by Duncan, Hal
•
—Gerron, yer warmint! snarls Reakesack, whipping his Scruffian forward with the chain.
—A most suitable habitation for a mongrel scruff, says the Waiftaker General as he brings out his pistol. On your guard, men.
Into the lair of the Beast they goes then, into the rookery’s maze of blackened tenements, more’n a score of narrow streets, all reeking with the stench of tripe and tallow, cow’s shit and cat’s meat, dead dogs’ corpses in the mud. Dark doorways gape on either side, doors long-since gone for firewood. Eyes peer at em through broken soot-smeared windows.
In they goes.
•
Three men the Waiftaker General sends down a side-street, to circle round. Three men he orders down another alley as might hide a hound Three he sends off yet another way entirely, three in each team cause even pairs ain’t safe in the Old Nichol, not even the beefiest bruiser stickmen, with the heftiest coshes they can carry. But yer don’t catch nothing in the Old Nichol lest ye can box it in. So they needs to be smart, he tells them, leave the Beast nowheres to run.
—Sound your whistle if you see it, men, says he. Immediately.
•
Course, with old Reakesack and his Scruffian hardly counting in a scrap, well, the Waiftaker General, all’s he’s got is his lieutenant now, but he ain’t one to be trembling with no stickmen at his side. Don’t you be fooled by all his fineries into thinking he’s a fop. Don’t you be thinking, as he’s heartless, why, he must be gutless too. Evil don’t come so neatly wrapped, me scamps, all tied up with a dainty ribbon. No, that there waiftaker were a man with ice in place of blood, a man as hadn’t never known fear.
Until that day.
• 10
On through the rookery they goes, eyes watching em all the way, children and drunks being dragged in off the streets, quarrels cut-off with fists at faces, songs stilled to silence halfways through a verse, all ruckuses dying in their path, like as the Angel of Death has come to Egypt, come to take their firstborn. Men as would murder for a sniff what slighted em steps back to let the vulture of vagabonds pass.
Only once had a Waiftaker General come to grief in any London slum. Tales is still told of the tithe took by his heir.
•
Sudden and sharp, a sound cuts through the air—a whistle! Off to the west it is, and the Waiftaker General’s after it in a jiffy, pistol in the air—Come on! This way down an alley, that way now, he runs, the slap of steps echoing off the walls as the whistle blows again, then cuts off dead. He’s still running when another whistle sounds—to the south now.
—Quick! It’s on the move!
A third whistle! This time to the north—too far away, surely. He whirls, coat billowing, his lieutenant stumbling not to run right into him.
•
Now the second whistle blows again, no more’n yards away; he sprints to a corner, pistol aim sweeping round at… nothing. Another whistle! The first again? But to the east now? How? And he ain’t barely off his mark—the lieutenant, Reakesack and Yapper in tow—when a shrill tin shriek sounds far behind. Now all three whistles sounds at once, here, there and elsewheres, notes drawn long, and longer still, going on and on until… they stops.
All’s silence.
Silence except for Yapper’s whimper as he slinks back, cowering, quivering, peepers fixed on the black maw of a doorway.
•
—Sir, says the lieutenant. Sir! The Scruffian!
The Waiftaker General, he’s got the gears of his noggin whirling right now, figuring how’s the rookery scum’s called a reckoning upon themselves by ambushing his men, interfering in his extraordinary business; but he’s quick to catch the drift of his lieutenant’s fluster. The hawker ain’t slow neither, finger pointing.
—Is ’e in there, boy? says Reakesack.
—Yip!
—’E’s in there, sir! The Beast!
In the Waiftaker General’s noggin, a tiny niggle—yip, one yip—catches a cog only to be whirled away. No matter.
At last the Beast is within his grasp.
• 11
The Waiftaker General goes in first, pistol in one hand, cane in the other. His lieutenant follows, cosh and net at the ready. Ain’t a flicker of light in the tenement close. Only hints of gloaming seeps through the cardboard and rags what patches a window on the stairwell, halfways up to the first floor. Ain’t no lights in the ground floor flats neither, nor a peep of human habitation. In a rookery as has folks living twenty to an home.
