The Somnambulist

Chapter 6

The murder of Cyril Honeyman was the sixty-third criminal case to be investigated by Edward Moon. It was the nineteenth in which he had enjoyed the assistance of the Somnambulist and the thirty-fourth sanctioned by Merryweather and the Yard.

It was also to be the last of his career.

He began, as was his custom, by immersing himself in the minutiae of the killing, by haunting the murder scene and trawling the streets for clues, interviewing witnesses, speaking to the most tangential of bystanders. But despite his diligence these efforts bore little fruit. It was as though the evidence had been somehow erased from existence, the ground of his inquiries swept clean, become a blank slate, a tabula rasa. He spent long days in the Stacks but could find no trace, not a shred of a clue on the Honeyman affair, nothing to shed light on the man’s demise.

At the end of the first week, more out of courtesy than any real belief it would materially aid his investigation, he and the Somnambulist visited the parents of the deceased. They lived in a large country house, miles beyond the furthest reaches of the city and isolated by several acres of green and pleasant land.

An hour after their arrival, during which time they had been left to wait in the hallway as though they were little more than common tradesmen, a retainer shuffled out to inform them that his master and mistress — already severely inconvenienced by their presence — felt able to receive only one guest. The Somnambulist was happy to forgo the pleasure and so, shortly after, Moon was ushered into a draughty office.

The Honeymans sat at the far end of the room, enthroned behind a great oak table. Neither of them got to their feet when he entered but gestured silently for Moon to sit several feet away. When he explained the purpose of his visit (having to speak more loudly than was natural because of the distance between them) they reacted without any visible sympathy. Mr. Honeyman, a gray-faced, harassed-looking man trussed up in pinstripe, explained that they had already told the police everything they knew and that this kind of intrusion was certainly unwarranted and probably illegal. Moon retorted that he did not represent the police, going on to remark (somewhat immodestly) that he had a better chance than anyone of bringing the case to a successful conclusion. The man blustered and harrumphed in reply until his wife intervened, fixing Moon with a basilisk gaze.

“My son is dead. We have answered all these questions before. My husband and I are satisfied that the police are doing everything in their power to settle the matter. And we most certainly do not require the services of an amateur.” She spat out that last word with some vigor, as if trying to dislodge an awkward piece of gristle trapped between her teeth.

“My wife is a devout woman,” Mr. Honeyman added mildly, as if that explained everything.

They rose to their feet and filed silently from the room. Evidently, Moon’s audience was at an end.

The Somnambulist was waiting outside, standing by the fish pond and engaged in a conversation with a gardener about the finer points of tree surgery. The giant turned away and wrote Moon a message.

CLOOS

Moon shook his head morosely. “Nothing,” he said, and stalked away into the foliage.

Later, aboard the train, he sounded almost angry. “Could it just have been random? Motiveless malignancy?”

The Somnambulist shrugged in response.

“But it seems so premeditated. There’s something planned about it. A sense of… theatre. Grand Guignol. This is not the work of a common hoodlum.” He fell silent, brought out his cigarette case and, to the exasperation of his fellow travelers, proceeded to fill the carriage with thick, acrid smoke.

The following evening, Moon and the Somnambulist were invited to a party.

Their hostess was Lady Glyde, a valuable patron in the early days of the theatre and the woman largely responsible for introducing Moon to high society. Her house in Pall Mall was an ugly, ostentatious place, a shrine to wealth and vulgarity, a warren of interlinking rooms and chambers which, despite their considerable size, tonight brimmed almost full.

A manservant took their coats and hats and led them through the teeming throng into the drawing room. A string quartet were plucking their way through some baroque sonata or other but were all but drowned out by the babble of conversation, the tinkle of polite laughter, the chink and clink of glasses, the sounds of insincerity. The servant stood at the doorway and announced, with the po-faced solemnity of a pastor reading the last rites: “Mr. Edward Moon and the Somnambulist.”

The volume dropped momentarily as heads swiveled and turned to ogle these new arrivals. Moon — once the toast of the best soirees in London — offered his most dazzling smile, only to watch his fellow guests glance at him briefly with glazed indifference before returning to their conversations as though nothing of any significance had taken place. A decade ago, dozens would have dashed forward, jostling to the front to be the first to greet him, to shake his hand or fetch him a drink. Many would have asked for autographs. Today, there was only the barest flicker of interest before he was dismissed by the herd.

The servant thrust drinks into their hands and vanished, abandoning them to the uncertain mercy of the mob. The Somnambulist gave Moon a warning nudge as a dumpy, pugnacious-chinned woman pushed her way toward them.

“Mr. Moon!”

The conjuror raised his voice in order to be heard above the tumult. “Lady Glyde.”

She reached them at last, clasping Moon’s hand with all the feverish pertinacity of a drowning woman. “Edward,” she gasped. “I’m quite sure I don’t know who half these people are.”

The conjuror laughed politely and even the Somnambulist’s face cracked a dutiful grin.

“You have drinks?”

“Thank you, ma’am, yes.”

She looked curiously at the Somnambulist. “You always choose milk?”

He nodded.

“Come with me,” she said, “there’s someone you simply have to meet.” And she thrust her way back into the scrum, her new companion trailing reluctantly behind. “Are you engaged on a case at present?” she called back.

Moon told her.

