by Jack
‘It is, sir ...’ the clerk looked up. ‘I have already sent to Mister Settlepond at the Harbour Governor’s for the necessary vessel lists. It should be arriving any moment now.’
Wells suppressed any exhibition of weariness or dismay; it would never do for his assistants and fellow sleuths to see him burdened or flagging no matter how head or body ached.
‘Might have been good to have this tale clear at the first,’ Sprawle murmured grimly from the further end of the room, the lurksman pacing his usual track on the fine Dhaghi carpet that near obscured the floor. ‘A day wasted ...’
Exhibiting admirable efficiency of his own, Pardolot had — by way of messenger sent from his palatial file at Grand Plus Banking & Mercantile — furnished them with the required keepsake. Delivered by one of the man’s servants in a plain flat box of card, it was rather startlingly a petticoat assured by way of a brief sealed note with it, to have been frequently worn by the young lady, and to have been rescued from the fuller’s basket before it could be cleansed. For all his swagger, Sprawle blushed when he discerned exactly its nature.
‘Well — I —’ he tried.
‘What ails you, good sir?’ Wells spoke goadingly over his shoulder. ‘You are forever goosing about the faintness of the smells typically provided you, yet here a proper odour is presented and you are complaining still. As good a slot-trace you’ll never get.’ He took in a long breath and turned abruptly. ‘Come, gentlemen! Put on better proofing and arm yourselves discreetly. We shall have dear Miss Pardolot show us this night-cellar.’
* * * *
At first dear Miss Pardolot proved predictably reluctant. Yet with a few dashing smiles from ‘Mister Wells’ and the timely return of her father, Monsiere Pardolot himself, she agreed finally to retrace the night as best she could. After some tears, gentle cajolery and even a dark prediction of Viola’s possible fate, she proved her worth, directing them to a dangerously cramped part of the Alcoves. While Mister Thickney returned the young lady to her home, Wells, Sprawle and Door found themselves at the top of what locals satirically named ‘gullies’ — narrow sunken channels between the towering, tottering houses. As much cloaca as laneway, the ‘gully’ bending slightly right ahead of them was rank with sewer-stink, mixing with the reek of the harbour coming on the gentle evening breeze.
‘’Tis surely faint, but I can smell that Viola was here,’ Sprawle muttered through his sthenicon box and hared down the gully-way, sending a pair of rabbits nosing unseen amidst the refuse fleeing ahead of him.
Wells — Door at his back — came as quick he as could, ignoring the resentful observation of a pair of surly locals peering from their inadequate apartment window above.
Slowing some to let his chief catch him, Sprawle soon halted at a stony stair on the right that lead down deeper than a cellar stair ought to the entrance of a sinister establishment with a tiny marmorine — false-marble — sign quietly pronouncing the unseemly name of The Empresses Bosom. Little doubt it was a lewd reference to ancient Dido. ‘She went in, but there is no slot of her coming out again ...’
Here insisting on taking the lead, Wells trundled laboriously one step at a time to the bottom, ignoring the deep ache of hip and knee. Keeping his tall-brimmed, three-cornered thrice-high with its inner proofing band firmly upon his crown and, setting the murky glasses that hid his eyes more firmly upon his nose, he stepped within.
Perched on a highback chair and flipping lazily through an out-of-date copy of Military and Nautical Stores, the greasy doorward showed scant interest in this trio of heavy-harnessed gentlemen; every sort of fellow came for a visit with the Empress. His role was not to stop them going in but, when required, prevent them leaving. With scarce more than the merest look, he gave Wells and his assistants a darkly knowing nod and returned his attention to last year’s news only to find a well-drawn spedigraph thrust in his face. Did he recognise her? He drew back his head like a turtle might retract into its shell, blinked languidly at the image and shrugged.
Without the fellow speaking another word, Wells could fathom from the shift of humours beneath his skin that this was true — just as with the boniface of Ratio’s Swing, it was a case of too many faces. A variation in the hue of the door-clerk’s temper gave Atticus a moment’s warning as the fellow made a strangled kind of bark.
