“Lead keels and copper bottoms. Some have outriggers, like the South Seas islanders. Some are rigged out with a mast and sail. A barrel is a dry sort of craft, and there’s a jakes built in, what they call an ‘evacuator’ that…”
“None of that talk, Bill,” Henrietta interrupted, giving her husband a hard look.
Tubby Frobisher entered at that moment, all eighteen stone of him, wearing a light flannel coat streaked with snuff that he had apparently tried to dust off. He had an out-of-sorts look on his face as he removed his disreputable Bollinger hat, smoothed the ratty peacock feather in the band, hung it on a peg, and slumped heavily into a chair. The Billsons avowed that they were happy to see him and then hurried out to put the halibut in the oven and finish the anchovy sauce.
“What’s the good word, Tubby?” St. Ives asked him.
“No good word at all except that I’m damned happy to find you two here.” He poured ale down his throat and banged down the tankard before saying, “We’ll have to sup without Uncle Gilbert, and he won’t be going along tonight to hear Nabucco.”
“He’s not ill, I hope,” Alice said.
“No,” Tubby said. “He’s bought a barrel, a goddamned barrel. He’s nothing less than Lord Mayor of the Primrose Hill Faction. He sent his man Barlow back home to Dicker and purchased a fabulously contrived kitchen barrel for Madame Leseur, his cook, to the tune of over four hundred pounds sterling. She spurned the barrel, refused to follow him, said that the English had finally gone mad, and has returned to Paris to live with her mother.”
“That must have been a blow,” Alice said. “Madame Leseur is the great cook of the world.”
“She’s correct about this barrel madness, and I speak literally,” Tubby said. “I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“Lord Mayor, do you say?” St. Ives asked. “They’re well organized, these factions?”
“Oh, yes. It’s entirely necessary. I’ve been told that the term of office rarely extends past a few days. There’s a decline in mental faculties. Pass me that plate of deviled ham if you will.” He engulfed two of them before going on. “The newer members are enthusiasts, do you see, but that quickly passes and they begin to turn inward. Newer members rise up to take their places. They reach a point where there’s no preventing them from taking to the river to be swept out with the tide. According to the Times they begin to conceive of themselves as eels, of all the bleeding nonsense.”
“It’s a swift decline, then?” St. Ives asked.
“An out-and-out tumble for some,” Tubby said. “I mean to have a powwow with this human demon who calls himself Diogenes. He badly needs a thumping.”
“Heaven help us,” Alice said. “The three of us can surely talk Gilbert out of this madness without anyone being thumped. We’ll pluck him out of his barrel and carry him away if we have to.”
Tubby shook his head darkly. “I sought out the Primrose Hill crowd this afternoon in order to take Gilbert out by main force. There was a minister there, from what they call the Church of Diogenes. He was striding around the meadow gesticulating, filling their heads with rubbish, but they hung on his words like apes from a limb. A woman and several children arrived, looking for the children’s father. The wife saw the man in his barrel in the midst of the crowd and they moved toward him directly, all of them sobbing aloud. The entire faction pedaled into motion, circling the barrels in order to protect their man, who apparently had no desire to leave. None whatsoever. His family might as well have been strangers. It was positively inhuman.”
“Won’t the police do something?” Alice asked. “This is insidious.”
“No, ma’am. No law has been broken, and the current consensus is that people may do as they wish.”
“And Gilbert wishes to live out his days in a barrel, then?” St. Ives asked.
“That he does, although what he wishes is nothing to me. I told him a flaming lie in order to placate him and the damned minister, so-called, who was the image of Beelzebub in a tailor-made suit. I was thinking of buying a barrel myself, I said to Uncle: the ‘Jumbo,’ identical to his own. He yammered on about accessories: a folding rain hood made of glass, a patent evacuator, a clean water reservoir with a purifier of charcoal and silver, a paddlewheel for river travel, an electric motor to run the whole business, including what they call a ‘dry cell’ battery to turn the wheels or paddles when a barreller is fagged out. There’s no end to it: he’s even had the Frobisher crest carved into the rear of the boot. I don’t doubt that it cost him a fortune, although the barrel alone costs little. The common man can go to hell as easily as the rich man, do you see? It’s the goddamned accessories that drive the price up. In any event, when I suggested that the two of us look into the Pennywhistle for lunch and a whet he turned me down flat. Can you imagine that?—A Frobisher having no interest in food and drink?”
