LONDON
I
When one lives and works in a large, austere, almost empty house in Kensington, in an atmosphere of sustained gravity and importance, one will naturally long for escape, for a burst of good humour and a taste of friendly companionship. And when the daily life of the house in question has about it not only that air of high seriousness but also certain undercurrents of something like corruption and decay, the desire (no, the necessity) to get away from its confines grows to an all but intolerable degree.
These, at least, were the truths of the life of Mr Jacob Berry, a tall, saturnine fellow who dressed, quite deliberately, rather like an undertaker, and who was at this time amongst the highest paid valets in London.
It was the money, of course, which kept him in his current, unsettling and sometimes bizarre place of employment. He was of this fact neither especially proud nor particularly ashamed for he still lived by his late father’s dictum: “You play the hand you’re dealt in life, and you keep as many of your winnings as you can.”
Mr Berry’s current employer (Berry had had five before him, all very wealthy, three of them titled) seemed to arrange his own affairs along similar lines. Certainly, he had always been honest with his manservant, sometimes to a discomfiting degree. In their first meeting (it was not quite an interview since it was well known that, at this juncture in his career, Mr Berry might have his pick of gentlemen) his future employer had stressed the oddities which would be daily bread in his household and the concomitant need for absolute discretion.
“You will see and hear many strange things during your time with me,” he had said when they had met, in a private room in Claridge’s, away from the prying eyes of city gossips, “and you may even find yourself routinely intrigued and made curious by them. Yet I would ask you to tell no-one of what you see whilst in my employ and to ask me no questions concerning that which you witness. Do you think, Mr Berry, that you can do these things for me?”
In response, Berry had all but waved the question away as something like an insult to his professional pride. “You need not have asked the question, sir,” he said, colouring his words, quite deliberately, with a shade of reproof.
“You will forgive me,” his future employer had said with a swiftness and smoothness that suggested a man to whom insincerity came easily. “I did not mean to impugn you. Only, based upon certain recent experiences, I have come to understand that one really cannot be too careful.”
“Of course,” Mr Berry had replied, every bit as smoothly as he who would be his master. “I shall keep your every secrets, sir. I shall take whatever I witness at your side to the grave if necessary.”
“That’s very good. That’s excellent.”
And, for the past three and a half years, Mr Berry had kept all of the promises which he had made that day – at least, until one particular evening.
II
Mr Berry’s desire for an occasional escape has already been explained. The more that you come to realise about his place of employ, the more you will surely comprehend this desire, if not, perhaps, to entirely sympathise with him.
Still, it had been an absolute condition of Mr Berry’s employment that he should be allowed to absent himself from the house and grounds every Friday afternoon and evening, from two until midnight. These occasions were, as you might imagine, much looked forward to by Berry, and, however they began (with, perhaps, an errand to be run, a walk to be had, an agreeably aimless visit to the library) they almost always ended in the same way, with Mr Berry retiring to one particular institution. The name of the place was “The Outpost” and it was, Mr Berry often thought, perhaps his favourite place in all of London, if not in all the world.
On the afternoon in question, Mr Berry left the house of his employer at the usual hour, took the omnibus to Regent Street and strolled there for a little over two hours, enjoying the anonymity of the browsing crowds who moved, herd-like, from one emporium to the next, and relishing, in stark opposition to his home of quiet and secrets, the rattle and bustle of that populous street, the chatter of pedestrians and the jounce and clatter of the carriages and cabs. He looked in many shops but bought not a single thing.
In a small eatery by Covent Garden, he bought himself an early supper at half past five of cutlets, bread and a small carafe of red wine. Thus fortified, he hailed a cab and, heedless of the expense, instructed that he be taken to Richmond and to the easternmost edge of the park.
He must have dozed during the journey – he believed that he had even begun to dream, of the sun upon his back and of the soft whisper of the sea – because the next thing that Mr Berry knew was the sound of the cab driver bellowing down to him that they had arrived at their destination and could he please, if it’s not too much trouble, be given the simple courtesy of his due?
Mr Berry disembarked and passed up his fare. The horse stamped impatiently, pawing the ground as if eager to be away again. The cab had stopped by a stretch of dark iron railing, beyond which the verdant expanse of the park could be glimpsed.
