by David Boop
Holly finished wiping his face with the cleaner part of the washrag, and tossed it to the desk. It landed with a wet splotch. “Honest?” he repeated, incredulous. “Of course I haven’t been honest! Any honest caller would have dropped over at the first whiff of this place! What do you do for a confinement? Drape yourself with the sheets from her childbed? Does she give him the afterbirth to play with? And for God’s sake, what is that?”
From the distant receiving end of Holly’s out-flung hand, the apprentice looked up. “A word of advice, sir,” he said as he toweled off his intestinal treasure and held it up for his own inspection. The window’s dirty afternoon light profoundly deepened the object’s resemblance to a necklace—a locket, in fact, on a length of fine chain. “If you ever suffer a broken engagement, resist the urge to do anything terribly literal with your love tokens.”
The apprentice glanced at the disemboweled pig on the table, and then over at the doctor. “I think we’ll want the carbolic acid before we return this to Miss Miller.”
A small, feebly protesting part of Holly’s mind wanted his attention. But it had been a hot and tiring walk, his headache was ripening fast, and if he’d just time enough to sit and properly think for a minute…
“What’s that?” Dr. Fitch indicated the vial that Holly had drawn from his pocket.
Holly glanced down at the impressively purple fluid. It was Digby’s dubiously dyed wonder-water, and the only remedy he had for the burning in his throat and the bile aftertaste in his mouth. “This?” Having definitively ruined any chance of a sale, Holly suffered no impediment to honesty. “This is what I was coming to sell you.” He uncorked the vial and drank it in half a swig, the licorice flavor for once very welcome.
From this calmer remove, Holly began to regret his outburst. Who was he to present himself unannounced and then complain that the premises weren’t up to standard? He ought to pay the doctor for his time and care, and to volunteer it before he was asked. What would be considered generous here, assuming one didn’t intend to settle in livestock?
“Really?” In spite of everything, Fitch’s long face creased in curiosity. “What does it do?”
Whatever you want, Holly thought. But if there was to be any hope of keeping his job after this appalling incident, he’d have to do better. “Oh…a great number of things,” he said. “As we were discussing earlier, the—er, the fishmen have long cultivated bog yams for a number of medicinal purposes. Dr. Digby’s breakthrough was in developing a distillation method that leaches the healthful mineral essence from the root, leaving the toxins behind, so that we can be relieved of a whole host of parasites, dyspepsias, digestive complaints…it’s not half bad for a nervous stomach either.” This, with a chagrined hand on the area in question.
Actually, Digby’s real breakthrough was in packing up the medicine show and employing people like Holly to pitch his panaceas directly to rural doctors. Then there was no risk of getting pinched for selling alcohol and laudanum to natives, harlots, mereaux, or other “morally wanting” clientele. One had only to confirm the doctor’s license, and let him accept all liability for his prescriptions.
A good strategy, provided the salesman didn’t outrage every notion of decorum in the process.
But this doctor had something of the outrageous in him too. He stared at Holly’s bag, his young face drawn in scrutiny. “So…you were coming to Hockit just to sell me this medicine? And when your coach turned over, you carried it here and presented yourself, just the same?”
It sounded even more crass and manipulative now than it had then. Holly draped the washrag discreetly over the bowl beside him. “Well…yes, essentially.”
The doctor clapped his hands like a gunshot. “Splendid!” he declared. “How much do you have?”
Holly was beginning to feel that disorientation now. “Er…a dozen quart bottles in hand, and substance for four dozen more, if you’re not averse to preparing it in-house…?”
“Of course not!” Fitch cast an emphatic, upturned hand at Holly’s empty vial. “This is a drug worth suffering for! This is what a man drinks when he’s been reduced to honesty! This is what we need here!” He left off gesticulating at the window and glanced back at Holly. “Unless it’s very expensive?”
It was ten dollars a bottle. And this time, Holly knew exactly what to say. “Oh, not at all. Ordinarily it’s twelve-fifty a bottle, but I’m so extraordinarily in your debt—would you accept ten dollars even?”
