Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [144]
He did not seem in the least taken aback by my sudden appearance, but rather smiled and said in a high-pitched, nasal voice, like that of an Irish tenor with a cold, “There you are, Prothero. I thought you had eluded me.”
“So you admit it—you were following me. May I ask why?”
“I hoped it might prove less of an embarrassment if I pressed my business with you away from the confines of the club.”
This shamed me, since I was a snob by association and not by nature; yet I maintained a cool manner. “I’m unaware of any business between us.”
“That remains to be seen. I require the services of an alienist for a day or two. If you come with me to Saint Nichol, I will double your usual fee.”
My interest was piqued, but I had concerns. “Tonight? At this hour?”
“If you fear for your safety, let me assure you that at no hour of day or night is Saint Nichol markedly less perilous.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth and I had the idea that it was a mocking smile. “While I cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that you will survive the experience,” he went on, “I swear that you will be as safe in my company in Saint Nichol as you would be on any other street in London.”
I hesitated and, apparently attributing my hesitancy to greed, Richmond said, “Name your price, then. I will gladly pay it.”
“Money is not at issue,” I told him. “Mental ailments—and I presume this is why you have sought me out, to treat such an ailment—are not easily corrected. I am no carpenter who can repair your steps or patch a hole in your roof in a few hours.”
“I do not expect you to effect a cure, simply to give me your counsel.”
“On what subject? Is there a patient you wish me to observe?”
“Two. Myself and one other.”
I started to speak, but he said, “You have questions for me. That I understand. And I intend to answer them. But my answers, insufficient as they are, will be far more revealing in light of what I have to show you.”
Without waiting to learn whether or not I would accept his invitation (I fully intended to accept, seduced by the air of mystery attaching to it), he produced a silver whistle from his coat and sounded a blast. A coach and pair lurched into view at the end of the lane, wheels and hooves raising a clatter. At that distance, rendered featureless and distorted by the fog, it posed an indistinct black mass against the diffuse yellow light, and the coachman’s bulky figure, established in vague silhouette, seemed a projection of that blackness, the crude semblance of half a man. I climbed into the coach with no little trepidation, its aspect having brought to mind a Turner seascape I had long admired, not as regards its particulars, but relating to the sinister mood suggested by its depiction of a numinous fiery light smothered beneath lowering grim clouds.
TO REACH SAINT Nichol it was first necessary to cross Bethnal Green, scarcely a fashionable neighborhood itself; but nothing in Bethnal Green prepared me for either the foul stench of Saint Nichol’s muddy byways or the view of human dereliction I had through the fluttering curtains of the coach. On the verge of the slum, in the ghastly greenish-yellow light that spilled from the door of a gin shop wherein anonymous figures staggered and shrieked and capered, perhaps dancing to the scrape of a fiddle, a man lurched toward the coach with open arms, as if in welcome, his round face red with drink, almost purplish and so bloated I imagined it would burst and release a spew of fluids. The fog thinned sufficiently to permit closer observation as we drew near Richmond’s home in Rose Street. I saw an elderly man on a stoop, his toothless grin expressing