—Search them, sir? asks the lieutenant.
The Waiftaker General points at where Yapper’s nosing.
—Up the stairs, says he.
•
On the first floor landing, it’s darker still, without even the light from the close’s front door. They peers into flats with windows boarded up, but all’s they make out is rotten floorboards smeared with filth they smells more’n sees. Up to the second floor they goes, into deeper blackness, like as someone’s sealed up every crack what might let in the slenderest shaft.
—Ah, vait just a tick, yer grandiose vorthiness, says Reakesack. I’ve a glim here, sir, I’m sure. Hold this.
He gives the lieutenant the leash, rummages out a candle, strikes a light, a phosphorous flash, and—
•
Of a sudden, Yapper barks and bolts, leash spinning the lieutenant like a top, yanking him round and off-kilter even as it’s ripped from his grip. The lieutenant stumbles, snapping a curse that’s killed in his throat by a black shape shooting from a doorway. Then the match is dropped, it’s snuffed, and the afterlight in their peepers makes the darkness worse. All’s they hear is the savaging, the gurgling screams, the thumping and thrashing. There’s another flash, with a bang this time—the buzzard’s pistol—but it’s wild, shook by Reakesack clutching at the arm, screaming, mercy! mercy!
•
—Damn you, man! Let go!
The Waiftaker General clubs the peddler with his cane, struggles free to fire another half-aimed shot at the sounds of horror, gets a glimpse of eyes and teeth and blood. He falls back as it hits him, feels the cane thrash in his grasp, hears the hound’s blood-curdling wrath in his face, smells its breath, feels its slaver. He don’t hardly know what he’s doing as he shoots and swings, and rolls and shoots. Then the cane’s torn from his grasp, but he feels the lieutenant’s net beneath him, grabs it, flings it.
• 12
Now there’s something on him again, but it’s Reakesack, panicked to a wild and howling scrabble, like as he wants to get up on his shoulders and behind his back all at once. And now the pistol’s knocked from his hand, and it’s the Waiftaker General’s turn to howl in rage, not a string of curses at the bloody Beast and peddler, the accursed darkness and damned chaos, just a single wordless bellow of wrath. He’s no fool to be lost to his ire though, not that vulture. He’s already figuring where the Beast is from its snarl and struggle.
•
He throws Reakesack off him, stumbles back, hand slapping on a rickety banister that near collapses with a mighty crack under his weight. Yes! With a roar he slams himself into it, splintering wood. Now he rips out a balustrade for a bludgeon, throws himself at the shape in the shadows, wild as some monstrous ape. The rotted wood shatters in his hand, but there’s bone cracks too, he’s sure, from the hellish yowl as the Beast gives out. Tain’t even nearly down and out though, and its lurching brings it twixt him and the way out down the stairs.
•
But the peddler’s already sorted his solution to that, fleeing past the Waiftaker General, screaming as he goes.
—Upstairs! Upstairs! Follow the Scruffian!
And it’s near drowned out by the Beast, but sure enough Yapper’s frantic yelping can be heard above. The Waiftaker General, he don’t stop to think, knows that the Beast ain’t more’n stunned, that he has to fall back, find a weapon, higher ground. He turns, leaps the stairs three at a time, spots light ahead of him now—yes!—on the landing, from
a flat, a room, an open door—snarling at his heels—a door!
•
And he’s in, with the door slammed shut at his back, the Beast pounding into it on the other side, shuddering it, a demon crazed with hunger for his blood. But he’s safe. A chair sits just beside the door, and he hauls it round, jams its back tight under the handle. He looks round the room for anything else as might help his barricade, but all he sees is Reakesack panting and the Scruffian…
He sees the Scruffian stood at a bare brick fireplace, leaning on the Waiftaker General’s cane, spinning his leash, and grinning, casual as can be.
