He turned the key of 44 Lamb’s Conduit Street, thinking of his sister-in-law, and most particularly of that little clasp which must be undone to remove her precious necklace.
Imagine, then, his chagrin to step into his hallway and see, through the open doorway of the sitting room, the retired grocer he had described so humorously the night before, sitting bolt upright on the red sofa by the fireplace.
The traveller dropped his case beside the hall-stand, and picked up what mail had accumulated in his short absence. He advanced towards the visitor, flicking through the letters in order to hide his irritation, although he achieved, of course, the opposite effect.
“You’ll excuse me, Sir,” said Percy Buckle, rising from the sofa. “But I felt I should tell you before I acted.”
“What is it, Mr Buckle?”
“I’m sure it is my own fault, Sir, and no one else’s.”
“Mr Buckle, what on earth has happened?”
“I am talking,” said Mr Buckle, whose cheeks were now bearing the badges of his great emotion—florin-sized red spots, one on each cheek—“I am talking about our Jack Maggs. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sir, he has gone mad.”
“Sit down, Mr Buckle. If he is mad I’m sure it is not you who made him so.”
“He knows.”
“Sit. There, I’ll sit too. You’ll excuse me, Mr Buckle, but I have a most pressing engagement. We will need to deal with this matter of yours rather quickly.”
“Now, Sir?”
“Now.”
Mr Buckle then spoke in a voice so low that Tobias Oates had to strain to hear him above the thunder of a passing dray. “He knows we saw his scars.”
“Very well,” said Tobias Oates. “This is not so bad.”
“He is certainly a bolter, Sir, and therefore he thinks it very bad. He reckons himself to be in mortal danger.”
“He has my word: I will keep mum. Tell him that.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Percy Buckle, worrying at the brim of the sealskin hat which was balanced on his knees.
“So,” Tobias said briskly, “that is that.”
“Well, Sir, it is and it isn’t. There is also the kitchen maid. She is also a party to his secret.”
“The maid knows he is a bolter?”
Percy Buckle squeezed his hands together.
“You told the maid?”
“Not a great deal, Mr Oates.”
“And she told him,” asked Tobias, his voice rising, “that you and I had been staring at him with his shirt off?”
“She meant well,” whispered Percy Buckle.
“Very well,” said Tobias Oates. “Your Jack Maggs is concerned . . .”
“Oh, I would not say concerned,” interrupted Mr Buckle.
“What would you say?”
“I would say, he was in a rage.”
“With me. Is that it?”
“He has the maid held hostage, Sir.”
“The maid?”
“He has her locked up in my snuggery. He says it is to stop her gossiping to the servants, but God knows what depravity he practises on her there.”
Tobias Oates looked up, at that moment, and saw the figure of his sister-in-law standing in the open doorway in a long white muslin dress. She smiled at him.
“You are home, Mr Oates.”
“Indeed, Miss Warriner.” He half-rose.
“You will be attending to that clock?”
“Indeed, indeed yes. Very soon.”
She retreated, smiling.
“Now, Mr Buckle.”
“He has taken my sword, Sir,” said Percy Buckle. “He held it against my throat.” And here the little fellow pulled his collar down to show a red bruise on his chicken neck.
Tobias Oates looked at the little grocer and despised him for his broken teeth, his dirty little smile. “Mr Buckle,” he rose, “we should discuss this at greater length this afternoon.”
“He believes that the maid has gossiped to the other servants— Mr Spinks, Mrs Halfstairs, Miss Mott. He ordered me to instruct them to stay indoors.”
Tobias sighed, and sat again. “And you did as you were bid?”
“Mrs Halfstairs is to go to her brother’s tomorrow, and it would cause a great upset if she were stopped. I tried to point this out to Mr Maggs. I cannot cage her. But when I told him this he flew into a rage with me, and that was when he did the damage to my throat. As for the maid, he will not let her out of his sight. She must sit locked in the snuggery, from dawn to . . .” He stopped, and turned away.
“For God’s sake, man, please don’t cry.”
“I’m sorry, Sir. I did not wish to trouble you, but I thought it best I tell you before I went to Bow Street.”
“Bow Street? But you have been harbouring a felon. You cannot go to Bow Street. Are you mad?”
“Well, you was going to call the police yourself.”
“No, no, Mr Buckle. It is too late for that.”
Percy Buckle then began to shake his head like a horse refusing the bridle.
“Then take him, Sir,” he cried. “Please come and take him. Bring him to your house.”
“You undertook to keep him,” said Tobias sternly.
“You can’t make me,” said Percy Buckle.
“Tell me,” Toby smiled, “did you ever have a book dedicated to you, Mr Buckle?”
“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”
“Mr Buckle, please be calm—if you will return to Mr Maggs and tell him I will personally undertake to keep his secret within four walls.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“Tell him I will quarantine the household. Tell him no one will leave or enter. Won’t that make him happy?”
“You’ll lock up my housekeeper? My butler? Sir, with respect, you’re going to make things worse.”
Tobias had no idea how he would do what he was suggesting, but he had unlimited confidence in his ability to do it.
