The Fiend in Human (27 page)

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Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human
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Outside Plant’s Inn
The key to manoeuvring while drunk is to choose one’s points of support, for a set of legs which serve reasonably well in motion can buckle of a sudden when called upon to remain upright and still at the same time. Therefore it is well to have a lamp-post or other stable object on hand at the right moment. By this rule of hand, or foot, Whitty totters down Tudor Street to Bouverie Lane on his way to the Strand, the most convenient throughway for locating a cab at this time of night.
Ryan or no Ryan, Chokee Bill is still at work – unless there are several Chokee Bills, an original and his imitators. That is the problem with whores – they provide opportunity and cover for any mimic with the desire to murder a woman.
Whoever Chokee Bill is, he is not William Ryan. This much seems certain …
Where am I?
Whitty embraces a lamp-post, the better to regain his bearings, his sense of what is vertical and what is horizontal and what is in between.
Bracing himself in an upright position, he pushes firmly on the lamp-post, thereby securing sufficient forward momentum to propel his body down the street, while his feet move beneath him as though walking, as far as the succeeding lamp-post – to which he clings with the crook of one arm as though embracing a tall, narrow-shouldered acquaintance.
He covers an eye to avoid seeing double. He is at a doorway, at the end of a series of vaults called the Adelphi Arches, a succession of subterranean chambers leading through the embankment to the Strand. He remembers this doorway, for it was once the back exit of a notorious coffee- and gambling-house, where visitors were befriended by thieves, blacklegs and prostitutes, then swindled, drugged, thrown from the rear door into the darkness, and left to find their way home as best they could.
Whitty’s recollection is distracted by the exclamations of a woman near the river, which echo off the stones. Curious, he stumbles down the embankment into what appears to be a stable, where the outspoken female, seated on the steps of a wagon, is engaged in an altercation with
a cab owner – several of his vehicles are lying about – whom she claims to be her husband.
Notes the cab owner: ‘Yer were common when ah met yer, lying as what you was, and is since the most drunken slut-hag what is possible to meet.’
Whereupon the woman brandishes something in his face made of paper, going so far as to slap his cheeks with what she triumphantly claims to be her marriage-lines.
Aware of the presence of a spectator, the womanly combatant turns abruptly to the correspondent: ‘It don’t matter if I were one of Lot’s daughters afore. I don’t say I wasn’t. But I’m his wife now, and this ’ere is what licks ‘em.’
Man and wife produce flasks of gin and toast their future together, reminding Whitty of the nostrum:
When drunk a Frenchman chatters; a German sleeps; an Englishman fights.
He staggers onward, for to obtain a cab at this location is impossible. He is about to proceed back up the embankment when a coach slows on the road beside him, then comes to a halt. Perhaps it is black, or perhaps it is dark blue. In either case, Whitty is not aware of having signalled for transportation.
He gazes up at the driver, who is indistinct; Whitty’s lips are somewhat numb, rendering his consonants indistinct.
‘Ah good, my man. Evening to you. Most appreciated.’
‘Evening, Guv. Where to, then?’
Whitty’s right foot paws the step in an attempt to gain purchase. ‘To Camden Town, Sir, that sour, frigid bitch of a community. Be in no haste, for I believe I shall avail myself of a brief nap.’
His foot finding the step at last, he propels himself in one motion, head first, into the open doorway of the carriage – where two men await. Or perhaps it is four. And a boot comes down. When he lifts his hand to his eye, the finger is bent in an unnatural direction.
The driver cracks his whip with an automatic flick of the wrist, and the carriage continues to Fleet Street and the Strand, thence to Piccadilly, to Regent Street, to Portland Place, around the park and back again, while the two gentlemen, or perhaps it is four, hammer the correspondent’s flesh by means of neddies – or rather, two types of neddy, one a traditional cosh, the other a short metal bar with a welded knob. Each weapon is designed for work at close quarters, in which the leverage of elbow and wrist can break a rib; such efficiency would cost many lives were it not for the stiff hats worn by fashionable gentlemen.
In Whitty’s case, though their intention is not to kill, his assailants are comfortable with that eventuality, and desist only when they are tired, at which point the victim’s injuries include broken ribs, nose, teeth, some internal injuries, and a broken finger.
Having been thus serviced, Whitty is thrown headlong from the swiftly moving carriage, to skip along the cobblestones as far as a trash heap near Plant’s, minus his hat, there to be examined by an emaciated black cat. A woman atop the rubbish heap with a clay pipe in her mouth straightens up to examine the correspondent … no, that is not so. She is looking at the cat, mumbling to herself that there walks two pounds of meat.
