Julian grasped Matthew’s shoulder. “Listen to me,” he said. “You go in there and find out who he’s meeting. Take a good look, come back out and describe him…or her. Britt didn’t see you at the Garden, so you’ll have a free moment, but only a moment. Understand?”
“I do.”
“Go. I’ll be around the corner.”
Matthew nodded and went down the steps. Opening the Green Spot’s door gave him a faceful of strong pipesmoke, the odors of spilled ale and wine and the smells of men who have gone a bit too long without a wash, but also the aroma and warmth of the fireplace that was brightly crackling wood opposite the door. Matthew entered, let the door close behind him, and walked between the tables and past the bar to stand before the fire. He turned around, the better to warm his backside and get a view of the room, which held perhaps ten or twelve patrons. There were no roach races running, so it was a quiet group intent on their drinking and their guarded conversations. The place was rather shadowy with stingy illumination, but quite suddenly Matthew realized he was standing about eight feet from a table where Britt had drawn up a chair to sit across from a second man.
By the fire’s glow Matthew took stock of this individual: a slender man wearing a white suit—odd for this time of year, but there it was—and a white shirt with a black cravat around the thin neck. The man looked to be maybe in his late forties or early fifties. He had a stripe of gray hair down the middle of his head but the rest of his scalp was shaved bald. A small gray goatee was set in the center of his pointed chin, and he had a small hooked beak of a nose. But the most arresting thing about the man were his eyes; they were almost disturbingly large and slightly bulging as if they were being forced by pressure from the setting of the sockets. And their color: as golden and sparkling as the guineas in Julian’s money belt.
Matthew saw Britt leaning forward, the man’s face half in shadow and half painted orange by the fire.
Then, suddenly, it happened.
The man Britt was addressing turned his head to the left, the golden eyes still wide and quite strange-looking, and began to twist his head around in that direction. Matthew’s heart jumped; in another few seconds the man was going to break his own neck, for the head was being twisted nearly back around to his shoulder blades.
The man’s head gave a slight jerk, Matthew saw the neck’s muscles clench and relax, there was a quiet pop and to Matthew’s amazement the twisting head continued to turn…to turn…to turn…until the freakish gent was looking behind himself…and yet the head still continued to swivel. Matthew almost stepped back and seared the heels of his boots on the burning logs, for this man in white with the golden eyes had turned his head only just short of all the way around on the neck, and now as Matthew watched the man’s head began to slowly swivel back the other way…more and more…more and more…as the golden eyes glinted with firelight and Britt’s shadowy face just kept talking as if this were the most natural sight in the world.
The man’s head, turning to the right now, looked near breaking the neck once again until there was that jerking motion, the contracting and relaxing of neck muscles, and the pop of bizarre bones resetting into angles that defied the formality of the human skeleton.
And then…the weird golden eyes fixed upon Matthew and remained there, and to his horror Matthew found he could not look away.
“Help you, sir?”
Was someone’s voice actually speaking? Or was it the strange man speaking from the depths of his mind?
“Somethin’ to drink, sir?”
The golden eyes left him and the head began to swivel back to a normal degree. The man’s full attention was being directed to Britt, and freed from that optic bondage Matthew looked to his side at the serving-girl who had come out from behind the bar.
“Sir?” the waif-like creature prompted.
“No,” Matthew said. He was stunned and oddly enough his own neck felt strained to its limits. “No,” he repeated. “I just…no.” And then he was moving away from the fireplace, past the bar and between the tables, out the Green Spot’s door and into the cold, up the crusty white steps and there stood Julian in a doorway around the corner.
“Well?” Julian asked.
For a few seconds Matthew could not speak.
“Who did he meet?” Julian prompted. “My God, what’s wrong with you?”
“He met…it was…I mean to say…it was a man…unbelievable…I couldn’t fathom such a thing…”
“All right, all right, it was a man! Now speak English instead of jabberguese!”
