“Not much of a butcher’s bill if you ask me,” Tubby said, picking up a rasher of bacon from a platter in the middle of the table and folding it into his mouth. “Two of the villains dead, and four others off their feed for a month. Why thank you, Winnifred,” he said to Mrs. Keeble, who set a plate of fried eggs and beans in front of him. “This is kindness personified.”
William, Winnifred Keeble’s inventor husband, snored in an upholstered chair, apparently indifferent to the promise of food. He was an early riser, up with the dawn, and was happily asleep by eight o’clock in the evening, which is to say, some four hours ago. Winnifred had driven him out of bed and compelled him to put on a dressing gown in deference to their late-arriving guests, but the effort hadn’t really awakened him. Hasbro came out from the kitchen now with a steaming platter of chops and another of black pudding, followed by Jack Owlesby and his wife Dorothy, carrying pots of coffee and more plates of food.
“Vittles is up!” Tubby said, looking hard at his companions, who were still seated around the room.
St. Ives found it incredible that Tubby was unscathed. Given his reckless abandon in the melee he might have been murdered three times over. And a melee it had been, a wild brawl that had achieved considerably less than nothing. Doyle had pronounced St. Ives fit after sewing up a flap of scalp that had been laid open, but any of the blows that he had taken on the head might have knocked him permanently senseless. The aching in his forehead, although easing up some, was still a distraction, and he studiously kept his head very still. He thought of Alice and of her threat to beat him with a coal shovel – no need for that now, really. He wondered what she was doing, whether she was asleep or lying abed worrying. He pictured her in his mind, and his heart was filled with sadness at his failure. “Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again,” he thought, remembering the old poem that had affected him so strongly when he was a younger man. He was surprised that its effect was squared and cubed now that he was older and had lived some. It hadn’t been but a day since he and Alice had parted, although it seemed like an eternity.
He thought about how full of optimism he had allowed himself to be just a few hours ago at the Half Toad, when they were at the beginning of things. That was too often the way of it – the fate of hopeful plans: inspired anticipation ending in unhappy regret. Certainly Narbondo had anticipated their arrival this evening and so had easily escaped, just as St. Ives had feared would happen. There was no point at all in returning to Thrawl Street in the morning on the pretense of carrying ransom money. They had been soundly beaten, no matter how many of the enemy they had brought down. That was the long and the short of it. The precious information they’d got from Slocumb about Narbondo’s whereabouts was now yesterday’s news, useful for wrapping up fried cod. They had come to a dead end.
Dorothy Owlesby, blond and pretty, fretted over her husband Jack, who had also been bandaged by an adept Arthur Doyle. Doyle’s own left hand still oozed blood from the knife wound, which Doyle had stitched closed himself, sweating and grimacing, although St. Ives and Hasbro were both competent with a catgut suture. Doyle was apparently happy with the wound – a badge of honor – but clearly made an effort not to revel overmuch in the heroic nature of the part he had played in the episode. His evident bonhomie very nearly matched Tubby’s. St. Ives rose from his armchair and took his place at the table, taking himself in hand and putting on a pleased face.
“I can’t remember ever having eaten so well,” Tubby said, shoveling eggs and beans into his mouth and then mopping his face with his napkin. “A skirmish does wonders for a man’s appetite. Pass that beaker of coffee, if you will, and that jam pot.”
“You say something of the same thing every time you sit down to sup,” Jack said.
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary about that,” Tubby said. “There’s scarcely a human being on earth who doesn’t ask for the jam pot now and then. The jam pot is a philosophical item, Jack, much prized by the ancients. I beg you to consider that the Wildman of Borneo keeps a jam pot in his hollow tree, as does the Queen in her cupboard. Indeed, the jam pot is the homely object that puts us all on the side of the angels.”
“Not the jam pot, you oaf,” Jack said. “I mean that you insist absolutely that every meal is the best you’ve ever eaten. How can everything be the best of anything? If everything is the best, then it stands to reason that nothing is the best.”
“I deny it,” Tubby said. “The jam pot shows us the way. Every day it’s filled afresh, you see – a new start, the world constantly turning toward the morning. We’re blessed with a renewable appetite, and not just for food, mind you, but for the things of the world. That’s the golden secret of the marmalade in the jam pot. Imagine if an appetite were like hair, that fell out as you grew older, and never grew back. You’d be in a sad way, Jack.” He plucked a piece of toast out of the rack and slathered jam on it by way of illustration.
“I’m with you there,” Doyle said. “A hearty appetite of any sort is synonymous with life itself. And as for the English breakfast, to my mind it’s one of the wonders of the world. It seems to me that there’s something particularly artistic in its being served at the stroke of midnight.”
“Just so,” St. Ives said, looking at his pocket watch. “It’s already tomorrow, and I for one am heartily glad to see yesterday gone.”
