The Somnambulist

Chapter 18

I fear I may not have been entirely honest with you.

Of course you’ll say I ought to have been truthful from the start, that I should have owned up on page one, come clean from the outset. But stay your verdict a while longer; don’t judge me for withholding a few minor details, a name or two, for fudging some of the minutiae.

I never revealed my true identity to you because I didn’t want you to think The Somnambulist is in any way a biased account. The great majority of what you have read is the absolute, unalloyed truth. Where I have embroidered or embellished, I have admitted it; where I have indulged in fabrication, I have immediately confessed.

However, you may be able to detect a slight unevenness in my portrayal of one particular character. I have done my utmost to write as impartially as I am able but — sweet Christ — how I hated that man by the end.

Nonetheless, when the two of us met again in the great hall beneath Love, Love, Love and Love, I tried my best to be civil, though it was with no small difficulty that I resisted the temptation to gloat.

“Mr. Moon. Delighted you could make it.”

“Have we met?”

“Edward,” I chided. “How can you have forgotten?”

“Reverend Doctor Tan,” he replied (in what I felt to be an unnecessarily sarcastic tone). “Can we assume that’s not your real name?”

“My title is an honorary one,” I admitted, “but I must say I’m hurt you don’t remember me.”

Moon spoke to his sister. “Who is this man?”

I cannot claim the honor of having known her well, but during the course of our all-too-brief acquaintanceship, Miss Moon always struck me as a thoroughly decent sort. Intelligent as well as pretty and (after a few days’ gentle persuasion) no mean convert to our cause.

“He’s a hero,” she said again. “A leader and a great friend.”

I blushed at this undeserved praise. “You really don’t remember me?”

Moon shook his head. “Never seen you before in my life.” He turned to the Somnambulist: “He ring any bells with you?”

Infuriatingly, the giant merely shrugged.

I felt cheated. For years, I had looked forward to our meeting, anticipating it with all the sick excitement of a child on Christmas Eve. On so many occasions I had mapped out the ideal version of this conversation — I would be magnanimous in victory, witty, wise and inspirational. I planned to dazzle.

But then I expected Moon to recognize me at once, for the Somnambulist to shrink back in horror, for both of them to treat me with just a little bit of respect, as a formidable rival, an adversary to be feared. Instead they just gazed blankly at me as they might at some rank stranger accosting them for money on the street.

So I told them my real name.

I shan’t repeat it here. It’s a prosaic, everyday thing which does no justice to a man of my talent and ambition. You may continue to think of me (if you care to think of me at all) as the Reverend Doctor Tan.

The Somnambulist grinned in recognition, but still Moon looked none the wiser. The giant scribbled something down, and at long last the light of understanding flickered into Edward’s eyes.

SEWERS

Moon laughed — the despicable little man actually laughed at me. “Of course,” he said and proceeded to relate a highly exaggerated account of how (as a much younger man) I had attempted to rob the Bank of England but had burrowed mistakenly instead into the London sewer system.

“I’ve been trying to remember your name for months.” He chortled. “Even Mrs. Grossmith wasn’t able to recall it and she’s always had an excellent memory for nonentities.”

I think I said something then about the wisdom of Moon taking quite so antagonistic a tone with me when he was trapped in my underground lair, unarmed and entirely at my mercy.

He demanded an explanation, and as soon as I had recovered my composure, I did my best to answer. I told him that there is a hierarchy even amongst criminals, and that following the regrettable incident outlined above, I had become something of a standing joke amongst my peers. Artfully avoiding self-pity, pitching my tone perfectly between pathos and determination, I told them this: “I wearied of being the pettiest of petty crooks. I saw I had to improve myself. You might say I found religion.” I chuckled at this, thinking it an amusingly ironical quip. Charlotte smiled (dear girl) but the other two stood resolutely stony-faced.

“We’ve put our society out of joint, Mr. Moon. Here at Love we have a solution.”

“Tell us, then.” He yawned. “But don’t let’s take too long about it, there’s a good chap.” He spoke to me as one might to a child, and though I bristled at his manner I chose for the time being to let his impertinence slide.

“You’re a part of it,” I said carefully. “I summoned you here for a reason.”

“I came here of my own volition. You had nothing to do with it.”

I confess I was unable to restrain a squeal of delight at his ignorance (though I think I was able to disguise the sound as a light cough). “No, no,” I corrected him softly. “I have brought you here.”

Three people were waiting by the balcony door for their cue. I beckoned them in.