“A moment,” said Matthew, to clear his mind. “Yes, a man,” he continued. Snow blew into his face and clung to his eyelashes. “This man…he could twist his head around. I know it sounds insane, but he could—”
“Twist his head almost all the way around?” Julian asked. “So he can look behind himself? Ah. I know that man.”
“Who is it?”
“It is the Owl,” said Julian. “Real name unknown. Pardon me but I could laugh at the expression on your face. I do understand how witnessing that particular talent of his could upset one’s cart.”
“My cart,” Matthew answered, “has been turned upside-down.”
“Well get it righted in a hurry because we’re not here to dawdle and dance. I want to know why Britt stalked out in this weather to find the Owl. Did you see money being exchanged?”
“No. At least not that moment.”
“I’ll wager the Owl paid Britt for the information that I was asking questions,” Julian said. He tapped his chin with a forefinger. “But…who is paying the Owl?”
“I don’t…quite understand this.” Matthew still felt brain-fogged, even in this cold. “Who is the Owl and why should he be paying Britt for information?”
“The Owl,” said Julian, “is a security specialist. He takes care of…shall we say…keeping things buttoned up that need to be, and maintaining order. He’s been working that angle for underworld gatherings for the last two years. Which means there’s something cooking we should know about.”
“Agreed, but how to find out?”
“We wait again. If Britt’s information interests the Owl—and I think it will—our man of the twisted neck will be on the move himself very soon, and this time he might be reporting to someone we really do care to meet.”
“The admiral?” said Matthew.
“We’ll see. I’m going to cross the street and find a place to watch those steps. I want you across the street there,” and Julian motioned toward the west, “so neither Britt nor the Owl run into you if they come up and turn this corner. Then settle back and try to warm yourself. We might be out here a while.”
Matthew took up the position Julian had indicated, blending as well as possible into the darkness. Julian strode off to the north and became invisible. Then Matthew concentrated on watching the corner across the way and at the same time trying to envision himself standing before a bonfire that warmed every square inch of his body. He rubbed his hands together and was grateful for his gloves and the woolen cap under his tricorn that was keeping his ears from falling off. If the cap had any lice, by now they were only ice.
He had reached the point of dreaming not about standing before a bonfire but sitting in a hot bathtub with the fire in front of him and a warm cup of apple ale in his hand when Julian rushed around the corner and said, “Hurry! We can’t lose him!”
“Who are we following? Britt or the Owl?” Matthew asked as they started off in a westerly direction.
“The Owl. He’s wearing all white, a white greatcoat with a white hood up over his head. You can just barely see him up front half a block. He’s walking fast. I don’t trust getting much closer than this, with that swiveling head of his, but we’ve got to keep him in sight.”
Matthew could indeed barely make out the white-clad figure against the snowfall, and even as he caugh
t view of the freakish man the whirling flurries swept in and hid the Owl behind their veils. Julian picked up the speed of his stride and Matthew matched it; Matthew knew full well that if they let this man get away they might lose whatever chance they had to find this mysterious admiral, if that’s who the Owl was going to hoot to.
For block after block they continued, crossing street after street. At times Matthew feared they had lost the Owl because against all that white the white-hooded figure could not be seen, but then the flurries parted and there was just the glimpse of the man striding through the illumination from a tavern’s window before he was again obscured. Matthew wondered if at some time during this pursuit the Owl might choose to swivel his head almost all the way around to check who might be following, but at least the hood would prevent such a sighting of his two trackers.
They were reaching an area of the city that was lit up by many oil lamps and had fewer staggering drunkards and raging maniacs upon the streets; here there were less tawdry taverns and more sophisticated music halls, theaters, coffee shops and restaurants. Still, it was the same falling snow. Suddenly Julian stopped and caught Matthew’s arm, because on the next block the Owl had hailed a hackney carriage and was climbing into its enclosed space. The door closed, a whip cracked and the single horse started off with a steam-bellowing snort. Matthew realized the man had come to this more elegant district in order to catch a carriage, the likes of which did not roam very far into the darker and more dangerous territory he and Julian had just travelled across.
