Beneath London (40 page)

“Wait until St. Ives joins us and we can reconnoiter,” Hasbro said.

“You have a duty to St. Ives and Alice,” Tubby told him. “My duty is to my uncle. Every hour that passes lessens the odds of finding him alive, or so I fear.”

They turned up Fingal Street now, and the cabby reined in the horses outside the inn. Hasbro opened the door and climbed down onto the street, and Tubby leaned across to speak through the door. “I won’t play the fool,” he said, although he had a hard, desperate look about him. “If there’s nothing to be discovered, I’ll return straightaway. Leave word with Billson if the lot of you go out again, and I’ll follow.”

Hasbro nodded curtly, gave the driver further instructions, and shut the door as the coach moved out into the traffic.

THIRTY-ONE

T
he portable vivarium had been rolled out of the way, but Narbondo sat in it as ever, looking out like an ape in a tree, his eyes open and filled with unmistakable loathing. The box sat on a wheeled cart, and Dr. Peavy ordered Pule to take it out the back now and load it into the van, not forgetting to lock the van door afterward. He would want it again later, but in the meantime Narbondo could sit in the darkness, Peavy said, rather than foul the air in the surgery with his dirty looks.

The surgical theater was scrupulously clean and neatly arranged, most of the equipment on wheels, which would make it easier to scrub the floors and walls. The floor was constructed of large marble tiles, each some three-feet square and snowy white. St. Ives had been in a number of surgeries in his time, both privately and publicly funded, but he had never seen such extravagance. There were drops of blood on the floor where Clara had sat, but otherwise the floor was pristine. Even as this came into his mind, Peavy himself wiped away the blood with the same cloth that he had used to clean Clara’s arm, and then without speaking a word he went out through the door, leaving St. Ives alone with Jimmy, Pule, and Klingheimer.

Electric lamps behind red shades went on as if by magic along the wall to St. Ives’s right. The red glow illuminated a confusion of bubbling apparatus – bladders, aerators, India-rubber tubing, enormous glass bottles full of the green fluid – much of it resting atop a long wooden bench. He was startled to see that three human heads sat on barbers’ basins on that same bench, the green fungal elixir running from their mouths and nostrils. The severed necks were fixed upon thick cross-sections of luminous mushroom stem, each stem apparently regenerating a cap – becoming whole again – so that the heads seemed to wear collars.

The heads were in various states of preservation, two men and a woman. There were two other basins, empty of heads, although with a piece of stem mounted in each, a plinth waiting for a statue, and the fluids bathing them. Hanging from pendant rings nearby were three empty, wire bird-cages each of which might have held a large parrot, but without perches and with broad doors. Evidently they were used to transport the barbers’ basins, and were the same that he had seen being unloaded from the van earlier.

“I told you that you would see wonders, Professor,” Klingheimer said. He had obviously regained his self-possession, and he appeared to be gratified by the unhappy scowl that was fixed on St. Ives’s face. Klingheimer produced a pair of aura goggles from within his coat and put them on, gazing for a moment at a nearby lamp. “I’ll introduce you to our charges, although I see now that one of them has expired. With the aid of these very interesting goggles I can tell you that his inner light has quite gone out.”

He gestured at the first of the heads – a woman’s head. The flesh, with its telltale green tone, was remarkably preserved, and the eyes were shut. Although he had never seen her – or at least her face – St. Ives had no doubt that it was Sarah Wright. There was nothing of the death mask about her features, however. Clearly a semblance of life was preserved by the fluids.

“I see that you know the woman, sir – Sarah Wright, as you have ascertained. I also see that after your initial distaste you reacted with intellectual interest. It is a marvel, is it not? The gentleman in the middle is James Harrow, dead beyond recovery, as I said. You recognize him, no doubt.”

“Of course I do,” St. Ives said. “I expected as much.”

“There was too little life left in him when Peavy removed his head, and the fungi have apparently failed to revive him.”

St. Ives said nothing.

“He had a first-rate mind, or at least an excellent memory. I was anxious to look into it, perhaps to engage with it, although I have little interest in natural philosophy, except as a means to an end. The third head is a terrible creature, once married to your friend Harriet Laswell and stepfather to our mutual friend Narbondo – one Maurice De Salles. His is a long and interesting history. Would you like to hear it?”

“I’m well aware of it,” said St. Ives.

“I’d wager a small sum that your knowledge is trifling. Suffice it to say that Clara Wright, who has magnificent hydroscopic powers, found De Salles’s head buried several feet beneath the sandy bottom of a riverbed in your small corner of the Empire. The head had been preserved by Sarah Wright in a cunning manner – his life, that is, his faculties. Ironically, it would have been better for her to incinerate the head, if indeed the intention was to eradicate the man’s spirit. That puts me in mind again of poor Harrow, who will soon begin to stink, I’m afraid.”

He picked up the head of James Harrow, clutching it by the ears, and carried it to the furnace, where Willis Pule raised a hatch in the iron lid, his hand encased in an asbestos-lined glove. Klingheimer dropped the head into the red glow, flames leapt upward with a great roar, and Pule dropped the hatch into place.

“This oven attains a heat in excess of a thousand degrees centigrade,” Klingheimer said. “It was built at no small expense by the factory that produced the Woking Crematorium. I fully expected that they would inquire as to its use, that they would be in some sense curious. But they were not curious. They fixed a price, and all of us were happy. I like a clear, single-minded motive, Professor. Indeed I do.”

