The ringing ceased. “I wishes to speak with yer employer,” the little man announced. “Take me to him.”
“If you’ve come to have some hair removed, you don’t need to talk to the boss. I can—”
“The boss I asked for, sonny, and the boss I’ll speak to. It’s to do with a friend of mine, you see—he sent me here, as it were. He can’t travel about because he—” and the man paused to give the clerk a massive wink, “— grows hair, terrible thick, all over himself. Eh? You understand? And don’t, sonny, try to go for yer tranky gun. Take me to the boss.”
The clerk blinked and licked his lips. “Uh… damn … okay, yes. Will you wait while I—no. Uh, will you come this way, please, sir?” He lifted away a hinged section of the counter so the little man could come inside. “Right through here. Now you won’t… do anything crazy back here, will you?”
“Not me, sonny,” the man said, evidently surprised and hurt by the very thought.
The two of them walked through a rear door and down a dim corridor, and were halted at the end of it by a man who stood up from a stool when they approached. “What’s this?” he asked, his hand going quickly to a bellpull rope. “Clients aren’t allowed back here, Pete, you know that.”
“This guy just now walked in,” said Pete hastily, “and he says—”
“A friend of mine grows fur all over his body,” the little man broke in impatiently. “Now take me to your bloody boss, will you?”
The hall guard gave Pete an accusing look.
Pete shrugged helplessly. “He… knew about it somehow. Told me not to go for it.”
After a moment of thought the guard let go of the bell rope. “Very well,” he said. “Wait here while I tell him.” He opened the door behind him and stepped through, shutting it carefully behind him, but the rope hadn’t even stopped swinging when he opened it again. “Pete,” he said, “back to the shop. You, sir, may follow me.”
“Aye aye, skipper.” The disheveled little man grinned and stepped smartly forward.
Beyond the door was a narrow carpeted stairway, and at the top was a hallway with several doors visible along it. The next to nearest one was open, and the guard waved toward it. “There’s his office,” he said, and stepped back. The little man brushed his joke wig hair back with ridiculous daintiness, then walked into the room.
An old man with hard, bright eyes stood up from behind a cluttered desk and pointed to a chair. “Sit down, sir,” he said in an impressively deep voice, “and let’s take it as given that I am thoroughly armed, shall we? Now I understand you—”
He paused, and looked more closely at his visitor’s face. “D-Doyle?” he said wonderingly. His hand darted out and turned up the wick of the lamp on the desk. “My God,” he breathed. “It is you! But… I see—I must have somehow overestimated Benner’s ruthless self-interest. He lied when he said he killed you.” His confidence was coming back, but there had been real fear in his face for a moment.
The other man was sitting back, grinning delightedly. “Oh, aye, he lied, right enough. But you might say I am dead.” He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. “Poisoned.”
A bit of the fear was again visible in the old man’s eyes, and to cover it he spoke harshly. “Let’s not indulge in riddles. What do you mean?”
The grin left the little man’s face. “I mean if I throws away me razor I won’t be bald much longer.” He held up one lumpy hand. “Can ye see the whiskers between me fingers? They’ve started already.” His cheeks accordioned back as he bared all his teeth in a savage smile. “And let’s… take it as given, sir, that I can leave here any time. If I have to flee, this body will stay here, but there’ll suddenly be a very scared and confused soul in it— and I’ll be miles away.”
Darrow went pale. “Jesus, it’s you. Very well, no, don’t flee, I don’t want to do you any harm.” He stared hard into the eyes that had been Doyle’s. “What did you do with Doyle?”
“I was in yer Steerforth Benner’s body, and I’d been in it long enough so’s it was furry as a bear; I ate a whole lot o’ strychnine and also a drug that makes you see things and act crazy, and then I chewed my tongue up real good—so he’d not have a chance to talk to nobody—and then just switched places with him.”