• 13
There ain’t many as has had the Waiftaker General lost for words, but Yapper he got that bugger gawping like a goldfish. It might have been him nicking the bastard’s own cane, and it might have been him playing dandy with his own chain, but I likes to think it were mostly just the sight of Yapper standing on his own two feet as dumbfounded the Waiftaker General. Whatever it were, the buzzard were so blowed over, it were Yapper had to speak first.
—One yip always means yes, says he.
—Reakesack? growls the Waiftaker General.
—Yer hubristicality? sneers Reakesack.
•
Now as the peddler strolls over to stand beside Yapper, the Waiftaker General looks around a room as is empty of aught but that one chair holding back the slavering Beast. Floorboards and fireplace is all there is, and windows with ragged-edged grills nailed, screwed and bolted over em, crude but crafted for a purpose as is all too obvious. A cage, he thinks.
—Reakesack, I swear—
—He ain’t the one to be swearing at, says the Scruffian.
Oh, how the Waiftaker General glowered at that. The filthy scruff…
—You, he says. Who do you think you are that—?
•
—Yer don’t really has to know my name or story, says Yapper. Fact, yer don’t get to know my story. All’s yer need know is that I’m awful fond of dogs. Ain’t a dog in the world that’s not a little bit Scruffian in its heart, so all us Scruffians loves our poochy pals, yeah? But even me crib-mates says I’m downright daft for me mongrel mates. So what? says I. So what if I likes to go down to all the strays in the backstreet bivouacs and feed em any grub as I’ve got spare? It’s mine, innit?
•
—So what, says I, if this Beast of Buskerville everyone’s gabbing about is fiercer than a ticked-off tiger? I talk Dog, don’t I? Tain’t that hard if yer lives with em for long enough; it’s mostly feed me and bad men and cats! Anyways, if it’s true that Beast’s been Fixed, says I, ain’t we obliged to offer it a crib? So I had a little shufty for him, yeah? Took yonks to find him, but in the end…
—Blow me if he ain’t indeed a Scruffian dog, says Yapper. A Scruffian dog! But you already knows that, eh?
• 14
The Waiftaker General glowers at him then, saying nuffink with his lips but blathering the bleeding works of Charlie Dickens in the glare of his murderous peepers. A Scruffian dog and he knows it alright. Blow me if he ain’t got the look all em groanhuffs gets when’s they been rumbled for a rook, that look of hate hiding guilt, like as they can smother the shifty with the surly. It’s the look of them as don’t wear their story proud, pinned to their chest in a name like Gobfabbler, yeah? The look of them as is ashamed of it.
•
—Oh, he’s a wild one, right enough, says Yapper. Whelp—that’s what I calls him—Whelp, he don’t half get his hackles up if a stranger come too close. First day I goes back to me crib, I had three fingers missing, bit right off. Lucky the Fixing sorts that, eh? Me crib-mates swore blind I was bonkers, but I kept at it. Lost more fingers than I has to count with, but afters a while, Whelp and me, we got to talking. Thing is though, Dog… tain’t exactly made for fabbling, so getting his story were another matter.
•
But the Waiftaker General, he don’t need to speak Dog to have a fair notion as to what Whelp is saying right now, on the other side of the door behind his back. And tain’t nothing to do with cats. Bad men and feed me, maybes. Maybes even feed me bad men. But a lot of that barking, why, it’s almost in plain English, it is, as best a mutt can articulate all em complicated consonants with its slobbery muzzle. But, well, it ain’t like there’s too many consonants in: You! You! You! You!
Yapper he smiles and carries on.
•
—Most I could get from Whelp was river, river, river! Which weren’t getting us nowhere. Then I has an inspiration. Go ask Rake Jake Scallion, I thinks. He’s a good mate to us Scruffians—well, ye’ll know that on account of the grief he causes yer—and he weren’t Fixed for the usual reasons. He don’t talk about his own how and why, but maybes he’d have a notion why the Institute would be Fixing an animal of all things. So I done just that, and blow me if Jake Scallion don’t know the whole story of the Scruffian dog.
