“There’s four pennies more to my own modest coffers,” said Sal as she returned to our small circle of red light near the lantern. “Yahee, you should well know, ’Ib, is more nor eighty years old and been a’smoking the opium through sixty nor more of those years. It’s true ’e don’t sleep, but ’e’s wonderfully ’ealthy and clean. In the morning, after a night o’ smoking, ’e buys his own rice and fish and vegetables, but only after a’scrubbin’ and a’cleanin’ ’is house out and own person off. Sixty years o’ opium, and never a sick day. Ol’ Yahee ’as smoked his way ’ealthy through the last four London Fevers while those arounst ’im were fallin’ like flies, and…”
“Enough,” commanded Hatchery, silencing the crone. “The gentleman’s going to ask you a few questions now, Sal… and if you value this rat hole you call a ’ome and business and don’t want to see it shut down around your poxy ears, then by God you had better answer quick and honest.”
She squinted at us.
“Madam,” said Dickens, his tone as easy and cordial as if he were addressing a lady visitor to his parlour, “we are seeking out an individual named Drood. We know that he used to patronise your… ah… establishment. Could you tell us, please, where we might find him now?”
I saw the shock and sobriety hit the opiated woman as surely as if Dickens had thrown a bucket of freezing water on her. Her eyes widened for a few seconds, then closed in an even more narrow and suspicious squint. “Drood? I don’t know no Drood.…”
Hatchery smiled and prodded her harder with his stick. “That won’t wash, Sal. We know he was a customer ’ere.”
“Who says?” hissed the crone. A dying candle on the floor extended her hiss.
Hatchery smiled again but also prodded her again. The club pressed against her skeletal arm, harder this time.
“Mother Abdallah and Booboo both told me that they’ve seen someone you called Drood ’ere in years past… a white man, missing fingers, strange accent. Said he used to be a regular of yours. He smells of rotting meat, Mother Abdallah told me,” said the detective.
Sal attempted a laugh but it came out only as a wheezing rattle. “Mother Abdallah’s a crazy bitch. Booboo’s a lying Chinaman.”
“It may be.” Hatchery smiled. “But no more crazy nor lyin’ than you, my Puffer Princess. Somebody named Drood has been ’ere and you know it and you’ll tell us.” Still smiling, he brought the end of the weighted baton down on her long but arthritis-gnarled fingers.
Sal howled. Two heaps of rags in a corner began dragging themselves and their opium pipes into another room where the noise, should someone be murdered, would not disturb their dreams.
Dickens removed several shillings from his purse and jingled them in his palm. “Telling us everything you know about Mr Drood shall be to your advantage, madam.”
“And you’ll spend a few nights—maybe weeks—not just in my station cell but in the dankest pit in Newgate if you don’t tell us,” added Hatchery.
The impact of that struck me on a level that could not affect Dickens. I tried to imagine a few nights, much less weeks, without my laudanum. This woman obviously ingested much more of the pure opium than I ever had. My own bones ached at the mere idea of being deprived of my medicine.
There were real tears in the Puffer Princess’s watery eyes now. “All right, all right, leave off wi’ the bludgeonings and threatenings, ’Ib. I’ve always done right by you, ain’t I? I’ve always paid up when pay-up was due, ain’t I? ’Aven’t I always…”
“Tell the gentlemen about this Drood and shut your gob about anything else,” Hatchery said in his most quiet and threatening voice. He laid the length of his club along her quivering forearm.
“When did you know this Drood?” asked Dickens.
“Up to about a year ago,” breathed the Puffer Princess. “’E don’t come around no more.”
“Where does he live, madam?”
“I don’t knows. I swears I don’t knows. Chow Chee John Potter brought this Drood bird in for the first time about eight… maybe nine years ago. They smoked prodigious amounts of the product, they did. Drood always paid in gold sovereigns, so ’is credit was pure gold and all paid up for the sweet future, as it were. He never sung or shouted like the others… there, you ’ear one now in t’other room… ’e just smoked and sat there and looked at me. And looked at the others. Sometimes ’e’d leave first, long before t’others, sometimes ’e’d be the last t’leave.”
“Who is this Chow Chee John Potter?” asked Dickens.
