“Ridiculous.”
“You know it’s true.”
“Then you know what happens to us? To the Somnambulist and me, to the city?”
“Know but can’t tell.”
“Why?”
“There are rules I can’t break. My position is a privileged one, and though I have the utmost respect for you and your methods, I will not jeopardize it.”
“Do you ever speak plainly?”
“Believe it or not, I am never deliberately oblique. I have always done my best for you.”
“Was Innocenti right? If she was, we’ve only two days left.”
“Well, then. Perhaps we should save the recriminations for another time. Why am I here?”
“I need your help.”
“I’d assumed as much.”
“There is a man I have to locate, the final link in the chain I have forged.”
“His name?” Cribb asked, sounding as though he already knew the answer.
“Love.” Moon watched his companion intently for any sign of recognition. “Ned Love.”
“Ah,” Cribb sounded pleased.
“Ah?” Moon repeated, infuriated. “What do you mean by ‘ah’? Do you know him?”
“I can tell you only that you’re close. Very close. No more than that.”
“But can you find him? He’d be an old man by now.”
“If he’s somewhere in the city, then yes, you may rely upon me. As soon as I have him I’ll send word.”
“Excellent.”
“Well, then.” The ugly man got to his feet.
“Thomas?”
He turned back.
“Please. Tell me how it ends.”
“Sorry.” Cribb smiled. “You’ve no idea how complicated it is being me.” He touched the brim of his hat and walked from the café.
Moon settled the bill and wandered home, troubled in his mind and anxious for a resolution. This case, singular though it had been, had hung over him for far too long. High time to bring an end to it.
E,
I apologize if this letter is to be shorter than the rest. Love 893 has been removed from my room and a new woman put here in her place. Older by far, a long-term employee, Love 101 is a hatchet-faced crone who has assumed an immediate dislike of me and seems determined to act more as my gaoler than my roommate. Why 893 was summarily evicted I am not entirely certain, though naturally I have my suspicions.
I am watched all the time and I am no longer permitted to absent myself from the evening prayer meetings. It seems more and more as though I am a prisoner here, one neither liked nor respected by my fellow inmates. Needless to say, I do not sleep well — my nights are fitful, my dreams troubled.
Tomorrow I am summoned into the presence of the Chairman of the Board. His name is spoken amongst the faithful in the most absurdly hushed and reverential tones — he is as royalty to these people, small god of their little realm.
He is Love 1, the alpha company man, Ur-Love. It seems as though a thousand is some predetermined limit for the company, a quota to be met. That number is almost attained, and as soon as a Love 1000 is found it seems certain that whatever it is these people have been planning will come to fruition.
I cannot for the life of me make out how much in earnest these people are. At times I am convinced that, with their poetry and prayers, they are harmless zealots who delight in schemes and plots which can have no reality beyond their own fevered minds. But more and more I feel as though I am in danger here, that my colleagues are working toward some terrible and devastating end, some outrage to be perpetrated upon the city. Whatever evidence led you to place me here (and I quite refuse to acknowledge any part the charlatan Bagshaw may have played in the matter) you did well to heed it. Whatever they are planning, they mean for it to happen soon.
My work was as uninteresting today as ever but I did happen to stumble upon one small item of note. Whilst working through an especially tedious ledger, I came upon a record of the company’s transactions. Until recently Love, Love, Love and Love were buying up a great deal of property underground. Disused pieces of the sewer system mostly and some stretches of tunnels abandoned by the railway. I have no doubt that you will find this suggestive, though its precise significance eludes me at present.
I shall endeavor to find out more when I am able, but for now I must tread carefully. I am under close observation and I should not like to guarantee my own safety in the event of their discovering my true purpose here. When may I leave? I feel like the dim heroine of some shilling shocker walking blithely into peril.
But I must go. My time alone has ended. I hear my warder approaching.
C.
