Matthew followed this jab with, “I presume Rosabella told you where to find him? Madam Candoleri said she was very impressed with this room.”
After a silence, the professor said, “You do get around, don’t you? The problem-solver at work? My providence rider still astride his dead steed? It did you proud to destroy my house and my work on Pendulum Island, didn’t it? Destroyed my heritage, is what you did.”
“I think I just stopped you from destroying many thousands of English men and women with that gunpowder,” Matthew answered. “Your house and heritage happened to be in the way.”
His face clouded, the professor started to say something but then stopped himself. He nodded, his gaze on a vacant distance. He rose smoothly from his chair, went to one of the walls and tugged a bellpull twice. From the hallway beyond the closed door came the double sound of the bell. Then he returned to his chair, opened a drawer of his desk and drew out several items: a saucer, a knife with a hawkbill-shaped serrated blade, a small white card, a piece of blue cloth and finally a little glass vial containing an inch-depth of what appeared to be blood.
“I want you to witness this,” said the professor. He spent a moment using the hooked blade to scrape away wax that gave the vial’s stopper an air-tight seal. Then he put the knife aside and from the opened vial poured just a dab of blood onto the saucer.
Matthew knew full well what he was witnessing. Professor Fell was about to create a blood card, his vow of death to whomever received it.
Fell pressed the index finger of his right hand into the blood. The finger then pressed upon the card. Fell wiped his finger clean with the cloth and then held the card up with its bloody print for Matthew’s approval. “Like it?” he asked.
“Seen one, seen them all,” said Matthew.
“True, but the person to whom this is being sent has never seen one. You know him. His name is Gardner Lillehorne.”
Though he felt it like a bellyblow, Matthew made sure he revealed no impact of emotion. “What’s he done?”
“Oh…you didn’t know? Well, it’s a trifling thing, you might say. His first task upon arriving in London was to rouse the High Constable to undertake a search of warehouses on the docks. I presume that someone told you a shipment of Cymbeline was stored there, pending sale to Spain, and you passed that information on as soon as you were able. I can guess who squealed the tale. So a similar card will be travelling across the Atlantic to the door of Miss Minx Cutter, and she will be made to pay—as Mr. Lillehorne will—for the seizure of a fortune’s worth of my gunpowder.”
Matthew remembered. Fell was correct. Minx had told him the specialized gunpowder that Fell had created was being hidden in a warehouse and disguised as barrels of tar and nautical supplies. He had informed both Lillehorne and Lord Cornbury when he’d gotten back to New York but thought at that time the message had received only a shrug and a cold shoulder from two personages who wished not to become involved.
“I also gave Lillehorne the names of Frederick Nash and Andrew Halverston,” Matthew said, citing other information Minx had given him about a pair of influential and seemingly-upstanding London figures—one in Parliament and the other in the money trade—who were on Fell’s payroll. “Are they in Newgate yet?”
Fell laughed quietly, as if he appreciated Matthew’s sense of daring in the face of doom. “The first is here, with a new position as mayor of Y Beautiful Bedd in my absence. The second…alas, poor Andrew blew his brains out with a pistol shot when Julian failed to convince him to seek refuge here.”
“Oh, you mean to say that Andrew blew his brains out when Devane pulled the trigger for him?”
“It is his pleasure to serve.”
“I thought his master was Mother Deare. Where is she?”
“Still here, for a time. And…since I am the master—let us say, guidance—of Mother Deare, I am also the guidance of Julian Devane. Ah! Here’s our repast!” There had been a knock at the door. “Come in.”
Speaking of the devil, it was Devane himself who brought in the silver tray bearing two plates of white cake, silverware, two green ceramic cups and a small silver teapot bearing the filigree of—as Matthew saw when the tray came nearer—a dragon with a pair of smooth jade stones as its eyes.
“Right here is fine,” Fell said, indicating a place on the writing-desk. “If I need you again, I’ll ring.”
Devane left the room without a word or a glance at Matthew.