Mr. Clemence. Mrs. Honeyman. Thomas Cribb.

“I laid down the clues, Edward, and you followed them just as I knew you would.”

Something like fear flickered across his face as the final pieces of the puzzle were pressed into place. I cannot be certain whether it was at this moment that Moon realized the sheer scale of the trap into which he had been expertly led. Certainly he seemed deliciously broken, and as I watched him come to grips with the parameters of his failure I found it almost impossible not to laugh.

Despite what you might think, I am not entirely devoid of compassion. Moon had experienced a considerable shock, and even the Somnambulist — he of the granite face, the Easter Island visage — now wore a look of stunned surprise at my casual revelations.

Dismissing Cribb, Charlotte and the rest, I led my guests to my modest private rooms where I offered them food and drink and promised that when they were ready I would explain it all. The Somnambulist was manifestly grateful for the food, but Moon, rather churlishly, declined. He pushed aside his plate and announced, rather petulantly: “I have questions.”

“What we’re building here,” I said, “is the future. A new community inspired by the dream of Pantisocracy.”

“Why does this dream necessitate murder?”

“My conscience is quite clear. What I do, I do for the poor and the abandoned in this great city of ours, for the indigent who exist at the very precipice of society, forced there by circumstances not of their own making. “The ‘edge-people’, if you like, life’s marginalia, footnotes in flesh and blood. The meek, Mr. Moon — the meek who will inherit the earth.”

“Men like Speight.”

“Precisely so.”

He sounded angry. “The Speight I saw last week was not the man I knew.”

I tried to make him understand. “He’s changed. He’s found a better way to live.”

“Whatever you did to him, you’ve done to my sister.”

“She came to us willingly. When she realized that she had spent her life in darkness, Love led her into the light. All we desire is to live our lives according to Pantisocratic principles. And we’re very close to achieving our dream. How many men in history have been able to say as much? We’re going to build Paradise on Earth, Mr. Moon. Why do you persist in opposing us?”

“Because you have murdered and cheated and corrupted. Because you are a twisted failure deluded into thinking you can recreate the world in your image.”

I smarted a little at these harsh words and Moon pressed home his momentary advantage. “You had Barabbas killed.”

“We asked him to join us.”

“Join you? What place does a killer have in Paradise?”

“You never believed him to be irredeemable. Neither did we.”

“But he refused?”

“It seems he was happy to die in the dark.”

“And Meyrick Owsley?”

“Meyrick was placed there to watch over him. Barabbas knew a great deal about our operation.”

“Is that why you had him killed?”

“It wasn’t that he was telling you the truth. It was the speed at which he was doing it. I must admit to being surprised,” I said, “that you haven’t asked me about Cyril Honeyman. It was his death, after all, which first set you on this path.”

Moon glared resentfully at me.

“No theories?” I asked lightly. “No elegant suppositions? No brilliant deductions pulled out of the hat at the last moment?”

He all but shouted, “Tell me!”

“It was a hook, Edward. A wicked, grotesque crime which was bound to attract your attention. A piece of theatre we knew you couldn’t resist. As a means of drawing you to us it could scarcely fail.”

“Are you saying all this was for me? A set-up?”

“Essentially, yes, that’s true.”

“Men have died,” Moon spat, “so that we can have this idle conversation?”

“There’s no need to be quite so self-centered. Mrs. Honeyman and Mrs. Dunbar had little love for their feckless sons. They wanted those blights on their lives removed, lopped off as harmlessly as one might an unsightly mole. I think they rather enjoyed the experience.”

“Mrs. Honeyman. Mrs. Dunbar. Hardly edge-people, are they?”

“I confess, there have been times when Love has not been entirely solvent. We needed money. They were useful assets.”

“Were?”

“They’re not fit to enter Paradise,” I admitted quietly.

“And the Fly? Why him?”

“The kind of deliriously improbable touch I thought might appeal to you. How were we to know you’d kill him?”

“So you have me here at last. What do you want? Has this just been about my humiliation?”

“Oh, I shan’t say I haven’t enjoyed it. But this is about more than revenge.”

“What do you want?”

“Why, Edward.” I smiled. “I want you to join us.”

Mrs. Grossmith (soon to be Mrs. Barge) woke suddenly just before dawn with no immediate idea of why she had done so. The room was silent, though she could hear the birds in the garden trilling their perennial songs, their avian arias, their feathered canticles and hymns. For much of her life, Grossmith had wondered precisely what it was they had to be so cheerful about first thing in the morning. Since meeting Arthur she finally knew. A small sigh of pleasure escaped her at the thought of him, something between a conscious snore and a moan of satisfaction. She reached out her hand to touch him but found only empty bed-sheets, still warm but distressingly devoid of fiance. “Arthur?”