His life has been not a bad one on the whole, thinks the correspondent, who closes his eyes and surrenders to whatever lies beyond. A merciful end, really. God bless the drink: even during the worst of it, he did not feel a thing.
WHITTY, J’ACCUSE
by
Alasdair Fraser, Senior Correspondent
Dodd’s
Following the escape of the Fiend in Human Form known colloquially as Chokee Bill, the incitement of the public continues unabated, not least as a result of the efforts of one Edmund Whitty, who marks upon the pages of a rickety, tottering weekly, notorious as the most corrupt, profligate, contemptible publication that was ever palmed upon any community, the aforementioned gentleman’s most recent outrage being to induce the distinct, if wholly unfounded, impression that a person or persons other than William Ryan perpetrated five foul murders, and has murdered since.
One expects a measure of credulity from the great unwashed, and a measure of cynicism from the lower orders of journalism. However, when members of the House begin to take such piffle seriously, when such inflammatory ramblings o’ertop the considered verdict of a court of British Justice in the minds of serious men, then it is time to cry, ‘Enough!’
Much has been written about the obvious danger of excessive free speech, when it takes the form of a cry of ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. It is no small achievement on Mr Whitty’s part to have joined that cautionary exemplar in illustrating the criminal perversion of a founding principle of English civilization – to wit, the deliberate spreading of false news, with the object of furthering a nefarious agenda, to sell newspapers at any cost. For this much is true: that a false report can prove as
murderous as the deed it professes to discover.
Whitty,
j’accuse
.
Decent Londoners accord to the police the most admirable tenacity in working toward the arrest of Mr Ryan. English justice pursues its quarry with steps swift and sure. Although deeds of violence may be concocted with the greatest premeditation, they cannot for long escape.
The law and its officers have conferred a high benefit upon society, not merely in punishing present offenders, but in deterring others from committing such crimes in future. It is a duty far higher and more important than anything conferred by the organ on whose pages Mr Whitty sows public doubt as to the folly of crime and the justice of punishment.
We trust the esteemed proprietor of
The Falcon
will not permit the charade to continue. We trust that Mr Whitty will not pursue such vital and delicate public issues, lest modern journalism eclipse middle-age witchcraft in the atrocity of its superstition, and the cruelty of its ignorance.
For Whitty’s writings prove his creed,
That men who write should never read,
Just as Whitty thinks it bosh
That men who write should ever wash.
The Falcon
Algernon Sala adjusts his monocle, turns to his sub-editor and sighs: nights of shuddering pessimism, not a wink of sleep, nothing but bleak projections ahead, all causes doomed. No man on earth can have this effect upon him the way Whitty can.
‘Dinsmore, I am worried.’
Sweet music to the ears of the sub-editor, who lowers his copy of
Dodd’s
with an expression of sympathy upon his face: ‘Indeed, Sir. I should be worried sick were I in your place.’
‘Fraser has got off a good crack. A good crack indeed. Edmund will need to advance a compelling piece of rhetoric to top a crack like that.’
‘A most ominous indication, that we have not heard from Mr Whitty in nearly a week.’ Dinsmore adopts an expression of worry, while planning his own future.
Sala lights a cigar, ignoring the stub burning in the tray. ‘Mr Whitty will respond decisively and at any moment.’
‘Your loyalty is most gratifying.’
‘We Oxford men stick together.’
‘That is generous of you, Algernon. For it is well known that the man was sent down in disgrace. His intemperate habits got the better of him, I expect.’
‘Not a bit of it. Damned promising fellow, won the Boulton Scholarship – Christ Church, you know. Some expected him to end up in the clergy if that is plausible.’
‘It is not.’
‘In any event, the question became moot when he published a lampoon portraying the Archdeacon in inappropriate situations involving choirboys. Under a pseudonym to be sure, but of course it all came out.’
‘And for concocting a piece of satire he was sent down? That seems hard.’
‘The deuce of it was, every word of it was true.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘That is the thing of it, you see. Whatever else, Whitty is an honest man, in his fashion.’
‘He is a fool.’
‘That too. And it is not unreasonable to call Whitty a wastrel and a reprobate – but a charge of endangering the public by concocting lies? This must be rebutted with vigour.’
‘Yet what rebuttal can there be?’
‘Indeed. And there is another worrying development, Dinsmore. I have in my hand a note from the proprietor. He asks for a casual meeting in precisely an hour and a half.’
‘Concerning Mr Whitty?’ Dinsmore’s plump little hands are folded on the desk before him as though in prayer.