“Damn!” said Julian. “We’ve lost him!”
But not quite.
“There!” Matthew pointed at a second hackney carriage just pulling to the curb in front of the Sir Toddy’s Music Hall and letting out two couples bundled up in woolens and furs. A woman laughed like the tinkling of chimes, and one of the gentlemen playfully swatted her ample rump as the group lurched toward the music hall’s entrance.
“Go!” Julian said.
They ran for the carriage. “Hire a hack, sir?” the driver asked Matthew from the depths of his coat, muffler and well-worn beaverskin hat.
The carriage carrying the Owl was still in sight, about to swerve toward a roundabout.
Matthew pointed. “Follow that carriage!” he said, as Julian was already climbing in.
“Oh, zounds!” said the driver with a measure of glee. “An intrigue!”
Matthew was going to make certain the man followed the correct vehicle, so instead of climbing into the carriage he grabbed hold of the leather help-you-up grip and hauled himself up onto the seat beside the driver. The whip snapped the frigid air, the horse started moving and Matthew tensed forward like a greyhound on the trail of the fox…or in this case, an eagle on the flight of a lesser bird.
True enough, the roundabout led into a boulevard where many hackneys were converging. Even as the snow flew into his face Matthew fixed his eyes on the Owl’s carriage, and he was aided in this by Julian, who opened the hackney’s door wide enough to be able to lean out and keep watch.
The attitude was of a chase, but the mechanics were of a plod. Neither the Owl’s hackney nor Matthew’s could gain much speed in this weather, so it was more of a slow-motion ramble. At one point Matthew feared his driver was going to smash into the rear of the one ahead, which swerved to avoid another coming in from a street on the right, but with a hollered “Whup, Hermes!” from the driver which seemed to make some sense to the horse the steed slowed in its seeming intentions to crash through to where the Owl sat possibly twisting his head in all directions.
The hackney ahead turned north and so did Matthew’s driver. Matthew thought he could hear the man giggling at this romp, which was likely a departure from his usual more staid nightly work. “Are we chasin’ a jewel thief or an unfaithful wife?” the man called out, almost breaking Matthew’s ear, and Julian shouted from below, “Both!” which made the driver hit the reins as if to make Hermes airborne.
In another few minutes they were entering an area of London that was so far removed from The Octopus Garden and The Green Spot as to be part of another world. The wheels crunched through snow on a road alongside a large park where the whitened foliage was manicured into what appeared to be the whimsical shapes of horses. Pine trees surrounded a gazebo lit up with multi-colored lanterns to celebrate the Christmas season. Through the trees on the other side of the park could be seen the houses of the wealthy, also even at this late hour illuminated with many lanterns in their windows and on their sweeping porches as if time meant nothing but the accumulation of more money to that singular breed of men.
The Owl’s hackney was curving around the park toward that grand row of stellar estates, and so followed Matthew’s carriage.
“Slow down!” Julian advised from below, as it was apparent the vehicle carrying the Owl had begun to ease its pace as the road’s curve straightened out before the abodes of what might have been the gods of London. Matthew saw the Owl’s carriage stop in front of a high gate. Beyond the gate, another road led between more sculpted foliage perhaps twenty yards to the steps of a huge house of white stone whose array of slanted roofs were covered with snow, and whose windows of varied shapes were ablaze with lamplight. The entire estate was surrounded by an iron fence. At the gate stood a man wearing a long dark greatcoat, a tricorn and a woolen mask over his face as protection from the cold. Matthew saw the Owl hurriedly get out and approach the gate, and before Julian could voice it Matthew said, “Drive on past the house.”
“Yessir, as you say.”
Both Matthew and Julian looked back to see the Owl being admitted through the gate, which swung shut behind him, and the freakish man in the white-hooded coat strode rapidly toward the front steps.
