Homunculus by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online

from a gentleman, which, I profess, is what I heartily wish myself to be considered.” The Captain waved his hand. Hasbro tut-tutted. Godall continued, “I hurried Mr. Pule on his way only because I knew him. He is, I’m sure, ignorant of that. He meant us no good, I can assure you. He was in the company, day before yesterday, of your man Narbondo.” He nodded at the surprised Captain. “The two struck me as being passing familiar with each other, and although we might have led this Pule along a bit to see what stuff he was made of, I thought the idea rather a dangerous one, in the light of what I perceive as a situation of growing seriousness. Forgive me if I acted in haste. My rushing away was merely a matter of desiring to confirm my suspicions. I followed him to Haymarket where he met our hunchback. The two of them climbed into a hansom cab and I returned with as much haste as propriety allowed.”
    St. Ives was stunned. Here was a fresh mystery. “Hunchback?” he asked, swiveling his head from Godall to the Captain, who squinted grimly at him and nodded. “Ignacio Narbondo?” Again the Captain nodded. St. Ives fell silent. The woods, apparently, had thickened. And as mysterious as the rest of it was the mere fact that Captain Powers was so well acquainted with Narbondo, quite apparently had an eye on the machinations of the evil doctor. But why? How? It wasn’t a question that could be asked outright.
    And Langdon St. Ives wasn’t the only one mystified. Jack Owlesby, perhaps, was the one among them most seething with angry curiosity. He hardly knew the Captain, who, it seemed to Jack, carried on a strange sort of business for a tobacconist. He knew Godall not a bit. He was certain of only one thing - that he would marry Dorothy Keeble or blow his brains out. The slightest hint that she was being swept unwittingly into a maelstrom of intrigue made him fairly burst with anger. The idea of Willis Pule flattened him with irrational jealousy. His window, he reminded himself, overlooked the Captain’s shop. He’d be a bit more attentive in the future; that was certain.
    It was almost one in the morning, and nothing had been accomplished. Like a good poem, the night’s doings had aroused more questions, had unveiled more mysteries, than they had solved.
    The seven of them agreed to meet in a week - sooner if something telling occurred - and they departed, Keeble and Jack across the road, Hasbro and St. Ives toward Pimlico, Theophilus Godall toward Soho. Kraken stayed on with the Captain, unlikely to awaken before morning, despite the shrieks of the wind rattling at the shutters and whistling under the eaves.

THREE
    A ROOM WITH A VIEW
    T he open doors of the public and lodging houses along Buckeridge Street were wreathed with smoke, which wandered out to be consumed by the London fog, yellow and acrid in the still air. A gaunt man could be seen through one such door, sitting at a table in a dim corner, half a glass of claret before him, boldly clipping the gats off counterfeit half crowns and filing the edges smooth with a tiny, triangular iron. He’d been at the work all evening, tirelessly tossing cleaned blue coin into a basket and covering the heap with a scattering of religious tracts that prophesied the coming doom.
    He employed no agents to sell the coin, preferring to distribute it at greater profit and peril through the faithful - his lambs, who understood that they did the work of Shiloh, the New Messiah. They’d be very pretty coins, once they’d been plated, and would further the work of God. The time approached when such work would be at an end. The Reverend Shiloh had honed the coming of the apocalyptic dirigible to the day. Twice it had passed in the early morning, and the last time, more than four long years ago, it had appeared to him out of the west, emblazoned by a dying moon, its impossibly animate pilot peering down out of the heavens.
    Historically speaking, the current years should have