Phantom of Blood Alley

by Paul Stewart

  I handed the cloak back to the open-mouthed butler. Then, tugging on Kaiser’s leash, I left the Moorish mansion of the late Sir Crispin Blears and headed back down the broad, tree-lined thoroughfare of Batavia Park, my mind racing.

  Albert Hoskins had told me of chemicals mysteriously going missing from his warehouse, and kept guns and a rapier behind his counter as a result. Sir Crispin Blears had told me his painting had been vandalized, and now he was dead.

  Could Albert be in similar danger? I had to warn him, at the very least.

  I headed off towards Gastown as fast as I could, with Kaiser trotting along beside me. Half an hour later we cut down Sleat Alley, which led to Coldbath Road, where the industrial chemist’s was situated. We hurried along the shadowy alley, past a row of rundown workshops, the sounds of hammering, sawing and grinding mingling with the clatter of treadles and looms, and out onto the busy main street at the other end.

  I paused and took my bearings. Diagonally opposite, on the corner of Coldbath Road and Tibbalds Lane, was the industrial chemist’s premises. With Kaiser on a short leash, I waited for a brewer’s dray to trundle past before darting out into traffic. I’d got halfway across the street when, all at once and without warning, a blinding white flash lit up the street, followed a second later by an ear-splitting blast.

  For an instant, everything seemed frozen. There was a ringing in my ears, and the street around me was unnaturally still. Then everything started moving at once.

  People were running in all directions, heads down and hands raised protectively over their heads. Horses reared up, whinnying and pawing the air, while others bolted, their carts and carriages lurching on the cobbles behind them. Adults were shouting, children were screaming, dogs barked and howled, while a flock of startled pigeons rose up in a great mass from the ledges and lintels of the surrounding buildings. And ahead of me, flames poured out of the shattered windows of A.G. Hoskins Industrial Chemists as a fire took hold, spreading through the building and triggering explosion after explosion as the volatile chemicals inside went up.

  ‘Albert Hoskins,’ I breathed, my worst fears confirmed, as a tattered, blackened figure appeared at the splintered doors, looking like a sweep’s apprentice fresh from a soot-encrusted chimney, and stumbled into the street.

  Blood poured down from a gash at the side of his head, soaking into his smoking shirt front and torn apron and splashing onto the paving stones. He managed half a dozen steps before falling to his knees, then keeled over and collapsed on the ground. Dragging the leash of the trembling boarhound, I dashed towards him, picking my way between the wreckage of two upturned carts.

  … a tattered, blackened figure appeared at the splintered doors, looking like a sweep’s apprentice …

  ‘Mr Hoskins,’ I said, crouching down next to the injured chemist. ‘Albert …’

  His eyelids fluttered and he looked up at me, a mixture of pain and bewilderment in his gaze.

  ‘There was someone there, I swear there was,’ he gasped, wincing with every word. ‘But when I looked, there was nobody …’ His eyes widened. ‘Then I saw it …’

  I leaned forward and cradled his head in my arms. ‘What did you see?’ I asked.

  Albert Hoskins’ brown eyes grew wider still, and he clutched at my sleeve. His lips parted, but nothing emerged except for a low gurgling sigh from the back of his throat. I put my ear to his mouth.

  ‘The box of matches,’ he whispered desperately, ‘floating in midair, they were, and lighting themselves … Nothing I could do … to stop … the flames …’

  Albert’s eyes abruptly glazed over and I felt the tension in his body dissolve. His head slumped back.

  I laid him gently down on the ground, swallowing hard. Just as I had feared, the phantom who’d murdered Laurence Oliphant and Sir Crispin Blears had struck again, and I had been powerless to prevent him. Now Albert Hoskins was dead. As I climbed to my feet, there was only one thought in my head.

  Miles Morgenstern.

  ‘Come on, boy,’ I said, tugging at Kaiser’s leash.

  The poor creature had been unnerved by the explosion and kept close to my side as the pair of us ran up Tibbalds Lane. Miles Morgenstern’s garret was on Brazier Street, half a dozen or so roads away, and I kept to the less busy ones, darting from one to the next, my breath coming in puffy clouds.

