The Haunting of H. G. Wells

by Robert Masello

  Then it became crystal clear.

  Seeing his route unimpeded, Silas mustered a last reserve of strength and scrambled on all fours to the exit.

  “My God,” Phipps shouted, “stop him!”

  But he was already through the door and making straight for the open ward. Gibbering like a baboon, he staggered into the center aisle, colliding with a terrified young nurse, then reeling away toward the bank of casement windows. Wells saw him pause, and, as if inspiration had struck, run between two of the beds to get at one of the more open windows. He pushed it wider, and though Wells would not have guessed it possible, squeezed himself into its gaping frame. He hesitated for just a second, looking down at the courtyard several stories below, and then, his scrawny arms flung wide, launched himself like an eagle taking flight.

  Wells was close enough to hear the splat when he landed, and when he craned his head out the window, to see the broken body, exploded like a ripe plum, on the cobblestones. A couple of patients, who had been smoking in the courtyard, were looking on in shock. The blanket draped across one of their laps was spattered with gore; the other was slack-jawed, a pipe dangling from his lower lip.

  “Don’t touch him!” Wells shouted down. “Get out of there!”

  When he turned around, he saw Rebecca—pale and stricken—with the bloody paw prints soiling her gown. Coming to her, he said, “Hold your breath and close your eyes and put your arms out straight.” As deftly as he could, he removed the gown, wadded it into a ball, and keeping his own face averted, shoved it into a receptacle for soiled linen, making sure that the lid was clamped down tight. Doctor Phipps, shouting instructions to Emma to keep all the patients in their beds until further notice, charged out of the ward.

  For Wells, who had seen so much death of late, this was just another horror, but what was it like, he wondered, for someone as young and sheltered as Rebecca? He wrapped her in his arms, expecting her to cling to him for comfort, but he was wrong. Her back was stiff with resolve, and when he drew back, she said, “I think I know who Dr. Oil is.”

  Puzzled, Wells said, “Who? What’s this about a Dr. Oil?”

  “The German prankster of legend and lore. Eulenspiegel,” she said, emphasizing the proper pronunciation of the first syllable. Oil. “I believe I’ve met the man, at Crowley’s house, who has disguised his identity that way.”

  Now he was more confused than ever.

  “We have to stop him, H. G.”

  “From doing what?”

  “That I don’t know yet.”

  “Then why are you so sure it must be stopped?”

  The dread in her voice was as real as the crumpled body lying in the courtyard below. “Because, if I’m right, it will be terrible.” Nodding toward the open window, she said, “That is only its harbinger.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Before rushing to catch the evening train back to Easton Glebe, Wells warned Rebecca to hold off. But she did not want to hear that.

  “I’ll be back in a day,” he told her. “I’ll go and see Winston and we can pursue this lead to the mysterious Dr. Eulenspiegel then.”

  “But what’s so pressing at the rectory?” Rebecca asked. “What could possibly be more urgent than this?” Finding Dr. Anton Graf—whose pseudonym struck her as just the kind of wicked joke he might make—took precedence over anything.

  “It’s a personal matter, nothing I can explain just now.”

  “Then it’s to do with Jane?” she said, trying hard to keep any note of jealousy out of her voice.

  “In a way,” he said, uncharacteristically evasive.

  He kissed her on the cheek, jumped into a cab and Rebecca, surprised and more than a little vexed, turned on her heel and marched right back into Guy’s Hospital. She found Nurse Chasubel enforcing a strict beds-only policy on the ward, as Dr. Phipps had ordered, and it was only by waiting an hour at a table where a copy of the controversial Sons and Lovers sat—with three separate bookmarks sticking up from its pages—that she prevailed upon the nurse to look in the file cabinets and dig out the records of the veterinarian who had checked himself in.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much,” Emma said, handing her a thin folder with just a few pages in it. “He was delirious when he arrived, so the intake form is largely blank, and he left without any notice or word to anyone on the staff, between shifts.”

