“You cannot go there, Edgar Broom!” shrieks William Shakespeare. “It is HIM. He is not just a messenger! He is Satan. I KNOW it! HE SAID SO!”
“He did?”
“YES! I could not bring myself to tell you that!…Where are the others?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“They have vanished.”
“That is what he wants. You are ALONE! Do NOT go to him!”
“But you brought me his card.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. I could not stop myself.” He looks down at his bright apparel. “I do not know why I am wearing these clothes either! I have no memory of putting them on!”
“You have worn them before, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Here.”
“Yes.”
“And Jonathan greeted you at the door!”
“Yes. No! Yes.”
“You and the hag killed Jonathan and now you are sending me to see the devil!”
“The hag?…I did not KILL him!”
“Tell me what happened now or I will put a bullet through your brain with this rifle!” Edgar points the barrel of Alfred Thorne’s extraordinary weapon at the little man’s big head.
“But you have nothing in your hands.”
Edgar looks down, realizes it is true, and it horrifies him. He remembers that Tiger must have the rifle…or someone else. He staggers toward the settee and falls onto it next to William Shakespeare.
“I do not remember how I got here that morning,” says the little man in a voice so small that Edgar can barely hear him, “though I do know now, through some vague and hideous memory, that I was wearing these clothes. I knocked and Jonathan looked through the window and then opened the door to me. I could see a wild look in his eye when he first peered out, but then he saw it was me and his face relaxed, at least a little. He looked terrible, Edgar Broom, terrible! Oh my Lord sakes almighty! Then he looked out toward the street and his face changed again. That is what I remember. I could not have killed him. NOT ME!”
“You do not recall Jonathan lying at your feet, you little beast!”
“I remember scurrying away and I think I know who sent me.”
“Who?”
“The devil.”
“This Morley fellow.”
“I believe so. I tried to resist coming, Edgar, I know I did.”
“What about the hag?”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“She was with you!”
“No one was with me…the hag is a figment of—”
Edgar seizes the little man and throws him across the room and his head smashes into the ridge on the top of the baseboard on a wall. Blood comes from a sickle-shaped wound on his forehead and tears from his eyes.
“When I fled,” says Shakespeare, looking pitifully up at Edgar, “I mounted my noble steed, Rocinante, and galloped through the streets of London all the way home to the Crypto-Anthropology Society of the Queen’s Empire, windmills at my back, my gallant friends Messrs. Sprinkle, Winker and Tightman awaiting me to soothe my fevered brow!”
Edgar walks to Shakespeare and stands over him. “When did you last see him?”
“Who?”
“Morley! You told me two days ago that he had been to see you a few days before that. Has he been in your presence since then?”
“He has been to see me three times this week…the last time was yesterday, and I had a note from him just hours ago, telling me that if I ever revealed his identity he would deliver me to hell. Something good inside me, Edgar, something deep down, made me come to you tonight. I have seen his handwriting. The note was in his hand! I believe he brought it himself! I burned it upon my fire!”
“Hours ago?” Edgar gulps. “He might be in the streets now? Near us?”
“The note said he could be found at home.”
Edgar turns his back on Shakespeare. “Thirteen Thomas Street,” he says quietly. “He’s there.”
“FLEE, Sir Edgar Broom, there is room on my horse!” Shakespeare struggles to his feet, the blood dripping down his big face.
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am going there.”
“NO! NO, SIR!”
“And you are going with me.”
The little man’s big head looks as if it will explode.
“I would rather descend into hell.”
“Perhaps you will be accommodated, and shortly. You know the truth, William Shakespeare, and it is that you cannot run from fear. You must face it. Now, come with me!” He grabs him by his collar and escorts him out the door, realizing as he goes that they are unarmed.
Edgar and his tiny companion move at a good pace south and east toward the East End in the now-dry early day through crowded streets. Shakespeare keeps pulling back and even trying to run away, but Edgar maintains a grip on him. The little man mutters at high speed, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief.
“The devil has spells. He has black magic. He can make you do anything! He will kill us. He will kill us by simply looking at us! He said he could do it. He knows who you are, Edgar Brim, exactly who you are, and you fascinate him. You, the young knight of fear, the king of the hag phenomenon, you discombobulate him; you energize him! He is in your mind making you do what he wants! He wants to play with you more than anyone else! He wants you to come to him!”
“Then that is what he will get.” Edgar is grinding his teeth.
“This is not simply a creature, lad: this is Satan himself, alive in London!”
Edgar Brim feels powerful. His brain is telling him that it is working better than ever before, his muscles are stronger, his quickness greater. He has ejected fear and the confidence that has replaced it is like a narcotic bursting inside him. At this moment, Edgar Brim is a genius and a superman.
