The Demoniacs

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The Demoniacs Page 12

by John Dickson Carr


  “We are all demoniacs,” said Jeffrey. “Mr. Sterne, who released you?”

  “From where?”

  “From the magistrate’s keeping?”

  “Why, what’s this either? It was my widow released me. Not my widow, that’s to say, since I am no corp yet. I refer to Mrs. Ellen Vinegar, most excellent young relict of a late pious vestryman of the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, who attested my character before honest Justice Fielding. And the doctor here, in a manner of speaking, helped too. If he refused to attend the court, being too preoccupied in slaughtering his patients with calomel, he sent a letter to be read when I begged one.”

  “I did so,” confessed Dr. Abel, knuckling his forehead and glowering at Jeffrey. “It troubled me; I am a vestryman of Bow Church too. At least I could say in honesty I had seen no ill act on this gentleman’s part since I met him last night, and that I believed him in essentials a man of good heart.”

  Mr. Sterne fell back a step, like an actor seeing the ghost in Hamlet.

  “Now, damn my great eyes,” he cried, “but both of you seem sorry I was released.”

  “Not sorry, reverend sir. It is only—”

  “Is this genteel? Is it civil? I am come to express my thanks. Your housekeeper at London Bridge said you were gone for an engagement at the Rainbow. I bespoke a chair all the way, which cost me two shillings, and is now outside with greedy chairmen awaiting more. Is this civility?”

  “Mr. Sterne,” said Jeffrey, “sit down and hold your tongue.”

  “I am destined for great things. I can’t yet say what, but I am. When I was a boy at Halifax School, I would inform you, we had had the ceiling of the schoolroom new whitewashed—the ladder remained there. I one unlucky day mounted it and wrote with a brush in large letters LAU. STERNE, for which the usher severely whipped me.”

  “Reverend sir—”

  “But my master was very much hurt at this. He said before me that never should this name be effaced, for I was a boy of genius and he was sure I would come to preferment. Is that not an omen?”

  “Reverend sir,” cried out Dr. Abel, “it is an omen and you are a man of parts. Now why don’t you sit down and be silent, as Mr. Wynne suggests? Better still, why don’t you return to Yorkshire and write books? Should they prove one half so full of meat as your discourse, then your preferment is gained and so is your name.”

  “Well, I have thought of so doing. There is a doctor there too, a damned fellow called Burton, I can see already as Dr. Slop. And as for you, young man, I was charged with a message for you. Ay, and was resolved to search all London until I found you. And now,” said Mr. Sterne, cut to the heart at this ingratitude, “I don’t know if I ought to deliver it.”

  “What message?” Jeffrey demanded. “From whom?”

  “Ah! You change your tune, don’t you?”

  “What message, Mr. Sterne? From whom?”

  “Well, I am generous. I take pity. It is from the sweet chick, the delectable morsel of flesh, who shared my unfortunate lot until they took her to Newgate.”

  “Yes, so I had supposed. What did Peg say?”

  “She loathes you,” replied Mr. Sterne. “She has bespoke the best room at the keeper’s house in Newgate, or will do so. She has sent for great chests and boxes of all her clothes. She says she would not now leave her martyrdom if you begged her on your knees to go free.”

  “Martyrdom? Has it become martyrdom now? What does the idiot girl think she is at this time?”

  “Mr. Wynne,” urged Dr. Abel, as Jeffrey began to do a kind of small dance, “I counsel you not to be hasty.”

  “Martyrdom, for God’s sake! Did I consign her to the house at Versailles? Does she fancy Mortimer Ralston would not have been forced to put her in Newgate, if only for running away as she did? I swear I have all but finished. She deserves to remain where she is.”

  “Mr. Wynne—”

  Even in a tavern, where almost anything except a murder might go unnoticed provided you did not interrupt a newspaper-reader or empty liquor into somebody’s lap, they had begun to attract attention. Angry voices shouted out. A tapster stalked across.

  And then, from close at hand above a grinding whir of weights as two metal figures emerged from a lofty door, the clock at St. Dunstan’s Church banged out the first stroke of four.

  Jeffrey halted, emotionally stricken sober. A moment later he turned his usual grave, courteous face.