“It’s conceivable that he had already dined, I suppose,” said Alice.
“On a sandwich yesterday evening. The powders are said to diminish appetite—some sort of bodily stasis, like a tortoise in winter. The Red Vests make sure they take their dose.”
The halibut and anchovy sauce arrived, followed by roast pork, long beans, four types of mushrooms in gravy, and crushed potatoes swimming in butter and garlic—Gilbert Frobisher’s sort of meal to be sure, now given up for life in a barrel and yesterday’s sandwich. The conversation shifted to the opera, and St. Ives’s mind drifted away, turning on the problem of the headache powders, what they might consist of—opiates? cocaine? chloral hydrate? He wondered about their medicinal effect and their curious connection to the barrel madness. Did they promote the desire for confinement, he wondered, or perhaps for an aquatic life? What had Tubby meant by the barrelers turning into eels? It was entirely likely that this self-styled Diogenes had synthesized an entirely new compound in a laboratory, like Mr. Stevenson’s infamous Dr. Jekyll, whose “Strange Case” filled the bookstall at Cannon Street Station. A chemist might puzzle it out, although it would take time, and time was short.
“Good heavens!” Tubby said, bringing St. Ives out of his thoughtful stupor. “We must dress and be on our way. You’re going to miss out, Professor. Lyle Worthnaught is to play the part of Nebuchadnezzar.”
A not-very-clever reply entered his head, but he dismissed it. He was minutes away from abandoning Alice, and it was best to act the part of the gracious husband, especially because it had come into his mind to have an adventure of his own. It was an idea he had best keep to himself for the moment, lest Alice express her doubts about it.
Tubby swallowed the last of his wine and stood up, asking Lars Hopeful to fetch a cab in fifteen minute’s time.
“I’m going out for a walk before the weather changes,” St. Ives said, accompanying Alice to their room. “You can tell me about the operatic wonders I missed over breakfast in the morning. To my mind the Half Toad breakfast is reason enough to come into London.” He said this last to placate her, and was happy when she agreed.
He fetched his umbrella and his coat, warned her that it would surely rain very hard within the next hour, bade her enjoy the opera, kissed her goodbye, and five minutes later climbed into a cab bound for London Bridge and Bankside, putting off his alleged walk until he had satisfied his curiosity about the infamous headache powders.
DIOGENES’ BARREL
IT WAS EIGHT o’clock before St. Ives found his man. The storm was fast approaching, dark clouds moving across the moon and lightning in the cloudbank just to the east. A cold wind preceded the storm, the night looking to be a dirty one, and London Bridge was almost empty of foot traffic. The few remaining pedestrians hurried up or down Bankside or along Borough High Street, anxious to be home before they were drowned. St. Ives loved a storm, but he meant to conclude his business with Diogenes and find shelter before it broke.
Diogenes seemed to be of a like mind, for he was hurriedly closing things up in the glow of the lamp. His stall, into which he was squirreling away odds and ends, was a large, wheeled
barrel that had bloomed into a complicated display case, hinging open in sections so that it stood some six-feet wide and tall. A long scroll that read “Diogenes’ Palliatives and Wisdom” was still unfurled alongside, hanging from a long, sturdy pole lashed to the side of the barrel.
St. Ives had half expected that a man named Diogenes would have flowing hair and perhaps wear a toga, but the small man with mustaches grown down past his chin and a long, square beard looked like a professor from an out-of-the-way university, one who was profoundly unhappy with his students, perhaps with the world in general.
“I believe I’m addressing Diogenes?” St. Ives asked.
“Right you are,” he said without looking up.
“Closing up shop, I see. Do you have time for one last customer? A friend of mine particularly recommended your headache powders.”