• 15
So now Yapper spins his yarn, how he stopped by Rake Jake Scallion’s hidey-hole in—yer don’t needs to know, says he—and how Jake brung him in, give him a glass of hot gin as welcome, and listened keen as Yapper told him ’bout this mad dog he was wrangling out of rage. And after he’s done, Rake Jake Scallion gazes a whiles at his latest forgery, a perfect copy of some fine Old Master’s painting of David with the head of Goliath—only Goliath’s face looks right familiar in a beady-eyed buzzard way. Then he nods.
•
—See, once upon a time, says Yapper, there was a spoiled little brat who’d an awful tendency to torture his pets to death. Went through a dozen mice, he did, a half dozen cats, and a good few dogs. His old man keeps bringing him new ones, but he keeps on killing em, till one day his father says enough’s enough; this is the last, and if it’s killed there’ll be no more. Only that father happens to be the Waiftaker General, and the brat knows all about his old man’s business. About the Stamp, and how’s it Fixes things.
•
Old Lionel J. Reakesack, he’s got his arms folded now, but the Waiftaker General, he sees a thumb come up to drift across the man’s chest, like as he’s minding an itch what’s been scratched raw. Like when it hurts too much to scratch more, yeah, but it’s still a right sore bother, so’s you can’t help but stroke it? And it don’t exactly help none, but yer still does it anyhow, traces the pain with a gentle touch, as if to soothe it with yer thoughts, to let it know it ain’t forgot.
Yapper, he just twirls his leash.
•
—So this brat has a bully idea, see. Sneaks his pet into the Institute one night, not a stickman even asking why the spiteful little turd is there, for fear of him running to his old man, getting em dismissed for imaginary insolence. He knows where the Stamp is, how to use it, how he’s going to use it: he’s only going to Fix the dog, ain’t he? So’s it won’t ever have to be replaced. No matter how he harms it.
—Only he don’t reckon on how Fixing hurts. He don’t reckon on the dog going… well… barking mad.
• 16
—Now that dog don’t like the little fucker to start with, and it don’t trust him an inch, so when he brings the Stamp out, it does its damnedest just to get away. He has to catch it, muzzle it, tie it down while it’s Fixed, and by fuck, the moment the pain starts, that dog snaps. It goes from struggling to snarling, howling and growling with all the fury it’s got. Is it any bleeding wonder? It don’t know what’s going on, but it sure as fuck knows it ain’t good. That dog was Fixed fighting for its life.
•
He feels the door shuddering at his back, does the Waiftaker General, slamming and rattling under Whelp’s unending onslaught. He minds how he’d felt when his lieutenant first brung him news of this Beast of Buskerville, his wave of a hand—hardly our concern, man. But then how the sightings and stories grew and grew, till he gots to wondering whether it were just another rabid cur after all. If it had really been shot in the face and survived. If it were truly the fury they said it were…
But it couldn
’t be, he’d thought. It just couldn’t be.
•
—Course, even this brainless little brat knows it ain’t suitable for a pet now. Man, it near enough skins its own legs getting free of the straps as holds it down; it’s all’s he can do to beat it back into a cage; and once inside, well, when it manages to smash its muzzle off, there’s no sodding way he’s going in there to try and Scrub it. So what’s the boy going to do with an immortal, indestructible beast Fixed furious at him? Except maybes order two stickmen to dump the animal in the Thames, cage and all.
•
It weren’t from panic, strange as it might sound. As the Waiftaker General stood there scowling back at the Scruffian and the hawker, as they slowly moved in towards him, that were a certainty in his heart, a truth as made him hate them more for their not knowing that part of it. He were a reckless child, but it were cold anger as made him hasty in… disposing of the dog, not fear. He were like ice as he give the order, he remembers, calm as can be. But the white light of his ire did blind him, maybes.
• 17