“If you will deliver this message to him, then this book I’m now writing will one day bear your name.”
Mr Buckle paused. “Bear my name?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Where?” cried Tobias incredulously. “Are you bargaining with me, Sir?”
“Why shouldn’t I bargain with you?” cried the tearful grocer. “You have made me break the law.”
“It would be at the front of the book, before the title,” said Tobias Oates more quietly. “It would say ‘To my friend Percy Buckle, a Man of Letters and a Patron of the Arts, without whom this book could not have been written.’ How is that? Is that not handsome?”
“I was christened Percival.”
“Yes, yes, Percival.” Tobias put his hand on the grocer’s bony elbow. “I will come to your house by evening. You tell him that. As for the dedication, I will write it out for you so you may study it. We may discuss the choice of words together.”
Percy Buckle permitted himself to be escorted to the door, then he found himself gently guided out into the street.
Tobias Oates quietly bolted the door after him. Then he walked downstairs to the kitchen and, having confirmed that Mrs Jones had left for market, locked the area door, and hurried up the stairs to Lizzie.
37
MR BUCKLE HAD A shop-keeper’s manners. That is, he usually appeared timid, almost obsequious, yet when he discovered that Jack Maggs, in addition to holding his Good Companion prisoner, had also taken possession of his bureau, he was filled with a fury that was all the more intense for being incommunicable.
He looked down at Mercy, examining her closely for signs of damage, yet, finding none, he was not mollified.
“You take the ottoman,” she said.
“I’ll stand, thank you very much.”
She laid aside her knitting. “I ain’t tired.”
“Sit,” Mr Buckle ordered.
And then, his raw hands folded in front of him, he leaned against the wall and waited for Tobias Oates to make his pr
omised visit.
Soon enough, thank the Lord, the bell did ring. There was a murmur of voices followed by the distant tread of Constable’s feet upon the stairs. As they arrived outside the snuggery, Percy Buckle moved impatiently towards the door but was pushed violently aside by Jack Maggs, who proceeded to interview the footman, while he, the master of the household, was left to stare at his assailant’s sweat-stained back.
Upon hearing that the visitor was a doctor, Maggs let out a curse, then returned to the bureau, a delicate piece of furniture which he nevertheless proceeded to punch with his bare hands.
Mr Buckle felt he had no choice but to pretend this act of violence was not occurring.
“Is it Dr Krone?” he asked his footman.
“No, Sir,” said Constable, and it was to his professional credit that he also displayed not the least reaction to the explosive situation in the snuggery. “It is not Dr Krone. But the gentleman speaks oddly and I did not catch the name.”
“Then I’m not at home to . . .”
“See him,” interrupted Jack Maggs. “We don’t want no one thinking anything is up.”
“See him?” Mr Buckle’s voice had risen almost to a screech. “You are in such a panic lest anybody talks to anybody. Why should I see him?”
The convict ignored Mr Buckle and addressed Constable instead. “You go with him. See no one gives the game away.”
Said Mr Buckle, “Constable is to stay here with Mercy.”
“Go with your master,” Maggs continued. “See there’s nothing said about Jack Maggs.”
To this vexing exchange, Mercy Larkin pretended not to listen. Mr Buckle, however, saw through his Good Companion’s counterfeit, and when he saw how she affected such great concentration on her pearl and plain, he understood she was ashamed for him. He left the room with Constable, feeling angry and humiliated.
His visitor turned out to be a very strange one: a portly gentleman in a Regency frock-coat who stood with his back to the empty fireplace, his legs apart, holding a great leather bag against his stomach.
The master of the household advanced with his hand outstretched. “Percy Buckle Esquire at your service.”
“Send him out.”
“I beg pardon, Sir?”
“The servant. Out.”
“Perhaps I might be . . .”
“Out, out,” the doctor cried, making shushing movements with his hands while Constable took long careful steps backwards like an odd and long-legged marsh bird.
“Now look here,” cried Percy Buckle, who was by now tired of being pushed about by others. “I take this very ill.”
“Ill?” The doctor poked him in the ribs with a short square finger. “I’ll give you ill, Sir. There is Contagion in Great Queen Street and I am here to have you act with the greatest expediency to avert a catastrophe for all concerned.”
38
A SHORT TIME LATER, Edward Constable was recalled to the sitting room. Now only two candles were burning where before there had been six. These candles being at the far end of the room, by the curtained window, the room was now so very gloomy that the footman could barely see the visitor at all. Then, from the murky shadows of the master’s wing-back chair, came a foreign wheeze.
“Ah there you are, fellow. Now bring me a nice wedge of Cheshire and a glass of port.”
“I’m not sure we have Cheshire, Sir.” The candle light made the peculiar visitor’s skin look smooth and waxy, like an effigy. “We do have a very good double Gloucester.”
“Is this fellow your only footman, Mr Belt?”
“Buckle, Sir.” The master rose from the gloom of his own adjacent chair.
Oh please, Sir, do not stand for him.
“Mr Buckle, is this the only footman?”
Sit. Sit, Mr Buckle.
“No. I have a pair.”
