before I awoke. The cook surprised him.”
“What can he do with these plans?” asked the Captain, tapping his pipe out against his ivory leg.
“Not a living thing,” said Keeble.
Godall stood and peered out to where wind-whirled debris danced and flew along Jermyn Street in the night. “For my money Kelso Drake will market such a device within the month. Not for profit, mind you — there wouldn’t be much profit in it — but as a lark, to thumb his nose at us. He was after the perpetual motion engine then?”
Keeble began to assent when a banging at the door cut him off. The Captain was out of his chair at once, his finger to his lips. There was no one beyond the seven of them whom they could trust, and no one, certainly, who had any business at a meeting of the Trismegistus Club. Kraken slipped away into a rear chamber. Godall shoved a hand beneath his coat, an act which startled St. Ives.
At the newly opened door stood a young man who was, largely because of a disastrous complexion, of indeterminate age. He might have been thirty, but was more likely twenty-five: of medium height, paunchy, brooding, and slightly stooped. The smile that played across the corners of his mouth was evidently false and served in no way to animate his cold eyes — eyes ringed and dark from an excess of study under inadequate light. He seemed to St. Ives to be a student. Not a student of anything identifiable or practical, but a student of dark arts, or of the sort who wags his head morosely and knowingly over cynical and woeful poetry and who has ingested opiates and stalked through midnight streets, without destination, but out of an excess of morbidity and bile. His cheeks seemed almost to be sucked inward, as if he were consuming himself or were metamorphosing into a particularly picturesque fish. He needed a pint of good ale, a kidney pie, and a half-dozen jolly companions.
“I am addressing a meeting of the Trismegistus Club,” said he, bowing almost imperceptibly. No one answered, perhaps because he had addressed no one or perhaps because it seemed as if he expected no response. The wind whistled behind him, trifling with the tattered hem of his coat.
“Come in, mate,” said the Captain after a long pause. “Pour yourself a glass of brandy and state your business. This is a private club, you see, and no one with a full deck would want to join, if you follow me. We’re all idle and we have little regard for hands, you might say, looking for a sail to mend”
The Captain’s speech didn’t wrinkle the man in the least. He introduced himself as Willis Pule, an acquaintance of Dorothy Keeble. Jack’s eyes narrowed. He was certain the claim was a lie. He was familiar with Dorothy’s friends, and even more, he was familiar with the sorts of people who could likely
Godall, his hand yet in his coat, addressed Pule, who hadn’t touched a glass despite the Captain’s offer. “What do
The question seemed to take Pule aback. “A club,” he stammered, looking at Godall, then glancing quickly away. “A scientific organization. I’m a student of alchemy and phrenology. I’ve read of Sebastian Owlesby. Very interesting matter.”
Pule chattered on nervously in an unfortunately high voice. Jack was doubly insulted — first at the mention of Dorothy, now at the mention of his father. He’d have to pitch this Pule into the road. But Godall got in before him, waving his free hand and thanking Pule for his interest. The Trismegistus Club, he said, was an organization devoted to biology, to lepidoptery, in fact. They were compiling a field guide to the moths of Wales. Their discussions could be of no use to a student of alchemy. Or of phrenology, for that matter, which, insisted Godall, was a fascinating study. They were awfully sorry. The Captain echoed Godall’s general sorrow, and Hasbro instinctively arose and showed Pule the door, bowing graciously as he did so. A silent moment passed after Pule’s ejection. Then Godall stood, pulled his coat from its hook, and hurried out.
St. Ives was astonished at Godall’s so quickly and handily ejecting Pule, who was, to be sure, not at all the right sort, but who might have been well intentioned. There could be little harm, after all, in his praising Owlesby, though Owlesby’s experimentation was not entirely praiseworthy. In fact, when he considered it, St. Ives wasn’t sure what part of Owlesby’s work Pule had such admiration for. None of the rest of them could enlighten him. No one, apparently, knew this Pule.