“Really?” She seemed genuinely fascinated. “I gather the papers speak of little else. It must be quite a challenge, even for you. Are you very close to a solution?”

“I’m quite lost at present,” Moon admitted. “I’ve yet to find a suspect.”

“Well, if anyone can crack the case, I’m sure it’s you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I must say, you’ve recovered wonderfully well from that dreadful business in Clapham. Most unpleasant. A lot of men in your position might have given up after that. Thrown in the towel.”

Moon did not have time to respond before Lady Glyde stopped beside a small group of women gathered about a young man holding court. Moon caught a little of what he was saying — from the sound of it, something unnecessarily contentious about America.

Squat, freckled and sporting an ugly shock of ginger hair, the fellow cut an unprepossessing figure amongst Lady Glyde’s social elite. Stoop-shouldered and stuffed into an ill-fitting tuxedo, he seemed an alien there, an interloper, a moth amongst the butterflies. His face was made up of an unusually revolting set of features and he appeared to be missing a finger on his left hand.

“Enjoying the party?” asked Lady Glyde.

The ugly man beamed. “It reminds me of a marvelous little soiree I went to once before in Bloomsbury…” — he paused before delivering his punch line- “in 1934.”

Moon took an instant dislike to the man. Lady Glyde giggled in a manner quite unbecoming for her age.

“Mr. Moon,” said Lady Glyde, with the air of an impresario introducing a music hall act. “Meet Thomas Cribb.”

“We’ve already met,” Cribb said quickly.

Moon glared. “I doubt it.”

“He won’t remember me, but I know Edward well. In fact, I think I’d go so far as to say we’re friends.”

Lady Glyde laughed and Moon eyed the man with a good measure of confusion. The Somnambulist’s reaction, however, was unexpected. On seeing the stranger a kaleidoscope of emotions crossed his face — what almost seemed like recognition, then suspicion, then anger, then rage, then fear. He turned away, and disappeared back into the party. Nobody saw him leave.

“Mr. Cribb,” said Lady Glyde, “it sounded as if you were having the most fascinating conversation when I arrived.”

“Oh yes. Go on, do,” squealed one of the women, and the others chattered their empty-headed approval.

Cribb made an unconvincing dumb show of embarrassment before bowing, inevitably, to their demands. “I was speaking of America,” he explained, “of what she will achieve a few short years from now.”

“And what is that?” one of the women asked. “Civilization at last?” She snorted at her own waggishness.

“She becomes a great power,” Cribb said soberly. “A mighty nation that eclipses our own. Our empire withers and dies.”

With the exception of Moon, everyone laughed at this. Lady Glyde all but whooped in delight. “Oh, Thomas,” she gasped. “You are wicked.”

The man gave what he mistakenly believed to be an enigmatic smile. “I’ve seen the future, madam. I’ve lived it.”

Thomas Cribb was an enigma.

As is often the case with men like that, there are innumerable rumors and theories about his origin. He may have been a genuine eccentric, a man with simply no conception of his oddness. He may have been a professional charlatan, a canny self-publicist who had started, disastrously, to believe his own press. More plausibly, he may just have been someone who made up stories to get invited to parties.

He claimed to have knowledge of the future, to have lived there and seen the city a century from now, but whether anyone actually believed this is irrelevant. What mattered was that his stories granted him a color and theatricity which would otherwise have been quite beyond his grasp. Whenever he spun those yarns, women hung on his every word for what was almost certainly the first time in his life. Middle-aged widows like Lady Glyde adored him. He had cut a swath through polite society and become a fixture at these events, where he was regularly brought on as a kind of semi-comic turn. Above all, they made him interesting.

The is the outside possibility that he was something altogether more significant, but I’ll come to that in time.

I met him only once or twice and, frankly, thought very little of the man. But I insist you make up your own mind.

Once Lady Glyde, whispering huskily into his left ear, had told Moon exactly who and what Cribb claimed to be, the detective was so singularly unimpressed that he called the man’s honesty into question.

“Mr. Moon!” his hostess exclaimed in mock indignation. “I believe every word he’s told me.”

“You disappoint me.”

Moon stayed for another hour or two, mingling half-heartedly with the other guests, yearning all the while to continue his investigations. The Somnambulist, meanwhile, had found himself an empty chair and a jug of milk and had settled down for some serious drinking.

Moon quit the party as soon as politeness allowed, upon which Lady Glyde took barnacle-like hold of his arm to escort him to the door. They passed Cribb on the way.

“Goodbye, Mr. Moon. I shan’t see you again.”

“I suspect I’ll stand the disappointment.”

A sly grin. “But you misunderstand. This may be the last time I see you but it most certainly is not the last time you see me. A deal has to happen yet before you see the back of me.”

The conjuror just stared. “You’re gibbering.”

“I’m a two-legged contradiction, Mr. Moon. You’ll learn.” Cribb gave an oddly wistful little smile, bowed his head once and disappeared back into the crowd.

“Quite something, isn’t he?”

“I’m glad he amuses you,” said Moon, as Lady Glyde squeezed his arm a little tighter than was really necessary. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me. I must go.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve work to do.”

“See you again?” she asked hopefully.

Moon offered a final, tight half-smile. “Goodbye, ma’am.”

His obligation for the evening satisfied at last, Moon stepped out into the night.