  The temperature had dropped sharply and the previous day’s drizzle had turned to fine, grainy snow. By the time I arrived at the tall, thin building where Miles Morgenstern worked and lodged, the snow was beginning to settle.

  With an unpleasant lurch of the stomach, I noticed that the front door was ajar. I pushed it open and was about to enter the dark hallway when Kaiser let out a bloodchilling howl and braced his front legs, refusing to enter.

  ‘Come on, Kaiser,’ I said. ‘Heel, boy. Kaiser, heel!’

  But the dog was having none of it. Fur ruffled and eyes rolling in his head, he whined pitifully and jerked back on the leash. I yanked it forward again. Suddenly it was tug-of-war, until all at once, with a resigned sigh, Kaiser stopped pulling.

  ‘Good dog,’ I said, and was reaching forward to pat him when, with a loud yelp, he leaped away. My shoulder jarred painfully in its socket, the leash slipped from my grip and I was left staring helplessly as the great hound bounded across the road. ‘Kaiser!’ I bellowed after him. ‘Kaiser!’

  But the Moravian boarhound was oblivious to my calls. He dashed headlong into a narrow lane opposite and disappeared from view.

  Something had spooked Kaiser, but there was nothing I could do for the moment, I told myself. I’d go in search of him just as soon as I had spoken to Miles Morgenstern. Yet as I walked along the gloomy hallway and up the flights of stairs, I too began to feel uneasy, my skin turning as cold and clammy as that of a freshly plucked goose.

  I reached the eighth-floor landing to discover that the door to Miles Morgenstern’s garret rooms was also open. It creaked softly when I pushed it, and I poked my head round the side and peered in.

  ‘Hello?’ I called out. ‘Mr Morgenstern?’

  There was no reply. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it at all. Drawing my sword, I stepped cautiously inside.

  The place looked abandoned, with a half-eaten plate of fried eggs and buttered bread at the end of the mattress-table and a pot of coffee bubbling on the stove. I crept across the floor and was turning off the gas when I heard a muffled thump from the other side of the door that led to his attic laboratory.

  Now seriously alarmed, I crossed quickly to the door and opened it, only to freeze with shock.

  Miles Morgenstern was before me, suspended in the air, his feet inches from the floor and his body shaking violently like a marionette in the clutches of an invisible puppet master. His face was bright purple and, as his steel-rimmed spectacles were dislodged and clattered to the floorboards, I saw his bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets.

  He was reaching up, his hands clawing at his throat as he gasped for breath. Our eyes met, and his imploring gaze begged me to help him.

  The next moment, his neck twisted violently to the side, there was a loud crack, and the light in his eyes was extinguished as his head fell forward. I let out a cry of horror and stumbled back, shocked and frightened, yet unable to look away.

  … his feet inches from the floor and his body shaking violently like a marionette in the clutches of an invisible puppet master.

  The lifeless body of Miles Morgenstern remained hovering in midair for an instant, his dead eyes staring sightlessly into mine. Suddenly, it lurched to one side and, accompanied by a soft, strained grunt, rose towards the ceiling, flipped upside down and plunged headfirst into a large copper vat of half-set gelatine.

  Transfixed, I stared at the body sinking slowly into the vat of gelatinous gloop. Chilling laughter, stifled yet clearly deranged, hissed in the air about me. I looked around the narrow attic room, but there was no one to be seen, and I took a step forward – only to be knocked roughly
aside by something barging past me. I heard a sharp intake of breath and caught the faintest whiff of chemicals.

  I was about to sheath my sword and hurry across to the vat when I noticed a splash of red at the tip of the blade. I touched it gingerly and inspected my fingertips. It was blood. Whatever had brushed past me must have been nicked by the blade, and I was struck by a thought.

  Supernatural phantoms don’t bleed; invisible he might be, but the murderer was made of flesh and blood. It wasn’t a ghost or ghoul I was after. It was a person – an evil monster, maybe, but a person nonetheless.

  Upending the vat, I pulled the body of Miles Morgenstern free and turned him over. I cleared the claggy gelatine from his nose and mouth with fumbling fingers, hoping against hope that the poor man might still be alive. But as I’d feared, his neck was broken. In the grip of the invisible phantom, he’d never stood a chance. I reached forward and closed his bulging eyes.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of footsteps echoing round the stairwell. I jumped to my feet, quickly left the garret and hurtled down the stairs in hot pursuit, reaching the hallway at the bottom of the building just in time to see the front door swing shut. The phantom was getting away.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t, Dean Henry Dodson,’ I muttered grimly through gritted teeth as I raced outside after him.