“I said I wanted nothing,” Matthew objected, as Fell poured two cups. The teapot was only large enough to hold that much.
“Humor me. You will notice I am pouring both cups from the same pot and you are watching very carefully.”
“No,” said Matthew.
“All right, then. Have a piece of the cake.”
“Certainly not.”
Fell shrugged and took a sip from his cup. “Back to the card for a moment. It might interest you to know that Mr. Lillehorne is receiving a bloodprint made with your blood. It was taken from your mouth on an occasion during which, in Mother Deare’s words, you ‘went all hazy’. And by the way, we do have a good physician here who can also take care of the teeth…you might want to make an appointment with him, just to make sure Noddy cleaned up after himself.”
Matthew watched Fell drink his tea. The professor chose one of the pieces of cake and began to eat it very delicately. “What’s in the Velvet?” Matthew asked.
“What you already know. A narcotic from the late Dr. Jonathan Gentry’s notebook of fascinating formulas. We have a greenhouse full of useful botanicals here. The dosage is being increased as time moves along. It’s as much of an experiment as a business.”
“It seems to be you’ve stirred someone else’s interest in the business. Mother Deare told you what happened in that warehouse?”
“She did.” Fell’s mouth became a grim line. “There is some…let me be a gentleman and call him an upstart…who has come upon the territory—my territory—with obviously great ambitions. That was not the first cache of White Velvet to be stolen, and not the first of my helpers murdered to get it. Whoever did this also murdered my associate Judge Jackson Fallonsby and his entire family. He is taunting me, just as your Albion did by murdering other members of my…shall we say…circle. But this new man, if I may use that term lightly, leaves an interesting mark on the foreheads of his victims…the mark of a demoniac.”
“A demoniac?” Matthew asked, having never heard that term before.
“Someone who either is or believes himself to be possessed by a demon.”
“What do you mean, ‘is’? Such a thing isn’t possible.”
The twisted smile on the professor’s hollow-cheeked face was frightening. “Oh, Matthew!” he said. “What you saw in London…in that warehouse…and what you’ve seen elsewhere in your experience…and you say such a thing isn’t possible? Even your Bible says it is. If you were my son, I would say…grow up.”
“The closest to a demon on earth I can think of is yourself.” Matthew was near mentioning The Lesser Key, but for the moment he restrained himself.
“You may find to your educated horror,” said the professor, “that as bad as you feel me to be, I am far from the worst.”
“Debatable.” Matthew’s head had begun to ache and his mouth was a dry sandpit. He was thirsty and hungry but he didn’t dare take any of the tea or cake. “I want to know more about the Velvet. It’s made here?”
“No, we produce the drug here. Or, rather, my very talented new chemist produces it. In the laboratory at the hospital, if you’d care to know…which you always do. The gin is purchased as any dealer would, through a middleman in London. We add the narcotic there, and the gin is stored for later delivery. I did not come up with that title of White Velvet. I think Lord Puffery did. My appreciation to him.”
Matthew felt a bit satisfied that he knew one secret Fell did not. “Your new chemist must be a busy man. I take it that this entire village is a laboratory in which to test Ge
ntry’s formulas?”
“Exactly. Also a place for new drugs to be created and tested, and a refuge for those associates whom I deem worthy. You’re certain you don’t wish any tea or cake?”
“I wish Berry Grigsby and Hudson Greathouse to be returned to normal,” Matthew said.
Professor Fell drank down the rest of his tea. He took a small bite of the cake, and then he leaned back in his chair and smiled at the overhanging octopus before he returned his gaze to Matthew and spoke again.
“After Pendulum Island,” he said quietly, his face calm but the fire smoldering in the amber eyes, “I spent much time considering how I would deal with you when I found you. And not if I found you, but when. I knew…someday, in some way, I would get hold of you again. I considered…drastic things. Drawing and quartering, emasculation and consumption of your own organs, the death of a thousand cuts, death by crushing, strangulation or drowning…or, simply, being tortured nearly to death and then having your head cut off bit by bit starting with pieces of your face. Oh, I spent much time thinking of all the possible ways, Matthew…but one thing I did not think of.” He paused for a few seconds, smiling.
