We walked to our front door. As I unlocked it, my friend said, “Odd. Our cabbie just ignored that fellow on the corner.”
“They do that at the end of a shift,” I pointed out.
“Indeed they do,” said my friend.
I dreamed of shadows that night, vast shadows that blotted out the sun, and I called out to them in my desperation, but they did not listen.
5. The Skin and the Pit
THIS YEAR, STEP INTO THE SPRING—WITH A SPRING IN YOUR STEP! JACK’S. BOOTS, SHOES AND BROGUES. SAVE YOUR SOLES! HEELS OUR SPECIALITY. JACK’S. AND DO NOT FORGET TO VISIT OUR NEW CLOTHES AND FITTINGS EMPORIUM IN THE EAST END—FEATURING EVENING WEAR OF ALL KINDS, HATS, NOVELTIES, CANES, SWORDSTICKS &C. JACK’S OF PICCADILLY. IT’S ALL IN THE SPRING!
Inspector Lestrade was the first to arrive.
“You have posted your men in the street?” asked my friend.
“I have,” said Lestrade. “With strict orders to let anyone in who comes, but to arrest anyone trying to leave.”
“And you have handcuffs with you?”
In reply, Lestrade put his hand in his pocket, and jangled two pairs of cuffs, grimly.
“Now sir,” he said. “While we wait, why do you not tell me what we are waiting for?”
My friend pulled his pipe out of his pocket. He did not put it in his mouth, but placed it on the table in front of him. Then he took the tin from the night before, and a glass vial I recognized as the one he had had in the room in Shoreditch.
“There,” he said. “The coffin-nail, as I trust it shall prove, for our Master Vernet.” He paused. Then he took out his pocket watch, laid it carefully on the table. “We have several minutes before they arrive.” He turned to me. “What do you know of the Restorationists?”
“Not a blessed thing,” I told him.
Lestrade coughed. “If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about,” he said, “perhaps we should leave it there. Enough’s enough.”
“Too late for that,” said my friend. “For there are those who do not believe that the coming of the Old Ones was the fine thing we all know it to be. Anarchists to a man, they would see the old ways restored—mankind in control of its own destiny, if you will.”
“I will not hear this sedition spoken,” said Lestrade. “I must warn you—”
“I must warn you not to be such a fathead,” said my friend. “Because it was the Restorationists that killed Prince Franz Drago. They murder, they kill, in a vain effort to force our masters to leave us alone in the darkness. The Prince was killed by a rache—it’s an old term for a hunting dog, Inspector, as you would know if you had looked in a dictionary. It also means “revenge.” And the hunter left his signature on the wallpaper in the murder room, just as an artist might sign a canvas. But he was not the one who killed the Prince.”
“The Limping Doctor!” I exclaimed.
“Very good. There was a tall man there that night—I could tell his height, for the word was written at eye level. He smoked a pipe—the ash and dottle sat unburnt in the fireplace, and he had tapped out his pipe with ease on the mantel, something a smaller man would not have done. The tobacco was an unusual blend of shag. The footprints in the room had, for the most part, been almost obliterated by your men, but there were several clear prints behind the door and by the window. Someone had waited there: a smaller man from his stride, who put his weight on his right leg. On the path outside I had several clear prints, and the different colors of clay on the bootscraper gave me more information: a tall man, who had accompanied the Prince into those rooms, and had, later, walked out. Waiting for them to arrive was the man who had sliced up the Prince so impressively…”
Lestrade made an uncomfortable noise that did not quite become a word.
“I have spent many days retracing the movements of His Highness. I went from gambling hell to brothel to dining den to madhouse looking for our pipe-smoking man and his friend. I made no progress until I thought to check the newspapers of Bohemia, searching for a clue to the Prince’s recent activities there, and in them I learned that an English Theatrical Troupe had been in Prague last month, and had performed before Prince Franz Drago…”
“Good Lord,” I said. “So that Sherry Vernet fellow—”
“Is a Restorationist. Exactly.”
I was shaking my head in wonder at my friend’s intelligence and skills of observation, when there was a knock on the door.