  Rebecca scanned the documents quickly, noting that the address given was a flat on Tottenham Street in the old German quarter, not Crowley’s townhouse, and there was no place of employment. Nor were there any relatives listed. On the medical charts, she read a précis of the conditions she already knew about, some of which she had just witnessed in the old man who had leapt to his death. Dreadful as it had been, she understood exactly why he’d done it. Who else, suffering as he most plainly was, would not have done the same? She was actually relieved for his sake that the ordeal was over. She did not necessarily believe in any afterlife, but in this instance, all that mattered was putting an end to the present one. Making a few of her own notes, Rebecca thanked the nurse and returned the folder.

  Sliding it back into the drawer, Emma said, “And how is it that you know Mr. Wells? I wasn’t sure.”

  “Family connections. But how is it that you knew him?”

  The nurse blushed, and with downcast eyes, said, “He had met someone, at the Front, that I cared for. He acted as a courier and brought me a letter from him.”

  “That was kind,” Rebecca said, reminding herself that there was so much about her lover that she still didn’t know. “And will you be seeing the letter writer again soon?”

  Emma shook her head tightly. Rebecca did not have to guess at what that meant. “I’m so sorry.”

  Emma drew a lace handkerchief from the pocket of her smock and, turning away, dabbed at her eyes. “But I do sometimes wonder . . .” she murmured.

  “Wonder what?”

  “Whether he is truly gone.” She shook her head as if to dismiss such embarrassing thoughts. “I’m sure you would think me silly—I would have thought so myself, until recently—but as I told Mr. Wells, sometimes I can feel a presence.” She sniffed, and thrust the bunched handkerchief back into her pocket. “I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this, especially when you have just lost your grandfather and in such a terrible way.”

  For a moment, Rebecca was stumped, before remembering the lie she’d told about Silas. Vaguely ashamed, she placed a consoling hand on the nurse’s shoulder and said, “It’s a dark time just now, for all of us.” And that was no lie at all. “The whole world is shared with ghosts.” A telling look crossed Emma’s face, and Rebecca put it down to the fact that it must be a common sentiment these days, what with the endless scroll of the war dead in the papers, the black armbands of civilians in the streets, the church services and tolling bells for the missing and deceased.

  By the time she emerged again onto St. Thomas Street, dusk was falling and Rebecca saw that the maimed soldiers she had passed on her way in had nearly all been rounded up for the night. The last of them was being wheeled in through the gates, a kerchief drawn across the lower half of his face. Rebecca offered him a sympathetic smile, just as a vagrant breeze lifted the bottom of the cloth, revealing . . . nothing. Below his nose, his face had been entirely shorn away.

  The soldier followed her with a forlorn gaze. Rebecca let her feet guide her down the street, past the banner pleading for quiet, around the corner and into the hurly-burly of the evening traffic. She was grateful for the ordinary noise and commotion; there was something reassuring about bumping into the other people on the sidewalk, even when one of them accidentally knocked the notepad from her hand and she had to turn abruptly and bend down to pick it up. A man in a shabby herringbone overcoat and a hat with a slouched-down brim was ogling a fancy silk smoking jacket in a store window across the street—who had the money, or the desire, for such luxuries today? Not she.

  Armed with nothing more than her notes, she s
et off for 92 Tottenham Court Road. As she approached the tall, rickety building in the middle of the block, she heard the muffled crack of gunshots from the second story, and saw the last glimmerings of a lighted marquee—“Fairyland Shooting Gallery”—just before an air warden supervised its extinguishing.

  “You’ll want to be getting home for the night, Miss,” the warden said. “Clear sky tonight, and Fritz will be wanting to take advantage of it.”

  Fairyland, she thought, of all places. Had Graf really lived above this penny arcade and shooting range, the place that had become infamous a few years back, when the Indian nationalist Madan Lal Dinghra had practiced his marksmanship here before going on to assassinate Sir William Curzon Wyllie? And as if that weren’t enough, the arcade had achieved further notoriety when two suffragettes had reputedly used the facility to train for an attempt on the life of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. It was at once a shock, and strangely fitting, that Graf had holed up here. Along with the coin-in-the-slot machines, billboards advertised “Expert Advice in Firearms.” She checked her notes again, but this was indeed the address the putative Dr. Eulenspiegel had given.