Now, if you’ve any Victorian qualms about a loving couple sharing a bed out of wedlock then I trust you’ll keep them to yourself. I’ve no truck with such antiquated prudery and I can assure you that in the new state of Pantisocracy there’ll be no place for your morality. The repressive codes of our parents and grandparents will be swept away to be replaced with something far more organic, more beautiful and true. Liberated from the cages society has constructed for itself with such self-defeating ingenuity, human nature will flourish and prosper. In the new age, we shall all be as Emmeline Grossmith and Arthur Barge.

The housekeeper felt uneasy at her lover’s absence. She sensed the first faint intimation that the day ahead was about to go horribly wrong, and all at once the merry chirping at the birdbath ceased to seem quite so inspirational. She sat up in bed, pushed the pillows behind her and brushed from her eyes that hard, flaky substance which accumulates during sleep. Unable to resist, she deposited a crumb of the stuff in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, although, unusually, this ritual failed to improve her mood. She called again. “Arthur?”

The door to the bedroom opened and her fiance appeared, scrubbed, clean-shaven and fully dressed. “Yes, my dove, my angel?”

“It’s early. What are you doing?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Arthur, I’m worried.”

“No need, my dear. I’m just going out for an hour or so. There’s a little matter requiring my attention. A chore I’ve been putting off. Nothing for you to concern yourself over.”

The cool, deliberate manner with which he said it, the studied nonchalance of his tone, immediately convinced her that the reverse was true — that whatever the love of her life was getting up so early for was something she should worry over and, more than that, that it was worth getting frightened about.

Barge wandered over to the bed, sat down beside her and stroked her cheek. “Go back to sleep. I shan’t be long. And I’ll have a surprise for you when I come back.”

“A surprise?”

He put a finger to his lips. “Wait and see.”

Mrs. Grossmith allowed herself to be soothed and reassured, and for a time she was even able to ignore that persistent sense of imminent catastrophe.. Arthur left to carry out his mysterious errand and she retreated back under the bedclothes to let sleep wash over her. As she dozed, she dreamt, and her dreams were restless and black.

Bad enough that dear lady should suffer nightmares at all — worse still that their vague, amorphous horror should be eclipsed upon her waking by terrors of the real world.

Arthur Barge hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take him to Piccadilly Circus. His errand had long been delayed — a reprehensible lapse in a man who had always prided himself on his professionalism and timekeeping.

Once in Piccadilly, Barge stopped the cab and stepped out onto the street. The object of his errand did not lie there, of course, but he had no wish to give the driver an exact address. He passed his fare up to the cabbie and, as he did so, turned his face away. It wouldn’t do for the man to be able to identify him later.

He stepped away from the cab, waited until it had driven out of sight, then set off toward St. James’s Park. It was early morning, just light, and the streets were largely empty, save for those unfortunates who spent their evenings crumpled in the doorways and gutters of our metropolis. Barge strode past them all without a second glance — understandable enough, given the ubiquity of such sights, but it’s worth noting, perhaps, that these things would never occur in a Pantisocratic state.

Barge reached the borders of St. James’s Park, headed down a narrow avenue just off Pall Mall and paused before a modest house situated halfway along the street. The plaque hanging by the doorbell read:

THE SURVIVORS’ CLUB

STRICTLY MEMBERS ONLY

Needless to say, Barge was not a member.

He pulled a spindly metal tool from his jacket pocket, a thin, delicate thing bristling with sharp, serrated edges. With the stealthy ease of a man who has performed the action many times before, he inserted the instrument into the keyhole, turning it first one way and then the other until the lock sprang open with a solid clunk. As quietly as he could, he pulled the door open and crept inside.

He edged his way down the corridor. Ahead of him lay the Smoking Room, out of which emanated a stream of ear-shattering snores and wheezes. Barge peered inside to see an old man asleep in one of the armchairs, yesterday’s Times open in his lap, a half-empty decanter of brandy by his feet.

Barge turned away and moved toward the end of the corridor where he knew Mr. Dedlock’s quarters to be situated. He had been observing the club for weeks, eventually coming to the conclusion that membership must be restricted to the very oddest men in London. Everyone he had seen entering or leaving the premises looked like an escaped detail from a painting by Hogarth, barely three-dimensional, so grotesque they were scarcely believable. Once he had glimpsed Dedlock himself, strutting naked around the Smoking Room. That he appeared to be the most normal person present spoke volumes for his fellow members.