A pair of hefty doorwards emerged from handy nooks in the walls, the biggest standing over the stunted sleuth to bend menacingly over him.
‘Get thee lost!’ he breathed stinkingly into Wells’ face. ‘No fluffs allowed!’
Neither Sprawle or Door, immediately behind, moved to intervene.
Mistaking this as reluctance born of fear, the big vinegarroon seized the short sleuth before him by the arm. Quick as an asp Wells struck, dropping his cane to drive the nose of this fellow into his face, snatching a second doorward by the wrist even as the rough lunged and threw a swipe. Twisting the fellow’s entire frame about, the sleuth pressed his assailant’s hand down, thumbs pushing on knuckles, pinning him entirely with pain so that the lout was forced bawling angrily to his knees.
‘Awrigh’! Awrigh’! I knows when I’m beat!’
‘I wish an interview with the procuress of this fine establishment,’ Wells stated matter-of-factly.
‘Deglubius!’ the pinioned rough hollered to the clerk blinking a little stupidly at the doorward writhing with broken nose on the cold stone flags.
The clerk snapped to like a foot-slogging pediteer in the Archduke’s army.
‘Tell the Empress some f —’ Wells gave his arm a smart bit of pressure, ‘fine gents wants to see her in-personal.’
The clerk hastily went and hastily returned: they could meet the Empress.
Wells let his adversary free, standing back and ignoring resentful glowers as the two doorwards guided them to their interview.
Peculiarly sweet narcotic fumes wafted about the over-warm common room lit by little more than the enormous hearth in the left-hand wall. Under the low, ponderously-beamed ceiling sozzled men representing the entire human catalogue of Soutland citizenry lounged amongst genuinely exotic cushions and falsely exotic women of hard faces. In fluffing dresses like sombre subterranean flowers, these predatory lasses were uniformly thick with pastes and rouges that went some way to obscure the falseman’s reading.
Wells was almost grateful for it.
Everyone looked more stark and bizarre to him, their skin shifting, flushing, nigh oh crawling at every turn of thought, every falter of soul, every unspoken cruelty. The almost corpse-like distortions that flushed across a person’s visage as they concealed or deceived, growing ever more grotesque with the increasing convolutions of their lies was for him a daily and ghastly spectacle. Despite half a life with such singular lucidity he yet remembered the pasty blank a face presented to usual eyes and was glad sometimes not to know the turnings of another fellow’s mind.
Punch-drunk, brawling, howling or throwing lots, patrons and ladies alike ignored them entirely as the three were taken deep within the night-cellar.
What desperate nadir one must reach in themselves to call on such a place for amusement, the chief sleuth marvelled quietly, hobbling by grimy amorerobes — love-cupboards — holding half-concealed displays of depravity, their suggestion perhaps more shocking than the reality. Not all these men would make it out again tonight, Wells was sure of it — but there was little he could do to prevent the fate of men so given over to dissipation, and his current mission must come first.
The Empress turned to be one of the many hard-faced, over-painted ladies dwelling here, dressed in a full-bosomed dress of wide-flaring scarlet taffeta. Settled in a tall elbow chaise of ruby-red leather, she sat in a cheaply plush boudoir, fanning herself and making show of her apparent unconcern.
It was only skin deep.
Wells could well tell the disturbance of her spirits. Still hot in soul after the scuffle, he wasted no time revealing his telltale eyes to this madame.
Deeply unam
used at the persecution of her own, the woman regarded him evenly from her lustrous couch. Cold comely eyes rimed in thick black flicked to Sprawle lithe and dangerous with his red hood and boxed face; to Door well harnessed, and barely able to fit through the gleaming red portal to her chamber; and finally to the pair of sturdy roughs hovering tensely behind them. A brief calculation passed across her gaze. ‘Fetch in Caspar,’ she finally called to her uneasy wards with a voice so jaded Wells nigh felt sorry for her.