  Men’s voices carried into the open arcade, along with the scent of cheap cigars and cordite, but when she went into the lobby proper, all motion and talk seemed to cease.

  “Help you, Miss?” a man growled. “The perfumery is down the corner.”

  There were several snickers among the men loitering there, and behind a counter she saw the proprietor in a striped vest, the stub of a dead cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth. “Yes, you might be able to help,” she said, withdrawing her pad and flipping to a blank page.

  “You ain’t one of them damn suffragettes, are you? Your lot ain’t welcome here no more. The country’s got bigger fish to fry.”

  Not surprising, Rebecca thought, that he felt that way; most of the nation did.

  “There’s a war on,” he said, for further emphasis, “case you haven’t noticed.”

  Although the issue of voting rights for women was one of many that had had to be put aside in view of the present crisis, Rebecca accepted the practical argument. “I’ve nothing to do with that. I’m here on behalf of the War Office.”

  She applauded herself for the ease with which she now conjured up one identity or another. Grieving granddaughter, War Office employee—what next?

  “Oh no, you don’t,” the owner said, rummaging around beneath the counter, “you won’t be writing me any fines. I’ve got a license for the guns and ammunition used here.”

  From the floor above, Rebecca heard a round of shots and a man cursing his aim.

  “None of it’s fit for present combat use,” the owner went on, as Rebecca, falling into the role, pretended to inspect the certificate he slapped on the counter. The line for proprietor was signed “Henry Morton.”

  “This all looks in order,” she said, making a note of his name on her pad. “But I’m chiefly here to check on the whereabouts of a tenant.”

  “You think anybody’d live above this racket?” one of the eavesdropping bystanders cracked. “He’d have to be balmy.”

  But Morton screwed up his face, and told him to butt out of it. Leaning over the counter to lower his voice, he said to Rebecca, “You referrin’ to that rum bastard used to live up top?”

  “That depends. What was his name?”

  “You tell me. Had a different one every week. Did his best to cover up the German accent, but I can smell ’em from a mile away.”

  “When did he move out?”

  “Why? What’s he done?”

  “That, I am not at liberty to say.”

  “He left oh, maybe seven, eight months ago. Middle of the night, no word. But lucky he had, ’cause I’d have throwed him out after that first zeppelin attack. Yes, I would ’ave. Him and his cages.”

  “Cages?”

  “Had animals, he did, in cages, all over the place. Rabbits, rats, even a cat or two. They’re up there even now.”

  “May I see them?”

  “The animals? Oh, they’re dead and gone.”

  “No, the cages.”

  Little as she relished the idea of ascending into the uppermost recesses of Fairyland, and in such dubious company, she still wanted to find that one indisputable piece of evidence that would confirm it was Anton Graf—alias Eulenspiegel—who had resided here. That it was Anton Graf who had perpetrated the attacks at the Horse Guards Parade. As soon as Wells returned from his own mysterious mission to Easton Glebe, she wanted to have an indisputable case so well in hand that together they could go straight to the authorities . . . and on her own she could go straight to press in the Freewoman.

  “Nothin’ much to see up there,” Morton grumbled, lifting the board to come out from behind the counter, “but if you insist. Sully, watch the till,” he said to the bystander who had interrupted earlier.

  “You take as long as you need,” Sully said, in a suggestive tone.

  What was she getting into? Rebecca wondered.

  Morton went to a side staircase, where a sign with a bright red arrow pointed the way to the “Shooting Gallery—Must Be Sixteen Years of Age or Older.” Below it, a second smaller, hand-lettered sign read, “No Ladies or Dogs Allowed.” As they rose, the racket got louder, and at the top Rebecca saw that the long and narrow room, its walls and ceiling lined with thick cork, had been divided into three lanes, with a bull’s-eye at the end of each one, and a box, painted in yellow, at the other end; three shooters stood in separate boxes, two with revolvers and one with a rifle. All of them turned to frown at her.