  “Dr. Abel, I ask your pardon. That professional call we spoke of in St. James’s Square: would it be convenient for you to go now?”

  “Yes, to be sure. And yourself?”

  “I have an urgent errand I had all but forgotten. It is close by, but I should have been there before this. Reverend sir, I ask your pardon too. May I assume the responsibility for your sedan-chair on Dr. Abel’s behalf?”

  “Why, damme, this is downright handsome! But there is two shillings to pay.”

  “They shall be paid.”

  It was just as well, he thought a few seconds later at the door of the tavern, that Mr. Sterne had kept the sedan-chair. The afternoon tide, of most who could afford pleasure and many who couldn’t, boiled from Strand to Fleet Street in both directions under Temple Bar.

  The playhouses opened their doors at four o’clock for a performance that began at six or later. The cockpits—three of them, where steel-spurred fowls tore each other to pieces in a matted arena under tiers of bettors—set off a first bout between four and five. There were those who merely went to stroll in the Park. Yet on foot, or in private chariot or hackney-coach or chair, all struggled like mad to get there. Above Temple Bar the remains of two heads were still stuck on poles from the Jacobite Uprising of ’45; but the heads had been there for so long that only a countryman would glance at them now.

  Dr. Abel, clutching cane in one hand and wooden box in the other, was jammed back into one of those chairs from which no human being could climb unaided.

  “Young sir …” The doctor hesitated, lowering his voice. But Mr. Sterne, galvanized when he thought himself winked at by a pretty, high-painted lady in a very small round hat, had already vanished.

  “How may I find you if I should have news? Or send you a letter?”

  “I am going now to Mrs. Salmon’s Waxwork. Afterwards you may find me at the Hummums, in Covent Garden, at any time until I visit Peg this evening.”

  “At the Hummums?”

  “Gently, Doctor! The Hummums is something else besides a place for assignations. It is called a bagnio; you may actually obtain a bath there, hot or cold or of the Oriental sort too; and I have need of one.”

  “Sir, this attack at Sir Mortimer may prove useless. You are sure you don’t mind if I make mention of Grace Delight’s portrait?”

  “On the contrary. If any person has seen or knows of the portrait, he has and does. And the picture itself will no longer embarrass Peg. I burnt it.”

  “You burnt it?”

  “These chairmen have been paid. After St. James’s Square they will carry you where you like. Doctor, it is good of you to undertake this. I would express proper sentiments, as Mr. Sterne so often does, if I could force out the words.”

  “Pray don’t waste them on me. If already you had expressed the proper sentiments towards Miss Ralston …”

  “Not long ago I could have killed her. I am still inclined towards it. Au revoir, Doctor.”

  “But you still have not answered the question of—”

  “Doctor, au revoir.”

  The front panel closed. The chair lurched away.

  Jeffrey, drawing a deep breath, stood back inside the doorway. He looked across the street, and up at two men who lounged on the balcony of the King’s Head on the corner of Chancery Lane. Lifting his left arm, he swept it out slowly towards the door of Mrs. Salmon’s Waxwork only a short distance away on the left. Unobtrusively the two men nodded. Then, hitching up his sword-belt, Jeffrey strode to Mrs. Salmon’s door between its broad small-paned windows. He opened it, and pl
unged at once into twilight.

  “That will be sixpence, sir, if you please.”

  “Yes, to be sure. Here is a shilling. Are you Mrs. Salmon?”

  “Lor’, to think you’d ha’ mistook me for my aunt!” But the small scrawny girl did not seem ill-pleased. She stood teetering before him in cap and apron, jingling coins in the apron. “It’s not often even Kitty is mistook for my aunt.”

  “Kitty?”

  “The other niece. My cousin. Kitty Wilkes. She’s a handsome, well-growed creature, Kitty is. And, oh, Lord, how I wish I was!”

  “I am sure you will be.”

  Suddenly the small girl flew at the front windows, examined the coin he had given her, and flew back again. “But this is gold! This is a gold guinea.”

  “Is it so? I—I must have searched in the wrong pocket.”