“Half London will be recommending my headache powders before the month is past, including you, sir. We’ll be quick about it if you don’t mind. How many envelopes would you like? The first is free to anyone who asks. The second will cost you a shilling. Eight envelopes for one crown. That’s a right bargain. Take my advice and buy sixteen. Save yourself a return trip, unless you develop an interest in a barrel-house. Half London will be recommending them, also. Let me offer you an illustrated brochure.”
St. Ives took the multi-page pamphlet from him. He saw that there was a Holland Road address on the front above a sketch of the barrel shop. “I’m never averse to a bargain, or to a barrel, for that matter,” he said as cheerfully as he could manage.
“Then we have something in common,” Diogenes said, counting out sixteen little parchment envelopes that he slid into a larger parchment envelope, saying nothing by way of thanks to St. Ives as he took his coins. After glancing at the threatening sky he went back to reducing his barrel, closing drawers and banging home hinged compartments.
“How does one best consume a dose of the powder?” St. Ives asked.
Not looking up, Diogenes said, “I suggest stirring it into a tumbler of water, or of beer if you’re inclined. Gin heightens the effect. Tea will do. An alternative would be to draw it up your nose through a common drinking straw cut off short or through a tightly rolled banknote. It goes to the head that way, straight into the enemy’s camp. Consume two packets straightaway, and then single packets at the rate of four packets a day at even intervals. Another packet more or less won’t hurt you.”
“I was wondering also about the ingredients of the powders,” St. Ives said as he tucked the lot of it away into his vest pocket, “the analgesic property, I mean to say. What makes it so effective?”
“Do I wear the face of a fool?” Diogenes asked him, looking past St. Ives’s shoulder and giving his head a jerk just as the first drops of rain began to fall. “No doubt you wish to profit from another man’s work.”
“Not at all, sir. But I’ve got an interest in patent medicines and nostrums of all sorts. My curiosity is purely scientific, I assure you.”
St. Ives was aware that someone was looming behind him now, and he stepped aside, thinking that it was perhaps a customer. The large, mule-faced man staring fiercely down at him, however, looked to be something else altogether. In a low voice the man said, “Move along, cully.”
“Good day to both of you,” St. Ives replied. He walked away down Borough High Street beneath his umbrella, still contemplating his rather desperate notion, one that would reveal the workings of the headache powders in short order. He looked back to see Diogenes climbing into a waiting coach and the horse-faced man wheeling the portable shop across London Bridge.
A CONTEMPLATION OF BARRELS
ST. IVES BENT in through the door of the George Inn just as the skies opened and the rain came roaring down, the cobbles in the courtyard disappearing beneath a mist of broken water. He was happy to see a fire in the hearth and equally happy to see an empty, lamp-lit snug with both a view of the fire and a window looking out at the street. He hung his damp coat on a peg, dug his note-book and pencil out of his vest pocket, bought a pint of porter at the bar, and settled into the snug, where he was unlikely to be disturbed on such an evening. He thought of Alice and looked at his pocket-watch, happy to see that she and Tubby would quite likely have arrived at Covent Garden before the storm broke.
After another moment of consideration, he removed the packets from his vest pocket, opened one of them, and sniffed the powder, which was a buff-colored substance, very finely ground. There was an unmistakably fishy smell to it, although not offensively so. He picked some up on his finger and tasted it—again the fishiness, and a tingling sensation on his tongue, the sensation and flavor rather more attractive than otherwise, which surprised him, given the odor. He patiently listed these things in his note-book along with questions and comments that came to him, pausing now and then to sip his porter and to watch the rain come down beyond the window.
The behavior of the Here-and-Thereians was baffling in six different ways, it seemed to him, as was the motivation of this self-made Diogenes, who was beginning to look like a behemoth of vice despite his diminutive size. Money would account for it, surely; money accounted for most of the world’s ill-doing. He thought of Gilbert Frobisher now, who had so much money that he could buy and sell Diogenes a hundred times over. He owned a vast Georgian mansion in Dicker, complete with a six-acre pond with rowing boats. His giving up Madame Leseur, his longtime cook, was perhaps the strangest part of this entire affair, for no one on earth was fonder of food than Gilbert Frobisher.
“Another?” the bar man asked, looking in on him.