‘Our girl was brought in here,’ Sprawle murmured in his chief’s ear as they waited.
The Empress sipped at a flute of dark purple vinothe and made show behind her beauty plaster of indifference, while bloody-nosed, the taller rough shuffled.
A small neat man in a worn but well-mended coat of silver-grey silk emerged from some back chamber. Wells closely observed his detached face blatant with ugly and habitual dishonesty as the fellow stopped by his mistress’s wide desk and paled by the merest degree when he saw that there was a falseman before him.
‘These men have lost something, it seems, Mister Caspar,’ the Empress said in dangerous hush, glaring at the fellow, thought clear in her eyes, What quandary have you got me in now! ‘Answer them as best you can where they might go to find it and leave us to peace.’
Caspar recognised the image of Viola, though he did not say as much. Indeed, upon seeing the spedigraph he peered at Wells as if to say, Do I truly need to tell you what you can already see ...? His expression turned dogged, as if expecting some retributing blow. ‘She seemed a ripe cherry, so little an’ bright amongst all them rowdies. So I plucked ‘er away from ‘em, an’ I — I ... passed ‘er on to a ... more deservin’ gent ...’
‘Passed her on ...’ Atticus repeated like the pronouncement of a Duke’s Bench magistrate. This fellow was a chattelman — a vile stealer and seller of people as mere goods. It was such people as these that kept the sleuth in constant work — how hard it was not to lash out and destroy this deliverer of misery where he stood. I shall return perhaps and shut this place down, he promised himself.
‘Ah,’ Caspar glanced uneasily at his mistress. ‘Aye ... I soporified ‘er an’ carried ‘er down the trap right below yer feet, sirs,’ he nodded to the imitation rug upon which the three questers stood.
Clearly furious with her employee, the Empress struggled to suppress her dismay at such an admission.
‘To who?’ Wells persisted with the fellow, ignoring the woman’s poorly hid discomfort.
‘Um’ ... a nervous chappie I ‘ave done trade with from time to time ...’
‘WHO!’
‘One Mister Emptor Settlepond; he owns a whole bunch o’ tallowbellies and is constantly seekin’ sturdy souls to work ‘em on account of ‘im always openin’ more. Money must be good in th’ fur business, I’d say ...’
‘There is more, sir,’ Wells persisted, bizarre blue-on-red gaze narrowing. ‘Your eyes might have been blinded with a bribe but I can still see.’
Caspar baulked a little. ‘J-just that yesterday a fine chappie comes in looking for a body just as her. Not a-feared of any old body, that one, has the Enigmatic Mouth of Sucathes cribbed on neck an’ ‘ands, clear as a bum in a bath-’ouse.’
Sprawle caught an involuntary draw of breath.
Wells simply blinked.
The Enigma of Sucathes was the allegory — the cult-sign — of a particular group of falsegod worshippers.
Emboldened by even slight dismay, the chattelman smiled wickedly but hid it hastily behind a cough. ‘Called hisself Monsiere Jack.’
Wells simply sniffed at such an obviously fake appellation
‘Was set fast on a girl of such a one as this’un, so I obliged him with Settlepond’s address and beyond that I am done.’
‘You shall furnish us with this man’s particulars too, of course.’
The chattelman nodded impatiently, wrote an address upon a fold of paper and passed it over.
‘There you are, man,’ the Empress said frostily. ‘You have all we can give. Go now and bully some other poor soul trying to make his way.’
‘Thank you, madam, I shall,’ Wells said blandly, with a tight bow first to the procuress then the chattelman Caspar. Pivoting on his heel, the sleuth and his two allies departed, the chief sleuth remarking as he passed the doorward with the pummelled face, ‘Sorry for your nose, man. I am sure you and your social life shall survive it; I have a perfect mess of a proboscis yet my friends are devoted to me still.’
