hours, hoping and praying that the moment would come. For months he had waited, and now, at last, the Fiend was condemned. Tonight was the last time he would ever see Barabbas alive.
“Sir?”
The killer slumped in the corner of his cell, elephantine, all but naked, luxuriating in his wickedness and sin. He had prized his stash of beauty from its hiding place in the wall and had spread before him a dozen or so of his favorite items — rings, coins and Moon’s tiepin amongst them. “Come in, won’t you?” he said, barely bothering to look up. “I was just admiring my collection. Flashes, little fragments of beauty in a world of misery and care.”
Owsley looked disdainfully at the meager pile. “I’ll make sure they’re distributed to charity after your death.”
“My death. Has it come already?”
Owsley grinned. He seemed hungry suddenly, cruel, his mask of servility wrenched aside. “In a manner of speaking.”
I fear I may not have been entirely honest about Mr. Owsley.
Barabbas seemed not to notice the change in his disciple. “When?” he breathed.
Owsley licked his lips. “Now.”
The prisoner made no attempt to move away, but rather slouched further onto the floor. He scrabbled in front of him to gather his collection and clutched it to his heaving, blubbery chest. “It’s you, then?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Me,” Owsley snapped back. “It’s always been me.” He bent over the convict, malevolence boiling off him in ugly black waves. “You should have accepted our offer. You could have had lysium. Instead you chose this.”
“I know my level,” Barabbas murmured. He added, almost conversationally: “Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose.”
“Why now? I had hoped to see how everything turns out.”
“You ought never to have given him that book.”
“Edward will work it out. His faculties are almost the equal of my own.”
Owsley laughed. From his pocket he drew out a long, slender surgical knife, coolly vicious, precision-tooled for death. “Your punishment has been decided,” he snarled, relishing the drama of the moment. “And the sentence is death.”
Barabbas yawned, waved a pudgy hand languidly. “Then get on with-” he began, but before he could finish, Owsley, his face convulsing with pleasure, plunged the knife deep into him. Barabbas gave a wet gasp. Owsley twisted the blade, pulled it loose, then thrust it in again. The fat man moaned and a trickle of blood emerged from his mouth like lava, staining his lips and teeth a murky scarlet, spattering messily down his chin.
Still alive, he whispered something to his disciple that even Owsley, in all the innumerable times he had rehearsed and played this scene out in his head, had not forseen.
“Kiss me.”
Owsley had never killed a man before. He felt overwhelmed by the power of it, caught up in the giddy thrill of his transformation, possessed by the sublime transgression of the deed. No doubt it was this which made him think he would be safe and assured of his invulnerability as he leant forward to kiss Barabbas full on the lips. Triumphant, drunk on his murder, he was about to pull away when he felt the dying man stir. With one vast hand, Barabbas held firm his erstwhile servant’s head; with the other he reached for his stash of beautiful things and pulled free Moon’s tiepin, sharpened and honed in anticipation of this inevitable moment. Owsley thrashed and flailed as, with his final flicker of strength, Barabbas brought the pin up to Owsley’s throat and dragged it pitilessly across, feeling the arteries snap with a series of satisfying pops. He closed his eyes as a torrent of blood gushed stickily onto his face. Meyrick Owsley tried to scream in rage, agonizing pain and frustration, but could succeed only in gurgling. Helpless, he fell onto his former master and they lay there a while in a macabre embrace — mutilated, ragged things, bound together for the underworld.
Just before he died, Barabbas tried to whisper the name of the man he loved, an act which had always seemed to him to be appropriate before the end. Whenever he had imagined his death, he had always envisaged an attendant degree of pathos, for it to play out as the sort of strange and tragic scene which might inspire some artist to daub a study in scarlet or a poet to pen a mournful stanza or two. Much to his disappointment, as he lay choking on his own blood, his life dripping away from him with a terrible speed, he found himself too weakened even to speak.
Consequently, the Fiend died silent.
Merryweather and Moon found the Somnambulist in the first place they looked — the taproom of the Strangled Boy. The pub had withstood the worst of the fire, but across the street the theatre remained a blackened, burned-out husk, bleak testament to Moon’s failure.
The conjuror bought his friend a pint of milk and asked, as politely as he could, why he had disappeared. The Somnambulist took out his chalkboard.
SAW SPEIGHT
“Speight?” Merryweather peered nosily over Moon’s shoulder. “The tramp?”
The giant nodded.
“How was he?” asked Moon, slightly bemused.
SUIT
“He was wearing a suit?” Moon asked carefully.
SMART
“Are you sure?”
The Somnambulist nodded, evidently frustrated.
BANK
“He was outside a bank?” the inspector offered.
The Somnambulist shook his head vigorously.
“He works in a bank?” Moon asked, incredulous.
The Somnambulist nodded gratefully.
Merryweather snorted. “Preposterous.”
CAMOUFLAGE
“Camouflage?” Moon was about to ask the meaning of this when the faint cry of a paper boy floated in from outside.
When he heard the headline, Moon dashed out of the pub and into the street.
“Horrible Murder in Newgate!” the boy shouted again. “The Fiend Is Dead!”
Moon seized a paper and riffled furiously through it. When his friends ran out to join him, the found him staring dully down at the newsprint, tears edging the corners of his eyes. Discreetly, they kept their distance. Moon let the paper fall from his hands and drop onto the street, where it was trampled underfoot, sodden, torn and kicked away, another piece of city flotsam. Suddenly, acutely aware that forces of coincidence were marshaling themselves against him, Moon stood alone and silent. Then he surprised himself by laughing. There was no humor in the sound, no genuine mirth, but in the face of all that had happened it seemed to him by far the most logical reaction. To the impartial observer, of course, it may have appeared more like the act of a man whose sanity, like desert earth baked dry, has begun at long last to splinter and to crack.
Through it all, the old man sleeps beneath the city.
Some conscious part of him may be aware that things are changing in the streets above, that events are progressing toward their inevitable crisis. Perhaps he knows that he will soon have to stir from his slumber and face the waking world. But for now he remains mired in dreams.
First, he is a young man again, in the company of friends, before any of them had been touched by life’s realities. Southey is with him — brave, dear Southey — at a time before his betrayal and their feuds. Their talk is earnest, too solemn, perhaps, but typical of the way they were.
The old man sighs and stirs uncomfortably in his sleep, remembering happier times.
The young men talk of their hopes and ambitions, of the great experiment. Southey speaks loftily of a