“Good evening to you, sir!” called down the driver before moving away.
Berry watched the vehicle go. He turned and, with something of the air of a child at the zoo, he walked to the railings and brought his face close to the bars. It had always fascinated him, this sliver of wilderness so near to the city. He gazed beyond the rails, at the trees and grass beyond. In the distance, something moved and he saw the silhouette of a deer, outlined against the horizon, a shadow in the dying light. Mr Berry even, madly, felt a boyish instinct to clamber over the railings and seek a kind of freedom in the park, to run with the stags and sleep beneath the stars and to face only the consequences of the natural world, and not the many constraints of civilisation.
No doubt plenty of us have felt in our lives such an urge. And no doubt plenty of us have done precisely what Mr Berry did: set aside such thoughts as folly and, with only the hint of melancholic sigh, turn once again to the everyday world.
In the middle of the street which stood opposite this long border of the park was an entrance to an unprepossessing alleyway. It was towards this point that Mr Berry now stepped.
“Spare a farthing, would you, sir?”
There was a figure by the mouth of the alleyway, a sad and wretched fellow, clad in rags, who sat sprawled upon the ground.
Without thinking, Mr Berry reached into his pocket, wrenched free a couple of coins and tossed them down to the beggar.
“Thank you, sir.”
Mr Berry nodded but did not slow his pace. He had gone some distance into the alleyway before he heard the tramp call out: “I saw you looking, sir!”
Mr Berry stopped, walked back a few paces and, curious, asked: “What did you say?”
The filthy-faced fellow did not look up from his supplicant’s position. His eyes had a glazed quality, Berry noticed now, as though he had taken too much strong drink or ingested some substance that served – forgivably, in the opinion of the valet – to remove him from the cares of so uninsulated a life.
“Only that I saw you, sir, looking into the park.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“On a fine, bright day, most certainly.” The vagrant did not respond to this so Mr Berry found himself, more to fill the silence than for any better reason, adding: “A most pleasing little pocket of the wildwood.”
The penniless man barked a laugh. “Oh but it’s only little now, sir.”
“Well yes, in the past, I’m sure, it was very much larger.” Growing weary of the conversation, he turned again, only for the stranger to murmur something which rather tugged at his imagination.
“Oh but I didn’t mean the past, sir. I meant the future. Seen it, I have, in my dreams. One day all of this will be forest again. All London will be jungle.” He giggled at the thought and then begun to hum some cracked old tune.
“Have a good evening,” said Mr Berry, over his shoulder, as he walked away. Evidently, the man’s reason had been unseated, he thought, as he walked, yet somehow the image of the city as a jungle pawed at his memory and would not be entirely shaken loose, at least until the evening took a stranger turn.
III
At the bottom of the alleyway, which was unpeopled and surprisingly clean, stood a bright green door, upon which was affixed a polished brass plaque that read: “The Outpost.”
Mr Berry, having straightened his tie and smoothed down his hair, knocked three times. Almost at once, a shutter was pulled back, and a stretch of metal grille was exposed. A deep voice, long familiar to Berry, intoned: “Who goes there?”
“Jacob Berry.”
A grunt. “And what is the law here, Mr Berry?”
The valet gave the well-worn words of entry. “To pay heed, but never to reveal.”
A grunt of confirmation at this was all that came. The grille was covered once again and the door was opened. Warm low light spilled out from within, a dash of comfort in this chilly place. A large, squat middle-aged man with a distinctly martial air stood upon the threshold. He beckoned.
“Come on in, Berry, for gawd’s sake. You’re letting in a right perishing draught.”
The valet stepped inside and the door was closed behind him. He stood in a spacious vestibule, wallpapered in a shade of dark damson. The doorman sat down upon a high stool, his hands folded against his sizeable belly.
“Good evening, Mr Gibbens,” said the valet.
Another grunt was all that he received from this greeting.
“I fear I’m running a little late tonight.”
“You are, sir.”
“I dawdled in the city. I seem to be a little sluggish today.”
Gibbens shrugged, as though these things were to him matters of sublime unconcern. Mr Berry took off his overcoat and hung it on a row of hooks at the back of the vestibule.
“I’ll go through, then, shall I?”
