Southcote wasn’t an inspiring sight. She lay in a comfortable heap on the slab, partly disassembled, a rickety, fleshless, collapsed framework of dirt and dust and bones. Tangled wisps of hair were clotted with leaves. Her winding sheet lay in an ignominious heap beside the slab.
A dissecting board onto which was pinned an enormous, flayed toad had been swept from the slab onto the floor along with a sheaf of notes, an ink bottle, and a quill pen. The hunchback dropped the fish onto the slab and pulled off his dripping greatcoat in silence. Shiloh, stupefied with anger, threw out his arm and shoved the fish onto the floor atop the toad. The violence of the effort jarred the slab, and the bones of his mother danced briefly, her jaws clacking shut as if she were admonishing her clumsy son.
“She speaks!” cried the evangelist, lurching forward and grasping her forearm as if to entreat her to continue. Her hand fell off onto the slab. Shiloh stepped back in horror, covering his eyes. Narbondo grunted in disgust, turned to hang his coat on a hook. He stopped, a smile spreading across his face.
“Nell Owlesby,” he said. “And after so many long years. What has it been? Fifteen years now since you shot your poor brother, hasn’t it?” He paused momentarily and licked his lips. “A very pretty shot, that one. Straight into his heart. Knicked a rib going in and lodged in the left ventricle. Quite a mess. I worked on him for three hours after chasing you half across London, but I couldn’t save him. I animated him, though, for a week, but he wasn’t worth keeping. Lost his sense. Wept the day out. I cut him to bits, finally — used a piece of him here, a piece of him there.”
Nell sat tight-lipped in her corner, staring at the rainwater that beat against the window. “That’s a lie,” she said finally. “I saw him buried at Christchurch myself. His bones are still there. My mistake was to not shoot you instead of him. I know that now. I knew it an hour after. But the deed was done.”
“You’re right, of course.” Narbondo stooped to pick up his toad. He lay it on a table, repinning one rubbery leg that had fallen loose. He pointed then at the ruined carp. “Your mother’s soul,” he said, turning to Shiloh, “resides in this carp. It’s been beaten. It’s a pity, really, but it couldn’t be helped. My assistant here pulverized it against a window sill. But it’s worlds away healthier than this, eh?” He nodded at the skeleton before frowning just a bit as if not entirely satisfied with it. He stepped slowly across to the window, flung it open, and sailed the carp out into the night.
The old missionary leaped toward him, his cloak flying behind. Narbondo flourished his right hand in front of his face, as if he were a magician uncovering a palmed coin. Between his thumb and forefinger was the little kidney-shaped gland, glistening pink. He winked at the old man, who stopped abruptly. “This is worth two hundred fifty pounds.” Narbondo squinted at it, holding it to the light.
“I’ll trade you the woman for it,” said Shiloh, smiling for the first time that evening.
Narbondo shrugged. “What do I want with her? She’s a murderess. I haven’t any interest in a murderess, have I?”
“You’ve been asking after her around the city for a month. You’ve offered, in fact, nearly twice that sum for news of her. I’m prepared to let her go at a bargain.”
The hunchback shrugged. He turned to Nell, who sat as before, staring into the night. She had a faint idea of what brought the two villains together — what information Narbondo craved even after fifteen years.
“Where is the box?” the doctor asked abruptly.
“Ask the old man,” Nell said. “He knows.”
Narbondo spun round and faced the evangelist, who stood now with a look of satisfaction on his face. He shrugged. “This is,” he said slowly, as if contemplating each word, “a matter of mutual gain, is it not?”
Narbondo started to speak, apparently thought better of it, and fell silent. Then, after a pause, said: “Where is the box? I want it. Now.”
The old man shook his head. “I’ll pay for services rendered. I’ve seen no services yet.” Then, suddenly coming to himself, he gestured at the slab behind him. “Tonight,” he said. “Immediately.”