  “He used to shoot once in a while,” Morton said, gnawing on the butt of the cigar.

  “Was he any good?” For all she knew, it was a piece of information that might prove vital.

  “Given the glasses he wore,” Morton said with a shrug, “yes.” Then, he motioned with his electric torch for her to follow him up the next and even narrower flight of stairs, at the top of which he put his shoulder against a warped wooden door that screeched as he shoved it open.

  “Grease for hinges ain’t easy to come by these days,” he said. “Nor’s gas or the electric. I shut ’em all off.”

  Once inside, he went to the window and pulled back the blackout curtains. Pale moonlight spilled into the room, as the electric torch beam picked out a jumbled stack of empty cages against the back wall. Sloppily made, of wire and wood, they were falling apart at the hinges, and Rebecca had to wonder why Morton had bothered to keep them at all. In the air, there was a faint, but noxious, chemical scent that made her sneeze.

  “Haven’t you thought of airing the place out?” she said, going to the window herself and yanking it up. She stood there, to take a couple of breaths of fresh air, and only then noticed down below, across the street from the arcade, a man lurking in a doorway, with his hat brim pulled down to conceal most of his face. He was smoking a cigarette and stamping his feet to keep them warm.

  “Nobody’d want it, anyway,” Morton replied. “Every once in a while, a bullet comes up through the floor.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “It’s spent by the time it gets through. No danger, really.”

  As if she didn’t already have reason enough to hurry, Rebecca now had another, and borrowing the light from Morton she inspected the ramshackle cages, not even sure what she might be looking for. But apart from a few patches of fur or feathers, there was nothing to see.

  “Had a couple of pigeons, he did, but I tossed ’em out the window. Dropped like they was stones, not birds.”

  No doubt because Graf had subjected them to some horrible experiment, Rebecca surmised.

  Beside the cages, there was a fruit crate with broken slats, and in it she saw a jumble of other loose items—a rubber glove, some cracked flasks, a few papers. Crouching down, and holding her handkerchief over her fingertips, she gingerly sorted through them; the yellowed papers at the bottom included everything from theater stubs to train schedules, a pamphlet
on theosophy to a souvenir postcard of St. Paul’s Cathedral. But nothing that would identify, much less definitively incriminate, Anton Graf.

  Attempting to light his cigar, Morton said, “Told you there wasn’t nothing to look at.” The flame wouldn’t catch, and he tossed the dead match to the floor. But instead of using another, he drew a fancy gold lighter from his vest pocket.

  The glint of it caught Rebecca’s eye, and Morton said, “This was the only thing left that was worth anything. Found it on the staircase.”

  “So it was his?”

  “He left owing me two pounds.”

  She asked to see it, and turning it over in her hands she saw, to her surprise and delight, that it was engraved. On one side, it bore the patent mark of Hahway, a well-known Bavarian manufacturer, and on the other the initials “AJG,” with an even more pointed inscription—Reichskolonialamt. The German Colonial Office.

  “I’ll need to requisition this,” she said.

  “The hell you will.”

  She dug into her purse and just managed to come up with two pounds, which she stuffed into his breast pocket.

  “The War Office thanks you for your service,” she said, clamping her bag closed with the prize inside, and absconding before an errant bullet could pop up through the floor and graze her ankle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Wells had never been so frustrated at his inability to make himself readily understood. In English, he was a master of every idiom and means of expression, but without much German in his arsenal, it was difficult to convey his plan to Kurt, much less to persuade him of its wisdom.

  Jane, with Dr. Grover’s old bilingual dictionary on the table in front of her, offered constant translations, and Wells could see that it was better to let her carry the ball. Kurt trusted her in a way he would never trust Wells. Right now, she was explaining to him, yet again, how comfortable his life would be at an internment camp in London.