“Then send me the other,” cried the doctor. “I don’t like this one at all.”
“Oh no. We don’t need to push it quite so hard.”
“Send him to me. I’ll have to see them all in any case.”
Constable had already stood for a quarter of an hour with his ear pressed very tight upon the drawing-room door, but all to no avail. So although he now did what he was bid, and called Mr Maggs to stand attendance in the sitting room, he could not explain the nature of the doctor’s business.
“It smells fishy,” said Mercy. “When he has you there, Eddie, why would he want Mr Maggs?”
“He is what they call ‘eccentric’: meaning he is rich and has no manners.”
Maggs turned to Constable. “Go look in the street.”
“What would I look for?”
“Go look in the damned street. See who’s lurking.”
“Would it be too much of an imposition,” asked Constable, feeling his voice tight inside his nervous throat, “for you to say please?”
The convict turned his hard and private eyes upon him.
“Please,” he said.
Constable looked for evidence of mockery. Satisfied there was none, he went out into the drizzling night where he discovered nothing more than a passing whore with a cane basket and a boy with a lantern holding a horse. He returned to the house, and tip-toed past the drawing room. On the stairs he found Jack Maggs in the process of hiding a rough-looking dagger in his boot.
While Constable described what he had seen outside, Jack Maggs listened intently, his jaw set hard, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his brow.
“Very well,” said he abruptly. He returned to the snuggery, where he took the sheaf of papers from his master’s desk, rolled them up and tied them with a ribbon. He slid these papers into an inside pocket.
“If ’twere done,” he said, “ ’twere best done quickly.”
Mercy began to plead not to be locked up again. She spat in her palm and crossed her heart; she swore she would die before she betrayed him.
Consequently the two footmen came down the stairs two steps at a time, leaving Mercy Larkin in the unlocked snuggery. As they entered the gloomy sitting room, Constable’s heart was beating very fast. He recognized a tangled skein of shadow—the doctor—rise out of the wing-back chair. The doctor held his hand out to Jack Maggs. There was a flash of silver.
“Come, man, put out your tongue.”
“Why would I do a thing like that, Sir?”
The doctor held a silver instrument high in the air. “Because,” he cried, “there is Contagion in the house.”
Maggs took the doctor’s wrist, and thereby wrung from him a high and sudden cry of pain. A metal instrument clattered to the floor.
“Jack Maggs,” cried Buckle, fluttering around the two men. “Jack Maggs, I order you.”
But what he “ordered” he did not say, and now Jack Maggs was dragging the doctor, squirming and flapping like a great fat-bellied moth, into the far corner of the drawing room.
“God save me!” cried the visitor.
Jack Maggs manacled both the surgeon’s wrists with his left hand, thus freeing his right hand to pick up one of the two remaining candles. He then forced the visitor down to the floor.
“You bleeding dromedary! I’ll rip your bleeding throat out.”
“Stop at once,” wailed Percy Buckle. “It is Mr Oates.”
Constable turned expectantly towards the doorway but was puzzled to find it empty.
Maggs held the candle close upon the fellow’s upturned face and there revealed: grease and powder, a kneeling Tobias Oates staring wide-eyed at the light. “I know the dog,” he snarled.
“Listen to me, man,” cried Percy Buckle urgently, and while the big man maintained his hold of the terrified doctor, the master whispered into his ear.
39
JACK MAGGS FOLLOWED the doctor to the kitchen, where he watched him conduct a lesson in the correct way to wash the hands. One after another Sir Spencer Spence made the servants and their master follow his example; no one was pardoned from this exercise. When Mr Spinks claimed exemption, the doctor lashed him with
such irascibility that the old man began to tremble.
Finally, when the butler’s hands were washed and dried to the doctor’s satisfaction, the latter set a large black bag upon the deal table. Opening it, he took out a long object which, when its wrapping of black velvet was removed, turned out to be a cruel serrated knife.
“Oh dearie,” said Miss Mott.
The doctor then produced a second instrument with a long curling tail like a corkscrew. He toyed with this while he spoke of the “organ of secretion” and how it changed its colour when weakened by Contagion. The organ, he said, as a consequence, became large and flatulent like a great blue balloon, and he held the corkscrew as if intending to puncture everybody immediately. Finally, to the relief of all, both implements were put away.
But the ordeal was by no means over, as the doctor now announced that he would examine the members of the household individually, inside the scullery.
Although the scullery curtain was drawn, those who waited in the kitchen could hear every scrape and rustle. Mrs Halfstairs was first. Next was Mr Spinks. One by one, the victims coughed, gagged, and spat into a little silver bowl. They walked out of the scullery with hot cheeks and downcast eyes.
Jack Maggs was last of all. Entering the tight little alcove, he knew the power of Tobias Oates to be greater than he had suspected. This doctor, with his twisted red mouth and wild bright eyes, was incredible, ridiculous, and yet he existed, given life by some violent magic in his creator’s heart. The jerky little writer was thus made invisible. A glaring demon had taken his place, and this being took Jack’s jaw in its dry square hands and made as if to thrust a metal spatula down his throat.