He had gone barely five paces before he was stopped by a voice, whining and almost familiar. “Edward!”

He turned around. Someone stood silhouetted at the doorway — the ugly man.

“What do you want?” asked Moon, not bothering to hide his irritation.

Cribb grabbed the conjuror’s left hand and clasped it in his. It was almost certainly his imagination but Moon could have sworn that the ridiculous little man actually had tears bulging in his eyes.

“Mr. Moon.” He trembled, his voice thick with feeling. “Edward.”

Moon did his best to extricate his hand but Cribb held it tight. “Please, let me speak. Let me say this. We’ve been through so much together.”

“Nonsense. We’ve barely met.”

“Oh, we’ve faced death together, you and I. We’ve looked the worst this city has to offer in the eye and lived to tell the tale. I’d like to say what an honor and a privilege it has been to know you. To…” Choked with emotion, Cribb stopped, gasped in desperate lungfuls of air. Recovering his composure, he finished forlornly: “To have been your friend.”

Moon assumed the man was drunk and tugged his hand away.

“You don’t understand me now. But you will. I promise. You’ll regret this. You’ll regret not saying goodbye.”

Moon strode swiftly away. The ugly man chose not to follow but, sadder and more solemn than before, turned and walked slowly back inside.

As if by instinct, Moon returned to the site of the murder.

Despite the lateness of the hour the streets were filled with the same human flotsam that had accosted Cyril Honeyman on his final journey. But at Moon’s approach, they drew swiftly back, aware perhaps that he was not a man to trifle with. The conjuror barely noticed them as he moved, wraithlike, through the alleys and backstreets of the place, heading inevitably for the tower.

He could feel the weight of the past pressing down upon him as he walked, the waters of history closing about his head. He found himself recalling the notion of genius loci, that fanciful conviction that a place itself materially affects the individuals who pass through it. If this place had any tangible effect upon its inhabitants, then it was surely a malign one. The topography of the district had a uniquely malevolent quality; it seemed to draw to its bosom all that was most loathsome in the city, most monstrous and sinful. The place had a hunger to it; it craved sacrifice.

Moon reached the silent hulk of the tower, made his way to the top and found it entirely deserted. It was clear that no transients has pressed the place into service as an impromptu boarding house — in an area beset by poverty of the most acute and pernicious kind, this fact ought to have surprised him, though, strangely, it did not.

The summit was bare now and cleared of rancid food and Moon mused again on the particulars of this troublesome case, the suspicious paucity of physical evidence, the tantalizing sense he had of something greater lurking just beyond his grasp. He sank to the cold floor, fumbled in his pockets for cigarette and lighter and sat and smoked as the night slipped away, cross-legged, eyes tight shut, like some latter-day Buddha waiting patiently for he knew not what.

Mrs. Grossmith’s many years of service had inured her to her employer’s eccentricities, practically immunized her against his quirks and idiosyncrasies. Consequently, her near-hysterical reaction on Moon’s return home was no small cause for alarm.

“Mr. Moon!” she wailed. “Where have you been?”

“That’s no business of yours.”

“No need to be rude,” she snapped.

There was a long pause. Moon sighed. “My apologies. What is it? What’s the matter?”

“There was a man here for you. All night.”

“Who?”

“Gave me the proper chills, he did. Right upset me. He was a little man. All small and white.”

“An albino?”

Grossmith scrunched her face up in a frown. “I think that’s the word.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that he wanted to see you and that it was important.” She reached into her apron pocket and passed him a small white rectangle of card. “He left you this.”

Moon glanced down. “It’s blank.”

“I know. I asked whether it was a mistake but he said no, that you’d understand. I don’t mind admitting I was worried. What kind of a man leaves a card like that?”

Moon tossed the thing onto the kitchen fire where it was satisfyingly consumed by the flames. As it burned, he came to a decision.

The Somnambulist shambled into the room, his monolithic frame swaddled in a florid purple dressing gown. Moon bade him good morning; the Somnambulist yawned in response.

“I’m canceling the show tonight. It’s time we went on the offensive.”

The Somnambulist stretched and yawned again. He scrawled a message.

WHERE

When he heard Moon’s reply, the Somnambulist lost his bleary-eyed torpor and found himself suddenly and uncomfortably wide awake.

They waited until dusk before leaving the theatre, creeping past a disapproving Mrs. Grossmith and in inebriated Speight already settling down for the night. Moon raised his hat in greeting, to which the man managed a sottish sort of reply.

A coach waited for them a few minutes’ walk from Albion Square. Moon and the Somnambulist climbed silently aboard, saying nothing to the driver who sat draped in black, his face obscured by muffler and scarf. He was an associate of the inspector, a fellow renowned for his tact and discretion.

“Tonight is a hunting expedition,” Moon explained once they were inside. “We’re after information. Just fishing. I don’t want a repeat of your behavior last time.”

The Somnambulist nodded sagely.

“But if things become unpleasant — as I fully expect they might — I trust I can rely on your… expertise?”

Another nod.

“”Thank you. There’s no one I’d rather have by my side on these little excursions.”

The giant smiled shyly in response and the coach rattled on through the night.

