There were those who remembered Muzzlehatch on the run, and how the dripping gates had opened to him with as great a sigh as ever haunted the dream of a melancholic.
Here, long ago, in his enormous hideout he would sing until the bells gave in, or sit for hours brooding, like a monarch, sometimes covered in brambles, or daubed with earth according to the country through which he had been stealing. And there was the time, on a never-to-be forgotten day, when he was seen immaculately clad from head to toe, striding down a seemingly endless corridor, complete with a top hat on his head, a cane in his hand (which he twirled like a juggler) and an air of indescribable hauteur.
But for the most part he was known for the shameful negligence with which he kept his garments.
But he never lived there, with the denizens. The Under-River was a refuge and nothing more to him, and so he was as much a mystery to them as to the sophisticates who lived in the great houses above the river banks.
But where had they disappeared to, these two figures, the gaunt and self-sufficient Muzzlehatch, and the young man he saved? How could they ever know, these self-incarcerated rebels; these thieves and refugees? Yet they talked of little else but the flight and where they might be. Their talk was nothing but conjecture, and could get them nowhere, yet it provided almost a reason for living. For all, except three. Three, and a most unlikely three. It seems that they had been awakened in their different ways, by the horror of the ghastly incident. They were shocked, but they did not remain so. All they wanted now was to escape, at any risk, from the thronged emptiness of the place.
Superficially unadventurous, yet restless to quit that saturated morgue: superficially inactive yet ready now to take the risk of escape. For the police were after all three.
Crabcalf, with his pale pushed-in face and his general air of martyrdom. Self-centred, if not to the point of megalomania, then very near it. What of the fact that he was bed-ridden? And what of the heavy ‘remainder’ of identical volumes that had once propped up his pillow and surrounded his bed for so many years?
His bed, thanks to his friend Slingshott, and one or two others, had been exchanged for an upright chair on wheels. On the back of this chair was hung a great sack. It was filled with his books, and a great weight it was. Poor Slingshott, whose duty it was to push the chair, books, Crabcalf and all, from district to district, found little pleasure in the occupation. Not only had Slingshott the lowest opinion of Literature as a whole, he had even more a distaste for this particular book in so far as it was repeated so many times, and every time a strain upon the heart.
But though it was a long book and heavy, in spite of Crabcalf having jettisoned the bulk of it, and though it was duplicated scores of times, yet Slingshott never dreamed of rebellion, or queried his rights. He knew that without Crabcalf he would be lost.
As for Crabcalf, he was so absorbed in shallow speculations, that the fact that Slingshott was in any way suffering never occurred to him.
To be sure he heard from time to time the sound of wailing, but it might just have well been the scraping together of branches for all he knew or cared.
SEVENTY- SIX
It was on a moonless, starless night that they escaped from the Under-River and headed north by east. Within a month they were on foreign soil.
It was under a bald hill that they picked up Crack-Bell as planned. He was, for all his idiocy, the only one of the three who had any money. Not much, as they soon found out, but enough to last them for a month or two. This money was transferred to Crabcalf’s pocket, where, as he said, it would be safer. When it came to money Crabcalf’s vagueness seemed to desert him.
Crack-Bell had no objections. Nothing happened. He had been rich. Now he was poor. What did it matter? His laugh was as shrill, as penetrating as it always was. His smile just as fatuous. His responses just as quick. Compared with his two companions, Crack-Bell was intensely alive, like a monkey.
‘Here we are,’ he cried. ‘Bang in the middle of somewhere. Don’t ask me where, but somewhere. Ha, ha, ha.’ His crockery laughter rattled down the hill in broken pieces.
‘Mr Crabcalf, sir,’ said Slingshott.
‘Yes?’ said Crabcalf, raising an eyebrow. ‘What do you want this time? Another rest, I suppose.’
‘We have covered a lot of heavy ground today,’ said Slingshott, ‘and I am tired. Indeed I am. It reminds me of those …’
‘Years in the salt mines. Yes, yes. We know all about them,’ said Crabcalf. ‘And would you care to be a little more careful with my volumes? You handle that sack as though it were full of potatoes.’
‘If I may get a tiny word in edgeways,’ trilled Crack-Bell. ‘I would put it like this …’
‘Unstrap my volumes,’ said Crabcalf. ‘All of them. Dust them down with a dry cloth. Then count them.’
‘When I was in the mines you know, I had time to think …’ said Slingshott, obeying Crabcalf mechanically.
‘Oh la! And did you then? And what did you think of? Women? Women! Ha, ha, ha. Women. Ha, ha, ha, ha.’
‘Oh no. Oh no indeed. I know nothing of women,’ said Slingshott.
‘Did you hear that, Crabcalf? What an extraordinary statement to have made. It is like saying “I know nothing of the moon”.’
‘Well, what
‘As much as I know of
‘The moon figures in my book,’ said Crabcalf. ‘I can’t remember quite where … but it figures quite a lot. I talk, or rather, I dilate you know, on the change that has come over the moon. Ever since Molusk circled it, it has been quite a different thing. It has lost its mystery. Are you listening, Slingshott?’
‘Yes, and no,’ said Slingshott. ‘I was really thinking about our next encampment. It was different in the mines. There was no …’
‘Forget the mines,’ said Crabcalf. ‘And mind your clumsy elbow on my manuscript. Oh my friends, my friends, is