“Good God,” Darrow whispered in an awed tone. “That… poor son of a bitch… “
He shook his head. “Well, let the dead bury the dead. I’ve come a long way to find you—to strike a bargain with you. Damn it, I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my mind a hundred times, but now I can’t think where to begin. Let’s see—for one thing, I can cure your hyperpilosity, the all-over fur, any time, and as many times as you please, so from now on you’ll be free to take a new body only when you choose to—you won’t have to anymore. But that’s not the main item I want to bargain with.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Listen to this extract from a book I own. ‘It seems,’” he read aloud, “‘a man at another table took exception to some—as I heard the tale later—heathen sentiments the stranger had voiced, and seized the front of the offender’s shirt in order the more forcefully to convey his displeasure; the shirt tore, and the man’s breast being exposed, it was remarked that the hitherto concealed skin was covered with new whiskers, such as would show on a man’s face after not shaving for a couple of days. Mr.—” Darrow looked up and smiled. “I can’t let you know his real name yet. Let’s call him Mr. Anonymous. ‘Mr. Anonymous,’” he resumed, “‘exclaimed to the company, “I believe it’s Dog-Face Joe; Seize him and take off those gloves.” The gloves were promptly pulled off of the struggling man’s hands, which proved to be likewise bewhiskered. Mr. Anonymous silenced the uproar and declared that if justice was to be visited on this notorious murderer it would have to be done at once, without involving the slow wheels of the law, and so the man was dragged out into the yard behind the pub, and hanged from a rope which was tied to one of the warehouse cranes.’” Darrow put the paper down and smiled at the other man.
“An entertaining fiction,” pronounced the man in Doyle’s body.
“Yes,” agreed Darrow, “it’s fiction now. But in a few months it will be fact—history.” He smiled. “This is going to be a long story, Joe. Would you like some brandy?”
Again Doyle’s face grinned. “Don’t mind if I do,” Amenophis Fikee said.
* * *
In the sudden silence Horrabin, his sling still swinging from his violent gesticulations of a few moments before, stared at the shattered corpse on the flagstones beside the table and realized that the fallen beggar lord had put control of the situation back within his reach. He grinned merrily, clapped his painted hands and cried, “He didn’t quite make it to the table, did he?” The clown knew he had his audience’s attention again, so he reached unhurriedly for a joint of meat on his plate, gnawed it thoughtfully, and then tossed it all the way to the back of the hall, where the shambling derelicts fell upon it with a satisfactory noise of growling and scuffling. “None of you,” said the clown quietly, “will ever take anything from me but what I let you have.”
He looked up at the remaining beggar lords. Their spider web hammocks were still swaying back and forth across the abyss, though they’d stopped yelling and waving and now just peered cautiously down, their eyes glittering in the smoky red glow from the oil lamps. Horrabin’s gaze dropped to the corpse, and then swung to the thief lords sitting at the long table. Miller, the one who had been loudest in the mutinous uproar, avoided meeting his eyes.
“Carrington,” Horrabin said softly.
“Aye,” said his lieutenant, stepping forward. He still limped from the beating he’d taken in one of the Haymarket brothels, but the bandages were gone, and his look of frustrated anger was tonight especially intense.
“Kill Miller for me.” As the suddenly pale and gasping thief lord kicked his chair back and scrambled to his feet, Carrington drew a pistol from his belt, poked it casually in Miller’s direction and fired. The ball struck Miller in the back of the throat through his open mouth, punching out a hole over his collar.
Horrabin spread his hands as the body hit the stones. “You see,” he said loudly before the tumult could start up again—then went on more quietly, “I’ll feed all of you… one way or the other.”
The clown smiled. It had been good theater. But where was Doctor Romany? Had all his promises, as Miller had insisted, been lies to manipulate the London thieves into furthering some privately profitable scheme of his own? Horrabin, who knew more than the rest about what was supposed to have happened, was concealing a disquiet greater than Miller’s had been. Was the king assassinated yet? If so, why hadn’t any of the clown’s surface runners reported it? Or was the news being suppressed? Where was Romany?
In the silence the unsteady, jarring footsteps from the corridor sounded loud. Horrabin looked up, though