Barge tried the handle to Dedlock’s room — stupidly left unlocked, it opened easily. The joint chief of the Directorate lay prone on his bed, sweating, turning, mumbling in his sleep. The bed stood close to a large bay window, its curtains billowing suggestively in the early-morning breeze. Bed-sheets were strewn over his naked form and his thick white chest-scars were visible even in the gloom.

As Barge walked over to the bed, he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a surgeon’s knife. Nonchalant as a dentist about to commence his dozenth examination of the day, he leant over the victim.

In the course of his career, Arthur Barge had killed thirty-four men, thirteen women and two children (twins). During this time he had cultivated certain habits and superstitious rituals, chief amongst which was the fact that he always liked to look into the eyes of his victims before he slit their life away. It made it more real, somehow, gave it a certain tangy flavor.

With his free hand, he shook Dedlock awake. The man’s eyes flickered open. Bleary and befuddled, he started to struggle up only to be pushed easily back down again. Thrashing about frantically, he tried to call out, but the jug-eared man brought up his knife. Then, like a cow docile before its slaughterer, prescient of the inevitability of the blade, Dedlock fell still. Barge pushed the knife up against his target’s throat and was looking forward to increasing his tally — wondering how many more there would be before he finally retired — when, amid an apocalyptic smashing of glass, something burst through the window.

Or rather two things.

Once they had disentangled themselves from the curtain, idly brushing shards of glass from their clothes, two deeply improbable figures stepped into the room.

“Hullo, sir.”

“What ho, Arthur!”

Barge dropped his knife in shock. Dedlock struggled upright in bed, gasping for breath, suddenly hopeful that he might yet live.

Barge stared at the two intruders, too stupefied at first to speak. “Who are you?” he managed at last.

“I’m Hawker, sir. He’s Boon.”

The Prefects grinned as one.

“Evening, Mr. Dedlock. Beastly sorry to drop in on you like this.”

Dedlock hugged a stray pillow for comfort. “Did… did the albino send you?”

“Certainly did, sir. Pal of yours, is he?”

“He’s an absolute brick, old Skimpers.”

“Tip-top.”

It was around this time that some understanding of what was taking place finally dawned on Arthur Barge. He was about to make a run for it when the larger of the two men gripped him by the shoulders and steered him firmly across the room. Barge tried to fight back, only for the stranger — quite casually — to break his right arm. As Barge screamed in agony, Hawker began to whistle.

“Thank you,” Dedlock said weakly, his words barely audible over the sound of his assailant’s torment.

Boon touched the brim of his cap. “Pleasure, sir.” He and Hawker bundled Barge swiftly out of the window, then disappeared the same way themselves.

A moment’s silence, then Dedlock swung himself out of bed and peered through the shattered remains of his bedroom window. The old man with the eyebrows doddered into the room, his hair disheveled and askew. “What happened here? Are you all right?”

Dedlock barely spared him a glance.

“There’s the most ghastly mess,” the old man moaned.

“I was almost murdered in my bed.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Dedlock snapped, “Fetch the brandy. I’ve an awful feeling today’s about to get worse.”

A deferential twitch of the eyebrows. “Very good, sir.”

When Arthur Barge came to, Hawker and Boon were leering over him like a couple of prep-school gargoyles. He was lashed to a chair with twine which cut into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood. Aside from the bright light shining in his face, all was darkness.

“Good to have you back, sir. Marvelous to see him, isn’t it, Hawker?”

“Marvelous, Boon.”

“Who are you?” Barge mewled. “What do you want?”

“He’s not heard of us, Boon.”

“Not heard of us? I’m disappointed. Thought we were living legends.”

“Silly old josser.”

“How much have you been paid?” Barge asked desperately. “Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”

“Don’t bandy words with us, sir.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m afraid we’ve been told to give you a bit of a wigging.”

“A… wigging?”

“A damn good slippering, that’s what he means.”

“A sound hoofing.”

Barge began to cry. “Please-”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“My name?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Arthur Barge. My name is Arthur Barge.”

Boon looked disappointed. He nodded toward his companion, at which Hawker rooted around in his blazer pocket and retrieved an immensely large knife, two or three times the size of the one with which Arthur Barge had intended to murder Dedlock and far, far too large for the size of the Prefect’s pocket.

