Infernal Devices

2

I have returned from my regular morning perambulation. Long acquaintance with my father's devices, and the eliminative functions of a dog grown old even before he became my companion in travail and peril, have made my habits as rigidly timed as those mechanical figures that parade in and out of the faces of certain Bavarian clock towers.

In a smoke-darkened courtyard branching off my route, a group of children in tattered smocks, bare feet as black as the street grime they skipped upon, sang and played a simple hand-clapping game. The dog barked, as though to join in their shrill, innocent glee, but a chill settled around my own heart as I made out the words that accompanied their criss-crossing dirty arms and slapping palms.

Georgie's fiddle

Georgie's clock,

Georgie sets him in the dock;

With his bow

And ladies low,

Georgie's fiddle and clock!

The children ran off, laughing and shouting rude gibes at the man who gazed after them with stricken expression. Painful memories, evoked by the childish song, marched behind my creased brow as, dog at heel, I retraced my steps homeward. The game's jingling rhymes were, no doubt, a decaying echo of those street ballads – complete unto infamous detail! – that first sprang up when my affairs came under the eye of public attention. I recalled the horrid evening, when I, thinking I had at last been returned to safety and anonymity, stopped at the perimeter of a crowd assembled to listen to an itinerant singer. Within minutes, I had realised that, to the tune of "Hail, Smiling Morn," a bawdy account of my recent perils was being related to the audience. Above their heads a coloured board had swayed on the end of a pole, with an artful caricature of my own face leering at maidens swooning to my supposed violin-playing; one ladylike hand had been depicted by the artist as trembling to touch the exaggerated clock-winding key into which a private section of my anatomy had been transformed. The sight of this villainous depiction in the hands of the balladeer's accomplice had staggered me backwards; the nearest faces had turned towards me and had spotted the resemblance between me and the demon fiddler on the placard; across dizzy-heaving streets I had been forced to flee before a general hubbub could arise. Shortly after, I had decamped to my new residence and hidey-hole, in a less populous district where my alleged crimes might go unnoticed against the backdrop of the inhabitants' grey squalor.

Having returned to my desk and pen, the dog once more at his somnolent station by the coal-grate, I strive to banish the singing, mocking voices from my thoughts. To no avail: they form a constant obbligato to the actual words and tones I seek to conjure from the past.

The day on which the Brown Leather Man first made an appearance in my life would have remained memorable for that alone. That he should be followed by other visitors, who would prove to be equally significant, illustrates that principle best described as the Superfluity of Events.

My puzzlement at the morning's caller and the commission he had given me circulated through my thoughts for the balance of the day. A fit of pique had been engendered in Creff by my failure to heed his dire warnings about the "Ethiope" or, perhaps, by the same's obstinate refusal to actually murder me. The lack of his willing assistance left me unable to do more than carry the mahogany casket, weighty device inside, from the shop counter to the workroom bench. Under the lamp, the intricate brass assemblage seemed as intimidating as before; I left it for the next day, when my resources – and Creff – might be better marshalled.

No further custom came that day. It seemed increasingly likely that the Brown Leather Man's device would have to be the salvation of my accounts. The coin he had deposited as partial payment weighed heavy in my waistcoat as I pulled the shutters against the evening's approaching darkness.

As I was about to extinguish the shop brackets, a knock came upon the door. I lifted the shade and peered through the glass at the barely discernible figure beyond. The weight and fine tailoring of the cloak revealed the person's gentlemanly status. Before I could speak, he rapped again on the glass with the silver head of his cane. "Come on, come on," he called in a slightly coarse accent, unplaceable to me. "Jesus H. Christ," I heard him whisper to another figure behind him. "Sure gotta deal with a lot of dim bulbs around here…"

The unfamiliar inflection and incomprehensible terms I attributed then to foreign or modish affectation. My reclusive habits kept me apart from those cant phrases "What a shocking bad hat!" and the like – that flourish on everyone's tongue for a season, to be replaced by something equally foolish. That this gentleman had time for such frivolity bespoke money, and the urge to spend it; I unlocked the door and bade him enter.