St. Ives looked up from his note-taking, slightly surprised that he had finished the porter. “Yes, thank you,” he said, rearranging himself on his chair in order to take pressure off his sciatic nerve, although the effort brought him little relief. Gilbert was one of the few apparently happy men that St. Ives knew. He was rich, but there was nothing of the miser in him. He had an immense steam yacht moored in Eastbourne in which he traveled to tropical islands to escape the English winters, and he was perpetually busy the rest of the year compounding his fortune and trudging about the British Isles on the lookout for rare birds, nests, and eggs. In short, despite his age—well past sixty years—he was an active, cheerful man who would scarcely retire from a rich life in order to occupy a mobile barrel, or, God help him, to stand for Lord Mayor of a faction of barrelers who had abandoned their own lives and families.
It came into St. Ives’s mind that it would be monstrously easy to infiltrate a faction of barrelers if he knew what motivated them. One must understand one’s enemies, after all. His porter arrived, and he sat looking at it for a moment, at war within—hesitation doing battle with the bold stroke. Scientific curiosity sometimes demanded experimental zeal, it seemed to him, especially if the scientist was armored with a sound mind, clear intentions, and no troubling vices.
Having made his decision he carefully dumped the contents of two envelopes into his porter. The powder floated on top like a small island, and before it had a chance to settle, he said, “so be it,” and he drank it off, emptying a third of the mug. Again he noted the distinctly fishy flavor, although it was somewhat disguised by the porter, and within a matter of moments he felt a general lightening of being, and, he realized happily, an almost total cessation of pain in his lower back and thigh. He got up out of his chair and strode back and forth. He could dance a jig if he chose to—there was nothing at all stopping him—and he cut a quick caper and spun on his heel. Well satisfied, he sat back down, raised his mug in an unspoken toast, laughed aloud, and with a feeling of great good health, drank off the rest of the porter.
Alice would surely frown at his…experimentation. But, he told himself, there was simply no other way to come to an understanding of their foe—if in fact they had a foe. His estimation of Diogenes, he realized, had risen considerably. The man’s powders had metamorphosed the humble porter into something like the elixir veritas of Paracelsus.
He scribbled no
tes energetically: the novelty of the sensation, the clearing away of cobwebs in his mind, the feeling of contained, intelligent recklessness, and yet only a few minutes ago he had hesitated to consume the powder out of mere timidity. “Science,” he wrote, “requires intrepid action,” and he underlined the sentiment and added an exclamation point. He asked for a third pint of porter before noting that his reasoning powers were far more acute than they had been when he had walked in through the door of the George.
He was able to see now that Gilbert Frobisher was a man of considerable curiosity and enthusiasm who had simply made a virtue of these qualities. Certainly he had. There was much to be said for doing as one pleased if one was sure of oneself. St. Ives himself had never, he realized, been surer of himself than he was at this moment. The room roundabout him had a fine, rosy glow, as if it were alive with its own compounded history. Charles Dickens, a famous patron of the George Inn, had no doubt sat in this very seat, perhaps had written something brilliant while he drank his porter. What might he have written if he had access to the powders of Diogenes?
Emboldened by this notion, St. Ives drank deeply from his mug, squinting at the fire, which sprang apart into an enormous fan of colors like the tail of heaven’s own peacock. The wood grain in the oak paneling was a collection of fabulous arabesques—shapes that threatened to leap out at him—and he could see, literally, it seemed to him, that the stones of the floor were dense with accreted time and with the elemental properties of the thousands of people who had trod upon them over the centuries.
He applied himself feverishly to his work, jotting down this whirligig of impressions, the words coming to him in an incessant rush. His mind had never been as sharp and vital as it was now, and his sentences were elegantly crafted, full of subtle wit, something near poetry.
He found that he was smiling broadly, very nearly a rictus, and he clamped his lips shut, startled by the phenomenon. In that moment the rain redoubled its wild fury, and he watched it fall in the gaslight out in the stormy London night, fascinated now by the very idea of water descending from the heavens and marveling that his hearing had grown acute enough for him not only to make out the sound of individual drops, but also the clear melody of their drumming. It came into his mind that he would swim back to the inn through the operatic rain, and he laughed aloud.
The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives Page 29