Less than half an hour passed before they arrived at their destination, a squalid alley deep in the bowels of Rotherhithe. This was an evil place, a collection of vile tenement buildings, doss kitchens and tumbledown slums. The streets were putrid with the stench of neglect and its people seemed more animal than human, their faces grimy, leprous and grizzled. It was a part of the city that cried out for civilization, for mercy and — yes, I do not hesitate to use the word, however unfashionable you may happen to find it — for love.

Midway down the street, amongst a row of crumbling houses leaning drunkenly together, between a pub and a lodging house where the very poor paid tuppence a night for the privilege of sleeping slumped up against a rope, stood an establishment well known to Edward Moon. An aged, drunken Lascar stood guard, and as they approached, Moon nodded politely — just as one might to a doorman at the Ritz, to the gatekeeper of some exclusive club of which one is a lifetime member. The Lascar studied them with rheumy and suspicious eyes but, too inebriated perhaps to offer much resistance, let them pass without comment. They walked down a crooked, well-worn staircase into the main body of the building, its poisonous heart, a gigantic cellar reeking of sin — the notorious opium den of Fodina Yiangou.

The cellar was wreathed in a fog of livid yellow smoke and the floor was thick with human bodies: contorted, ugly and unnatural. A young man sat lost in some heaven or hell of his own creation, the very portrait of ruin, mouth agape, eyes wide open, pupils shrunk to pinpoints. Hunched beside him was a broken-down soldier, still dressed in the scarlet livery of his regiment, filthy and ragged from years of neglect. Their hands like claws, they clutched feebly onto their opium pipes — granters at once of ecstasy and torment. Made drowsy by the poppy, they lolled listlessly on their couches, their pale, pasty faces illuminated by the light of the oil lamps, helpless as puppets shorn of their strings. Moon and the Somnambulist picked their way amongst them, and almost as one the men shuddered as they passed.

“Lotus-eaters,” the conjuror murmured. His companion gave him a quizzical look, but before he could write anything in reply a stooped Oriental materialized beside them, his face cracked and raw as though ravaged by some hideous disease.

“Mr. Moon?” His voice was thickly accented, insidious, sly.

The detective bowed politely.

The Chinaman jabbed angrily at the Somnambulist. “Why he here?”

Moon did his best to placate him. “The Somnambulist has come as my guest. You have my word he’ll be on his best behavior.”

“He not welcome,” Yiangou insisted.

“Don’t say that,” Moon grinned toothily. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

Yiangou snarled. “What you want?”

“What do I want?” Moon asked nonchalantly. He moved toward the Oriental and pinched his pug nose hard between forefinger and thumb. “I want information, Mr. Y. I trust you’ll be happy to oblige.”

The Chinaman yelped in reluctant agreement.

“Capital,” said Moon, releasing his nose. “Now let’s see if we can manage a more civilized conversation. I’m investigating the murder of Cyril Honeyman.”

Yiangou nodded sullenly.

“I’m sure a man of your intelligence could hazard a guess at my next question.”

Yiangou laughed. “You must be desperate to come here,” he said. “I think you fail. You fail!”

“I never fail,” Moon replied stiffly.

“Clapham!” The Chinaman cackled triumphantly. “I think you fail there.”

The shadow of the Somnambulist fell across Yiangou, and the Chinaman immediately fell silent.

“I want names,” Moon demanded, “anything you might have heard. Any whisper, any clue let slip by one of your poppy-addled clientele. Every evil thing in London comes through here at some time or another. One of them must know something.”

Yiangou gurgled a sigh. “I no help you, Mr. Moon.”

“I could persuade you.”

“I think you could not.”

Moon glared. “Do you know something?”

The Chinaman gave an elaborate shrug, only to give himself away by giggling.

“You do!”

He shook his head.

“Given our long friendship, Mr. Yiangou, I rather think you owe it to me to say.”

Yiangou simpered.

“Alternatively,” suggested Moon matter-of-factly, “I could ask my friend here to break your fingers one by one.”

“Ah.” The Chinaman sighed. “I been told to expect you.”

He clapped his hands and two burly men appeared by his side, stripped to the waist, awesomely muscled, prolifically tattooed, glistening with perspiration. Yiangou snapped his leathery fingers. At this signal both men drew out alarmingly vicious-looking swords and advanced toward Moon and the Somnambulist.

“You’ve been told?” the conjuror said thoughtfully. “By whom, I wonder?”

One of the men lunged eagerly toward him, his blade cutting the air inches from Moon’s face.

“You’re making me nervous, Mr. Yiangou. And you used to be such a generous host.”

The man swung his sword again and Moon took an instinctive step backwards, silently berating himself for not bringing a gun with him. He gulped and wiped a trickle of sweat from his temple.

The other thug brandished his sword at the Somnambulist who, unlike the conjuror (never at his best in any physical confrontation), stood resolutely firm.

“Run away!” Yiangou squealed as Moon muttered something about the better part of valor. “You come to me,” the Chinaman went on. “You threaten. You disturb my customers. You aggravate for many years.”

“I can close you down any time I like,” Moon protested, rather out of breath. “The only reason you’re still here is because you’re of use to me.”

It was quite the wrong thing to say. Yiangou clapped his hands. “Bored now,” he said, and the thugs moved in for the kill, their eyes aflame with the promise of murder. Moon leapt aside as one of them tried to skewer him, but was forced back against the wall. Exhausted, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

But still the Somnambulist stood firm. The other man ran roaring toward him and, like some especially ferocious javelin-thrower unable or unwilling to let go of his spear, thrust the blade deep into the giant’s belly.