“You do that, Mr Berry.”
“Have they started yet?”
“Almost, Mr Berry. Almost.”
“Then I’ll take my leave of you.”
A final grunt. Gibbens settled himself on his stool and fixed his baleful gaze upon the door as if daring somebody to knock upon it and once again interrupt his evening.
Berry walked on, towards a door which led to a corridor beyond the initial space. With his hand upon the doorknob he turned back and said, softly but with palpable concern: “I was very sorry indeed, Mr Gibbens, to hear about your son.”
This time the grunt from the doorman was of a still lower pitch than before. With a kind of gruff sorrow, he said: “These things happen.”
“Still…” Mr Berry said. “I am sorry.”
Then he opened the door and walked on, down a long corridor, papered in the same dull shade of damson before emerging into a room which was arranged like an informal auditorium. Chairs, placed in small groupings with drinks tables at the side of each, were arranged in a semi-circle around a modest stage, raised only a foot or so from the ground.
The place was busy – around forty or so patrons, all of them men – who sat expectantly, with a drink in hand or beside them, gazing at the stage.
Mr Berry slipped into a chair towards the back of the room. Almost at the instant that he did so, a neat, rather dapper little gentleman walked up on to the stage and motioned for quiet. The gesture was all but unnecessary for the Outpost was not the kind of establishment much given to raucousness or hearty expostulations – not, at least, unless the circumstances were exceptional ones.
“Good evening, my friends,” said the dapper man. “Welcome to an evening of what we like to call ‘Confessions and Recitations’.” Another host in another kind of venue might have paused at this juncture for polite applause. Such things, however, were scarcely in the tradition of the Outpost.
“I trust you’re sitting comfortably,” said the dapper man again, “and I trust that, as ever, you will, as you listen, bear in mind the code of this place, our solemn pledge for absolute discretion.”
Silence, save for the odd creaking of chairs and clinking of glasses.
“The penalties for breaking our only rule in any way at all are, as you will know, of the severest kind. And let it be remembered that we are never slow to act. I am pleased to say that there has not been an incidence of rule-breaking since Mr Terris, four years past. I dare say many of you will recall that most unfortunate accident to which he fell victim. If any have joined the Outpost since that time and are not aware of the details, I have no doubt that an older member shall be able to enlighten you.”
This was familiar stuff to many, part of an opening ritual meant to heighten anticipation. Berry’s mind wandered a little as the dapper man spoke (drifting back towards that odd proclamation of the mendicant outside) though he was able to recollect well enough what had befallen poor Terris, only a month or so after Berry had joined the Outpost.
He was brought back to his senses by a soft hand at his elbow and a young male voice which asked: “Will it be your usual, sir?”
“Not tonight, I think,” said Mr Berry. He did not turn around to face his attendant. “Just a whisky and soda, please.”
“Would that be lighter on the soda, sir, than on the whisky?” asked the waiter.
“Most certainly it would.”
“Very good, sir.” The fellow withdrew and Mr Berry settled himself again in his chair, reflecting as he did so how pleasant a novelty it was for him to be waited upon for a change.
On stage, the dapper man was finishing his introduction. “And now,” he said, “that all our preliminaries are dealt with, we can proceed to the business which has brought you here tonight.”
There was in the atmosphere of the room, although it was detectable only to the habitué, a certain drawing in of breath at this, a surge of highly suppressed excitement.
“We have five stories for you tonight. Each must be heard only under conditions of absolute secrecy. Each is personally painful to the speaker. And every one of them is the absolute truth.”
There was more after this, more introductory chatter, and there was now even a smattering of rather muted applause.
Mr Berry did not observe, however, as the waiter had returned with a whisky and soda.
“Here you are, sir.”
The valet reached out and took the tumbler. This time he did turn his head to look at the waiter. He was a young man, very slim and with bright blue eyes.
“Thank you,” Mr Berry said, and felt his face flush at the man’s proximity. “You’re very kind.”
“Oh but we like to spoil you here, Mr Berry,” said the waiter. He withdrew again, slipping back into the shadows at the back of the room.
The valet, left only with the memory of the man, relished this for a moment and took a long sip of his drink. He swilled the liquid around his mouth, enjoying the subtle burn of it and, for an instant, felt something like contentment.