Chapter 16
No man alive knew the city better than Thomas Cribb. Like an old and faithful lover, he knew her every curve and crevice, her every aperture and inlet, all the intimate places of her body. He was custodian of her secret and hidden terrain. In a few hours he was able to find any individual in London from the lowliest street-sweeper to a peer of the realm, regardless of how well they believed themselves to be hidden. He boasted that on numerous occasions he had assisted the police in precisely this manner, bringing to justice dozens of wanted criminals who, in their vanity, had believed themselves disappeared for good.
But Ned Love was a different matter. It was almost as though the city were hiding him. No one had ever proved as elusive — not even in the far-flung future when (Cribb assured me) the metropolis would be still more densely populated than it is today.
Consequently, it was late in the afternoon on the following day when Moon and the Somnambulist received word from the ugly man, and by the time they found themselves standing on the threshold of their quarry’s singular residence, light was already fading.
Ned Love lived in a low, mean district of the city. His house, with its boarded-up windows, its doors heavily bolted and barred, had the appearance of being utterly abandoned, so much so that the Somnambulist angrily scribbled that Cribb might have sold them a pup and led them on a fruitless expedition for some mischievous purpose of his own. Ignoring the suggestion, Moon knocked as loudly as he was able. “Mr. Love!”
The giant looked carefully about, checking to make sure they were unobserved. In such an area as this, surely it did not pay to draw attention to themselves.
Moon was about to shout again when the letter box creaked open. Suspicious eyes peered out. “Go away,” a voice croaked.
“Mr. Love?”
“Who wants to know?”
“My name is Edward Moon. This is my associate, the Somnambulist.”
“Don’t like visitors. Got no time for guests.”
Moon looked at the house, derelict and shuttered-up as if awaiting demolition. It astonished even him (no stranger to unconventional accommodation) that anyone could seriously conceive of living there.
“It’s vital that we speak to you,” Moon said urgently. “Many lives could be at stake.”
“Go away. You can’t get in. Shan’t let you.”
“I have… questions. Concerning the poet.”
“Poet? Don’t know any poets.”
“You knew him when you were a boy,” Moon snapped, his patience already wearing thin. “I’ve no time for games. If my sources are correct, we’ve little more than twenty-four hours before the city is attacked.”
“Is it come, then, at last?” He muttered something, to quiet for anyone else to hear, then: “I feared it must be close.”
Moon bent down to address the letter box. “Mr. Love. This is not the most comfortable position in which to conduct this conversation. Please let us in. We need your help.”
“Wait.” The face vanished, the letter box snapped shut and groans and clankings ensued as an improbably number of locks and bolts were undone. All this took far longer than it ought — Barabbas himself had not been so secure within Newgate’s walls as was Ned Love at home. In the event of a fire he would assuredly perish before he could open his own front door. Moon made a m
ental note not to inform Mr. Skimpole of the fact — given the man’s predilection for arson, it might put some nasty ideas in his head.
At last the door swung open and a very old man ventured out to greet them. His face was lined and weathered like a piece of fruit left in the sun too long; he was dressed in an ancient brown suit which showed unmistakable signs of having been habitually slept in, and clutched in his left hand a half-finished bottle of noxiously cheap whisky. “I am Love,” he said grandly. “But you may call me Ned.”
They followed him inside and he led them down a corridor which smelt of mildew and animal hair, into what must once have been a sizeable morning room. If gas had ever been laid on, it had long since been disconnected and the place was lit by a dozen or so candles, flickering half-heartedly against the gloom, their wax puddling onto the floor. A mass of blankets had been pushed up against the wall, a small stove sat in the center of the room and the remnants of several rough meals lay scattered about on the ground. Surely a magnet to vermin, thought the Somnambulist (his instinct for cleanliness and hygiene cultivated over the years by the meticulous house-sense of Mrs. Grossmith).
“Take a seat, gentlemen, please.” Love scuttled about them, stepping nimbly over the debris with a dexterity that belied his advanced years. “Might I offer you a drink?”
“I’ll have whatever you’re drinking.”