The Somnambulist looked down at the wound, his face a picture of mild curiosity, looked up again and smiled. His would-be assassin gazed back in disbelief and then in real terror as, without betraying the slightest outward sign of pain, the Somnambulist strode forward, thrusting himself further onto the sword to reach his attacker. Expecting his quarry to fall at any moment, the man kept tight hold of the hilt but still the Somnambulist came relentlessly on, unstoppable as the sword slid smoothly into his belly and emerged unstained on the other side. The man held tight until the Somnambulist was almost upon him, when, shrieking inchoate curses, he let go of his weapon and ran in terror from the scene.

Disturbed by the noise of the rumpus, some of the opium slaves started to stir in their sleep, a few shambling to their feet, mumbling and howling confusedly. Yiangou squealed in frustrated rage and barked an order to his remaining servant. Foolishly, but with admirable loyalty, the man ran at the Somnambulist and buried his sword in his back. The giant swatted him easily aside and, still unflinching, plucked both blades from his body. Just as at the Theatre of Marvels, the swords were clean of blood. Moon walked to his side.

“Thank you,” he gasped. They turned to face Yiangou. “Now. Who the devil told you to do that?”

Numbly, the Chinaman shook his head.

“Mr. Yiangou,” Moon said reasonably, “you said someone had told you to expect me. All I want is a name.”

Yiangou seemed terrified. I can’t, Mr. Moon, I can’t.”

“Very well. I’ll just have to ask the Somnambulist to be gentle with you. But as you’ve seen, he’s not a man who knows his own strength.”

One of the pipe smokers, a whiskery fop who had hitherto lain silent, suddenly lumbered to his feet and yelled something unintelligible into the air. Startled, Moon and the Somnambulist turned toward him, but as they did so Yiangou saw his opportunity and took it. He ran, vanishing from sight almost immediately, disappearing deep into the warren of his establishment. The Somnambulist set off in pursuit but Moon called him back.

“No good. Yiangou knows this place far better than us. I fear we’ve lost him for tonight.”

The Somnambulist seemed disappointed.

“Are you all right? That must have taken its toll even on you.”

The giant frowned.

“You don’t look well. I think we should get back.”

They left the opium wrecks behind them and headed home, looking forward to the broth Mrs. Grossmith had promised to prepare for their return, but as the coach drove into Albion Square, they saw Detective Inspector Merryweather waiting on the steps outside their lodgings. He stood next to Speight, evidently uncomfortable in the vagrant’s company, even if the latter seemed in the midst of lively conversation, talking loudly and gesticulating at his perennial sandwich board.

SURELY I AM COMING SOON

REVELATION 22:20

“Gentlemen!” Merryweather called out as the pair descended from the cab.

“Inspector.”

“What have you been up to this time?” he asked, eyeing their torn and bloodied appearance.

“Solving your case,” Moon replied, a little tartly.

“It’s bad news.”

The conjuror sighed. “Go on.”

Merryweather drew himself up to his full height and paused dramatically.

“Well?” Moon was in no mood for theatrics.

The inspector swallowed hard. “There’s been another one.”

Chapter 7

As the coach sped back into the city, Merryweather explained it all.

“What was his name?” asked Moon. He seemed alert again, re-energized, whilst the Somnambulist, exhausted by the battering the night had already given him, had begun to drift off into a pleasant doze.

“The victim’s name is Philip Dunbar. Wealthy. Like Honeyman, an only son, an idler and a wastrel. Like Honeyman, he fell from the tower.”

“The same site?” Furious, Moon clenched his hands into fists.

“Dunbar was lucky.”

“Lucky? How?”

“He survived, Mr. Moon. He survived.”

Philip Dunbar lay close to death. He may once have been a handsome man but now it was almost impossible to tell — teeth smashed, face ruined, he writhed helplessly on the bed, its sheets already stiff with sweat, blood and urine, more like some shattered beast than a young man whose whole life had stretched uncomplicatedly before him only hours earlier.

“How long has he got?” Moon asked.

“Doctor says it could be any time now. Frankly it’s a miracle he’s still with us at all.”

Dunbar thrashed about, muttering indistinctly.

“Poor devil’s delirious. From what we can make out he says he was attacked by some sort of creature. A kind of ape, he says, its face covered in scales.”

“Scales?”

“The doctors have given him a hefty dose of morphine. We can hardly blame him for getting a little fanciful.”

“Anything else?”

Keeps talking about his mother. Said he’d seen her.”

“His mother?” Moon gave the policeman a curious look.

“First person a chap calls for, I imagine, when he’s in a spot like this.”

Dunbar shouted again, the words more distinguishable this time. “God be with you.”

“What?” Moon seemed almost alarmed. “What was that?”

Shuddering, the man struggled to sit up. “God be with you,” he muttered. “God be with you.” He let out a feeble moan and fell back into bed, silent but still breathing, the cord which tethered him to life frayed and worn.

Merryweather sighed. “He’s too far gone. Sooner it’s over for him now the better.”

Mon turned and walked away. “I want to know when he dies.”

Merryweather protested. “You mustn’t take this personally.”