When he looked up again, the dapper fellow had left the stage to be replaced with the first of the night’s tale-tellers, a whiskery fellow dressed rather floridly in the costume of a poet. He was sweating and evidently ill at ease. His accent seemed to hint at the West Country.
“Good evening, fellow members of the Outpost,” he began. “I’m very pleased and gratified to be able to speak to you tonight concerning a thing which I’ve never before been able to tell so much as a soul. And I know, kind and decent gentlemen that you are that I can say anything here and it won’t leave these four walls.” He gulped noisily and dabbed a hand across his brow. “Now, what I have to say concerns the first time I saw a man die, the grandfather clock in my family’s possession and what was told to me by a maidservant who was once employed at Buckingham Palace…”
Mr Berry leaned back, stretched out his legs, took another appreciative sip and listened.
IV
The evening passed pleasantly enough. The man who was dressed as a poet finished his tale (a little over-elaborate, in the end, for all of the scandal it might have caused were it ever to be heard at Highgrove) and was succeeded by another man, a burly fellow in his sixties, a former docker whose tale involved attempted theft, cock fighting and the dreadful moment in his life when he had hesitated too long and brought about the death of a close friend. This was a little more engaging but nonetheless Mr Berry found himself consulting his pocket watch on more than one occasion.
He had now been at the Outpost for more than an hour. He drained his tumbler. He was growing uncharacteristically restless. Something in his evening (though he could not say exactly what) unsettled him.
Feeling suddenly decisive, he was about to rise to his feet, pay his due at the bar and call it a night, when a new speaker was introduced. Mr Berry was on the very cusp of standing when the dapper man announced to the still, thoughtful crowd: “Please, gentlemen, please welcome our third teller of tales on this very special night…” He glanced down towards his hands, where he probably had some note secreted. “Welcome to… Mr Edward Prendick!”
The force of the name was sufficient to guarantee that Mr Berry did not move but stayed firmly in his seat. The barman appeared by his side again.
“Another drink, Mr Berry?”
The valet did not reply. On stage, the man called Prendick, had shuffled into view. He was a rangy figure with thinning blond hair and a skittish manner.
“Mr Berry?” the barman prompted.
“I know him,” the valet said, in a burst of rare candour (though he was talking, at least in part, to himself). “I know that man.”
The barman frowned and cleared his throat but receiving no reply, withdrew.
On stage, Prendick bowed his head to acknowledge the attention of the audience.
“Good evening,” he said. “My name is Edward Prendick and the story I have to tell tonight is one which I have for two years now been struggling to decide whether or not to share with the world.” There was an almost musical lilt to his accent, a touch of Lancashire to his vowels. “I’ve kept it almost entirely to myself. Though I’ve set down a written account for my own purposes and I’ve started to speak about it to another, a professional gentleman who, like you all, is bound by oaths of secrecy.”
The audience were patient and polite but there was a palpable sense that Prendick was losing them with this somewhat dry introduction. The sole exception to this was Mr Berry who sat upright in his chair, riveted, unblinking and seemingly absolutely in thrall to this quiet man’s words.
“Nonetheless, I find myself beginning to wonder whether I might not owe it to the world to tell all that I know, to make a clean breast of my experiences and let the public decide what must be done. For even now, I hear strange rumours. I believe I see certain patterns in public life – patterns of the most troubling kind. My friend says that I ought to say nothing at all but… somehow… I wonder…” He said nothing then but only stood and looked at his audience.
It seemed to Mr Berry that Prendick was seeing something quite different to the convocation which sat before him, as though he was imposing upon them some distant, though still vivid, memory. There was a growing sense of restiveness in the crowd. Doubtless there were those who were starting to think that the speaker might not be altogether well, that he might fumble or embroider his story, or that he might simply be a fantasist. There were precedents for such a diagnosis; Outpost practice was generally to kindly, but firmly, remove the lunatic from the stage.