They ate in silence for a time, devouring the food, making inroads into the toast and cutlets, which seemed to be in never-ending supply.
“What’s the state of this fabulous airship that Jack’s been telling me about?” Doyle asked William Keeble.
Keeble, whose appetite had awakened, and he with it, was illuminated by the question and at once set out to answer it. The airship would fly, he told them. The decorative elements wanted gilt paint, and he contemplated a figurehead of some sort – something that wouldn’t weigh it down too much by the nose. A pasteboard figure, perhaps, heavily varnished against the weather.
“We’ll gild the lily in due time,” St. Ives said. “Tomorrow we’ve got to be about our business, however, if only we know what it is. She’s airworthy? You’re certain of it?”
“Oh, yes. Quite certain. I spent the better part of the last two days on what might be called ‘finishing touches.’ Just this afternoon I fitted a fine brass periscope to a swivel on the craft’s undercarriage, built on the design of Marie-Davy, which will reflect an image onto a lens in the gondola. The periscope can sweep the field of view, quite uninhibited. Farther astern sits a Ruhmkorff lamp that will cast a light for a hundred feet or so in the dead of night. Quite blindingly bright, if I do say so myself.”
“Tell them about the perpetual motion you’ve invented, Father,” Dorothy said. “It’s phenomenally clever.”
“It’s not perpetual motion at all,” Keeble said, smiling lovingly at his daughter, “although it’s very like, I must say. And I did not invent it; I merely had my way with another man’s invention – a giant of a man, so to speak, upon whose shoulders I stood. I’ve built a bladed weathervane, if you can picture it, a propeller, which swivels with the direction of the wind, so that the blades spin constantly, their motion turning the disks in what is known to science as a Wimshurst influence machine. The electrical charge produced by the machine flows into an array of simple Leyden jar batteries. Under the right conditions there’s no reason the dirigible shouldn’t circumnavigate the globe, providing its own motive power with the help of the wind.”
“That’s as perpetual as anything,” Dorothy said.
“Indeed it is,” Tubby put in. “It’s the jam pot come again.”
“The jam pot,” Keeble said. “Just so. Of course.” He blinked at Tubby several times, as if unable entirely to fathom the figure of the jam pot. “My men have begun the production of hydrogen, and the void has been filling for many hours.”
“The production of hydrogen?” Tubby asked. “One hires an alchemist, perhaps, to conjure it out of the aether?”
“No indeed, sir. It’s a simple business,” Keeble said. “One asks one’s apprentice to drip vitriol onto iron shavings. Hydrogen gas rises in the reek like a very phoenix, filling the body of the dirigible through an inverted funnel. In short order, the balloon is anxious to take flight, and will do so unless it’s moored to the ground.” He smiled at them over the rim of his coffee cup, very apparently happy with his revelations.
“My only… apprehension…” he said, “has to do with flying the craft in a lightning storm, which might lead to an explosive result.”
“Explosive?” Tubby said. “It’s a sort of floating squib, then?”
“After a fashion I suppose it is, although I’ve attached an experimental lightning rod of sorts that should draw away unwanted sparks or electrical charges.”
“What’s the nature of this rod?” asked Doyle. “It’s not grounded, as they say. It cannot be, since the ship would be nowhere near the ground.”
“The device consists of a solid glass ball mounted on the end of the bowsprit,” Keeble said, “much like the lightning inhibitors atop masts of ships at sea. It cannot be adequately tested without endangering the craft, of course, but theoretically everyone in the gondola should be as safe as babies. Nothing to worry about there, I assure you. Nothing at all. Perfectly safe.”
Doyle nodded, perhaps out of a desire to be agreeable.
“We’ve been told that you’ve built a miniature example of this Ruhmkorff lamp,” Hasbro said to Keeble.
“Oh, yes,” Keeble said. “Wonderfully small, but throwing a prodigious bright beam. I built only the one example, although another man has recently commissioned a second. He seems to be quite anxious about it.”
“Do you know the name of the man who commissioned the first?” St. Ives asked.
“A fellow named George Kittering. Very polite cove. Extraordinarily round head, it seemed to me.”
“The ubiquitous George! Of course,” St. Ives said. “We’re well acquainted with George, chatted with him tonight, in fact. I’d be surprised if half London doesn’t call him by name. This second commission – there was no apparent connection between it and the first? Not our man George again?”
“No, indeed. The second was a Dutchman named de Groot, the secretary of someone highly placed, or so he told me. Whom I can’t say, and it scarcely seemed politic to ask. He was a stout man with short legs, who sweated profusely. Very florid all the way around, including his hair and beard, which were red as a newt.”
St. Ives nodded. “There’s the telling phrase again: ‘highly placed.’ Narbondo’s nefarious Customer, I don’t doubt. If we knew who this Dutchman was, we could perhaps make use of him – make him sweat a little more. But we do not know him. We’re all to seek.”