  I skidded to a halt, and looked round in surprise. The snow had thickened. Huge feathery snowflakes were fluttering down now, white against a yellow-grey sky, and settling on the city below. I groaned, my breath billowing from my mouth.

  Now what? I wondered as I looked up and down the snow-covered street.

  Then I saw it. Pressed into the snow on the doorstep was a footprint. Then another, and another, leading off down Brazier Street in the direction of Blue Boar Lane. As I followed them, they became farther apart, and I knew that whoever was making them had broken into a run. But there was something else about the footprints. These weren’t the ridged impressions of boots or shoes. No, I could see the heels, the balls and the toes of feet; unshod feet. The phantom was barefoot.

  ‘Murderer!’ I bellowed after him as I gave chase. ‘Stop! Murderer! Murderer!’

  At the end of Brazier Street, the footprints turned sharply left. I skidded round the corner, straight into the busy thoroughfare of Goose Market Street, to the accompaniment of whinnying horses, the grinding of slewing carriage wheels and loud, impassioned cries.

  ‘You cretinous oaf!’

  ‘My legs, they’re trapped!’

  ‘What in the name of all that’s holy happened?’

  The street was in uproar. To my right, an old woman was lying on the pavement. A passing timber cart abruptly lurched to a standstill before me as the huge brown carthorse pulling it reared up.

  ‘Whoa, Jed! Whoa!’ the driver shouted.

  A loud scream went up from the far side of the street. I turned and, through the falling snow, saw a woman stagger backwards. The next moment, the man to her right bent double and crumpled up in a heap. Beyond them, several passers-by went sprawling as the invisible phantom barged them aside.

  I set off in pursuit and, as I reached the far end of the street, I saw the footprints disappearing round the corner. Blinking away the snowflakes that clung to my eyelashes and pulling my coalstack hat low over my eyes, I careered after him.

  Skidding and sliding on the newly settled snow, I turned the corner into Blue Boar Lane. The snow was falling thicker than ever, with a good two inches underfoot. Ahead of me, something curious was happening to the invisible figure. Not only could I see his footprints, but now the falling snow was giving the phantom a ghostly outline as he ran through the flakes.

  Reaching the corner of Blood Alley, the phantom turned to see if he was still being pursued, and from two hundred yards away, I found myself staring at the same hideous, inhuman face I’d glimpsed at the window of the lock-up. There was the one disembodied eye, the side of a grimacing mouth and a strip of cheek, all disconnected, as if the face of Henry Dodson was slowly being reassembled.

  The grisly apparition disappeared into Blood Alley. Like a wounded animal going to ground, the phantom was heading for his lair. I arrived at the lock-up on Blood Alley moments later, to find the door swinging on its hinges.

  With a soft swish, I drew the sword from my cane, and raised it before me as I stepped cautiously inside the gloomy lock-up. Dean Henry Dodson might, by some arcane powers of the occult or infernal alchemy, have cloaked himself in invisibility, but unlike his other victims I was armed and prepared to fight.

  Just as my eyes were adjusting to the gloom, there was a small click and a sudden blinding flash, accompanied by the acrid tang of sulphur. In the next instant, something hard and blunt struck me on the side of the head.

  There was a moment of searing pain. Then nothing …

  I don’t know how long I remained unconscious. A few minutes? A couple of hours? What I do know is that when I came round, the lock-up was stiflingly hot and bathed in a crimson glow.

  I was sitting, slumped in a high-backed chair, my hands and feet bound tightly by thick ropes. What a fool I’d been to enter the phantom’s lair instead of retreating to Hibernian Yard and reporting everything to Inspector Clackett and the city constabulary.

  But then would they have believed me? I scarcely believed it myself. An invisible professor committing murders all over town …

  ‘Ah, so you’re awake, Mr Grimes,’ came a rasping voice from over by the blazing fire, and I gasped as I saw a large, gleaming flask rise up from the nearby workbench, tip up shakily and a stream of liquid pour down into a bubbling vat below. Noxious vapours rose up in dense, crimson clouds. ‘I think it’s time we had a little chat, you and I.’ The voice sounded strained and racked with pain, yet there was an underlying tone of malice.