Love produced a grubby glass and poured the conjuror a tot of whisky. “And for your friend?”
MILK
“Milk?” He looked astonished. “My, what a curious request. Well, never let it be said that Ned Love doesn’t do his best for his visitors. Invited or otherwise.” After hunting around under blankets and pillows, sending up great clouds of dust and feathers in the process, Love emerged with a filthy milk bottle, a quarter full of a grey-green liquid. He passed it to the Somnambulist. “You’re welcome to this,” he said doubtfully. “Though I can’t vouch for its quality.”
The giant took the bottle, sniffed it with barely concealed disdain, then placed it discreetly to one side.
“Well, then,” Love began once they were all seated. “What can I do for you? I ought not to have admitted you but you did seem so very keen. Should I be flattered? The fact you’ve found me at all, you know, speaks volumes for your tenacity.”
“Why do you live like this?”
“I know it must strike you as strange. I often think so myself when I am awakened in the morning, usually by some small creature or other nibbling at my toes for its breakfast, roving about my cuticles for its aggs and b. Ned, I say, Ned old man, why do you live like this? Good God, I think. This isn’t worthy of you. You’d planned so much more than this.”
Moon arched an eyebrow. “Quite.”
“It was always my intention, you see, after I was removed, that I should shut myself away from the world entirely. I had a fancy to become a hermit, here in the midst of the city. An anchorite in the old tradition. I decided to abjure the material world in favor of a meditative life. I had discovered the eternal truth that one cannot serve God and Mammon both. I’d hoped never to see or speak to a human soul again. Though perhaps I didn’t think the matter through all that thoroughly. I have to make frequent excursions outside. For provisions, you understand. Oh, only for the most absolute essentials. I’m not the kind of hermit who goes dashing out every time he fancies a loaf. Absolutely not. No, no, I’m terribly strict with myself. Try to limit my forays to once a week or so. Still, that does mean I’m not quite the ideal anchorite. Not that that’s my only sin. I get visitors, too. Men like yourselves. By rights, I oughtn’t to speak at all. I’ve started to wonder recently whether I’m really cut out to be a recluse. But despite it all I continue to aspire. Saint Simeon, you know, spent thirty-seven years up a pillar. Best years of his life, he said. Remarkable, don’t you think? Absolutely remarkable.”
“Mr. Love,” Moon said gently, “I need to ask you some specific questions. You mentioned that you were ‘removed’. May we assume that this was from the corporation Love, Love, Love and Love?”
The man paused to take a noisy swig from his liquor bottle. “So you know about the firm? My, you have been diligent. What else do you know? Or should I say…” — he wiped his mouth with a grubby sleeve of his jacket — “what do you think you know?”
“I know that the city is in imminent danger from a plot masterminded by Love in collusion with a religious group known as the Church of the Summer Kingdom. I know that this same firm is responsible for the deaths of Cyril Honeyman and Philip Dunbar, for the disappearances of those men’s mothers., for the execution of Barabbas and for the assassination attempt upon the heads of the Directorate. I know that they are utterly without scruple and that they will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. The only thing I do not know is the nature of their plan.”
“Or why,” Love breathed softly. “You don’t know that.”
“You don’t deny it, then?”
“Deny what?”
“That the firm which bears your name is behind the bloodshed.”
“I’d hoped and prayed they wouldn’t stoop to this. You must believe me when I say that the company in its present form represents the most monstrous perversion of its original conception.” He paused for breath. “You’ve guessed no doubt that I am the founder of Love, Love, Love and Love.”
“We had assumed as much.”
“You will know, too, then, that the firm was established according to the stipulations of a will made by Samuel Coleridge. To enable you to understand his motives in making such a curious request, I shall have to explain it from the beginning.”
“Pray be as precise as you can.”
