There were several cheers, and the comedian said, “Well, it’ll make a change from herrings and pickled cabbage,” and the company laughed.
And it was to the smiles of all of them that we walked out of the theater and onto the fog-wreathed streets.
“My dear fellow,” I said. “Whatever was—”
“Not another word,” said my friend. “There are many ears in the city.”
And not another word was spoken until we had hailed a cab, and clambered inside, and were rattling up the Charing Cross Road.
And even then, before he said anything, my friend took his pipe from his mouth, and emptied the half-smoked contents of the bowl into a small tin. He pressed the lid onto the tin, and placed it in his pocket.
“There,” he said. “That’s the Tall Man found, or I’m a Dutchman. Now, we just have to hope that the cupidity and the curiosity of the Limping Doctor proves enough to bring him to us tomorrow morning.”
“The Limping Doctor?”
My friend snorted. “That is what I have been calling him. It was obvious, from footprints and much else besides, when we saw the prince’s body, that two men had been in that room that night: a tall man, who, unless I miss my guess, we have just encountered, and a smaller man with a limp, who eviscerated the prince with a professional skill that betrays the medical man.”
“A doctor?”
“Indeed. I hate to say this, but it is my experience that when a doctor goes to the bad, he is a fouler and darker creature than the worst cutthroat. There was Huston, the acid-bath man, and Campbell, who brought the procrustean bed to Ealing . . .” and he carried on in a similar vein for the rest of our journey.
The cab pulled up beside the curb. “That’ll be one and tenpence,” said the cabbie. My friend tossed him a florin, which he caught and tipped to his ragged tall hat. “Much obliged to you both,” he called out, as the horse clopped into the fog.
We walked to our front door. As I unlocked it, my friend said, “Odd. Our cabbie just ignored that fellow on the corner.”
“They do that at the end of a shift,” I pointed out.
“Indeed they do,” said my friend.
I dreamed of shadows that night, vast shadows that blotted out the sun, and I called out to them in my desperation, but they did not listen.
5. The Skin and the Pit
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Inspector Lestrade was the first to arrive.
“You have posted your men in the street?” asked my friend.
“I have,” said Lestrade. “With strict orders to let anyone in who comes, but to arrest anyone trying to leave.”
“And you have handcuffs with you?”
In reply, Lestrade put his hand in his pocket, and jangled two pairs of cuffs, grimly.
“Now sir,” he said. “While we wait, why do you not tell me what we are waiting for?”
My friend pulled his pipe out of his pocket. He did not put it in his mouth, but placed it on the table in front of him. Then he took the tin from the night before, and a glass vial I recognized as the one he had had in the room in Shoreditch.
“There,” he said. “The coffin-nail, as I trust it shall prove, for our Master Vernet.” He paused. Then he took out his pocket watch, laid it carefully on the table. “We have several minutes before they arrive.” He turned to me. “What do you know of the Restorationists?”
“Not a blessed thing,” I told him.
Lestrade coughed. “If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about,” he said, “perhaps we should leave it there. Enough’s enough.”
“Too late for that,” said my friend. “For there are those who do not believe that the coming of the Old Ones was the fine thing we all know it to be. Anarchists to a man, they would see the old ways restored—mankind in control of its own destiny, if you will.”
“I will not hear this sedition spoken,” said Lestrade. “I must warn you—”
“I must warn you not to be such a fathead,” said my friend. “Because it was the Restorationists that killed Prince Franz Drago. They murder, they kill, in a vain effort to force our masters to leave us alone in the darkness. The Prince was killed by a rache—it’s an old term for a hunting dog, Inspector, as you would know if you had looked in a dictionary. It also means ‘revenge.’ And the hunter left his signature on the wallpaper in the murder room, just as an artist might sign a canvas. But he was not the one who killed the Prince.”
“The Limping Doctor!” I exclaimed.
“Very good. There was a tall man there that night—I could tell his height, for the word was written at eye level. He smoked a pipe—the ash and dottle sat unburnt in the fireplace, and he had tapped out his pipe with ease on the mantel, something a smaller man would not have done. The tobacco was an unusual blend of shag. The footprints in the room had, for the most part, been almost obliterated by your men, but there were several clear prints behind the door and by the window. Someone had waited there: a smaller man from his stride, who put his weight on his right leg. On the path outside I had several clear prints, and the different colors of clay on the bootscraper gave me more information: a tall man, who had