‘It is no laughing matter,’ continues Sala, who thought he heard someone snicker.
Mr Henry Ingram of Broombridge & Paternoster Row, with an office in the Temple and rooms on Pall Mall, is a small party with sharp features, bright eyes and a hatchet-like demeanour designed to indicate that all decisions are final. His clothes fit him ill; he wears a white beaver hat with a long nap, like a farmer, and an incongruous, patterned silk
cache-nez.
Although spectacles lend him a studious air (provided one ignores the hat), he has no claim to education, for which commodity he turns to his secretary, Mr Lemon, a well-built man of thirty with a Cambridge pedigree, an epicene manner and an air of unctuous adroitness – which, in Sala’s opinion, renders him extremely dangerous. The Editor suspects that Lemon, in moments of repose, looks fondly at the prospect of an editorship should Sala fail. Which, if Dinsmore has anything to offer, he will.
The proprietor drums his fingers upon his desk in an attitude of purse-lipped concern, as though examining the future in its buffed reflection. Mr Lemon looms over Ingram’s shoulder in an attitude of benign stewardship, like the doctor of a wealthy patient in precarious health.
Sala stands on the rug like a man in the dock. Nobody invites him to be seated, and three empty chairs in sight.
The proprietor speaks without glancing up, the inference being that when he does favour the Editor with a look, it will cut to the quick and render the final verdict. Any Temple bully with a capacious purse can command an influential journal, and thereby purchase a degree of respect for the cut of his mind.
Sala is to receive a lesson in journalism. The little shite has read newspapers, knows his own likes and dislikes, can describe successful papers he has perused; and such is the traditional relationship between
editor and proprietor that the latter’s judgements, informed or not, hold sway on any topic known to man.
Here resides the real power of money and the supremacy of business in modern life – that the market-place of ideas is controlled by cunning idiots who have read little and learned less, who experience the city, the country, the empire, the universe, as a series of conveyances, luxurious rooms, and conversations with gentlemen as ignorant as themselves.
The little shite finally makes eye-contact with the Editor.
‘Dodd’s
has made an ass of your friend Mr Whitty, Sir. How do you intend to bring the ship back on an even keel?’
Adds Lemon: ‘What Mr Ingram means to say, is that this will not do.’
The Editor heaves a deep, inward sigh.
‘Exactly,’ agrees Ingram. ‘It will not do.’
On the word do, Ingram stabs his forefinger on to the desk, breaking a fingernail in doing so. Curiously, he does not appear to notice. This is the sort of occurrence that haunts the Editor’s days and nights with the suspicion that Ingram is but a Punch puppet, that the hand of Lemon, the secretary, is firmly stuffed into the back of little shite’s head.
Lemon wishes him ill. Lemon wants Sala’s head on a spike above Temple Bar.
‘Gentlemen,’ counters the Editor, ‘I am pleased to report that circulation on the current issue is up by half. Only Mr Whitty can account for this result.’
‘My good chap.’ Lemon speaks as though addressing a public school dolt. ‘Advertising is down. Please do remember that, at only a penny an issue from the reader, the advertiser is the key to our future. When the advertiser worries,
The Falcon
worries. And we expect you to worry as well.’
Sala would like to leap at Lemon’s throat with his penknife and slit it like an envelope.
The proprietor nods vigorously. ‘Saw Atchison at the club – the clothier, good for a quarter-page as you know. “Deuced business,” says he. “Never thought Broombridge & Paternoster Row would put the business of the city in jeopardy for the sake of a sensation.” ’
‘What Mr Ingram means to say is that Broombridge & Paternoster Row has a reputation which must be sustained by its subsidiary holdings. This is your editorial responsibility.’
‘Just so,’ agrees Ingram. ‘At all costs we must have editorial responsibility.’
Sala sighs anew, for he understands the mathematics involved: only if sales to the public equal or better lost advertising revenue, may he continue. For any hope of this, the Editor can only rely upon Whitty. But where is he? Where?
Sala reassures the little shite with a confidence he does not feel, hinting darkly of a matter of privileged information that does not exist. Our correspondent is onto a piece of crisp copy that will galvanize London and, of necessity, attract advertisers to the paper in unprecedented numbers.
‘Of course we trust in your judgement,’ says Lemon, indicating that Sala may choose the noose by which to hang himself.
‘I appreciate your confidence, Gentlemen.’
‘Of course you do, Algernon,’ replies Lemon.
‘Quite,’ agrees the little shite, returning to an examination of the desk-top. ‘Good-day, Algernon.’
‘Quite,’ agrees Sala, smarting at the use of his Christian name.

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