Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [143]
LUCIUS SHEPARD
Rose Street Attractors
THOSE WHO KNEW Jeffrey Richmond, if anyone could be truly said to have known him, viewed him as an acquaintance merely, the sort of person one tolerates because he belongs to a certain circle, yet avoids due to his unpleasant character or dubious connections. He was a slight black-haired chap in his middle thirties, beardless and brown-eyed, sharp-featured and plain of dress, possessed of a subdued public manner, and whenever he chanced to visit the Inventors’ Club, his fellows hid themselves behind the pages of a newspaper or pretended to be engrossed in a conversation concerning a cricket match or a minor political issue, or else they bluntly ignored him. On most such visits he would sit in one of the club’s deep leather chairs and drink a glass or two of port and then take his leave, both entrance and exit unmarked by the least notice; but infrequently he would attach himself to a group of men engaged in a discussion concerning some aspect of science or mechanics, and even more infrequently he would interject a comment that another member might acknowledge in a distant tone, saying, “Ah, Richmond,” before turning away. Whereupon the group would close ranks against him and he would drift back to his chair. He had endured that state of affairs for the past three years, ever since joining the club, and when I inquired as to the reasons underlying this consistent display of contempt, I was told that Richmond, holder of a dozen patents relating to a diverse range of industries, from textile to armaments, and thus wealthy, had chosen to live in the pernicious slum of Saint Nichol and was thought to have family in the district—even if untrue, it was apparent to the discerning eye, so my informant claimed, that his exposure to the evils endemic to the place had thoroughly corrupted him.
My own status at the club was hardly secure—although I came from a prominent Welsh family with business connections in London, I was but a probationary member and twenty-six years old (all the full members were at the least five years my senior), and otherwise suspect because, despite holding a medical patent, I was an alienist, a discipline not yet accorded the banner of respectability. I had joined the club in order to gain access to the upper classes through its membership, which counted a smattering of dukes and lords among their number, hoping that when one or another of their relations suffered an affliction for which medical science had no obvious remedy, they might call upon me. Indeed, I had already experienced a degree of success, having assisted in the treatment of Sir Thomas Winstone’s nephew, whose opium addiction was rooted in a childhood trauma. It was my hope that by attending the ills of parasites like Winstone’s nephew, I might garner sufficient wealth to establish clinics that would provide treatment of the mentally afflicted among the lower classes superior to that they received in hospitals such as Bedlam and Broadmoor. And so, while I felt something of an ideological kinship with Richmond, for the sake of my goals I became complicit in shunning him, addressing him with a reserve that verged on rudeness. I would have never done more than tip my hat and nod to the man had he not forced himself upon me.
One foggy autumn evening, a fog so thick that the streetlamps were transformed into inexplicable glowing presences like those said to hover intermittently above the northern marshes, I was returning home from the club, keeping a hand on the clammy bricks to guide me through especially dense eddies, when I heard boot heels behind me. I paid them scant attention until, on rounding a corner onto a poorly lit lane, their pace quickened and, fearing a footpad, I darted ahead and secreted myself in the doorway of an apothecary