The old man took another long swig of whisky. “You were quite correct, of course, when you said that I knew the poet when I was a child. In the last years of his life he dwelt in Highgate with a kindly medical man — one Dr. Gillman. In fact, the doctor’s young daughter lives there still. Bit of a looker. She might be able to furnish you with more facts about the old days. My memory has grown a little hazy.”
“It was she who told us of you.”
Love seemed not to have heard. “I was a lad of eight or nine when I met him, from a humble family, a harum-scarum youth, no great shakes at my studies and always with an eye on making money. The Gillmans took me on from time to time as an errand boy — odd jobs, little chores and suchlike.” Another swig of whisky. “I’d worked there a month before I met the poet. He lived upstairs in the garret room and more often than not he kept to his bed. You have to appreciate that by this time he was almost completely addicted to opium. Gillman had done everything in his power to curb the craving, but so far as I could see it never came to anything. The old man was completely in thrall to the stuff, and it was his need for the poison which first drew me to him. I’d been carrying out some minor task or other for the doctor’s wife when Coleridge called me upstairs. He had an errand for me, he said, and would pay handsomely for it. He ordered me to hurry down to the shop and buy what he referred to as his ‘prescription.’ He’d never call it by its real name, you understand. He was almost superstitious about that. Anyway, I did as I was asked. Gillman turned a blind eye, the old man got what he wanted and we all of us were happy. It became a regular arrangement, and over time the poet and I grew friendly, became pals. He loved to talk, you see — he was a great man for a chat — and I was his favorite audience.” Love sighed. “The things he told me. When I knew him he was close to death, but still he enraptured. How he must have been at the height of his powers I cannot imagine.” Another retreat to the whisky bottle.
“He spoke of the adventures of his youth, of his disastrous spell in the army, of his time at university where he conjured up the ghost of Thomas Gray. Oh, he could spin a yarn. Of course, I knew they were exaggerated like as not, embroidered for effect, but still I lapped them up. What boy wouldn’t? He even took me on holiday. We walked together on the beach at Ramsgate. But what he spoke of most of all was an old dream, someth
ing he had imagined as a young man with his best and closest friends. Pantisocracy. That was what they called it. No doubt you’ve heard the name?”
Moon inclined his head to suggest that he had not.
“It was a scheme of enormous audacity, an experiment, he said, in human perfectability. There were twelve of them, fresh from the university. They planned to create the perfect society, to quit England and live in America on the banks of the Susquehanna in absolute self-sufficiency. It was to be a utopia based equally upon agriculture and poetry. They thought they’d discuss metaphysics as they chopped wood, criticize verse as they hunted buffalo, write sonnets whilst they followed the plough.” Love laughed, all but clapping his hands in glee. “Wonderful! Quite, quite perfect.”
“It sounds admirable,” Moon said briskly. “If a little idealistic.”
“Ah, well, there you have it. That’s the rub. It could never have worked. They fell out over money, weren’t able to raise enough capital to make the trip. The whole project was abandoned.”
“I’m afraid I have yet to see a connection with the firm.”
“The abject failure of Pantisocracy had become the old man’s greatest regret, and toward the end it came to dominate his thoughts above all other things. He felt he had squandered his only opportunity to change the world for the better. And as we grew closer, the old man somehow got hold of the notion that I was his successor, that I’d be the one to succeed where he had failed — that I would revive Pantisocracy. I knew he was dying, of course, so I did the decent thing and told him what he wanted to hear — that I would do everything I could to carry out the plan, that I’d move to America and live out his fantasy. All bunkum as far as I was concerned but if it made a dying man happy I reckoned it could do no harm. What I didn’t realize was this: Coleridge was not a rich man, but most of what he possessed was placed in my care for me to do with as I would when I eventually came of age. It’s only due to the old man’s generosity that I was able to go to one of the universities. The remainder, he said, should go to the formation of a company dedicated to the resurrection of his Pantisocratic dream. In his will he insisted that I name it after myself. I can see you wondering, Mr. Moon. There are four Loves in the title. Time was, I had sons of my own.” At this mention of his family, he reached again for the bottle.
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