He swept in with magnificent carriage, the ebony stick planted in sharp arrogance with each step. The cloak was worn with Byronic panache; the waistcoat had been embroidered with gilt thread far beyond economy or taste. His hawkish, faintly pocked countenance was surmounted by spectacles of dark blue glass, hiding his eyes, although the only illumination on the street had been the yellow, mist-shrouded glow of the corner gas lamp. He made no motion to remove the spectacles, but examined me through them as though bending forward to the lens of a microscope.

His companion draped herself on his arm, one hand resting in the crook of his elbow. I had only a moment to note her fair, somewhat sharp-nosed beauty; the gaze she levelled at me from under her dark lashes drove my own away in confusion, while the gentleman's bark turned me on my heel towards him.

"You're Dower?" He lifted his cane to point at me with its silver tip.

"I am. That is, the son-"

"Yeah, right. Sure." The lady looked up at him and squeezed his arm in some manner of signal. He fell silent, frowning and pinching his lower lip, as if gathering his thoughts. When he spoke again, his words were wrapped in a mannered formality.

"Mr Dower," he said, bowing slightly. "I have the pleasure of your acquaintance. Um, that is, let me introduce myself. Scape – Graeme Scape." He shifted the cane and extended a gloved hand, then, upon receiving another warning squeeze from the lady, withdrew it while muttering another incomprehensible word under his breath. "This is Jane – I mean, Miss McThane. May I present. Whatever."

She parted the folds of her shawl enough to reveal the white curve of her throat. I stammered some simple pleasantry, the heat of my blood blossoming across my face. The smile Miss McThane bestowed on me was of a disturbing frankness that I had encountered only once before, when, a fresh-arrived innocent in London, I had chanced to stroll through the Burlington Arcade and had been approached by a seeming lady and greeted with a such-like smile and a murmured "Are you good-natured, dear?" – an offer clear to even one as naive as myself. Then I had been able to flee that precinct of glittering jewellers'-windows and even more glittering women, and thus maintain my innocence. In the confines of my own shop, however, I felt myself cornered and stalked by the scarlet smile and discreetly lowered sable lashes.

My transfixed gaze was broken away from hers by the sharp rap of Scape's cane upon the floor. As though startled awake from a guilt-provoking dream, I looked around at him.

"Mr Dower." His smile pulled his mouth lopsided, as though we shared some conspirators' knowledge between us. "I'd like to talk some business over with you. Okay? I mean… that all right with you?"

Some aspect of his manner, an oddity in his bearing, puzzled me. He had not the polished presentation of self that marks the aristocratic gentleman born to wealth and position. Nor the assured forthrightness, blunt of word and face, that characterizes the new entrepreneurial class whose money and mercantile ideas have obscured so much of the national landscape within this generation, like the smoke from their foundries and chuffing engines of commerce. Not a foreigner; however strange his choice of phrase, it seemed clear that English of some district was his native tongue. Charlatanism or knavery of another ilk rose in my mind as the possible explanation, yet the gentleman – if gentleman he was – displayed no part of that sidling, herpetoid insinuation by which the diddler places himself inside the victim's confidence. In the space of a few seconds, my mind skittered from one hypothesis to the next, all the while pursued and confused by the ineradicable image of dark eyes and snow-white throat.

"Well? You okay?"

The impatient bark of the self-designated Scape brought me out of my muddled reverie. The blue lenses drew closer – to my face, the eyes behind endeavouring to discern my health.

"Yes… yes, of course." I stammered out the words, watching myself in the dark mirrors of his spectacles, careful to keep my gaze from straying to the gently smiling visage of his companion. "Terribly sorry; the fatigue of a long day, I'm afraid." I stepped behind the shop counter and spread my hands along its smooth surface. "How may I assist you?"

Scape disengaged his arm from his companion's embrace and folded his hands upon the silver head of his walking stick. Miss McThane drifted with her teasing smile to examine one of the clocks on the wall, staying within hearing distance of any talk. "Maybe you've heard about me already, Dower." He lifted a hand to withdraw a card from an inside pocket; which he then laid on the counter in front of me.