Barge boggled at it in fear, a sticky yellow warmth coursing unchecked down his left leg.

“Cor! Hawker’s got a wizard new penknife.”

“It’s a smashing knife, sir. Look — it’s got a bottle-opener and a corkscrew and all sorts.”

Barge wept.

“Tell us your name, sir.”

“I told you. I’m Arthur Barge.”

Boon raised his voice just ever so slightly. “Don’t be an ass, sir.”

“Please. Please, I-”

“Name, please, sir. Your real name.”

Barge could see no alternative but to tell the truth and submit to the uncertain mercy of these creatures. Strangely, after all these years, it actually felt good to admit it out loud, to own up at last. He groaned: “I’m the Mongoose.”

Boon beamed. “Thank you, sir. You understand, of course, that we had to make sure.” They laughed. Hawker leant over Mr. Barge and, with enormous gusto, began to saw away at his neck.

I should put up my hand here and confess that I was, at least in part, responsible for all the unpleasantness. I needed to stop the Directorate becoming too interested in our activities, and following the failure of that old soak Slattery, I set this killer on their trail, a former Okhrana sleeper agent living in deep cover as Arthur Barge. I allowed Donald to take care of the specifics and I fear he may have been a little overzealous in his duties. Certainly, I never intended matters to go so far or for poor Mrs. Grossmith to suffer as she did. But how was I to know? I’m an important fellow, and delegation is a necessary evil of my job.

Much as I had enjoyed explaining to Moon the ease with which I had manipulated him, I had begun to weary of exposition.

Moon spluttered, “You want me to join you?” His face had turned an interesting shade of mauve, puce with righteous indignation.

“When you see what I have to show you, I think you’ll understand.”

I sauntered from the room, certain that Moon and his companion would follow — led on now not by fear or even simple curiosity but by the most basic and primal desire of all: the need to know how everything will end.

I have long had a fascination with underground London, her secret subterranean, for the dark places of the earth. Since wresting control of Love, Love, Love and Love from its odious President, Donald McDonald and I had constructed an entire world beneath our headquarters. We had sculpted great vaults and chambers to be a hiding place and refuge from the tumult of the world above.

I led Moon and the Somnambulist back to the balcony above the great hall. The place had filled up with my people, men and women packed shoulder to shoulder, crammed against the walls. It seethed with life, it brimmed with Love. Standing before us were London’s edge-people, the poor, the ugly and the deformed, the indigent, the dispossessed, the ragged and the hopeless, all the marginalia of the city. At my appearance a mighty roar went up, which I acknowledged as best I could with a modest bow and a diffident wave.

Moon stared down at the multitude, trying no doubt to spy his sister amongst them, or Thomas Cribb, or Mr. Speight.

“So many,” he murmured. “I had no idea there’d be so many.”

“Love assembled,” I said, unable (I admit it) to entirely hide my pride. “The foot soldiers of Pantisocracy.”

“Soldiers?” Moon was being contrary again. “Why would Paradise need soldiers? Why the violence? Why the death? Why not simply take your followers and go? Build your Eden by the banks of the Susquehanna and leave the rest of us be.”

I marveled at the man’s obtuseness. Despite all I had told him, still he hadn’t realized the truth of it. “The Susquehanna?” I tried to keep the contempt from my voice. “You really believe we’re going to America?”

“That was Coleridge’s plan, was it not?”

“American is unsuitable. Corrupt.”

“Where, then?”

“Here, Edward. Here, in the city.”

“I thought you hated London.”

“No city is irredeemable. We shall rebuild. Start again. A new city where we will live as true Pantisocrats. I’m giving London a second chance.”

“What happens to anyone who doesn’t qualify for your utopia?”

“I had to be honest. “They shall be put to the sword.”

Moon said something predictable about my mental state. I told him he was being short-sighted and patiently explained that we could wipe the city clean, begin again.

“What would your precious Coleridge make of this? I doubt he would ever have condoned such bloodshed.”

I felt an attack of hysterical laughter surge up inside me and it was only with a Herculean exercise of will that I was able to restrain myself. Calmly, I told Moon that I wanted to introduce him to my superior — the Chairman of the Board.

“I had assumed you were the Chairman,” he snapped.

I did not reply, but instead left the balcony, led them away from the hall and deeper into the underground tunnel system, down to the lowest levels, to a large locked room located in the most inaccessible part of Love, our holy of holies. The door was fastened with padlocks and chains, and a small sign was all that proclaimed this to be the province of the

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

I unlocked the door and ushered my guests over the threshold. Evidently, they had not expected anything so grand as what lay beyond. Even I, who ought to have been inured to the sight, never failed to be awed and humbled by it.