Pule groaned, slumping into a chair. Narbondo nodded, as if the request were simple enough, and plucked an apron from a hook, hissing at Pule to prepare for surgery.
“How…?” began Pule, but the hunchback cut him off with a curse. Shiloh backed toward a chair that sat opposite the fire, his face a mixture of reverence, satisfaction, and trepidation.
Theophilus Godall hurried along through the rainy streets, listening to the receding footfalls of Langdon St. Ives, and pondering the strange state of Captain Powers, who had evidently suffered a loss of articles unknown to the rest of them. This business was difficult enough when the bits and pieces were apparent. When they were hidden, it grew frustrating indeed — interesting certainly, but frustrating.
He’d become accustomed to staying up nights. He hadn’t any business to speak of, so he could afford to nod off in pursuit of a couple of hours of sleep in the morning. It was close upon two o’clock. The night and the weather would cover his lack of disguise. He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, tapped his stick decisively on the cobbles, and set a course toward Pratlow Street, rounding the corner as a lit window midway down the block was thrown open and a cylindrical bundle sailed out, smashing to the pavement below, followed by a shout clipped off by the shutting of the window. Godall hurried along and bent over the thing in the street. It was a dead fish of indeterminate sort — its head and most of its body having been reduced to muck by its sudden collision with the roadway. Godall turned and strode away up the stairs into his bare, rented room, arranging the curtains so as to have his usual view of the cabinet of Ignacio Narbondo.
He could see, from his curtain, three men in the room, all of whom were familiar. Shiloh, the self-proclaimed messiah, exhorted the hunchback and his assistant. He seemed to be railing at them, and now and then Godall could make out bits of shouting over the wind and rain. The hunchback squirted yellow mist at a corpse on the slab — a skeleton on the slab — from a hand-held device fed by a coiled tube. A fire roared behind him in the grate. Encased within a heavy, glass, liquid-filled jar was a tiny object of some sort — too small to identify. Herbs burned in a stone chalice. The evangelist collapsed to his knees in the semblance of prayer, and Narbondo, apparently treading on the old man’s hand, stumbled and sprayed his yellow mist onto Pule, who staggered away retching. The hunchback paused to shout at the old man, who arose and stepped back a pace, out of the way of the window.
A fresh flurry of rain dimmed Godall’s vision for a moment, but he squinted through it, focusing on the thing that lay on the slab. Surely, thought the tobacconist — surely the hunchback wasn’t attempting to animate such a thing. But he was wrong. The machine generated mist that hovered in the air above the corpse. The chalice smoked. Narbondo fished out the business in the jar and, nodding to Pule, shoved it into something that resembled a garlic press and squeezed it into the gaping mouth of the corpse.
The old man fell hack, his hands covering his face. Narbondo pumped at the machine. The thing on the slab lurched once, a scattering of debris falling from its tangle of hair, and seemed to rise as if by levitation. The shouts of Narbondo were audible but were reduced by the windy rain to gibberish.
The body jerked twice, stiffened, and very slowly began to pull itself up onto the elbow of its handless arm, as if it would slide from its slab and walk, It turned its leathery head back and forth, blind, barely animate, an unholy, rusted machine. Its other arm rose and followed the swiveling head as it rotated on its axis toward the window. For one gut-clutching moment Godall was certain the thing was looking at
The mist still clouded the room. Through it, striding toward the courtyard window, came a woman who appeared to Godall to be about forty. Supposing, perhaps, that she would attempt to meddle with the corpse, the old man rushed at her, protesting. She slammed him in the side of the head with her clenched fist, burst past him, and flung open the casement, leaning out, either for a breath of air or to throw herself from the window. Godall squashed the instinctive urge to drop the curtain and duck back into his darkened room. Instead, he looked straight at her, and, as if he were passing her on the sidewalk at midday, he tipped his hat to her, then slid round so that he could just barely see beyond the casing.
All three of the men in the room opposite dragged her back from the window, mortally fearful, it seemed to