* * * *
Orotund and utterly bald, Emptor Settlepond — owner and master of several tallowbellies and other sweatmills beside — sweated nearly as much as his desperate or impressed workers endlessly treading tallow into new-skun fur. While the work he offered was by no stretch pleasant, it was for some the only thing keeping them from a empty stomach and death. Settlepond was more than happy to provide such indigent souls with the necessary labour to keep them from such an end, and that perfectly efficient Caspar fellow seemed to have an endless supply of the wretches.
Looking down from his third-storey file over the bustling convergence of Mole End Circuit, the owner congratulated himself on avoiding such misery. Below him a fine-looking lentum drew to a halt and disgorged three fellows, one remarkably and misshapenly short, all three possessing the faces of men with set, serious purpose who would brook no obstacle. Hate to be the sod who has to deal with them, he smiled to himself as he watched the short chap and his fine-looking friend enter the building while the biggest fellow waited by the coach. Sipping long at his warm morning saloop, Settlepond extended his delight to the warming sun peeping low through early clouds.
A sturdy thump at his file door gave him a sharp start and he span about to see the very same dangerously determined men from below sweep into his very own comfortable file. Well, one swept, the other shambled.
‘Who are you?’ Settlepond finally mastered himself. He was inclined first to be impressed by the sweeping fellow — tall, brawny, flaxen-haired. Yet it was the stunted shambling fellow who arrested his attention most, peering as if right through him with the blue-in-red of a falseman’s stare.
‘Are you a gnosist, sir? A fantaisist?’ the shambling gent pressed accusingly, ignoring this very fair enquiry and forgoing any introduction as he and his tall, impressively-set comrade barged up to his very table. ‘Someone who believes themselves supplied with the secret knowledge of the falsegods?’
‘I — n-no not I, sir!’ the owner half stood, expression switching rapidly from ire to fear to complete befuddlement. ‘Just a gentleman attempting to make his place in the usual mercantile setting.’
‘By selling and buying souls,’ the impressive younger man said in aside, through gritted teeth.
Empty of excuses Settlepond’s mouth gaped, shut, gaped again. Completely absorbed with the function of his business and faced with such grim-looking men — one of them a lie-seeing falseman into the bargain — he quickly confessed under their close questioning to knowing the girl, if only to get these two froward fellows to leave. ‘What did you say her name was again?’ he asked, glistening head ducking forward obsequiously.
‘Viola Grey,’ the short fellow answered, adding portentously, ‘a ward of Monsiere Valentin Pardolot, Companion of Courtesy.’ For all his stunt stature he was patently the leader of the two.
‘Ah ...’ The owner’s innards leapt with dark dismay; this was the name of a man whom he greatly admired, of great means to which he greatly aspired. ‘Well, the problem is that I — I have on-sold her, sir.’
‘To who!’ the short gent glowered while, with equal measures of exasperation and infuriation, the fair one bristled frighteningly beside him.
‘I — I — it was some strangely marked chap with excellent address and his quiet servant,’ the owner stammered. ‘Master Jack it said on his card. He seemed exceedingly pleased with the girl — Viola, you said her name was?’
Mister Short nodded gravely.
‘He paid a dazzling amoun
t for her, enough for me to replace her ten times over, so I am afraid I passed her to him ...’ Settlepond could hear his voice trail to nought as he realised what he was admitting. He wiped with a large kerchief at the sweat dribbling on his dimpled crown. ‘This Mister Jack bore the oddest patterns on his knuckles, like — like a series of lesser case e’s ...’ He obliged them by attempting to draw one on a blotting sheet.
‘No doubting it’s fictlers now,’ the impressive fair chap muttered despondently when he beheld the fully-formed sign.
‘Are you in the possession of this Mister Jack’s whereabouts, sir?’ the short man pressed.
‘Uh ... no — no I am not ...’
‘Of course ...’ the fair-haired one continued his grim mutter.
‘And his servant?’ the short man pushed yet more.
‘I — he seemed a simple lad ... with big wet eyes and a much-itched ginger beard,’ Settlepond shrugged — normally a gesture he despised as insufficient in good company — and smiled weakly. Please just go, his mind kept repeating.