“There’s a pattern here. Why can’t I see it?”

Outside, the Somnambulist was still dozing in the coach. The driver shivered on top.

“Take us home.”

The man nodded.

“Inspector?”

“Mr. Moon?”

“I want to see Honeyman’s body.”

“I’m afraid the family had it cremated last week.”

“Cremated?”

“I’m sorry.”

Moon frowned. “I’ll be in contact again soon.”

“You realize we’ve got to stop this,” Merryweather insisted. “It has to end.”

Moon told the coachman to drive. “Give me time,” he called out. “Give me time.”

Philip Dunbar passed away an hour or so after Merryweather had wished him a speedy death, screaming out his agony to the last. Regrettably, Moon’s response was to throw himself back into the coils of degeneracy. Two days later, he returned to the house of Mrs. Puggsley.

Deliciously exhausted, he lay stretched out on a couch in the reception room, his modesty covered only by a woman’s filmy dressing gown. Mina, the girl with the beard and the vestigial limb, placed a lit cigarillo between his lips and shimmied demurely from the room. The procuress beamed and rubbed her hands together in delight. “I trust Mina proved satisfactory?”

“Admirable. She’s quite become my favorite.”

Sitting around the room were three other girls, former favorites all, and at Moon’s remark they affected distress, pulling mock-disgusted faces. One of them, a pinhead named Clara, crawled across to him and began to softly stroke his neck. Moon tossed her a few farthings and she gamboled happily away.

“Must be a slow night for so few of your girls to be working.”

“Oh it is, sir. It is. You’ve been our first john all evening. Point of fact, it’s been a rather slow week.”

“Really?” Moon made an unsuccessful attempt to blow smoke rings, much to the amusement of the women, a gray-faced creature with a painful-looking skin condition and flippers for hands. Mrs. Puggsley chided her softly. “Mr. Gray” was a regular customer and was not to be openly mocked.

“No doubt business will pick up soon.”

Puggsley shook her massive frame in what was probably intended as a shrug. “Not till the travelers leave,” she muttered, and the others murmured in assent.

Moon sat up, pulled the negligee tight about him and stubbed out his cigarette. “Travelers?” he said.

I once put it to Moon that his patronage of Mrs. Puggsley’s bawdy house was a reprehensible lapse in an otherwise approximately moral character, that his perverse attraction to these poor discarded accidents of nature was a predilection utterly unworthy of him. In reply, he maintained that these liaisons were the mark of an inquisitive mind and an experimental spirit and (somewhat more persuasively) that Puggsley’s was not in itself evil but merely a symptom of an unjust society. Mrs. Puggsley, he argued, provided a sanctuary for these girls from a world which would otherwise hate and fear them.

As it turned out, he was right about society. It was our society, of course, and not Mrs. Puggsley that was responsible for forcing these vulnerable women into their unfortunate positions. I believe I may have remarked something to the effect that I would give my life to change that society, to improve and re-engineer it for the better. But whatever philanthropic qualities Puggsley may have possessed, one thing is certain — that night she provided the key to the Honeyman-Dunbar killings.

“Tell me about the travelers.”

One of the girls tittered.

“They’re show people,” Puggsley explained. “A carnival. Novelties and funfair rides mostly. But some of their freaks turn tricks on the side. I don’t mind telling you, they’re hurting my business.”

“What are they like?”

Mrs. Puggsley groaned. “They’ve got all sorts down there — mermaid and midgets and a girl who can blow balloons up with her eyes. How can we possibly compete with that?”

Mina came back into the room. “We shouldn’t have to,” she said, absently running a comb through her beard. “It’s a proper disgrace, the way they’ve muscled in on our business.” She sat down beside Moon, gave him a perfunctory, passionless kiss on the cheek and returned to the disentanglement of her facial hair.

Moon barely noticed. “How long have they been here?”

“Rolled in about a month ago.”

“Are there acrobats? Gymnasts? Tumblers? Anyone who’d be able to scale buildings?”

“I shouldn’t care to say,” Mrs. Puggsley said haughtily. “I’ve no wish to visit such a place.”

Clara, the pinhead, spoke up. “I’ve been,” she said. “I saw this man there do this act where he climbs a church steeple and dances on top. He can crawl up anything, they say. They call him ‘the Human Fly’ because of it — and on account of the fact he doesn’t quite look right.”

“Describe him.”

“It’s horrible to see, sir. He got these scales all over his face-”

“Scales? Are you sure?”

Clara nodded vigorously.

Moon got to his feet. Showing no obvious signs of shame, he flung the negligee aside and hurriedly dressed himself before the assembly of women. “Where is this fair?”

“Is it important?” Clara asked.

“More than you could know,” he replied, struggling with his cuff links.

“South of the river. A mile or so beyond Waterloo.”

Moon gave her his thanks and ran for the exit. Mrs. Puggsley lumbered to her feet.

“Always a pleasure, Mr. Gray. Can we expect you again soon?”

“You may rely on it,” Moon called back. He left the house, ran back through Goodge Street, hailed the first hansom cab he saw and raced toward Albion Square.

“Well,” Mrs. Puggsley said as she moved with fleshy inelegance back to her easy chair, “there goes one satisfied customer, at least.”

Moon dashed up to the doors of the Theatre of Marvels to find a street arab loitering conveniently outside. “Boy!” he shouted.