An enormous metal sphere filled the room, a great iron egg paneled intermittently with glass portholes against which a greasy yellow liquid lapped hungrily. Attached to one side was a small steam engine, its working parts skeletally exposed, its tubes and metal lines snaking umbilically between the two machines. All the awesome modern technology of electricity and steam was at the service of the sphere, all its valves and slides, its crank-pins and pistons, its pumps and its flywheels, its cylinders and packing rings and pillow blocks.

But it was not the object itself which aroused such wonder but rather what lay inside — its most singular occupant.

An old man floated in the sphere, dressed in clothes not fashionable for almost a century, his wispy white hair yellowed from nicotine and decay, his skin mottled, torn in places and showing signs of minor putrefaction. He was immediately recognizable nonetheless as the foremost poet of his age.

Moon realized at once, I think. The Somnambulist took a little longer. A line of poetry sprang unbidden to my mind: “Could I revive within me that symphony and song…”

Moon gasped, and it was with a small spurt of pleasure that I saw he had finally comprehended the full magnitude of my achievement. “How is this possible?”

“Galvanism,” I said triumphantly. “The wonders of electricity and steam.”

The Somnambulist scribbled furiously on his slate.

GRAVEROBBER

I shrugged, beyond such petty morality. “I liberated him. No doubt he’ll thank me for it.”

“He seems… damaged,” Moon said uncertainly.

The Somnambulist peered through the glass at the old man’s hands.

STITCHES

“When I found him,” I explained, “parts of his body had badly deteriorated. They had to be replaced… Of course, we used his friends where we could. His left hand belonged to Robert Southey. Several toes were donated by Charles Lamb. Other organs, best left unspecified, originate from the late Mr. Wordsworth.”

MONSTER

“A thing of shreds and patches, perhaps,” I said. “But, no, not a monster. A savior. The lord of Pantisocracy.”

Moon seemed transfixed. “What is that liquid?”

“Amniotic fluid. Or at least my best approximation of it. ‘For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.’ ”

“He’s alive?”

“Dreaming. Recovering his strength. Often I’ve asked myself what he sees in his dreams. What wonders he must witness in his sleep.” I pointed toward an ostentatiously large red lever at the side of the sphere. “I have the means to awaken him.”

The three of us looked through the glass at the face of that remarkable individual, that titan of poetry and philosophical thought — the last man, it was said, to have read everything. He floated serenely in the golden liquid, magisterial despite the imperfections wrought by his sojourn in the grave.

Moon gazed on, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. “I understand,” he breathed. “Forgive me. You were right.”

You’ll think the less of me for this, I know, but I admit it without shame — when I heard him speak these words, I clapped and I jumped up and down, I cheered and squealed with childish joy.

Mrs. Grossmith woke again at breakfast time, some hours after her fiance had departed the house. Groggy, she rubbed her eyes, scratched herself vigorously all over and was about to clamber out of bed to make the first cup of tea of the day when she heard a curious sound emanating from the kitchen: children’s laughter and, mingled with it, male voices, gruff and unfamiliar. She armed herself with the nearest heavy implement (seeing no pokers or vases to hand she was forced to make do with her chamber pot) and tiptoed through into the next room.

Two extraordinary figures slouched before the stove — grown men dressed as schoolboys. They were playing with a soft, round object, kicking it between them as though it were a football. It made a squelching sound as they did so.

The burlier of the two men grinned when he saw her. “What ho, Mrs. G.”

“Hullo, miss,” said the other, rather more politely.

“Hope we didn’t wake you. We were just having a kick-around.”

“Playing keepy-uppy.”

It was then that Grossmith saw the true nature of the ‘football’. Strange, she thought distantly, as though she were somehow divorced from the horror of the thing, how a human head could look so much smaller when removed from its body than it did when securely in place on top of a good pair of shoulders. She tried to scream but no sound would come.

“Bad news, I’m afraid, miss,” Boon said courteously. “Your fiance was a professional assassin known to his masters as the Mongoose. ’Fraid Hawker and I had to give him a bit of a wigging.”

“Sawed his head for.” Hawker sniggered. “We fairly howled with laughter.”

“Still.” Boon brightened. “I wouldn’t worry. Sometimes life’s just like that.”

It was around this time that I made my first mistake.