"I don't believe so." Ordinary courtesy, and a shopkeeper's self-interest, ruled out a direct disavowal. "Perhaps…" I looked down at the pasteboard square on the counter. In florid lettering, it announced

The word Automata triggered a wary attitude on my part. Of that segment of my father's career concerned with the production of lifelike human figures capable of motion, speech, and other appurtenances of flesh and blood, I had, from the bitter upshot of my own dabbling with the devices my father had left behind, learned to deny any knowledge. The scenes of chaos inside the church of Saint Mary Alderhythe, kept from public scandal by the good offices and influence of the parish authorities, had been sufficient warning for me. If this gentleman's interest in my wares and services were limited to clockwork jiggery that imitated corporeal habits, then there was no possibility of commerce between us. The inflections of my voice were guarded as I pushed the card with one finger back across the counter.

"No," I spoke, shaking my head, "I'm afraid not. Doubtless, if I had more time for edifying culture, I would be familiar with your contributions. Still-"

"Don't sweat it," interrupted Scape, dismissing my ignorance with a wave of his hand.

"Pardon?"

"I'll send you some tickets, next time we play London." He swayed on the pivot of his cane, watching his uplifted hand paint an imaginary scene above our heads. "Bright lights, names all lit up in neon; you bring your girlfriend around to the box office, they'll give you the best seats in the house-"

"I'm not sure I follow…" His manner had become excited and effusive, and I didn't catch the meaning, possibly lewd, of some of his words. His companion laid her hand on his arm, which had some calming effect.

"Forget it," said Scape. "No problem."

Miss McThane brought her sly smile around to me again. "We've been touring abroad a great deal. It rubs off, you know? The way they talk, and stuff." In this, the longest speech she had directed to me, the same odd accent and diction appeared, that I had noticed in the gentleman's voice.

"Yeah, right," agreed Scape. "Those crazy Italians. Hah. Wild – really wild."

"How may I help you?" I said, hoping to move the conversation to a productive vein.

"Business – yeah." He swivelled his gaze around, searching among the clock faces, then back to me. "These, uh, automata I got – I take 'em around to places. And they do their bit. You follow me?"

I could see my politely reserved expression doubled in the blue lenses trained on me. "I believe so. You refer, I take it, to musical performances-"

"You got it, jack."

"And these mechanical devices that form your troupe – are they of your own creation?" I wished to draw him out, gently as possible, to find the actual extent of his knowledge of clockwork musicians.

"No – no." Scape shook his head. "I got 'em from what's his name…"

"Jackey Droze," supplied Miss McThane.

It took a moment for the words to spark anything in my memory. "You mean Jacquet-Droz," I said. The name of the eighteenth-century Swiss watchmaker, and the two sons that followed in their father's career (with more success than I had on a similar course), was familiar to me, as it had once been to all Europe. Indeed, Creff had informed me that my father had once travelled expressly to Lisbon in order to examine the devices christened by their maker Charles the Scribe, Henri the Draughtsman, and The Musician. The senior Dower's interest in, and efforts towards perfecting, the mechanical similitude of human action, presumably dated from that Portuguese visit.

"That's the guy," said Scape.

"You are, then, the current owner of the celebrated organ-playing figure?" I knew that the mechanical woman, reputed by some to have been modelled by Pierre Jacquet-Droz after his own wife, had changed hands many times after the watchmaker and his sons had toured with their creations before the Continent's crowned heads.

"Uh, no, actually-" An echo of my own wariness entered Scape's manner. "Some other ones that he made."

"Others?"

"Yeah. A, uh, trumpet player and a couple of… what's that other thing called… with the strings? – cello. That's it – two cello players."

"Extraordinary." I rubbed my chin, feigning the depth of my musing. "I never heard tell of any such musical devices crafted by Jacquet-Droz."

Scrape gave a diffident shrug. "Well, you see, he never showed 'em to anybody. They just sorta stayed in the family, you know? And then I bought 'em off the old guy's great-grandson."