The child, a ragged, underfed scrap of a thing, looked up. “Sir?”

“I’ve a sovereign for you if you can deliver a message to Scotland Yard.” He scrawled a note and handed it over. “Deliver it into the hands of a man named Merryweather. Have you got that?”

“A sovereign?” the waif asked, wide-eyed.

“Two if you hurry. Now go.”

Needing no further encouragement, the child ran headlong into the darkness.

Moon pelted down the steps to his flat, Speight grumbling sleepily as he passed.

Mrs. Grossmith was making herself a nightcap when Moon burst into the kitchen.

“Been for another walk?” she asked, her voice dripping with disapproval.

Moon ignored her. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”

“Asleep, sir, these past three hours.”

“Then we must wake him,” Moon cried, running toward the bedroom.

“Has something happened?” The housekeeper was unsurprised to receive no reply.

Moon shook his friend awake. “We have him!” he shouted. “We have our man!”

Half an hour later, in grim, persistent rain, Moon, Mrs. Grossmith and the Somnambulist stood assembled by the steps outside the theatre. Speight tottered across to see what all the excitement was about. “What’s going on?” he asked. Everyone ignored him.

“This is no night to be out in,” Mrs. Grossmith complained.

“We’ve no choice,” Moon retorted.

“Where is it you’re going at this hour, anyway?”

Before he could reply, a four-wheeler clattered into Albion Square, pulled up by the theatre and disgorged a beleaguered-looking Merryweather and two beefy plain-clothes policemen.

“You’d better be right,” he said. “You’ve dragged me out of bed for this.”

The Somnambulist nodded in weary sympathy.

“We’d best be going before this weather gets any worse. If what you say is true this’ll be the arrest of my career.”

“Have I ever failed you before, Inspector?”

It may be for the best that Merryweather’s reply was lost to the wind and the rain.

As the coach drove from the square, Grossmith and Speight walked back to the theatre ruefully shaking their heads in an unexpected moment of camaraderie. The vagrant settled stoically down upon the steps and Mrs. Grossmith felt a sudden pang of conscience.

“Mr. Speight? It’s a cold night. Might I offer you some broth?”

The tramp nodded gratefully, clambered back to his feet and the two of them retreated indoors to the warm and merciful pleasures of the housekeeper’s kitchen.

By the time they reached the carnival the rain had become torrential, and worse yet a thick fog had begun to descend, lending even the most innocuous scenes an eerie, minatory air.

The travelers had settled a mile or so west of Waterloo, colonizing a small heath beside a row of residential houses. A church sat some way off in the distance.

The fair itself comprised nothing more than a dozen or so caravans grouped together in a rough circle at the center of the heath. A few of them carried signs and placards promising contests, games, spectacles and the like, but everything was long since boarded up and covered over for the night. Most of their owners had retired but for a couple of uncouth, unshaven men sitting listlessly about a guttering, sickly fire. The plaintive wail of what sounded like a penny flute drifted through the camp.

As the investigators walked toward them, one of the men looked up, belligerence glinting openly in his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked. Attached to his left ear was the kind of large metal ring more usually to be found dangling from the noses of cattle.

Merryweather (well used to dealing with persons of this class) chose not to reveal his profession but instead that he wished to see the proprietor with a view to exchanging a sum of money for information. The man with the earring shot the inspector a suspicious look but got to his feet nonetheless and slouched away into the mist. The bolder of the two plain-clothes policemen (Moreland by name) unwisely attempted to make conversation with the remaining Romany, an offer ungraciously declined by means of a single, brusque hand gesture.

At length the proprietor appeared, and the fog must have descended still more heavily than before, as there was little or no sign of his approach — he seemed to materialize fully formed mere inches from the Somnambulist’s right elbow. He looked the giant up and down like a farmer eyeing up livestock at the county fair. “Shouldn’t you be with us?” he asked.

He was a slippery, weasel-faced squirt of a man who introduced himself as Mr. King. “What can I do for you, gents? Must be something devilish important to get you out here at this time of night and in such weather, too.”

“We’re looking for a man,” Merryweather explained.

“Lot of men here,” King replied unhelpfully, and sniggered.

“He is known,” Moon interjected, “as the Human Fly.”

A leer spread itself across the proprietor’s disagreeable face. “It’s the Fly you’re after, is it? What’s he done this time?”

“What makes you think he’s done anything?” Moon said carefully.

“Oh, he’s been in trouble before. He’s sprightly, that one.” King’s tongue darted out to dampen his lower lip. “Very sprightly.”

“May we see him?”

The proprietor shrugged. “I shouldn’t like to wake the boy. He’s got a big day ahead of him tomorrow. Being one of our star attractions, you understand.”

Merryweather produced his wallet and pulled out a five-pound note. “I’ll double this when you take us to him.”

King gave a greasy bow. “Follow me, gentlemen. Stay close. This fog can be treacherous.”

They had good reason to take notice of this warning, as the fog had degenerated into a London particular, rendering vision more than a foot in front of them practically impossible. The fog clutched at their bodies, muzzled clammily up against them and permeated their clothes, dank and cold and seeping through to the skin. As the Somnambulist shivered, Moon touched his arm.