He would—Holly could see it already—and opened his mouth to say as much.
“If I may…” the apprentice interrupted. He’d put down the necklace and wiped his hands, and now ventured out from behind the gruesome table.
Holly had no grounds for objection as Fitch bent to oblige his assistant’s whisper.
There was something wrong with the apprentice, Holly decided. Not his race: Heaven knew he couldn’t help his rusty skin or sooty hair or slight frame, nor any of the poor stature they conferred on him. Maybe it was his voice, and its peculiar hint of an accent. Or that faint, irritating asymmetry in his shoulders, like a picture hung five degrees off-center.
Regardless, the only certainty was that the apprentice meant to get even for Holly’s rude tone earlier—perhaps by talking his master out of the deal.
Well, let him try. Between the expensively constipated pig and the aborted suturing of his own skull, Holly was beginning to get the idea that this Dr. Fitch was a fellow who liked getting his hands dirty.
By the time the good doctor straightened again, Holly was as prepared as a duelist with first choice of the pistols.
“Ah. Please pardon us, Mr. Holly.” A blonde curl flopped over Fitch’s ear as he graced Holly with an apologetic smile. “We—I was just wondering, before we put pen to paper, what evidence you have for your miraculous medicine. You know, so that I can recommend it with authority.”
In other words, prove it. Holly returned the smile, and feigned surprise. “Oh! Well, the active ingredient is patented, so I’m not at liberty to disclose its exact composition, but let me think…” And then, as if struck by a fresh and exciting idea, Holly held up a placating finger and turned to fetch his bag from the desk’s foot. “Ah, yes, you see—I’ve still got a few things that haven’t smashed themselves to bits. Would you help me rig up a demonstration?”
“Oh, by all means!” the doctor said. “What do you have? What do you need?”
It required no more than five minutes’ preparation. Holly produced the sachet of Digby’s patented powder, poured it into his freshly emptied vial, and topped it with ethanol of the doctor’s generous provision. Then he stoppered and shook it to clarity as the doctor cut up a bog yam—because as it happened, he had one readily at hand—and dropped the chunks into a clean glass jar.
“Splendid,” Holly said. “And now it only needs a bit of chloroform—let me see if I’ve still got mine…” He rummaged around in the bag, careful not to reveal his own bottled ethanol and withered bog yam. It always worked better when customers thought you did it on the spur of the moment, improvised and especially for them.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Here, how much?”
“A scant tablespoon, poured over the top,” Holly said helpfully. “There, and now we just close and shake it, like so—we always want to coat all the root’s surface, you see.” He handed the vial of clear liquid to the doctor, and indicated the bottle. “Will you do the final honors?”
Fitch was only too glad to oblige: Like a schoolboy at his first experiment with vinegar and saleratus, he poured the one into the other and watched eagerly for a reaction.
The apprentice watched Holly all the while.
“Look!” the doctor cried, jabbing his menial freely at the arm. “Look! Do you see that? Now what do you have to say?”
There in the jar, as timely and reliable as the sunrise, violet tendrils began to seep from the purple flesh of the yam, curling and clouding their chemical bath.
“Lovely, isn’t i
t?” Holly was mindful to keep his face straight and his gaze averted from his foiled nemesis. What do you think of that, you tedious drudge?
“It’s marvelous!” Fitch agreed. “And is this the final product?”
Holly tipped his head modestly from side to side. “It’s the essence of it. You’re welcome to keep this batch, if you like: Just strain it tomorrow, then top it up with perhaps a pint of water and something for taste, at your discretion. We generally suggest a tablespoon for adults, a teaspoon for children under twelve, and five drops for infants.”
This was the point at which the diligent salesman would ask for the sale, but Holly had no need: He had his success in the declarative slap of the doctor’s palms on the desk. “I’ll take it all! How do you want the money? And when can I have delivery?”
By then, the blood and flies and ambient pigs-bowel smell had entirely ceased to matter. The cheap narcotics blossoming in his stomach lent an edge to Holly’s giddy enthusiasm as he retrieved his battered sales book and spread his papers on the desk. “Well, I have every confidence in the Gideon-Wright Overland Freight Company, but I expect it will be some hours before my inventory catches up with me, and I understand you still have an appointment to keep. Could I call on you tomorrow morning?”
