The waiter came back into the room bearing a large jug. “Your milk, sir.”
The Somnambulist looked longingly at it but Moon stood firm.
The giant pulled a face.
Moon relented. “Bring it with you,” he said. “You can drink it on the way.”
They arrived in Highgate just over an hour later. Their destination was a nondescript little cottage set back from the road, halfway up a hill so steep it was practically vertical and mere paces from the spot where Whittington was said to have turned back and returned to the city, powerless against the pull of its gravity.
WHY?
the Somnambulist asked, trying his best to wipe away the flaky dark milk stains which had accumulated on his shirt like the first spatters of rain on a dry pavement.
“Coleridge lived here.”
The Somnambulist’s expression made his feelings on the relevance of this remark quite clear. He gesticulated again at the chalkboard.
WHY?
“Remember the book Barabbas gave me? There was a name in the dedication. Someone called Gillman. I’ve done a little reading. I think he may have been trying to direct us here.”
The giant scrubbed out his message and hurriedly wrote:
MR. COLERIDGE — HE DEAD
“I shan’t take issue with your grammar,” Moon scolded.
The Somnambulist looked as if he were about to punch him.
Swiftly, Moon tried to explain. “I think that in some manner, Coleridge may be at the heart of this.” He was about to say more when the door swung open and a gray-haired woman peered out.
“Mr. Moon?”
“Miss Gillman? A pleasure. This is my associate, the Somnambulist.”
The giant proffered an awkward wave and the woman nodded back. “Come inside. I’ve tea and biscuits waiting.”
“Marvelous. The Somnambulist is absolutely famished.”
But the giant did not reply. Distracted for a brief moment from the prospect of food, he felt a strange, inexplicable certainty that it was here — in this unremarkable little cottage smelling faintly of lavender and soap — here that the end would finally begin.
I hope this letter finds its way safely into your hands. As a result of those circumstances I am shortly to relate, I have found myself unable to deliver it in person and have been forced to entrust these words to a “go- between,” a young woman whose acquaintance I have made here. A tentative friend, let us say, and perhaps an ally — though unfortunately I cannot tell you her name. That, too, I will explain in time.
These, then, are my first impressions of Love, Love, Love and Love (known henceforth, for brevity’s sake, simply as Love). The past few hours have convinced me that this is, by some considerable distance, quite the most eccentric organization in England. I am certain now that your instincts are correct — something seems very wrong here, but so far, whatever the truth of it, I have been shown only a tiny portion of a much greater picture.
I think you mentioned that you have seen the building yourself — a great black citadel just off Eastcheap, beneath the shadow of the monument. Close by is the church of Saint-Dunstan-in-the-East — a minor Wren but one which still has about it his characteristic beauty and brilliance. On the next occasion you and Mr. Cribb are enjoying yourselves on one of your historical walks, you really ought to stroll by and see it for yourself. Did the giant ever reveal the reason for his animosity toward the ugly man? In my opinion, all most suspicious.
I have joined the firm in the capacity of a clerk with a number of minor secretarial duties. I must say that this company is astonishingly egalitarian in its choice of employees — there are three other ladies on my floor alone. The work is tedious but easy, the nine-to-five routine a far cry from the derring-do of my assignments for the Vigilance Committee.
Edward, I think I could easily suffocate here, that it wouldn’t take long, weighed down by documentation and paperwork, correspondence, ink and dust.
Superficially Love operates much like any other large city firm — old-fashioned, moribund and staid. However, there are two remarkable facts which render the organization unique.
Firstly, accommodation is provided for its entire staff on site — by which I mean that we actually reside in the building itself, deep in the basement levels. This is not a generosity one may choose to decline: it is compulsory for all members of staff, and, more than that, even leaving the building at any time and for any reason is frowned upon. We are all of us expected to remain here and are fully provided for within these walls. I had no choice but to accept such terms and I write this in the tiny room I share with another girl. This is the first time I have ever spent the night in a bunk bed, though doubtless you would find it a home from home. I trust that whatever mysterious “lead” you and your giant friend are pursuing from the comfort of you singularly well-appointed hotel room is important enough to warrant forcing your only sister to endure these primitive conditions.
Strange though these arrangements may be, there is a sense of community here. That we all eat, sleep and work together seems to engender an atmosphere of fraternity not unlike being back at my old college, or how I imagine it must be for mariners at sea. More troubling is the mood of anticipation which hangs in the air. I am convinced that these people are waiting for something. They resemble a rugby team before the first match of the season or an army awaiting the order to advance.
Needless to say, it is not simply the idiosyncrasies of its domestic arrangements which mark this firm out as unique. Odder by far is the enforced practice of replacing one’s real name with a number. Lunatic though I know it must sound, every single person in this building shares the same name: Love.
To aid identification we are all assigned a number. Consequently, Charlotte Moon is no more and in her place sits Love 999. My tentative friend is Love 983. You see now why I was unable to give you her name.
All this strikes me as awfully strange and not a little sinister. It need hardly be remarked upon that I shall be greatly interested to hear your opinion of the matter.
Another puzzle: the Somnambulist was right.
I met Mr. Speight today, tidied up, clean-shaven and smartly dressed in an alarmingly expensive suit. “Love 903,” as he styles himself, failed to recognize me and gave me not a second glance when we passed in the corridor. He seems important, a bigwig, and works on one of the higher floors, his days of placard-carrying long behind him.
I am not sure why but we were asked today to burn a good deal of paperwork. I stole a look at it before it was consigned to the flames and the material was all very recent, relating, I think, to some kind of consolidation of the firm’s considerable assets. I have not the slightest idea why Love should be destroying documentation nor why it is marshaling its funds. Perhaps I will simply have to ask, although I have done my best, according to your instructions, to appear as inconspicuous as possible. I do not wish to seem curious and therefore provoke suspicion.
That is all I can tell you for the present. I shall write again as soon as I am able.
Chapter 15
I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday — honest, kind, stout- hearted, commonplace folk.