“I know, old man,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

King led them toward a peeling, canary-colored caravan set apart from its fellows, the runt of the litter. As they drew closer, Moon saw that painted on either side was the legend THE HUMAN FLY and beside it a strange, daubed symbol: a black, five-petaled flower.

King hammered on the door.

“Visitors!” he shouted. “Visitors for you!”

A muffled snarl issued from somewhere within.

“They have money,” King wheedled.

Another snarl, fierce and animal.

“We only want to ask you some questions,” Moon said reasonably. “We’re prepared to offer a substantial reward.”

The door swung reluctantly open and a bizarre figure thrust his head into the light. At first it was barely apparent that the thing was even human. He seemed a second Caliban — bestial, ferocious, his face covered with vomit-colored lumps and scales. He looked down at them and growled.

Merryweather coughed nervously. “He always look like that?”

King simpered. “Like I said. He’s sprightly.”

Moon ignored them. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

The Fly looked uncertainly back. He growled again and this time it sounded horribly like a word, each syllable crawling broken and mangled from his lips. “Poet…”

“Poet?” said Moon who was trying his best to sound encouragingly cheerful. “I’m no poet. Who do you mean?”

Another inchoate growl.

“My name is Edward Moon and this is my associate, the Somnambulist. We’re investigating the deaths of Cyril Honeyman and-”

Before he could go any further, the Fly yelped in shock. “Moon,” he pointed and screamed in a guttural, unearthly tone. “Moon!”

Moon smiled. “Well done!”

“Moon!”

“That’s right. Have you heard my name before?”

Ignoring his questions, the Human Fly thrust past them and vanished into the thick banks of fog. He moved so swiftly that they were all — even the Somnambulist — too shocked and to slow to stop him.

“Looks like he didn’t take to you.” King smirked and put out his hand. “Now as to the matter of my fee-”

Moon shouldered the man aside. “Devil take your fee,” he cried and ran into the fog, disappearing almost immediately.

Merryweather turned to his men. “Follow me.”

Accompanied by the Somnambulist, they dashed after the conjuror, leaving King to shrug and saunter back to camp.

Moon could just make out the figure ahead of him, a horrible, indistinct shape loping in and out of view. He cursed the fog. Behind him, he could hear the shouts of his friends as they struggled to find their way.

The Fly fled before them, across the common, into the streets beyond. Moon could hardly believe the evidence of his senses as he saw the man leap onto the side of the first house and scamper up to the roof with all the grace and agility of a jungle cat loose in suburbia.

“Please!” Moon called out helplessly. “I only want to talk to you.”

The Fly hissed something back. It may have been his imagination but Moon could have sworn the thing was still shouting his name.

“Stop!” Moon screamed. “Come down!”

The creature took no notice and began to race along the roof of the building. When it reached the end it jumped onto the adjoining house and moved relentlessly on, heading for the church in the road beyond, squirming, wriggling, leapfrogging its way down the street, a vile shadow scampering grotesquely across the skyline. Merryweather and the others appeared, panting and too late, by Moon’s side.

“Where is he?”

Silently, he pointed upward. The creature perched upon a rooftop several houses away. For a moment it tottered uncertainly, then righted itself and scurried on.

“Good God.” Merryweather crossed himself. “Is it real?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Looks like we’ve got our man.”

“He knew me, Inspector,” Moon shouted. “Someone had told him to expect us. This man did not act alone.”

“When we have him in custody,” Merryweather said in his most pedantic voice, “remind me to ask him.”

Above them, their quarry clattered across the rooftops. As they approached the church they lost him in the fog, but an instant later the mist cleared and there he was, atop the steeple, clinging to the weathercock and howling at the sky.

“Come down!” Moon shouted. “Please!”

The creature screeched obscenities into the night.

Moon turned to the Somnambulist. “Could you-?” he began, but the Somnambulist interrupted him with a gesture. He scribbled something on his chalkboard.

FRAID OF HITES

“Marvelous,” Merryweather muttered, and the conjuror shot his friend a disappointed look. The inspector turned optimistically toward his men, but before he was able even to ask the question, they shook their heads as one.

“How in God’s name are we going to get him down?” the inspector asked.

Moon called up to the Human Fly. “Please!” he said. “We won’t harm you. You have my word.”

The Fly screamed again.

“What’s he saying?” Merryweather asked.

“I think I can make it out,” said Moreland (famed in the force for his preternaturally acute hearing). “Sounds like… God be with you.”

“What?” Moon said.

The Fly wailed.

Moon shouted up to the steeple: “Please, whatever you’re about to do — stop. We can help you.”

But it was too late. The Fly shouted again and this time they all heard it quite distinctly, a prosaic and common enough phrase in everyday life, but here somehow unsettling, shocking in its incongruity.

“God be with you.”

With this final cry, the Fly threw himself from the steeple. Mercifully, the fog masked his fall, but they all heard with sickening clarity, the terrible bone-snapping crunch as his body hit the ground.

Merryweather ran across to him and felt for a pulse. “Quite dead,” he confirmed.

Moon stood over the unfortunate creature’s corpse. An oddly frail thing it seemed in death. One could believe it almost vulnerable. “The death of a human fly,” he murmured.

“Quite right.” The inspector chuckled. “Looks like we swatted him.”

Moon stared at the policeman, distaste etched upon his face. “This is not the end,” he said softly and disappeared into the fog.