He gestured at the third head now, which had long, lank hair and eyes that might have belonged to Satan himself. The eyes twitched sporadically, as if something in the brain was overactive. Even so they had a demonic cast to them. “I like to refer to Maurice De Salles as ‘the wizard,’” Klingheimer said. “He had quite a reputation among the cognoscenti. I was aware of his work at a very young age, and I had the pleasure of seeing him murder a boy with no other instrument than his mind. It was from De Salles that I bought the bottle of elixir I spoke of earlier, to my great good fortune.”

“You had the
pleasure
of seeing him murder a boy? Finally you reveal yourself,” said St. Ives.

“By ‘pleasure’ I meant a purely scientific satisfaction, of course. I took no
emotional
pleasure in the boy’s death, nor did I feel any particular aversion. Death is the fate that awaits the lot of us, after all, unless we take steps to avert it. De Salles was a prodigy of arcane learning, to say the least. I have high hopes that he will recover his wits in time. His being a blood relative to Ignacio Narbondo might lead to interesting results were the two linked. But of course he cannot speak except in thought, which you are deaf to. His thoughts are primitive – distilled anger, eager hatred. Some would call it idiocy, which it might very well be. I communed with him only once, and his mind was… a force, and little more. But it was a force that I could… access. An accelerant, as it were, very like turpentine poured onto a fire. Listen! The wizard attempts speech!”

De Salles’s mouth worked, bubbling out green fluid, his lips making a distinct flapping sound. Everything that Mother Laswell had told St. Ives about her dead husband was quite evidently true. It was written plainly on his face, even in its wizened, desiccated condition. If ever a head wanted badly to be cast into the furnace, it was the head of Maurice De Salles.

“Come, Professor,” Mr. Klingheimer said, gesturing at the viewing seats, “I believe that you’ll have a first-rate view in the second row. Take the seat two rows in front of Jimmy, if you will. Yes, directly in front of him, where he can put a bullet through your heart if the need arises. Pule, do us the favor of fetching Mr. Fez. Be quick about it. I’ll reveal to you, Professor, that I intend to undertake a small experiment while Dr. Peavy is busy performing his duties as a mad doctor. I can assure you that the patient whose mind I intend to probe will not come to any harm. I beg you not to interfere. If Jimmy is compelled to shoot you, Alice will find your head in Mr. Harrow’s basin, I’m afraid. We all wish for a happier outcome.”

And then, to Jimmy, Klingheimer said, “It is my direct order that you shoot Professor St. Ives in the back if he endeavors any heroics, any at all. I need not tell you, however, that we must preserve the head.”

St. Ives calculated the odds of taking Jimmy by surprise, liberating the pistol, and blowing Klingheimer to kingdom come. The odds weren’t at all good. The act would necessitate standing, turning, and scrambling over seats, which would give Jimmy adequate time to murder him or simply to knock him down with the butt of the pistol.

The door into the hallway opened, and Pule ushered the man wearing the Egyptian hat into the room. He looked about himself furtively. His head jerked uncontrollably, and he was attempting to speak, but could do little more than make noises in his throat. He hadn’t been nearly so agitated when St. Ives had seen him previously. Pule guided him to the chair that Clara had recently vacated, put his hands on the man’s shoulders, and compelled him to sit. Immediately he strapped his wrists and ankles and belted him into the chair at the waist and around the forehead.

“This fellow’s name is Kairn,” Mr. Klingheimer said to St. Ives. “Dr. Peavy tells me that his bill is paid promptly on the first day of the year by an unknown party – a bank draft. No one has visited the poor fellow in eight years now, alas. No one would know, in other words, whether he was alive or dead, or, if dead, how he died. He has a great fear of rats, has Mr. Kairn. Dr. Peavy put him to the test, do you see? Locked him into his room with a half dozen of the creatures. The result was extraordinary. It cost the poor man his tongue, which he chewed off in his fear. The rats were quite docile, actually – in no way did they threaten the man. They would have been content to build a nest in Mr. Kairn’s hat. There was nothing in their behavior, in other words, to provoke the fear. It is entirely self-invented, as are the great majority of our fears, alas. I am curious to see whether I can bring him to such a pass merely by mental suggestion.”

Klingheimer took a seat in a part of the theater that was out of Kairn’s sight. He put on the aura goggles and held himself quite still, leaning forward now in evident concentration. Kairn had fallen silent, and he gripped the wooden arms so tightly that his knuckles were white. Nothing at all happened for the space of two or three minutes. Klingheimer’s mouth was partly open, and he scarcely seemed to breathe, as if he had fallen into a self-induced trance.

Kairn’s body abruptly went rigid. His eyes opened widely, and his head jittered rapidly up and down as if an electric current were running through him. He made a high, keening noise in his throat, and rocked his body erratically, the keening turning into a high-pitched shriek.

The wild idea came into St. Ives’s head that he must break the spell, and he stood up and began to sing “God Save the Queen,” as loudly as he could, but he got no farther than “Send her victorious…” before Klingheimer held up his palm and gave him a withering look. He shook his head at Jimmy, who was also standing now, the pistol aimed at St. Ives. Kairn had either fainted or died, although his head was held upright by the various restraints. He stirred now, and opened his eyes, looking around in apparent terror. Pule cast Kairn loose and supported the now-sobbing man out of the room.

“Well, well,” Klingheimer said to St. Ives, a forced smile contorting his face, “if you will do me the favor of sitting in the chair recently vacated by Mr. Kairn, we will do what must be done.”