Then Prendick spoke a name which got their attention at last. “How many of you recollect a man named Moreau? Ah. I see that there are many of you who do.” As he said the name, Mr Berry saw a flush of disgust flare upon Prendick’s cheeks. “He was once quite the cause célèbre wasn’t he? A villain of the ’70s. The laboratory… the dog in the street… you all of you know the story… But then he disappeared. It was assumed that he had buried himself in some foreign land or had met some accident at sea or had taken his own life. Yet none of these things were true. I know this because I met him for myself in ’87.” He looked around the room at this, sensing, correctly, that the audience were warming to him.
“I found myself shipwrecked upon the island where he had been hiding out. And I saw for myself what manner of wild science he had there been practising. The hybridisation, gentlemen, of humankind with animals! The maniac desire to forge a new species. The creations of his which lurched upon the land and loomed along the shore.” He paused, took a deep breath and plunged on. “But I should begin at the beginning. If I’m to tell you my tale then you should surely hear it all.” He took a breath, steeled himself and said: “It began with the sinking of the Lady Vain when we were but ten days out from Callao…”
V
Prendick’s story was the longest that night, and certainly the strangest that had been heard in the Outpost for many years. By the end of it, his audience was entirely spellbound, relishing every twist, marvelling at the horrors that he described and wondering at the hubris of the madman at its heart who had sought to play god and transform a menagerie into a new kind of being. Although he was not a boastful man, the courage and resourcefulness of Prendick himself was clear. He had been brave and determined indeed to have lived for months upon the island, first sharing it with Moreau and his equally deranged assistant before, after their murder by his own creations, alongside the Beast People, as desperate to survive as they. His eventual escape, on a leaky and improvised boat he had constructed himself from windfall and debris, was thrillingly told.
When it was over, Prendick left the stage swiftly, perspiring and ill at ease, his face already showing signs of uncertainty as to the wisdom of making so full and frank a confession. This was not unusual at the Outpost and there was no tradition there of pausing after the speech for questions or applause.
The room was left in silence after Prendick’s departure (Mr Berry saw him slip towards the door) until the dapper man returned to the stage. “Time for a rest,” he said. “A chance to refill our glasses. For we have another pair of tales tonight. Though I do not envy having to be heard after Mr Prendick’s revelations…”
With relief, the room now stirred itself and rose. Mr Berry also got to his feet but he had no intention of staying. His eyes rested on where Prendick had been just a moment before.
The barman was at his side again, for all that he was surely much needed at his station. “Please,” he said. “I have to know. That man, Prendick. You said you recognised him?”
Mr Berry wanted to hurry after the tale-teller but there was something so beseeching in the eyes of the barman that he could not help but tarry. “He’s visited my employer,” he said, aware that confidentiality at the Outpost was absolute. “Many times. He’s been telling, I think, that same story he told to us tonight.”
“Your employer?” The barman was ignoring the clamour for refreshment from an increasing number of other patrons. “Why should Prendick have told him so much?”
Berry started now to move away. He had, he knew, to speak to Prendick. He called back briskly over his shoulder. “He’s a man called Vaughan,” he said. “An alienist. A kind of modern priest, I suppose. That is: a man who hears confessions.”
VI
Prendick had left the club, walked up the alleyway and was about to disappear towards the heart of Richmond when Mr Berry finally caught him.
“Wait!” the valet called out. He was still struggling to get on his overcoat, so rapid had been his departure from the Outpost.
Prendick did not turn but hurried on, his movements fretful and distracted.
Berry broke into a light jog in order to reach Prendick’s side.
“I’ve not got anything more,” said the blond man, not slowing his pace or acknowledging his pursuer in any way. “I told my story in full in there and I’m not even sure I should have done that. I know… that Mr Vaughan doesn’t think I ought to say…” He stopped now, Mr Prendick, and looked at Berry as though seeing him for the first time. “Wait. Don’t I know you?”
“I work for Mr Vaughan.”
“Of course. I’ve seen you there. Then what… what are you doing following me like this? I… Is this Vaughan’s doing?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
In the distance, a clocktower tolled the time. Ten. It was dark and cold and the streets were almost empty. The two men gazed at each other, nervous and jumpy.
“Then why…” said Prendick.
“Is it true?” asked Mr Berry. “Everything you said?”
“Every word of it.”