“What do we know in fact?” Doyle asked. “As a newcomer, it’s perhaps none of my business, but…”
“It’s entirely your business after the way in which you comported yourself tonight,” St. Ives said. “We’re considerably in your debt.”
“Yes, indeed,” Tubby put in. “That fellow with the dirk will be pissing blood for a week after…”
“For God’s sake, man!” Jack said.
“Dreadfully sorry.” Tubby looked abashed. “Perhaps another slice of that pudding?” he asked Winnifred.
“We’d best start at the beginning,” St. Ives said, and he did his best to reveal the salient points of Mother Laswell’s sad story, including the business of the Aylesford Skull, the alleged lane to the afterlife, and the likely reason for Narbondo’s kidnapping Eddie.
Keeble sat with a look of startled horror on his face. “The fiends lied to me,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“Of course,” St. Ives told him. “None of us knew anything at all until now. I still admit to finding elements of the problem little short of ludicrous, but it’s clear that Narbondo does not, and so the immediate dangers are very real.”
“I find it no such thing, sir, if I might state my opinion,” Doyle said. “There’s nothing necessarily ludicrous in it. I have a high regard for science, but an equally high regard for the thinking of your Mother Laswell. Indeed, science ignorantly deplores things of the spirit, so to speak, and at its own peril. Our highly placed personage – we suspect him of being in league with Narbondo?”
“Perhaps, but the evidence isn’t persuasive,” St. Ives said. “Narbondo famously keeps to himself, of course. I can’t imagine that he would take on a partner or a confidante, not unless it was for his own immediate gain. If the two are connected, I suspect financial dealings – Narbondo making use of this person’s money or power. And if that’s the case, then the man treads on very thin ice.”
St. Ives was suddenly weary. The food had done for him. It was past time to put an end to the day. “We’ll give the airship a trial at first light then,” he said.
Keeble looked askance at him. “Not all of you, certainly? Not at once?”
“No, William. Hasbro and I will take it aloft. You three,” he said, addressing Jack, Doyle, and Tubby, “should go about your business. I thank you for your loyalty tonight, but I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, and I don’t intend to keep you standing by. I intend to go to the police. Perhaps I should have done so immediately, although it would surely have impeded our own efforts tonight, perhaps for the better.”
This pronouncement dampened all conversation, and there was a general silence again. The most voracious eating was over, and even Tubby merely toyed with his final piece of toast. “I for one will look in on Uncle Gilbert’s bivouac down the river,” Tubby said.
“Ah, the search for the elusive bustard,” St. Ives put in. “I had forgotten. Give him my kindest regards, if you will.”
“He’ll be having a comfortable time of it,” Tubby said. “He has something of the Arabian sultan in him, you know, when it comes to an encampment. I’ll be nearby, Professor, if you’ve got any use for me, and I’ll be on the lookout for your airship.”
“Perhaps Doyle and I can make inquiries about this Dutchman named de Groot,” Jack said, “if in fact that’s his name.”
“Happily,” Doyle said. “I’ve no reason to return to Southend for another week.”
“We’ve got beds already made up,” Dorothy said. “You’ll stay here tonight. You too, Tubby, unless you’re keen on returning to Chingford. The lot of you, in fact. We’ll make do.”
“Thank you,” St. Ives said, “but we’ll just nip back over to the Half Toad as usual. Our dunnage is there. I’m done in, I’m afraid, so the sooner the better.” He pushed his chair back from the table and Hasbro did the same, but before they had time to stand, the doorknocker downstairs hammered a half dozen times, leading to an absolute silence in the room. St. Ives was keenly alert. This would not be a social call, not at this late hour.
“I’ll see to it,” Jack said. He arose and went to the several speaking tubes moored to a wooden rack on the wall of the room. He plucked the first of them free and spoke into the funnel-like mouth of the thing. “Please to identify yourself,” he said.
From the considerably larger funnel affixed to the wall nearby came a disembodied voice, a boy’s voice, perhaps. “It’s Newman, sir, at your service,” the voice said.
“Do any of us know a Newman?” Jack asked the company, covering the speaking tube with his hand.
“Not any sort of Newman who would be knocking at the door at this hour,” Tubby said. “It’s not the police, though, thank God.”
“What do you want, Mr. Newman?” Jack asked into the mouthpiece. “State your business.”
“Message for Mr. Owlesby or the missus if he ain’t there,” came the reply. “Finn Conrad sends word of the Doctor!”
St. Ives stood up out of his chair, a wave of pain cutting across his forehead and nearly staggering him. “Finn Conrad!” he shouted. “What on Earth…?” But he was already crossing the room to the door, Jack at his heels, the both of them hurrying down the stairs toward the street.