"I see." Indeed I did; whatever suspicions I'd had of this extraordinary person's less than honest intent had been all but confirmed by his exposition. Jacquet-Droz's skill in clockwork had, by all reports that have come down to the modern day, been eclipsed only by his genius for showmanship and self-promotion. The notion that he would create a veritable orchestra of musicians and not put them on display with his other mechanical children was obviously farcical. This, in combination with the muddled recall of what instruments this supposed impresario's troupe played, marked him in my eye as a person whose every word would need to be examined for fraudulency.

"And in what connection, sir," I continued, "have you come to me? I must confess I know little of music, being merely" – I smiled, lifting my hands towards the ticking wares displayed on the walls – "a simple watchmaker."

Scape returned my smile, or at least half of it; only one side of his face twitched to reveal a few yellow teeth. He leaned over the head of his cane, bringing his face closer to mine. "Well, you see… I'd like to build the act up a little. You know? I mean a trumpet-player and a couple of cellos – it's getting kinda old. People wanna hear something different. Got me? Like, maybe, something that could… sing…"

"That would be a marvel." It was obvious that he wished me to hand up on a platter the fish his verbal hook dangled for. From the corner of my eye I caught a change of expression in Miss McThane's face and, glancing at her, saw her dark eyes narrowed in what might have been grudging respect as they gazed at me.

Scape persisted. "Or – play… the violin." His words jabbed at me, in the manner of someone forcing the wrong key into an unyielding lock.

"To have such a device, I would imagine, would place one in your profession at the pinnacle of success."

He turned away from me, the better to hide the exclamation of annoyance which he muttered under his breath; I caught only what seemed to be the syllable cog (perhaps a reference to my mechanical trade) and the word succour (a prayer for divine assistance?). I smiled to myself, pleased with my fending off his pointed inquiries.

"Look," he said, mastering his emotions with visible effort. "Your old man was a very clever guy – all right? Let's just say he got… interested in musical stuff. And maybe he, like, built himself a violin player. I mean, a clockwork figure that could play the violin." Behind the blue lenses, the hidden points of his gaze probed into my visage. "What would you know about something like that?"

There; it was out; plain as simple day. Through some means, some hidden current of rumour, this scalawag had heard of the affair at the church of Saint Mary Alderhythe and the Clerical Automata that my father had left in place, but never animated before his death. Though my attempt to set the elaborate array of devices into operation had met with disaster, this Scape – if that were his real name – had evidently conceived the notion that one or more of the automaton figures – perhaps the priest, or the choristers – could be altered to suit the purposes of performing in music-halls. To one of his coarse sensibilities, there would be perhaps no difference between a chorus'd evensong and a collection of jigs sawed out of a fiddle; if a clockwork figure had been invested with any musical talent, this fellow no doubt believed that it should be as capable of one performance as the other.

"I have no knowledge of such a device." This, in strict truth: while my father had certainly eclipsed Jacquet-Droz, by giving his Clerical Automata a fair approximation of human vocal powers through ingenious assemblages of rosined wheels rotating against a set of tuned strings, he had not, as far as I knew then, ever envisioned a clockwork violinist.

Scape's mouth set into a bloodless line; his hands throttled the shaft of his walking-stick, as through he were about to bring its length down upon my insolent head. I took a step backwards from the counter, fearing such violence, only to start about in surprise when a soft hand laid itself upon my arm.

"Mr Dower-" Scape's companion had, during our verbal jousting, stepped quietly beside me. Her gaze, half-shaded behind her sable lashes, and intimating smile held me speechless as she interposed herself between shopkeeper and soi-disant client. Her hand traced a feather's touch up to my shoulder. Somehow, it seemed that while she had been outside the field of my vision, the edge of her gown's bodice had crept lower, revealing an immodest aspect. My dazzled eyes could not avert themselves from her white throat or the uplifted forms below. A delicate vein swelled with her pulse from beneath a lace-fringed shadow, as though it were a stream trickling beneath fields of snow that gave off an unaccountable warmth. "You know," she said, as I watched, mesmerised, the words formed by the coral bow of her mouth, "you seem like a nice guy. A real nice guy."