“Jack’s dead,” she said. “He was an ol’ Chinee ship’s cook who had the Christian name ’cause he’d been christened, but he was never right in ’is head, sir. ’E was like a sweet child, ’e was… only a mean, vicious child if he drank rum. But never mean just from smokin’. No.”
“This Chow Chee was a friend of Drood’s?” asked Dickens.
Old Sal rattled another laugh. It sounded as if her lungs were almost gone from the smoke or consumption or both.
“Drood—if that was ’is name—didn’t have no friends, sir. Everyone was afraid of ’im. Even Chow Chee.”
“But the first time you saw him here—Drood—he came in with Chow Chee?”
“Aye, sir, he come with ’im, but I suspect that ’e’d just run into old Jack and had the old pleasant idiot show ’im the way to the nearest opium house. Jack would’ve done that for a kind word, much less for a shillin’.”
“Does Drood live around here?” asked Dickens.
Sal started to laugh again but then started coughing. The terrible noise went on for what seemed like an endless amount of time. Finally she gasped and said, “Live ’round ’ere? ’Round New Court or Bluegate Fields or the docks or Whitechapel? Nossir. No chance of that, sir.”
“Why not?” asked Dickens.
“We would’ve known, gov’ner,” rasped the woman. “Someone like Drood would’ve scared every man, woman, and child in Whitechapel and London and Shadwell. We all would’ve left town.”
“Why?” asked Dickens.
“Because of his Story,” hissed the crone. “His true and awful Story.”
“Tell us his story,” said Dickens.
She hesitated.
Hatchery ran the edge of his club up the outside of her arm and lightly rapped her on her bony elbow.
After her howling stopped, she told the story as she had heard it from the late Chow Chee John Potter, another opium dealer named Yahee, and yet another user named Lascar Emma.
“Drood’s not new to these ’ere parts; them what knows says ’e’s been a’haunting these neighbourhoods for forty years and more.…”
I interrupted with “What is this Mr Drood’s Christian name, woman?”
Hatchery and Dickens both scowled at me. I blinked and stepped back. It was the only question I was to ask the Puffer Princess that night.
Sal scowled at me as well. “Christian name? Drood ain’t got no Christian name. He ain’t no Christian and never was. It’s just Drood. That’s part of his Story. Do you want me to tell it or don’t you?”
I nodded, feeling the blush heat the skin between the lower rim of my spectacles and the beginnings of my beard.
“Drood’s just Drood,” repeated Old Sal. “Word from Lascar Emma was that Drood was a sailor once. Yahee, who’s older than Mother Abdallah and dirt combined, says he wasn’t no sailor, just a passenger on a sailing ship that come here long ago. Maybe sixty years ago—maybe a hundred. But them all agreed that Drood come from Egypt.…”
I saw Dickens and the huge detective exchange glances, as if the crone’s words were confirming something they already knew or suspected.
“’E was an Egyptian, and dark-skinned as all of ’is damned-to-hell Mohammadan race,” continued Sal. “Word was that ’e had ’air then, too, black as pitch. Some says ’e was handsome. But ’e was always an opium man. As soon’s ’e set foot on English soil, they says, ’e was puffing at the blue bottle pipe.
“First ’e spent all the m
oney ’e had on it—thousands of pounds, if the story is true. He must’ve come from royalty there in Mohammadan Egypt. At the very least, ’e come from money. Or come by it some’ow shady. Chin Chin the Chinaman, the old Chinee dealer in the West End, stole Drood blind, charging him ten, twenty, fifty times what ’e charged ’is reg’lar customers. Then, when ’is own money runned out, Drood tried to work for the money—sweepin’ at crossin’s and doin’ magic tricks for the gents and ladies up at Falcon Square—but ’onest-come-by money didn’t buy ’im enough. It never does. So the ’gyptian became a cut-purse and then a cut-throat, robbin’ and a’killin’ sailors near the docks. That kept ’im in Chin Chin’s good graces and guaranteed the ’ighest-quality smoke, bought by the Chinaman from Johnny Chang’s establishment up at the London and Saint Katharine Coffee-’ouse on Ratcliff ’ighway.
