The Somnambulist

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