A change had come over Moon. The cynic in him had vanished before my eyes; the logician, the proselytizer for ratiocination and reason, all that had made him what he was, evaporated as I looked on. In his place stood a convert to our cause, a new Saint Paul, with Cannon Street as his Damascus.

Such a reaction on encountering the Chairman was far from unique. Speight, Cribb and Moon’s own sister had all seen the light only when setting eyes upon the dreamer.

“I see it,” Moon said softly. “I see it.”

Feeling much as Jesus must have felt once Thomas had finished rummaging about in His ghostly wounds, I tried hard not to seem smug. “So you understand now?”

Moon seemed oddly deferential toward me, all trace of his earlier disrespect gone. Perhaps I should have realized then that all was not as it appeared to be, but at the time it just seemed so right.

Astonished at his friend’s volte-face, the Somnambulist seemed about to write something down, some objection, some weasel words of doubt, but, wisely, he stood back and kept his own counsel.

“I’m flattered,” said Moon, then more forcefully, as though I might doubt his sincerity, “Really. I’m flattered. Everything you’ve done for me… To bring me face-to-face with this. All this trouble just to show me the truth. I’m in your debt.”

I licked my lips. “I have a mission for you.”

He grinned. “I thought you might.”

Quivering with excitement, I explained what I wanted him to do. I intended the conjuror to be the voice of Pantisocracy in the outside world, chief propagandist for the new order, spokesman for the Summer Kingdom. Who would listen to me: failed thief, former gaolbird, serial incompetent? I know first-hand the cruelty of popular opinion, its perverse, bovine insistence not on listening to the message but on ridiculing the messenger.

Moon was different. They would listen to him, a celebrated detective, star of the Theatre of Marvels, once a fixture of society.

It’s that ‘once’ of course which was important. I hoped he retained enough influence to be heard, but it was the marginalization of the man which intrigued me. He was turning into an edge-person. Whether he knew it or not, Edward Moon was becoming one of us.

“Let me go,” he said. “Please. Let me spread the word. The people must be prepared. The city must be made ready for Pantisocracy.”

It was a convincing performance and I’ve no doubt it came easily to him. Probably you think I was a fool to be taken in at all, but since I was overwhelmed by righteousness at the time, you’ll have to forgive me.

So I let him go.

I gave him fourteen days to spread the word, a fortnight in which to prime the city. But even in my sublime state of belief I was not entirely without guile — doubts lingered at the corners of my mind. “You’ll go alone,” I said, and as Moon started to protest, I cut him off with a gesture. “The Somnambulist has yet to be converted. He’ll stay with us here until he sees the truth of things.”

Moon argued some more but eventually he gave in and agreed to abandon his friend below-ground. Perhaps the two of them exchanged a secret message, a code or gesture, something to allay the giant’s fears and assure him that Moon was faking. If there was such an incident, it was one I failed to detect.

I like to think that a small portion of him really did believe, that despite his cynical play-acting, some fragment of decency recognized the truth. Naive, I know. Naive and too trusting. But that’s the kind of chap I am. The cynical perfidy of a man like Moon could never come easily to me.

I left the Chairman still sleeping and ordered the detective to be escorted to the surface (Donald McDonald and Elsie Bayliss, a one-armed former charlady, did the honors). We shook hands warmly before we parted.

“Fourteen days?” he asked, apparently still effusive, supercharged with belief.

“Two weeks. You have my word.”

He thanked me and strode away. The Somnambulist watched him go, his silent eyes betraying the barest scintilla of fear. “Don’t worry,” I said, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll see the truth before long.”

We walked back to the Chairman of the Board. Despite his sleeping state I hoped that he was aware of my presence, that he understood who I was and thanked me for it. Sometimes I even dared to hope he loved me. I spoke softly into the glass. “Fourteen days. Then you shall walk through the Summer Kingdom.”

A brisk tap on the door. “Reverend Doctor.”

I turned to face a vision in chiffon and lace. “Charlotte.”

She managed a thin smile. “Call me Love.”

“Of course,” I said, slightly embarrassed.

“I’m concerned.” She spoke in that enchanting singsong voice of hers — the kind of voice, I mused, which might in earlier times have led mariners to their deaths, lured generations of sailors onto the rocks. “My brother. Have you let him go?”

“He’s one of us now. Love one thousand has returned to the surface to spread the good news.”

Charlotte seemed impatient. “He was feigning. He’s lied to you.”

“What?”