“Then…” Mr Berry felt at this point that there was a great deal more which he could have said, based upon several years’ worth of observations concerning his employer. He could have told Prendick that the alienist was most certainly not the benign counsellor that he appeared to be. He could have said that his employer’s repeated advice to Prendick not to speak about his experiences was surely rooted in something other than unalloyed concern for a patient. He could even have told Prendick of certain of the other guests whose arrival at the house he had witnessed: the government men, the military men, the engineers, the financiers, the pleasure seekers and the artists, an unholy assemblage of individuals whose presence hinted at a scheme of the most elaborate kind. He could have told him that he had for many months now felt that he was, in his professional discretion, materially abetting something of troubling magnitude.
Yet, in the end, Mr Berry’s pride won out. He had given his word, after all, to his employer. That, from the first, had been the nature of their arrangement and he could not bring himself now to go against it.
“I suppose,” he said at last, “that I wished only to give you my greetings. And to thank you for your story. You have been very brave, I think.”
“Oh.” Prendick seemed almost disappointed by Berry’s words, as though he had divined something of the valet’s turmoil. “You’re kind. But I’ve really been nothing of the sort. There’s no real courage in survival. Just pure instinct.” With this, he nodded and went on, his gait that of an anxious man.
Mr Berry watched him go. He fought for an instant with the impulse to rush after him and tell him of all that he suspected. Yet the moment passed and the mariner walked on until he passed far out of sight of the valet.
VII
When Mr Berry returned home, to that big, ominous house in the city, he was somehow not surprised to see that a light burned in the master’s study. Nor was he surprised to hear the soft, potent voice of Vaughan call out to him as he trod by.
“Berry? Is that you? Would you be so kind as to step in here, please?”
The valet did as he was told. He entered the lavish but somehow rather chilly sanctum of his master to find Mr Vaughan sitting in his armchair with a book on his lap and a cigarette between his lips. He had evidently been smoking for some time for the room was filled with it, lending the space a distinctly Hadean air.
He waited at the threshold. “Yes, sir?”
The little man smiled. “So sorry to drag you in here like this. I know it’s late and your night off to boot.”
“No trouble, Mr Vaughan. What can I do for you?”
Vaughan sucked in the last of his cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray by his seat. “I understand you were at the Outpost tonight and that you heard speak a mutual friend of ours.”
Mr Berry struggled to keep his voice altogether neutral. “Sir, I think I ought to–”
Vaughan cut him short with a gesture. “Please don’t trouble to deny it. I know that you were there. And I know what Mr Prendick related. No doubt you recognised him from the sessions in this house. And no doubt, being a brisk, clever and, above all, observant fellow, you have started to think of all that you have witnessed here and have begun to put two and two together. Am I in this correct?”
Berry saw no alternative but to speak the simple truth. “Yes, sir.”
“Poor Mr Prendick,” said Vaughan, scarcely acknowledging Mr Berry’s reply. “He simply cannot hold his tongue.”
The valet said nothing. Mr Vaughan seemed to gather himself and return his attention towards his employee.
“It seems I have a choice. I can, if you like, send you away from here tonight. I can give you a generous gift before you leave in exchange for your absolute silence and discretion. I can also send you away with a promise that if you breathe a word of what you know I will ruin you utterly. Would you like that, Mr Berry?”
“No, sir. I’m not sure I would, sir.”
“Very good. Then do you want to hear the alternative?”
“Of course, Mr Vaughan.”
“That you work for me more closely than ever. That you take on some new, additional duties.”
“Sir, I don’t know what to say…”
Mr Vaughan smiled and said nothing.
“My duties, sir, in this new arrangement, would they be different at all?”
“Oh much as they are, Berry. Much as they are. Though I suppose there might, from time to time, be something slightly more robust that’s required of you.”
“Robust, sir?”
Vaughan reached for another cigarette, put it in his mouth, lit it and inhaled. “You’ll see in time,” he said eventually. “Suffice to say that there’ll be nothing which isn’t well within your capabilities. So then, what do you say? You know me well enough by now, I think, to know that I’m nothing if not a plain-dealing man.”
Mr Berry was far from sure that this was the case.
“Whatever you decide, I shan’t hold it against you,” the alienist went on. “You have my word. So what will it be?”
In the end, Mr Berry found it very easy to give his answer. And he did not regret it either, at least not at first, not until the complete truth began to emerge.