its racing and settled in apace, and with a keen-minded deliberation, tempered by a vision of the collected, astonished visages of the Royal Academy when he swept in among them at prodigious speeds, and encouraged by the vast canvas of the deepening evening sky, St. Ives eased the lever forward with a subtle pressure from his right hand. He steadied the ship with his left, satisfied with the controlled response. He dipped suddenly, evened her out, and smiled, angling in an increasing rush toward the Dover Strait. The ship slanted upward through thinning atmosphere into the purple heavens. The sky above darkened, brimming suddenly with flickering emerald lamps through the tinted ports, as if he stared into a deep, stellar well, half full of dark water and reflected stars.