Fitch pushed pen and ink forward for the bill, his gaze fixed on the serenely bleeding yam all the while. “Oh, I think that would be fine…around nine or so? I can have cash for you then.”
Holly could hardly believe his great turn of luck—and without a word about installments or interest! He hurried to put the figures to paper. “Smashing! I just need you to sign the transfer of liability—opiates, you understand—and have a second glance at the bill. I’ve included four dozen of the packets at two dollars each, but I can get you bog yams if you need them, and…oh, pardon my asking: What does ‘T.B.’ stand for?”
“Tuberculosis.”
Still doubling twelves and carrying twos, Holly dropped his mental digits and looked up.
“Consumption, you know,” the doctor added absently, his fair brow furrowing as he read through the liability form.
Holly opened his mouth to clarify what he’d meant, and then looked back down at the bill. He filled in the last of the zeroes on 216.00—which was to say, over twenty-one dollars’ cash commission, immediately payable to one Dagobert Francis Hollingberry Junior—and prudently forgot bookkeeping protocol as he wrote T. B. FITCH in neat letters at the top of the page.
“Ah…thanks very much,” Holly said, and returned the pen. The doctor signed with the grand, flourishing scrawl for which his profession was known, and offered his handshake in preference to sealing wax.
Holly had no trouble matching Fitch’s glad demeanor, but as soon as he reclaimed his hand and the requisite paperwork, he excused himself with blistering alacrity. By his own wits, he’d survived the doctor and the apprentice both, and escaped their ghastly premises with the year’s most lucrative and ludicrously improbable sale.
* * *
Evening found Holly well ensconced at the Hockit Hotel, and very kindly inclined toward the porter who arrived with the crate. On prising it open and, finding its straw-packed contents unmolested, Holly busied himself for the next hour with a bottle of glue and a stack of labels. He set aside the clothespinned sets of Digby’s Scrofula Tonic, Digby’s Female Remedy¸ and Digby’s Neuro-Sanative Elixir, and christened each naked bottle as Digby’s Digestive Specific.
* * *
A knock at the door woke him the next morning. Sluggish and wretched, with a strident headache, Holly pinched his eyes and struggled to recollect himself. Wreck. Rustics. Doctor, blood, nausea, tuberculosis—oh, God! The deal!
Holly sat up at once, the sunlight seeping through the thin muslin curtains suddenly a dire portent. How late had he slept?
The knock came again, soft, perfectly reluctant to impose. “Yes, what is it?” Holly called, his voice still rough from sleep.
The door opened to admit the apprentice. He was cleanly dressed today, plain linen shirt and spotless charcoal vest positively hanging from his spare frame.
But whatever he’d come about would have to defer to Holly’s guilty panic. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry… I’m late, aren’t I? I can’t apologize enough… I’m never a late sleeper, really…but I’ll be there just directly with the product, and…” A horrible thought struck him, one too grim to speak directly. “…that is, if it’s still all right?”
The apprentice’s dark-eyed gaze lingered on him, taking in Holly’s bare chest and thoroughly unimpressive physique. “That’s fine,” he said. He glanced over at the crate near the door. “Shall I take this for you?”
There was the first sensible notion of the day. “That would be grand, thank you. Please let the doctor know I’ll be right along.” Holly did not bestir his naked frame from the bedclothes as the apprentice lifted the crate onto his mismatched shoulders and excused himself.
Then the door closed. Holly positively hurled himself out of bed, assaulting himself with clothes as fast and fiercely as if he were mopping up a human spill.
He was halfway through his buttons when he realized what he’d just done.
Article 6, Section 7: Be it further enacted that any person vending, distributing, or otherwise furnishing opium or spirituous liquors to any indigenous or non-human person, shall forfeit a sum not exceeding two hundred dollars, or be imprisoned not exceeding six months.