“I did not think,” he continued, “that I would be so fortunate as to get hold of your two friends before I got hold of you. That has made all the difference. It has calmed me, as you can see perfectly well.”
“I see a monster sitting at a writing-desk,” said Matthew, who reached up with both hands to rub his temples. His head felt oddly swollen. “You’re going to kill me and I can’t stop you. But for God’s sake let those two go. Do whatever you want to me, but—”
“I am doing what I want to you,” the professor interrupted. “Don’t you grasp it yet? The volume Gentry left me contains a king’s wealth of information on various narcotics and poisons, most of which can be manipulated for different effects. For instance, three seeds of a particular botanical—crushed, put into food or liquid and given on a twice-daily basis—will cause certain death after a period of so many days. But one seed of that same botanical, crushed and applied every other day, will have an entirely different effect. So it is with many of the formulas in Gentry’s book. A poison is not necessarily deadly unless one wishes it to be. Which…in the cases of Miss Grigsby and Mr. Greathouse, I do not wish.”
Matthew’s head had really begun pounding. His tongue had gone numb. In his chest his heart had started beating so madly he feared it might burst asunder.
“You’ve colored up,” Fell said. “I was wondering when it would begin. Listen carefully, now.”
“You’ve pitched a rug out from toomey!” Matthew said, and heard that gobbledygook with his ears, yet in his mind he’d spoken the words You’ve given something to me.
“Hush. Listen.” Fell leaned forward in his chair. “Your reward for what you have done to me is to watch your friends be destroyed. Now, now…I wouldn’t advise trying to get up. Your brain’s sense of speech and sense of reality have been affected, though your hearing has been spared. If you attempt to leave this room you may find yourself climbing over the balcony’s railing thinking you’re getting on a horse like a good providence rider. Listen, I said.”
“Zoned see,” said Matthew. Poisoned me. His mouth weighed three hundred pounds, all gigantic swollen lips and pillow-sized tongue.
“The water in your cottage is extremely potent. But not by drinking. By absorption into the skin, and I know such a gentleman as yourself likes to wash his face in the mornings. Your hands too, I’m sure. It did take longer than I thought. We’re still testing this one.”
“Shine!” said Matthew, whose mind now lost any idea of what he was trying to say. The room had begun to spin and widened out to huge distances. Three Professor Fells sat in three chairs behind three writing-desks at its center.
“Sit still. Let me continue. Mr. Greathouse has been given what I call an essential timoris. The essence of fear. Give him that and while he’s slumbering in its embrace have someone recite to him a frightful tale. When he awakens, he lives the nightmare. If he wasn’t given the drug daily, he would revive back to normalcy in three or four days.” The Fells lifted three index fingers that in Matthew’s distorted vision shot up to be iron spears reaching to the limitless ceiling. “As to Miss Grigsby, she’s been given an interesting potion using the Jamestown weed that opens her mind to suggestion and has a steadily cumulative effect. She is lost to you forever, because even if the dosage ceased today—which it will not—she would fail to recover without vigorous and steady application of the antidote.” His triple grins to Matthew were the keyboards of spinet pianos, and amber-colored spiders squirmed in the eyeholes of his faces. “You are going to watch her decline into imbecility,” said the professors. “In the end, she will revert to being an infant in a cradle, and I may let you rock her from time to time.”
Matthew tried to rise from the chair. He was no longer sitting in a chair. He was encased in a tarpit, his movements caught by its ebony glue.
“Before you get any worse,” the Fells said, “you should eat your cake. The antidote is in it.”