(Torturing memories! I sit at the prison of my desk, gnashing my teeth and grinding my pen-nib into the mocking white expanse of the paper under my hand. The coaxing words of a very Delilah! Had I but known what lay beyond them!)

"My buddy – I mean, Mr Scape – he gets a little excited sometimes. You know?" Miss McThane's hand strayed to the top of my cravat, one slender finger teasing a loop of silk free from the knot. "Like when he's talking about something he's really hot on. Know what I mean?"

"Yes…" The word was no more than a squeaking gasp. The loosening of the constriction around my throat did nothing to aid my breath past the stone that had formed inside it. I felt my spine come up against the wall at the end of the counter; my legs, as though acting as the reservoir of all the moral steadfastness that had drained from the rest of my body, had effected my retreat from the woman's continuing onslaught.

"Like… violins…"

The back of my head struck the silver case of one of my father's more elaborate clocks. The force of the blow triggered the delicate mechanisms inside; dimly, I was aware of small doors opening above me, and a circle of uniformed mannikins tinkling a theme from Handel's Jephtha as they paraded in and out of the encircled numbers. Behind my own brow, other small doors were opening, emitting darker figures shrilling melodies more dizzying, as I watched the sinuous grace of Miss McThane's finger rise to lay its point upon my chin.

"Violins" I choked.

"Yeah There's just… something about 'em. Drives him… wild."

I strove to speak, but could not. A scent of lilacs, borne across the dwindling distance between us by the warmth of her bosom, enveloped my head. She seemed suddenly of greater stature, looking down at me from a height. Faintly, I realised that whatever virtue normally resident in my limbs had fled from them as well, and I was sliding slowly down the wall.

Her smile grew wider, her eyes even more shaded. "Violins…" she whispered.

(Temptress! With a start, the dog looks up from his doze by the grate, hearing the snap of the pen in my fist. I blot the spilled ink from my desk, draw forth a fresh sheet, and begin again.)

Suddenly, as though from a great distance, I heard a clatter and a hubbub of voices. The chain that held my eyes fast upon Miss McThane's was broken, as she jerked her face about towards the source of the noise. I heard my own name being shouted.

"Mr Dower!" It was Creff, in full cry, his harsh accents, echoing down the hallway behind the shop. "Thieves! Murdering thieves!"

The excitement in his voice roused me from my unwitting haze. I pulled myself upright and brushed past Miss McThane, shaking away the restraining hand she placed upon my sleeve.

At the end of the hallway the workroom door stood open. In the circle of light cast from the bench's lamp, Creff and Scape could be seen, wrestling over the mahogany cabinet held between them. Catching sight of me, Creff shouted, "It's the Ethiope's accomplices! He's sent 'em here to cosh and rob us!"

I ran towards the struggling pair, unmindful of any danger. The prospect of alteration to the odds against him spurred Scape to greater effort: he wrenched the device left behind by the Brown Leather Man away from Creff, and bulled head-downward at me. I fell from the impact of his shoulder into my chest; he charged past me, but I managed to snare his legs within my grasp, bringing us both sprawling on to the floor of the shop. Scape's hands splayed open, and the mahogany casket slid a few inches further, impelled by momentum.

Miss McThane bent down to pick up the casket, but was unable to lift it owing to its great weight. Creff, brandishing a broom handle as a truncheon, vaulted over the prostrate forms of Scape and myself, and menaced her away from the object of the pair's felonious desire. With unladylike facility, she raised the hem of her dress and forcefully placed the point of one reversed-calf boot in a sensitive portion of my servant's anatomy. Thus crippled, Creff fell in a knot upon the casket.

"Get offa me, for Christ's sake," said Scape. He struggled to his knees, breaking free of my grip. My flailing hands sought what purchase they could on him; my fingers hooked behind the blue lenses of his spectacles, and pulled them from his face. The nature of the struggle changed dramatically thereby.