Holly swore aloud. Surely not. Surely not. The apprentice had either just robbed Holly blind—or else was plotting to get him arrested.
No, not at all, he told himself as he jammed his feet in his shoes and fairly bolted from the room. The apprentice merely acted on behalf of the doctor, who was a licensed physician and the buyer of record. Holly swore again and about-faced to retrieve the bag containing his sales book and papers. No right-thinking person could suppose otherwise.
Outside, the few people out on the streets might have marveled at the sight of a sloppily dressed dandy stuffing in his shirttails as he ran across the road, but Holly saw only his memory of the apprentice’s baleful stare.
Someone had left the door open. Holly all but threw himself over the threshold, already knowing he wouldn’t find the apprentice there.
Fitch sat at his desk, swirling the thoroughly purpled contents of the demonstration jar. Across from him, in the chair Holly had so reluctantly occupied, a portly gentleman of perhaps fifty looked up at Holly’s uncouth arrival.
“Terribly sorry…please excuse me,” Holly said breathlessly. “By any chance, have you seen…” Damn it, what was the fellow’s name? An-Lap? Yan-Ap?
True to form, the doctor interrupted. “Oh, Mr. Holly! Good morning! How did you sleep? Do you still have that headache? You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?”
Bloody hell. There was no telling how far or fast the little bastard had absconded, and—
A wooden creak sounded to his left. There in the corner, at yesterday’s dissection table, the apprentice pried another nail from the crate.
Holly’s stomach sagged at the sight.
Of course there was nothing wrong here. He’d been fool to think otherwise. Holly drew a deep, calming breath, squashing the urge to laugh at his own paranoia.
“Frank Holly?”
The portly gentleman stood up. He cut a respectable figure with his chalk-striped coat and trimmed silver beard, and would not have been out of place even on a northern city street.
Holly stepped further inside, wishing he had a hat to remove. This was probably an officer of the bank, here to oversee the transaction. “At your service, sir. To whom do I owe the pleasure?”
The gentleman’s tone promised no pleasure at all. “Magistrate Linas Comstock. I’m here to arrest you for violation of the Commercial Intercourse Act.”
Holly’s nerves hit the floor and shattered.
“On what evidence?” he demanded. “I’ve entered into a lawful transaction with a licensed medical professional, and I’ve
got papers to prove it. I gave the product to this man as a good-faith representative of the doctor, and you can see he’s conveyed it here intact, so what possible cause do you have to imply otherwise?”
The magistrate didn’t seem so much moved by Holly’s impassioned defense as wearied by the sound of his voice. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Doc, shut the door.”
Fitch paused in fishing pieces of bog yam from the demonstration jar, but it was the apprentice who moved to oblige.
The apprentice’s name had two syllables—Holly remembered that much—but neither had sounded like Doc.
An awful, creeping suspicion wormed through his gut.
Holly spoke slowly and clearly, not trusting his reason, and pointed at the apprentice. “Do you mean to tell me that he’s your doctor?”
The magistrate arched an eyebrow at Holly’s rudely out-pointed finger, and matched it with a thumb jerked back toward the man at the desk. “You mean to tell me that you thought this harebrained hellbender was anything like it?”
From the receiving end of the magistrate’s gesture, the lanky blond fellow—the “doctor”—had just popped a piece of bog yam into his mouth. He stopped chewing and flashed Holly a guilty, sharp-toothed smile.
Mereau. By the Sibyl’s swollen teats, they’d duped Holly into selling to a God-damned fishman.
And he wasn’t about to stand for it. “I did, because he presented himself as exactly that, which means he’s committed criminal impersonation in the first degree.”
The mereau looked guiltier still, wilting faintly under his golden wig. “Please, Madge, I didn’t mean it that way. He was just so sure I was the doctor, and we didn’t want to embarrass him—”
The magistrate held up a hand for silence, his steely gaze evened with Holly’s all the while. “You got any evidence for that?”
“Certainly,” Holly said. If these backcountry jakes thought they’d get him on the paperwork, they deserved every bit of their dim reputation. “He forged the doctor’s signature.” He found the folded paper by touch, and handed it over.