With the greatest effort against the sticky tar that now seemed to have gathered from air that was blotched like leprosy, Matthew reached out for the piece of vanilla cake that sat on the middle desk of the three desks before him. His arm went on and on, his hand becoming as small as that of a child’s poppet. His fingers, a mile away, spouted spikes. His hand closed around the cake, which came to life like a vicious little animal and tried to bite the spiked digits, as Fell’s three faces ballooned larger and combined one into the other to make a swollen, knotty mass. Matthew wasn’t sure if he had actually grasped the cake or not, for his fingers were dead. Then he brought the squirming thing to his face and instead of finding his mouth it went into his eyes and nose.
“I wish Dr. Ribbenhoff were here to see this,” said the talking wart.
Matthew frantically worked to get some of the cake into his mouth, and he thought he’d succeeded…or he imagined that he thought he had. He kept pushing the stuff in with his spiky fingers. Swallowing took another effort. Around him all the colors of the room were running together, the sunlight came from a different world where the sun was blindingly red with a pulsing blue halo around it, and the tarpit was dragging him under.
“Close your eyes,” said the gnarled and faceless monstrosity that had begun to grow to massive size. It spread out tentacles that cracked in the stained air like bullwhips.
Matthew did. Under his eyelids his eyes stared back at him.
“You will need about half an hour. I’ll ring for Julian to take you to a room where you can lie down. I wanted you to understand how useless it is to resist…even a little bit. Nod your head if you understand.”
Matthew nodded. He felt his head topple from his neck and swing back and forth on the wires that were holding him together, because at that moment he realized he was a boneless construction not born of flesh but created by Professor Fell, who now had the power to take him apart.
“When you return to your cottage you’ll find a fresh and full bottle of water. Drink as much of it as you can. It will be only water. I want you in good condition to have dinner here tonight at eight. You and Judge Archer will be my honored guests.”
Matthew felt the tentacles around him, gripping his upper body with crushing force while the tarpit trapped his lower body to the waist.
A bell rang.
“You should’ve had the cake straight away,” said the voice beside his left ear. “You see what being stubborn gets you?”
Thirty-Six
SO it was, Matthew thought as he lay on the bed in his cottage, that the worst of the worst had come about. All he’d feared for Berry had come true…and even more horrifying, he was too late to do anything about it. Where was Gentry’s book of formulas? In Fell’s house or in the hospital, under the watch of this new chemist Ribbenhoff? Even if he could get the book, how could he produce the antidote for the drug in Berry’s system?
He lay staring at the ceiling. His head still ached and his body was occasionally wracked by a tremor, but at least he didn’t see the walls as bulging and cracking with the onslaught of unseen monsters as they’d been in the room at the professor’s house. When Devane had guided him back here, Matthew had taken down nearly half of the fresh bottle of water. He wondered if it also had been drugged in some way he didn’t yet know. He was absolutely defenseless against any potion Fell chose to experiment on him.
And what of Hudson? In that dark cell, his mind being torn apart by nightmarish terrors…it was the proverbial fate worse than death, particularly for such a man of strength. Add to this recipe of calamities the capture of Judge Archer, and the torments Fell surely had in store for Albion, and…it was hopeless.
Matthew pressed his palms into his eyes. He had to think, though his brain was mushy. What was it he could possibly do to dig them all out of the beautiful grave? Before releasing him, Fell had sent word by way of Devane to go to the tavern and get something substantial to eat after his head had cleared, but food was the last thing on Matthew’s mind. He dreaded the dinner tonight. What time was it now? He fumbled in his pocket and brought out the watch. Nine minutes after three. He wished to go see Berry again, because she was expecting Ashton McCaggers to go to dinner with her this evening at the tavern, but he couldn’t bear to know that she was unable to recognize him, and he thought that in her state of mind the presence of Ashton in her cottage this morning already seemed to her like a dream she’d had last night.
He asked himself once again, what possible weapon did he have to draw upon? Was the situation indeed hopeless, or had he yet to see how the pieces stood upon the chessboard? He could not give up. No. They might all be doomed anyway, but to give up would be an early death he wasn’t prepared to endure.
What was it that Professor Fell valued, that Matthew might yet seize hold of?
Matthew’s brain continued to work, if thrashing about like a squirrel in a cage could be considered so.