the paperwork, looking a little more surprised than pleased that his last bid had been the last of all. Doyle glanced at the clock, and felt a tiny cold quiver in his chest—it was thirty-five minutes after ten. His glance darted around the room, but there was no giant blond man present, with or without the fierce beard Ashbless was evidently never without.
His face was hot and his mouth tasted feverish. Reasoning that he must at all costs keep from passing out here, he ordered a pint of stout for two precious pennies. When it arrived the clock said twenty minutes of eleven, and though he tried to drink it slowly, as befitted a restorative, when the clock pinged the third quarter-hour his glass was empty, and he could feel the alcohol pressing outward against the walls of his skull—for he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours—and Ashbless still hadn’t arrived. Get hold of yourself, he thought. Coffee, no more beer. So he’s a little late; the accounts of his arrival were more than a century old when you read them—and those were based on Ashbless’ recollections, as recorded by Bailey in the 1830s. A bit of inaccuracy is hardly surprising. It might very well have been eleven-thirty actually. It has to have been eleven-thirty. He settled down to wait. Three carefully nursed cups of coffee later the clock bonged eleven-thirty and there had been no sign of William Ashbless. The stock and shipping business continued to be lively, and at one point a portly gentleman who’d sold a Bahamian plantation at a tremendous profit ordered up a glass of rum for everyone present, and Doyle gratefully poured the stuff down his feverish throat. And he began to get angry.
An idea struck him, and he stopped a boy and asked him for a pencil and some sheets of paper. And when it arrived he began to write out, from memory, the entire text of “The Twelve Hours of the Night.” In composing the original PMLA article on Ashbless’ work, and later while writing the biography, he had read the poem hundreds of times, and in spite of his sick dizziness he had no difficulty in remembering every word. By twelve-thirty he was scribbling the somewhat awkward final eight lines.
He whispered,
He folded up the sheets of paper and sat back smugly, content now to wait.
* * *
When the gargling screams started, Jacky broke into a run down the narrow alley toward Kenyon Court, the old flintlock in her shoulder pouch bouncing painfully against her left shoulder blade. She swore, for it certainly sounded like she was too late. Just as she burst out of the alley into the littered court a gunshot echoed between the dilapidated buildings.
“Damn it,” she panted. Under the ragged curtain of her bangs her eyes darted this way and that, trying to spot anyone—from a toddler to an old woman—leaving the court, especially with a too nonchalant air; but the entire population of the area seemed to be hurrying toward the house from which the shot had sounded, and shouting questions to the people that lived there, and cupping their faces against the dust-frosted windows.
Jacky sprinted, ducked and elbowed her way nimbly through the noisy crowd to the house’s front door, and just pressed down the latch, swung the door open and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and shot the bolt.
“And just who the bloody hell are you?” came a voice with more than a hint of hysteria in it. A heavy-set man in a brewer’s apron stood on the first landing of the stairway on the other side of the front room. The smoking gun in his right hand seemed to be something he hadn’t noticed yet, like a fleck of mustard on one’s moustache, and right now it only served as a weight, keeping that hand from flying about in aimless gestures as the left was doing.
“I know what you just killed,” Jacky panted, her voice urgent. “I’ve killed one myself. But never mind that for now. Are any people, any members of your family, not here? Did anyone leave the house in the last few minutes?”
“What? There’s a goddamn ape upstairs! I just shot it! My God! None of my family are at home, thank all the saints! My wife will go mad. I may go mad.”
“Very well, what was… the ape doing? When you shot it?”
“Was it yours? You son of a bitch, I’ll have you clapped in jail for letting that thing run wild!” He began clumping down the stairs.
“No, it wasn’t mine,” Jacky said loudly, “but I’ve seen another like it. What was it doing?”
The man waved with both hands, clanking the gun against the wall. “It was—Jesus!—screaming like somebody on fire, and spitting pints of blood out of its mouth, and trying to crawl into my son Kenny’s bed. Damn me, it’s still there—the mattress will be—”
“Where is Kenny right now?” Jacky interrupted.
“Oh, he won’t be home for hours yet. I’ll have to—”
“God damn it, where’s Kenny?” Jacky shouted. “He’s in terrible danger!”
The man gaped at her. “Are the apes after Kenny? I knew something like this would happen.”
Seeing Jacky open her mouth for another outburst, he said hastily, “At the Barking Ahab, around the corner in the Minories.”
As Jacky sped out the door and ran back toward the alley she thought, you poor bastard, it’s a blessing you’ll never find out that it was probably your Kenny you shot, as, crowbarred into an unfamiliar and fur-covered and poisoned body, he tried to crawl into his bed.
The Minories was blocked by a line of wagons carrying bales of clothing from the Old Clothes Exchange in Cutler Street toward London Dock, and Jacky ran to the nearest one, scrambled up the sideboards and from this vantage point looked up and down the street. There it was—a swinging sign with an Old Testament-looking man painted on it, his head tilted back and his mouth an O. She swung down from the wagon just as the driver behind