“Drood gathered ’round him some others—most ’gyptians, some Malays, some Lascars, some free niggers off the ships, some dirty Irish, some mean Germans—but mostly, as I say, other ’gyptians. They’ve themselves sort of a religion and they live and worship in the old Undertown.…”
Not understanding but afraid of interrupting again, I looked first at Dickens and then at Hatchery. Both men shook their heads and shrugged.
“One day, or night it were, maybe twenty year ago,” continued Sal, “Drood went to waylay and sap a sailor; some say ’is name was Finn, but this Finn waren’t as drunk as ’e seemed nor as easy a target as Drood thought. The ’gyptian Drood used a skinning knife for ’is dark work—or maybe it was one of them curvy bonin’ knives you see up at them Whitechapel butchers, what with their cry of ‘prime and nobby jintes for to-morrer’s dinner at nine-a-half, and no bone to speak of’… and it was true, gentlemen and Constable ’Ib, that when Drood was a’finished with ’em on the docks, there was money for smoke in ’is purse and no bone to speak of for the sailor whose ’ollowed-out corpse was then dumped like so many fish guts into the Thames.…”
There came a low moaning from one of the adjoining rooms. I felt the hair on my neck rise, but this other-worldly moaning was no response to Old Sal’s story. Just a customer with a pipe in need of a refill. The crone ignored the moaning and so did her rapt audience of three.
“Not this night twenty years ago,” she said. “Finn—if Finn was ’is name—wasn’t no regular customer for Drood’s blade; ’e got Drood’s arm before it done ’im harm and then he got the bonin’ knife, or skinnin’ knife, whichever, and cut off the ’gyptian’s nose. Then ’e cut ’is would-be murderer open from crotch to collarbone, ’e did. Oh, Finn knew ’ow to wield a knife from his years ’afore the mast, is how ol’ Lascar Emma tells it. Drood, all slashed but still alive, yells no, no, mercy, no, and Finn cuts the blackguard’s tongue out of his mouth. Then ’e cuts off the heathen’s privy parts and offers to place ’em where the missin’ tongue had been. And then ’e done what ’e offered.”
I realised that I was blinking rapidly and breathing shallowly. I had never heard a woman talk this way. One glance towards Dickens told me that the Inimitable was equally enthralled by the tale and the teller.
“So finally,” continued Sal, “this Finn—this sailor by any other name who knew ’is knife-work—cuts Drood’s ’eart out of ’is chest and dumps the ’gyptian’s dead body into the river from a dock not a mile from this ’ouse. So ’elp me God, gentlemen.”
“But wait,” interrupted Dickens. “This occurred more than twenty years ago? You said earlier that Drood was your customer here for seven or eight years, up until about a year ago. Are you so dazed with the drug that you are forgetting your own lies?”
The Puffer Princess squinted evilly at Dickens and showed her clawed fingers and arched her bowed back while her wild hair seemed to stick out farther from her head and for a minute I was certain that she was transmogrifying into a cat and would begin spitting and clawing within another second or two.
Instead, she hissed—“Drood’s dead is what I been tellin’ you. Been dead since ’e was carved and tossed into the Thames by the sailor nigh onto twenty year ago. But ’is band, ’is group, ’is followers, ’is co-religionists—them other ’gyptians, Malays, Lascars, Irishmen, Germans, Hindoos—they fished ’is rotting, bloated corpse out of the river some days after ’is murder and did their heathen ritules and brought Drood back to life again. Lascar Emma says it was down in Undertown, where ’e dwells to this day. Old Yahee, who knew Drood when ’e was alive, ’e says the restorrection was over across the river in the mountains o’ ’orse and ’uman shit what you gentlemen so politely call ‘dust ’eaps.’ But wherever they done it, ’owever they done it, they brought Drood back.”
I glanced at Dickens. There was something both thrilled and mischievous in the author’s eye. I may have mentioned earlier that Charles Dickens was not the man one wants to stand next to at a funeral service—the boy in the man could not resist a smile at the least appropriate time, a meaningful glance, a wink. Sometimes I thought that Charles Dickens would laugh at anything, sacred or profane. I was afraid that he would start laughing now. I say I was afraid that he would start laughing, not just because of the embarrassment of the situation, but because I had the most uncanny certainty at that moment that the entire opium den around us, all the poor wretches buried in rags and secreted in corners and hidden under blankets and draped on pillows, in all three filthy, dark rooms there, were listening with all of the attention that their drug-addled minds could command.