“I know my brother. He hasn’t gone back to spread the word. He’ll have the police down here, the army. They’ll wipe us out. You’ve humiliated him and he’ll want revenge.”

“I’m sure he’s genuine,” I insisted, though I could feel the fault lines already widening in my belief. “He was changed.”

“Nonsense,” Charlotte said briskly. “He’ll betray you. You’ve not sent out a Baptist but a new Judas.” It was an interesting side effect, I noticed, that those faithful who had encountered the Chairman seemed in the wake of the experience to become far wordier and more verbose.

“You’re sure?”

“Indubitably.”

For a moment I was lost. “What do we do?”

“Bring the plan forward. Forget the fourteen days. Do it now.”

“We’re not ready.”

“You’ve been planning this for years. Of course we’re ready. In fact, I’ve already dispatched a crew to stop the trains.”

“Without my permission?”

“Forgive me. I thought it best. Time is short. The Underground trains that shan’t trouble us today.” She glanced at my companion. “There’s something else. The Somnambulist. My brother will come back for him. He may prove useful as… leverage.”

It took twenty men to restrain the Somnambulist once he realized what we were planning, but eventually we succeeded in herding the giant into the main hall, forcing him onto the ground and staking him down. He was practically invulnerable, of course, and we knew that ropes and chains alone would not bind him. In the end it was Mr. Speight who came up with the solution.

We skewered the Somnambulist twenty-four times over; passed two dozen swords through his body, pressing them deep into the floor below. Stoically, without making a sound, he withstood these multiple lacerations and I wondered again precisely what he was, what nature of being could withstand such torture without shedding the merest drop of blood. As I watched, I found myself reminded of Gulliver staked out on the beach by the Lilliputians, of Galileo’s portrait of man, perverted, pinioned, reduced to the status of a lepidopterist’s specimen.

Love gathered about the giant, curious and not a little afraid. I called them to order — all nine hundred and ninety-nine of them, the infantry of the Summer Kingdom, my troops of Pantisocracy. I knew these might be the most important words I would ever speak, the culmination of a decade’s dreaming.

I began by apologizing. “I confess,” I cried, “that I have been misled — betrayed by a man I thought had become one of us. And because of my short-sightedness he has gone to warn our enemies. Thank the Chairman, then, for Love nine hundred and ninety-nine, who opened my eyes before it was too late.” A gratifying cheer at this.

“But something wonderful has come even out of treachery. Our plans have changed. Pantisocracy begins today. The Summer Kingdom is upon us sooner than we dared to hope.” More whoops and cheers. “Go forth,” I said, my voice rising to a crescendo. “Reclaim the city, eradicate the symbols of impurity and evil. Wreak havoc — but a pure and holy havoc. Use the sword — but sparingly, not as a weapon but as a surgeon’s tool to remove sickness and disease, for we walk amidst a new Eden. I have faith in you.” I looked down at almost a thousand lonely faces, the detritus, the dispossessed of our society, and I felt a great surge of power and affection.

“I love you all,” I said, before adding mischievously: “God be with you.”

And with a great roar they ran from the hall, through the tunnels and out onto the streets, antibodies ready to do battle with the city’s cancer.

Alone, I walked back to the Chairman of the Board and observed him silently through the glass of his womb until the excitement became too much to bear.

Then I finally did it. I pulled the red lever.

A shower of sparks flew from the machinery, firecracking across the room. The sphere filled with bubbles and a terrible light shone out from its innards, so piercingly bright that not mere stars but whole galaxies seemed to dance before my eyes.

The old man’s head jerked upward, his body shuddered and flailed and his hands reached out to claw the inner surface of the sphere. I could hardly credit it that I should be there to see such a sight, akin to witnessing the first birth, Eve’s bewildering heaving and writhing as Cain crawled forth from her womb.

The old man’s face was mere inches from my own when his eyes flicked open, and it seemed that when he saw me, he smiled.

The dreamer had awoken.

Overwhelmed with joy, I unscrewed the portholes of the sphere. Waves of fluid crashed about me and I screamed in triumph as the old man lurched forward. I caught him before he fell and he leant against me, struggling for breath. I clapped him hard on the back, he coughed, then breathed in great lungfuls of air. He said nothing but only gurgled and hissed like a leaky pair of bellows, spumes of liquid dribbling from his mouth as I held him in a tight embrace.

Moon would not defeat me. I had transformed failure into triumph. The dreamer had awoken, the Chairman walked amongst us and Love was loose at last upon the streets of London.