  The flask was set clumsily down and, as the clouds began to clear, I saw a filthy, white laboratory coat, high-buttoned and sleeves rolled, seemingly hovering in midair. There were stains down the front and the material was pock-marked where splashes of caustic liquids had burned holes.

  Footsteps approached and, craning my neck, I saw the laboratory coat coming nearer, though I could see no trace of either the legs or feet that might be propelling it. As it drew close, a hideous apparition emerged from the red-stained fog. I stared at the fragmented patches of face floating above me as the spectral figure moved in the flickering light. A single eye, a strand of straight, matted hair and a ghastly sheen of translucent skin …

  ‘My war paint appears to be smudged. This weather has played havoc with it,’ the phantom sneered, obviously delighted by the horrified look on my face.

  The white coat turned away and the lock-up echoed with a shriek of raucous laughter. I was in no doubt that I was in the presence of a madman. The poisonous chemicals which, even now, were swirling round the lock-up, must have stolen his reason. Miles Morgenstern had spelled out how dangerous they were. The toxic cyanide, the numbing ether and mind-warping mercury vapour had turned Dean Henry Dodson into this raging maniac, just as they had affected poor Laurence Oliphant.

  I gazed up at the oliphantypes pegged to a clothes line that hung from the ceiling above my head. The dean must have seen me, for he reached up with an unseen hand and plucked a print down from one of the waxed cords, and held it up before my eyes.

  I stared at the image incredulously. It was me, caught in the moment of stepping into the lock-up in a blinding light.

  ‘Laurence Oliphant, the greatest painter with light the world has ever seen!’ the rasping voice proclaimed. ‘Pioneer of oliphantography, yet how was poor Laurence treated by the very world he sought to enrich with his creation? I’ll tell you, Mr Grimes. I’ll tell you!

  ‘He was betrayed, he was belittled, and he suffered torments, Mr Grimes. Torments! …’

  The dean’s voice had risen to a deranged, high-pitched scream.

  ‘His financial backer withdrew his support! Because when he saw oliphantypes such as this one, Mr Grimes’ – my
photographic image shook in front of my face – ‘Crispin Blears realized that painting was dead!’

  The oliphantype fluttered to the floor by my feet.

  ‘His assistant learned all he could from him, then left like a thief in the night!’ the phantom rasped, as the white coat paced back and forth in front of me. ‘Miles Morgenstern stole his master’s work, and then contaminated it with … with gelatine and eggs!’

  He spat the words out with contempt.

  ‘Even his own sister refused to help poor Laurence in his hour of need. Sitting on a fortune in gold, yet she was deaf to his desperate entreaties for help …’

  There was a barely stifled sob in the phantom’s throat, quickly replaced by a rasp of malice.

  ‘But she’ll pay, just like all the others. She’ll pay for her treachery!’

  The white coat paused, motionless for a moment, its sleeves crossed in contemplation.

  ‘And then came the breakthrough – terrible, hideously painful; a torment, but also a triumph! And Albert Hoskins the chemist was unwittingly responsible. Imagine that! Stupid, money-grubbing little Albert, who adulterated the chemicals he supplied to poor Laurence to save a few miserable pennies, and by doing so caused the terrible … miraculous accident!

  ‘Poor Laurence. How it burned, Mr Grimes. How it burned! And yet … and yet …’

  The phantom’s voice was hushed with awe.

  ‘When the fire was out and the smoke and fumes had cleared, Laurence discovered that where the chemical compound had splashed onto him, his skin had taken on a strange translucency. There was more of the curious solution lying at the bottom of the vat, as clear and slippery as mercury …’

  He pressed his gruesome fragmented face into mine. His breath was warm and foul.

  ‘Mirrorskin, Mr Grimes,’ he said. ‘That’s what Laurence called it. He mixed it with goose-fat. When applied to the human skin, it renders the wearer …’

  ‘Invisible,’ I breathed. ‘Is that why you murdered Laurence Oliphant? For this mirrorskin?’