I was afraid that if Dickens started laughing, these creatures—Old Sal first among them, fully changed into a huge cat—would leap upon us and rend us limb from limb. Even huge Hatchery, I was sure in that instant of my fear, could not save us if it came to that.
Instead of laughing, Dickens handed the crone three gold sovereigns, setting the coins gently in her filthy yellow palm and closing her curled and twisted fingers around them. He said softly, “Where can we find Drood now, my good woman?”
“In the Undertown,” she whispered, clutching the coins with both hands. “Down in the deepest parts of Undertown. Down where the Chinee named King Lazaree provides Drood and t’others the purest pure opium in the world. Down in Undertown with the other dead things.”
Dickens gestured and we followed him out of the smoke-filled room and onto the narrow, dark landing.
“Detective Hatchery,” said the writer, “have you heard of this subterranean Chinese opium dealer named King Lazaree?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know of this Undertown that Sal talks about with such trepidation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it within walking distance?”
“The entrance is, yes, sir.”
“Will you take us there?”
“To the entrance, yes, sir.”
“Will you go with us into this… Undertown… and continue being Virgil to our questing Dantes?”
“Are you asking if I’ll take you down into Undertown, Mr Dickens?”
“That I am, Inspector,” Dickens said almost gleefully. “That I am. For twice the rate we agreed upon, of course, since this is twice the adventure.”
“No, sir, I won’t.”
I could see Dickens blinking in amazement. He raised his stick and tapped the giant gently on the chest with the brass bird’s beak. “Come, come now, Detective Hatchery. All joking aside. For three times our agreed-upon sum, will you show Mr Collins and me to this and into this tantalising Undertown? Lead us to Lazaree and Drood?”
“No, sir, I won’t,” Hatchery said. His voice sounded ragged, as if the opium smoke had affected it. “I won’t go into Undertown under any circumstances. That’s my final word on that, sir. And I would beg you, if you value your souls and sanity, not to go down there yourselves.”
Dickens nodded as if considering this advice. “But you will show us the… what did you call it?… the entrance to Undertown.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hatchery. His low words came out like someone tearing thick paper. “I will sho
w you… regretfully.”
“That’s good enough, Detective,” said Dickens, taking the lead down the dark stairway. “That’s fair and more than good enough. It is past midnight, but the night is young. Wilkie and I will press on—and down—by ourselves.”
The huge detective lumbered down the steps behind Dickens. It took me a minute to follow. The dense opium smoke in the closed room must have affected my nerves or muscles below the waist, because my legs felt heavy, leaden, unresponsive. In quite literal terms, I could not force my legs and feet to take the first step on the stairs.
Then, tingling and hurting all over as a limb does after falling asleep unbeknownst to its owner, I was able to take that first clumsy step down. I had to rely on my walking stick to keep my balance.
“Are you coming, Wilkie?” came Dickens’s accursedly excited voice up the black stairwell.
“Yes!” I called down, adding a silent God d—— n your eyes. “I’m coming, Dickens.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Imust pause in my narrative here for a moment, Dear Reader, to explain how and why I had chosen to follow Charles Dickens into absurd and dangerous situations before this. There was the time, for instance, when I followed him up Mount Vesuvius. And the more serious incident in Cumberland, where he almost got me killed on Carrick Fell.
Vesuvius was just one of the minor adventures of the 1853 trip around Europe which Dickens and I shared with Augustus Egg. Strictly speaking, there were only two bachelors in that three-man travelling party, and both were younger than the Inimitable, but Dickens certainly acted as carefree and boyish as any young bachelor with the majority of his life and career ahead of him as we gambolled about Europe that autumn and winter. Visiting most of Dickens’s old haunts on the Continent, we eventually headed for Lausanne, where the author’s eccentric old friend Reverend Chauncey Hare Town-shend lectured us on ghosts, jewelry, and—one of Dickens’s favourite topics—mesmerism, and then we were off to Chamonix and climbing the Mer de Glace, where we looked down into glacial crevasses a thousand feet deep. In Naples, which I had hoped would be a respite from all the adventure, Dickens immediately insisted that we climb Vesuvius.