"Shit!" He staggered to his feet, bent double and pressing his hands against his eye sockets. The dim glow of the shop's gas brackets, turned low for economy's sake, wrought obvious pain in him, as though he were some earth-burrowing animal rudely scooped to the surface by a rustic's hoe. Tears streamed from under his palms. "You sonuvabitch," he shouted blindly in my direction. The lenses splintered under his unguided boot. The sight unfolded Creff from his immediate personal concerns. He gaped at the stricken man as Miss McThane, abandoning her pursuit of the casket, rushed to aid her companion.

Emboldened by this turn of events, the wine of excitement drowning any remaining dregs of caution, I picked up the broom handle Creff had dropped, and laid it smartly across Scape's back. "Out you go, sir!" I cried. "Your custom's not wanted here."

"You turkey-" the agonised man spat the words in the direction of my voice.

"Come on. Later for this crap." Miss McThane dragged him to the doorway. A hansom cab waited in the dark outside; she soon had the hunched-over figure deposited inside; with no instructions given, the driver whipped the horse to speed, carrying the two away in extreme haste.

Creff, maintaining gingerly balance, peered out the window at the cab vanishing into evening mist. "The Ethiope," he said, turning towards me. "Those were his henchmen, no doubt about it." He gestured at the cabinet sitting in the middle of the floor. "Sent 'em here to steal that ruddy thing."

A tremor had replaced the strength in my arms. I laid the broom handle on the counter before it dropped from my hands. "There would be little reason," I said, "for the gentleman to whom you refer, to hire others to steal that which he himself brought here. If he wished to have it, why would he not merely keep it in his possession to begin with?"

Creff scowled, turning this argument over in his mind, looking for its flaws.

"No," I went on. "I believe our last visitors to have some conception of this as an article of value. They apparently felt it easier to take it from our custody rather than the rightful owner's."

Unconvinced, yet unable to say why, Creff nodded. "Here," he said, looking up. "What was all that palaver about fiddles?"

"I have no idea," I said wearily. He had apparently been listening from some post upon the stairs. Fortunately so; from such a vantage point he had likely seen Scape's furtive actions.

These events had taxed me sorely. I directed Creff to carry the casket back to the workroom. I briefly considered notifying the constabulary of this foiled robbery, but thought better of it. The article over which we had struggled – and which I could identify as to neither purpose nor value – might well have been impounded for examination, and I would thus lose a valuable commission.

Some time after my first arrival at the shop, Creff had directed my attention to a secret repository well hidden under the floor of the workroom. Upon examination, it had revealed nothing but a few of my father's mechanical sketches and a flask of antimony. In this hole, the Brown Leather Man's property was entrusted for safekeeping, the concealing cover placing it beyond an outsider's easy discovery.

As the reader might well imagine, my mind was greatly preoccupied with the perplexing nature of the day's events. From the appearance of the Brown Leather Man in my shop, and the puzzling spillage of sea water in the workroom – a detail dream-like in its apparent insignificance and nagging incongruity – to the blue-lensed Scape of jerkily animated mien and strange words, his companion of yet more frightening demeanour, and the pitched battle that had ensued over the mahogany casket, the hours had been spanned from one baffling occurrence to another. As though some great unseen Clock, ticking out with regular monotony the passage of my life, had reached a zenith and set its bells into previously unheard clangour and alarm – so we mistake Peace, and describe it as Eternal, when the hand is already poised to strike the hour of dreadful change.

So deep were my musings that the pangs of hunger reminded me of the engagement to which I was committed for that same evening. One of Clerkenwell's more prosperous watchmakers (that prosperity owed more to the cheapness of his goods than to any other quality), whose snobbishness made him anxious to associate with one bearing my renowned father's name, had renewed his invitation to me. The opportunity of a meal beyond that afforded by my meagre larder and Creff's slight culinary skill enabled me to endure the man's stultifying company.

Leaving Creff, armed with the broom handle and the kitchen-knife of which I had relieved him earlier, in vigilant guard over my shop and home, I made my way the short distance to my colleague's residence.