“Pull over just ahead, on the park side,” Julian instructed.
The driver did as he was told and reined Hermes to a stop.
Matthew saw that the Owl’s hackney remained in front of the gate. He watched the Owl use a knocker on the door to announce his presence, and within a few seconds it was opened by a man in a dark blue uniform of some kind, but definitely not a bearlike man with a flame-painted beard. The Owl entered the house and the door was closed.
“Let’s take a walk,” said Julian. “Driver, we’ll need you to stay here. An extra six shillings for you.” One of the guineas had been made into change at a coaching inn, which Matthew was sure would meet with Professor Fell’s approval since Julian was no longer throwing his money away.
Julian left his saddlebag and sword in the carriage, and he walked beside Matthew as they approached the man at the gate. The snow had abated though it was still blowing in flurries, but Matthew thought the temperature must be falling to bone-cracking lows. He figured the guard at the gate had been on duty for a while or was set to be there for a time, therefore the woolen mask to ward off the freeze. Julian reached out to rub his hand along the flank of the horse that had brought the Owl’s hackney here, and then he faced the guard and said, “Pardon me, sir. I fear we’re lost in all this weather. Whose house is this?”
The guard said nothing. The hard blue eyes in the mask’s holes stared impassively at his questioner.
“We’re to be guests at Lord Somerset’s. Isn’t this his house?”
Still the guard did not speak. But there was a response: a gloved hand moved a fold of his coat aside to show a holster and a pistol’s grip.
“Oh!” said Julian, feigning both surprise and offense. “Pardon me again, we must have the wrong address! Come along, Samuel.” He gave a tug at Matthew’s sleeve and started walking back toward the Hermes carriage further up the road. Before he followed, Matthew cast another look at the mansion and saw at its highest roof a large crescent-shaped attic window lit by a lamp. On the other side of the glass a ship’s spoked wheel stood on a pedestal presumably mounted to the floor.
The admiral’s house, he thought. Bravo, Julian!
&nbs
p; Then he turned away, the back of his neck bristling with the stare that the armed guard aimed at him.
ten.
“Hold on a minute,” said Julian as they reached their hackney. “What have we here?”
Matthew turned to look. Another carriage was coming around the park, the horses’ hooves making muffled thudding noises in the snow.
“You find who you’re after?” Hermes’ driver asked from his bench seat.
“Not yet,” Julian answered, his eyes narrowed as he watched the new carriage approach, “but the night is still young.”
“Gettin’ toward midnight is what I’m thinkin’,” the driver said. “If that’s what you mean by young. And I’m too old to be out here shiverin’ the rest of me life away!”
“Just a bit longer, if you please.” Julian and Matthew saw the new carriage slowing down, and then its driver reined the horse to a stop in front of the gate. “A busy place tonight,” said Julian. “I wonder what goes on in there.”
Two men emerged from the hackney. They appeared at first to be dressed as clowns from a circus. One wore an enormous white polar bear of a coat, a white muffler around the lower part of his face, and had on a bright red tricorn with a half-dozen feathers of various dyed hues sticking up from its golden band. The other man, taller and thinner than the first, wore a long coat of some kind of dark gray leather—sealskin? Matthew wondered—with a yellow cord as a sash around the waist, and perched atop his ridiculous pile of a curly white wig was a tricorn as purple as a new bruise. Matthew caught just a quick glimpse of his face, which seemed to be painted ghastly white with crimson arcs above the eyes to serve as brows.
“The carnival has come to town,” Julian said with a smirk. “Let’s see what these two do.”
The two in question approached the guard. The man in the polar bear coat reached into a pocket, withdrew something and showed the guard, who nodded and opened the gate. The strange pair then proceeded to walk nearly in lockstep up the drive and up the steps to the door, where Sir Polar Bear used the knocker. After a moment the door opened and that same uniformed man looked out. Both of the new arrivals came to rigid attention and sharply clicked their bootheels together.
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