  “Now, come! I can’t give in exchange for a gold guinea. Not yet. The door is but just open.”

  “Keep it, then. Pray forget you saw it.”

  “Well, sir, if you will give yourself the trouble of joining the others …”

  Jeffrey glanced round. ‘The others’ he had assumed to be a group of wax figures. They stood patient, unmoving, in a dusky gathering towards the right of the door. Among them were three or four large-eyed children, overawed by the mustiness and menace peculiar to the threshold of such displays. Now he could hear them breathing.

  “It will be but a few minutes, I promise,” the small girl said reassuringly, “until there’s enough of us. Then I will guide all, which my aunt does when not indisposed, and tell you which is what. I am none so skilled as she is at waving the pointer, but I speak the speech pretty well. Still, if you’d choose to go alone?”

  “With your permission, madam, the latter.”

  The small girl, who might have been twelve or thirteen, lifted one shoulder very high.

  “A gentleman may buy much liberty for a guinea. Here as elsewhere. Lor’, yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “On this floor, as you see,” and she gestured behind her, “we have the dwarfs and giants and other monsters, much admired by the nobility and gentry. Above-stairs we have the Kings and Queens of England, equally admired. On the floor above that, highest save the floor where my aunt lodges …”

  Enraptured to be addressed as ‘madam,’ she kept an icy dignity. But now he could not miss the conspiratorial look which had been there from the moment he entered.

  “Up there we have the curiousest figures and scenes too. I think they will give pleasure. I think, if you should go there, you may find what you seek.”

  “I think so too. Madam, your most obedient.”

  “Sir, be pleased to pass.”

  And she stood aside.

  Down the depth of the room behind her, two lengths of dusty red rope were looped through posts to form an aisle between displays at either side. Jeffrey could see an enclosed staircase at the rear. He sauntered towards it, glancing left and right.

  The figures were astonishingly well made. If the creatrix of the waxwork could never have seen a dwarf from Zanzibar or a Polygar giant with a war-club, then neither had the teller of travellers’ tales who inspired her. Staring glass eyes, bunched biceps and calf-muscles, carried the reality of a nightmare. Also, in the way of monsters, there was—

  “Stop!” cried the small girl.

  Jeffrey, imagining this was for him, swung round. But her back was turned. Towering above her, outlined against the windows, stood a man also scrawny of figure. He was a street-fiddler, one of many such entertainers. He wore a battered round hat; there was a black patch over his left eye, visible as he turned his head; he carried a battered fiddle to whose neck was tied a long pink ribbon ending in a bow-knot.

  “Be off,” said the small girl. “I’ll not have your sort here, and how many times must I say it? I’ll not have you Abrammen forever at these good people, scraping tunes they don’t want for coppers they don’t have. Be off!”

  “Now, hark’ee, fierce manikin,” said the fiddler, bending over her and speaking in a hoarse, whispery voice. “My money’s as good as another’s, look. And also hark’ee …”

  He bent closer to whisper. The small girl stiffened. One of the waiting group by the door, hitherto patient, suddenly strode forward. The small girl raised a hand to check him.

  Jeffrey, after studying them for an instant, hurried on into the enclosed stair-well. Two seconds later found him on the storey above, where kings and queens stood in rows.

  The floor, having a slight slope to the right as you faced forwards towards the windows, was covered in the same sort of thick matting used for benches and floor at the cockpits, though so dirty that its original color could not be determined. A large arched window, flanked by long windows with oblong panes, admitted tolerable illumination from a thickening sky. Imitation ermine and glass jewels would have made a braver show by candlelight, but no doubt they dared not risk fire.

  The queens had fared pretty well at Mrs. Salmon’s hands, being for the most part of unearthly beauty. But moral judgement, as usual, was passed on the kings. You could tell any bad king by his evil leer or a frozen fit of the horrors in which presumably he had met his end. All effigies seemed a little unsteady on their legs; they were dominated by an idealized George the Second, now seventy-five years old but appearing a red-faced thirty as he threw out his chest beside the late Caroline of Ansbach.

  Making no noise on the thick matting, Jeffrey ran up the next flight.

  ‘Then her name,’ he was thinking, ‘is Kitty Wilkes.’