Nothing in the man's conversation, or that of his wife, intruded upon the continuous hidden flow of my thoughts. I was able to maintain a fiction of polite society with a few appreciative comment, a murmured "Oh?" or "Indeed" over the boiled potatoes, while all the while the spectral figures of the day's drama trod the stage and declaimed their lines inside the theatre of my skull.

Only when my host and I were draining a resinous Oporto at the edge of the fire, did his comments enter my consciousness.

"Peculiar thing – eh? – these street costers – most peck uliar." he poured himself another tumblerful. "Peddle the damnedest stuff. Never seen the like."

"Pardon?" Perhaps I had finally grown weary of turning the thin pack's cards over in my mind. I emerged from my thoughts to hear his oration on the London Street vendors.

"The other day – just yesterday, it was-" He leaned forward to impart this confidence. "I was in the Tottenham Court Road with my little daughter." (I knew the child, a wretched pug-nosed creature.) "An old Irish woman, dirty as a pig, selling dolls from a basket, approached us. 'Shure they're bhutiful dolls,' she says." He imitated the accent with mocking scorn. "'Shuted for them angels of the worruld,' meaning my daughter. With that sort of blandishments, soon enough my little Sally must have one of the wretched things." (I had often heard the child in the street outside my shop, whining for some gimcrack or lolly.) "The old witch wanted fourpence – can you credit it? – for one of the things, and eager enough she was to sell one, too, until my Sally sees a few wrapped in tissue at the bottom of the basket, and says she wants one of those. Then damned if the woman doesn't go all coy on me, refusing to bring one of the bottom ones out, saying they weren't 'shuted' for such a fine child and such-like, until my Sally was near choleric to have one. I finally had to pay sixpence to entice the woman to hand it over – and a fine show of reluctance she made, too, even then! – and when she had scuttled away with her basket, and my Sally unwrapped the doll, damned if she didn't scream and drop the thing on the street! I'm sure it's quite the ugliest creation possible, and a wicked joke to sell for the hands of a child." His broad face was red from the port and indignation, as he stood up and opened the doors of his writing cabinet. "Here the thing is – see for yourself."

I took the object he thrust towards me, and with but small curiosity examined it. It was a doll as is often sold in the streets, cheaply manufactured of pappy-mashy, as the costers term it, dipped in wax. The striking aspect was its extraordinary face: a crude parody, as though the maker's rude art had meant to represent some animal other than the human. Sloping forehead, goggling rounded eyes, and protruding lips over a non-existent chin; these features, in combination with the greenish cast of the wax, gave a distinctly piscine impression, as if a herring fresh off the fishmonger's slab had been dressed in a plaything's clothes. For a moment, as I turned the thing over in my hands, I again felt as if I were toiling through the rigours of a dream; it reminded me of the sea water – from where? – on the floor of my workroom.

"Extraordinary," I agreed. I reached to hand it back to my host, but he waved it away.

"Keep the damned thing," he said.

"Your little girl-"

"Faugh. She can't abide the sight of it. No, no, do us a kindness and take it away from here."

I laid it on the arm of the chair. My thoughts drifted away, to their former channels, as my host expostulated on some other subject. My hands came to rest on my stomach – stuffed to bursting against future famine – and I felt a circular shape in my waistcoat pocket. The coin the Brown Leather Man had paid me; idly, as the other's voice droned on, I took it out. A familiar shape and weight; perhaps not familiar enough of late. I looked down at it in my palm, and felt my gut hollow beneath the half-digested meal.

The face, in profile, on the coin was the twin of the hideous doll.

A sudden panic pushed me up from the depths of the chair. I made a hasty excuse to my host and, gathering up my hat and cloak, rushed from his house. Outside, I realised that the doll had found its way into my hands along with the coin. I thrust them into my pocket to remove them from my sight.

The mist had thickened, swallowing every aspect of the houses and the railings in front of them. Under the sulphurous glow of the street lamps, mere smudges of light swathed in grey, indistinct forms scurried from one dark cranny to the next. I hastened home, guided by memory rather than sight, unable to look behind me to see what blurred shadow might be entwined with my own.