“Morley is reading about the monsters!” shouts Shakespeare in desperation. “He is reading and re-reading Dracula and Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde! He has been studying them! Ever since I told him about our missions, about you and the others! He reads Poe from day until night! He reads Inferno and Paradise Lost! And he reads the Bible! It infatuates him! He says he is IN it! He recognizes himself! Do you hear what I am saying! He says we have proven to him who he is!”
Edgar keeps pulling Shakespeare forward, feeling more powerful with every word the little man shrieks.
By the time they reach Thomas Street, he is almost dragging his companion behind him, the diminutive fellow digging his boot-heels into the pavement. They march past the building with the devil-worship room and up to the entrance of the residence next door. Edgar pins his prisoner to the wall with one arm on the scrawny chest and hammers on the door with his other fist. Shakespeare’s head wound has begun to clot.
“You were here in this street before, weren’t you?”
“I think so,” whimpers Shakespeare. “I may have come once…or twice. I do not know! Neither I nor you or anyone can resist his will!”
No one appears for a while, but then there are noises inside, someone approaching.
“Lord have mercy on our souls!” cries Shakespeare. “The saints in heaven preserve us now!”
The door opens and an old woman appears. For an instant, Edgar thinks it is the hag. He staggers back. She is, however, an ordinary woman, with a broom in her hand and a stained white apron over her dark-blue cotton dress. Edgar releases Shakespeare.
“May I ’elp you?”
Edgar turns away from her to his companion and whispers, “Have you ever seen this woman before?”
“No,” says Shakespeare in a shaky voice.
“May I ’elp you?” asks the crone again.
“I…I am looking for Alexander Morley,” says Edgar.
“Alex Morley?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ’e isn’t ’ere.”
“Then, where is he?”
“That is up to the Lord our God.”
“Pardon me?”
“You see, Mr. Morley is no longer with us. Atticus Cleaners ’as employed me to sort ’is residence. I will ’ave it ship-shape before the end of the day!”
“That is impossible,” says Shakespeare.
“No it ain’t!” replies the woman, losing her brief attempt at respectability. “I is among the best cleaners in the city of London, I is, and I will ’ave you know it can be done by the likes of me within the time allotted!”
“That is not what he means,” says Edgar.
The woman’s hands are on her hips and she is glaring at her interrogators.
“Then ’e ’ad best explain ’isself.”
“He means that Mr. Morley cannot have passed from this life.”
“Alex Morley is as dead as a doornail, for a week now, in fact.”
“OH!” cries Shakespeare.
“Is there somethin’ wrong with this little man, somethin’ more than meets me eye?”
“He has had personal contact with Morley within the past day or two and a note from him this morning.”
“Now that, sir, is impossible. ’E was carted out of ’ere and taken to the dead ’ouse a good seven days back, and I know so because I was told it ’appened and instructed to begin cleanin’ ’is place before all the furniture was toted away and sold at auction.”
“Oh!” cries Shakespeare again.
“Is ’e goin’ to keep doin’ that?”
“You are sure Mr. Morley is dead?”
“As sure as I’m standin’ ’ere.”
“How did he die?”
“Don’t know for certain. There may have been some funny business. ’E was a strange one, Mr. Morley was, with ’is shaved ’ead and ’is black clothes and ’is ’orrible eyes. A weird one. Weird and smart as a whip. I’ve cleaned ’is hovel before, you know, a good dozen times or more. As I says, near everythin’ ’as been taken away as of this mornin’, but if you’d a seen it when ’e was livin’ ’ere you’d a known what I mean by strange. The whole place was black, the walls and the ceilin’, there was obscene little statues everywhere, knives all about the place, not a bed in sight. The police came ’ere to look around when I was doin’ the first of this last cleanin’. It ’as been a long job. I heard them talkin’. There was no burial, someone claimed ’is corpse and took it away when the ’thorities was done with it.”
“What do you mean by funny business?”
“I knows there was buckets of blood because there was still red all over the floors when I first came in and I knows blood stains and ’ow to remove ’em. No one did it to ’im, though, if you knows what I mean, not by the way those Bobbies was talkin’.”
“Suicide?”
Shakespeare turns to the wall and lowers his head as if he is about to be sick to his stomach.
“I don’t like that word.”
“Do you think there was a doctor, a coroner?”
“Oh, ’parently they did it up right, took what he’d left of himself off to the hospital, before that someone came and claimed him.”
“The London?”
“Course. These coppers said he knew someone there, an old friend, one of them mind doctors.”
“Berenice,” whispers Edgar, and a chill goes down his spine.
“That’s it, that’s the name.”
Edgar immediately turns and starts to walk briskly down Thomas Street toward the hospital.