Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [34]
"Get down, you cur!" shouted Fexton at the dog, aiming a blow at it with the stick by which he supported his misshapen frame, and nearly toppling himself with the violence of his swing. The dog cowered abjectly, just out of his reach. "Come, come–" He was addressing me again, as he tottered about the room. "I haven't time no, no, not at all – no time, y'see – what's your concern with me? Eh? Speak out, man." A deal table, rickety as its owner, trembled as he pawed through the disorder upon its surface: a zinc basin, various mottled flasks, and a series of lead moulds were the visible evidence of his occupation.
My eye was drawn involuntarily across the rest of the room's clutter. A mound of crumpled, grease-spotted wrappings in one corner indicated the site of his furtive dinners; a bed, no more than a thin pallet on the sagging floor, was covered with grey clothing and a thick coat acting as blankets. A crude shelf nailed to one wall supported a row of books: the titles I deciphered were all of the order of Sub-Umbra; or, Sport Amongst the She Noodles and The Spreeish Spouter; or, Flash Cove's Slap Up Reciter, and similar cheap lechery (not that I recognised them other than by reputation). The general impression of the man's quarters was of sad, solitary degeneration.
His rasping voice broke into my musing inspection: "Speak up! There's no time!"
"I'm searching for a maker of coins–" I began.
"Coins? Coins?" His tortoise-like neck stretched its tendons to the breaking point as he glared at me. "I don't know anything about any bloody coins – nothing, I tell you. Soldiers is what I make; very fine, very coveted they are – in the collections of the finest gentlemen!" His denials mounted to a shrill peak. "No, no coins – I don't know anything! You won't get me that easy!"
It was easy to surmise that past investigations into his activities had resulted in unpleasant consequences for him. "I assure you," I said in as soothing a manner as I could manage, "I make no reference to forgeries – my interest is rather in harmless curiosities, such as the one I just showed you at the door."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. He drew the stopper from one of the flasks on the table, and tilted it to his lips; the juniper scent of cheap gin mixed with the sharper chemical odours tainting the air.
I pressed on: "The coin… bearing Saint Monkfish's profile…?"
Fexton drew the back of his hand across his lips. "Eh? What about it, then?"
"Are you the manufacturer of that item?"
"What if I am? Eh? What business is it of yours?"
His snarling manner irritated me; it was only with some effort of self-mastery that I refrained from sharper words. "I have made it my business, sir; I find the article… intriguing, shall we say. I would like to know more of its significance–"
"Huh!" Fexton's mottled skin flushed with the effect of his liquor. "As if you didn't already know enough of that! You and your kind – filthy buggers; filthy, filthy…" His voice ebbed into a mutter, drowned at last by another swig from his flask.
As with the cabbyman, he had assumed some degree of knowledge on my part that was in fact completely lacking. "I assure you," I said, "my questions are sincerely put–"
"Oh, yah!" mocked the coiner. "Sincerely – that's good! Very droll, that is!" The gin dribbled from the point of his chin.
"And of course I'd be willing to pay…"
That brought back a measure of sobriety. His eyes grew calculatingly narrow behind his spectacles. "Pay? How much?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "It would depend; upon the value of the information–"
A furious volley of barking interrupted me. The terrier skittered to the window, placed its paws upon the sill, and yapped at some event in the night's darkness invisible to us. It turned and barked at its master, as if describing the signal that had roused it.
"Damn you! Cursed hound!" The noise drove him to a fury, saliva dappling his lip. He raised his stick and brought it with a sickening crack against the