  He had never known the girl’s surname or even wondered what it might be. She was dark-haired but of fair complexion; she imitated Peg’s mannerisms and the more genteel aspects of Peg’s speech; she seemed nervous, rather clinging, for all her stolid appearance. And yet, if she would dare come here to meet him after what had happened in St. James’s Square that morning …

  ‘Ware! Take heed!’

  But nobody moved, or seemed to move.

  On this floor, with another slope toward the right, they had had built out the so-called grottoes like very wide booths projecting from both sides. You were to look into the grottoes for a vista of some scene in painted wood or canvas, with wax figures against it. Also, since the room was ill-served by its windows and the walls of the grottoes would throw every vista into dusk, they had risked lights of a sort.

  On the floor, just inside each wall of each grotto, stood a short candle enclosed by a tin box with a perforated top. Small speckles of light trembled upwards with the effect of a heat haze. And the staircase seemed to end here, though there was another floor above.

  Trying to remember what he had heard of the place, Jeffrey thought he recognized Mahomet’s tomb with a wax Moslem praying in the foreground. Another vista showed the Lake of Killarney, not very convincing. Since a passion for the Gothic was as current as any craze for the Chinese, he saw a Gothic grotto too.

  He moved forward over the grubby matting, glancing left and right. He called Kitty’s name loud. Then he went to the Gothic grotto on the right.

  A soulful woman in a white gown, who might have been a taller version of Lavinia Cresswell, stared straight back into his eyes. She stood under what appeared to be a stone arch, her back to the prospect of a ruined castle. Faint gleams of light, shifting up from the floor at each side, lent such mimicry of response to her face and eyes that a shock passed before he saw she was wax and the eyes were glass.

  Yet there had been a stir, a movement, perhaps a rustle of cloth against wood, somewhere in this room.

  “Where are you, Kitty?” he called aloud. “Are you here? Is anyone here?”

  What he heard may or may not have been an answer. But it came, very faintly, from the direction of the stairs and from the room below.

  London Bridge is falling down,

  Falling down, falling down,

  London Bridge is falling down,

  My fair lady.

  Jeffrey, standing motionless,
turned his head round towards stairs that were well behind him and on his right.

  It could hardly be called a tune, that faint scraping of an ill-made bow across the strings of an ill-made fiddle. It could hardly even be called a voice, hoarse and little above a whisper. But someone, standing below-stairs in the gloom amid the kings and queens, scraped and sang at that chant of dialogue which has haunted childhood for centuries.

  Build it up with bars of iron,

  Bars of iron, bars of iron,

  Build it up with bars of iron,

  My fair lady.

  Back, in the same whispery voice, came the response and denial:

  Bars of iron will bend and break,

  Bend and break, bend and break,

  Bars of iron will bend and break

  My fair lady.

  Still it did not falter or even hesitate:

  Build it up with pins and needles,

  Pins and needles, pins and needles,

  Build it up with pins and needles,

  My fair lady,

  Pins and needles rust and bend,

  Rust and bend, rust and bend,

  Pins and needles rust and bend …

  Jeffrey Wynne did not remember hearing the last three words. On went suggestion and answer, first with gold and silver and then with penny loaves. He did not hear this either. It seemed to him that his wits opened, though to any person who saw him it might have seemed he had lost them. He looked back into the eyes of the wax figure.

  ‘That’s it!’ he whispered to himself. ‘That’s the answer to it. There can be nothing else, since … Ware!’

  The sense of danger, tapping a warning to the muscles even before it reached the brain, was no mere instinct. There was a movement, perhaps only a noise of breathing, close behind him.

  Jeffrey fell flat on his face, kicked out savagely as he rolled sideways, and bounced to his feet like an India-rubber cat.

  The sword-blade in the hand of the man behind him, driving out at lull-length lunge for Jeffrey’s back, flashed silver in the lights underneath. But the attacker, though off-balance when his thrust missed, almost managed to check the lunge. The sword-point stabbed at the white gown on the wax figure; but it only just pierced satin, rocking the dummy without upsetting it, before the attacker had gathered his muscles for a retreat to guard.

 

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