Kraken peeked out of the rear chamber, and Captain Powers waved him into the room. Godall and Pule were forgotten for the moment as Kraken, at the Captain’s bidding, spouted the story of his months as a hireling of Kelso Drake, the millionaire, punctuating it with accounts of his readings into scientific and metaphysical matters, the deep waters of which he sailed on a daily basis. And what he found there, he could assure them, would astonish the lot of them. But Kelso Drake — nothing about Kelso Drake would astonish Bill Kraken. Kraken wouldn’t put up with the likes of Drake, not for all the money the man possessed. He gulped at his Scotch. His face grew red. He’d been fired by Drake, threatened with a thrashing. He’d see who was thrashed. Drake was a coward, a pimp, a cheat. Let Drake get in his way. Drake would reel from it. Kraken would show him.
Had Kraken news of the machine, asked St. Ives delicately. Not exactly, came the answer, it was in the West End, in one of Drake’s several brothels. Was St. Ives aware of that? St. Ives was. Did Kraken know which of the brothels it might be in? Kraken did not. Kraken wouldn’t go into Drake’s brothels. They wouldn’t hold Drake and him at once. They’d explode. Bits of Drake would fall on London like a blighted rain.
St. Ives nodded. The evening would reveal nothing about the alien craft. He might have guessed it. Kraken was proud of himself, of the stuff he was made of. He launched suddenly into a vague dissertation on the backward spinning of a spoked wheel, then broke off abruptly to address Keeble. “Billy Deener,” he seemed to say.
“What?” asked Keeble, taken by surprise.
“I say, Billy Deener. The chap who broke in at the window.”
“Do you know him?” asked Keeble, startled. The Captain sat up and ceased drumming his fingers on the countertop.
“Know him!” cried the slumping Kraken. “Know him!” But he didn’t bother to elaborate. “Billy Deener is who it was, I tell you. And if you’re sharp, you won’t get within a mile of him. Works for Drake. So did I, once. But no more. Not for the likes of him.” And with that Kraken reached once again for the Scotch. “A man needs a drink,” he said, meaning, St. Ives supposed, men in general and intending to do right by all men who weren’t there to satisfy that particular need. Moments later he slid into a chair and began to snore so loudly that Jack Owlesby and Hasbro hauled him into the back room on the Captain’s orders and arrayed him on a bed, shutting the door behind them on their return.
“Billy Deener,” said St. Ives to Keeble. “Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not a blessed thing. But it’s Drake. That much is clear. Godall was right.”
Keeble seemed to pale at the idea, as if he’d rather it weren’t Drake. A common garret thief was far preferable. Keeble poured out a draught of the Scotch left in the bottle, then clacked the bottle down onto the tray just as Theophilus Godall slipped back in out of the night, easing the door shut behind him.
“I’ll apologize,” he said straightaway, “for my behavior — hardly the sort one would expect from a gentleman, which, I profess, is what I heartily wish myself to be considered.” The Captain waved his hand. Hasbro tut-tutted. Godall continued, “I hurried Mr. Pule on his way only because I knew him. He is, I’m sure, ignorant of that. He meant us no good, I can assure you. He was in the company, day before yesterday, of your man Narbondo.” He nodded at the surprised Captain. “The two struck me as being passing familiar with each other, and although we might have led this Pule along a bit to see what stuff he was made of, I thought the idea rather a dangerous one, in the light of what I perceive as a situation of growing seriousness. Forgive me if I acted in haste. My rushing away was merely a matter of desiring to confirm my suspicions. I followed him to Haymarket where he met our hunchback. The two of them climbed into a hansom cab and I returned with as much haste as propriety allowed.”
St. Ives was stunned. Here was a fresh mystery. “Hunchback?” he asked, swiveling his head from Godall to the Captain, who squinted grimly at him and nodded. “Ignacio Narbondo?” Again the Captain nodded. St. Ives fell silent. The woods, apparently, had thickened. And as mysterious as the rest of it was the mere fact that Captain Powers was so well acquainted with Narbondo, quite apparently had an eye on the machinations of the evil doctor. But why? How? It wasn’t a question that could be asked outright.
And Langdon St. Ives wasn’t the only one mystified. Jack Owlesby, perhaps, was the one among them most seething with angry curiosity. He hardly knew the Captain, who, it seemed to Jack, carried on a strange sort of business for a tobacconist. He knew Godall not a bit. He was certain of only one thing — that he would marry Dorothy Keeble or blow his brains out. The slightest hint that she was being swept unwittingly into a maelstrom of
