The Angel of Highgate (27 page)

* * *

“If we do not act now, this young lady may be dead… or worse!”

Sergeant Dawkins looked across the counter of the police station at Thraxton and Algernon and his soft brown eyes shone with sympathy. “Bushy sideburns you say? A short, stout fella built like an ape?”

“Yes,” Greenley piped in. Although badly injured, he had insisted on accompanying Thraxton and Algernon to the Mayfair Police Station. Too weak to stand, he sat propped on a bench, a white bandage wrapped around his head.

“Him and two others: a walking skeleton with a hideous face and a third I glimpsed only briefly, the one who coshed me, a huge shambling brute.”

The officer nodded knowingly. “The men you describe are known to us, sir. The first would be Mordecai Fowler, the leader of a gang of criminals and ne’er-do-wells. The other two miscreants are Walter Crynge and Barnabus Snudge, known associates of Fowler’s.”

“You say you know these men?” Algernon asked.

The police officer stroked one of his waxed and twirled mustachios as he spoke. “Everyone in the Metropolitan Police Force knows them. Fowler and his men run out of the Seven Dials, the worst rookery in London.”

Hope surged in Thraxton at the news. “Then if you know where they are, you must take your men and go after them. There is not a moment to lose!”

The officer cleared his throat and frowned. “You have no idea about the rookeries, do you, sir? Last week we tried to arrest a man in Seven Dials. I had one officer shot dead and there’s three more still in ’orspital. One who’s never expected to walk again.”

“But this is England, for God’s sake!” Thraxton said. “You cannot tell me these ruffians are beyond the reach of the law!”

“There is no law in the rookeries, sir. Right now, I’m down so many men, I couldn’t entertain goin’ into the Seven Dials—especially at night. You’d need an army to go after Fowler on his own patch and come out alive. In the morning, once it comes light, I can have a dozen more men drafted in from other London boroughs—”

“In the morning?” Thraxton interrupted. “We can’t wait until morning! Who knows what unspeakable atrocities could have been committed upon Aurelia by then? We are talking about the life of a young woman!”

Sergeant Dawkins leaned his hands on the counter and stared down at them as he spoke. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how it has to be. My hands are tied.”

* * *

After a fast ride home in the brougham, the three men stood in Thraxton’s rooms. Thraxton finished loading one of his dueling pistols, passed it to Algernon and warned, “Handle it with great care, Algy.” Thraxton moved to a desk, slid open a drawer and produced two leather purses that chinked with coins. He tossed one to Algernon.

“Strewth!” Algernon said. “How much is in here?”

“Fifty sovereigns.” Thraxton tucked the second purse into a coat pocket. “I’m hoping we can buy Aurelia’s freedom. If not, the pistols will have to do the bargaining for us.” He threw a quick look at Robert Greenley who sat on the edge of Thraxton’s bed, his face buried in his hands. Thraxton said nothing and crossed the room to an elephant’s foot umbrella stand which held more than a dozen walking sticks of all descriptions. Thraxton found the silver tiger walking stick and held it out to Algernon.

“Take this.”

“A walking stick? I hardly think I’ll need to strike a dapper air where we’re going!”

“Not just a walking stick. Watch.”

Thraxton released the catch and drew the blade in one fluid motion. Algernon’s eyes saucered as he found himself staring at a sword tip hovering inches from his face.

“Good Lord! I feel as if we’re going to war.”

“We are, Algy. We are.” Thraxton sorted through walking sticks until he found a stick with a handle in the shape of a roaring boar and drew it out.

“What fiendishly clever trick does that one do?” Algernon asked.

Thraxton thumbed a catch and the stick broke in two like a shotgun. Sure enough, he loaded a single shotgun shell into the breech. “Unleash hell, if need be,” he replied.

T
hraxton’s brougham clopped down foggy streets that grew darker, narrower, bumpier and meaner the closer they approached to the Seven Dials. Thraxton, Algernon and Mister Greenley peered out the carriage windows at the shabby, darkened houses around. No one had spoken since they left Thraxton’s house. Each knew the danger and difficulty of the enterprise they were about to undertake. Most of all, each tried to avoid thinking about the fate of Aurelia.

None too soon, the carriage shook to a halt and Algernon and Thraxton clambered out.

Harold, reigns and whip in hand, peered down from the driver’s seat at his master. “Are you sure about this, sir? It looks very dodgy about here.”

Thraxton threw a quick look around. The gas lamps were all dark as every glass pane had been shattered—vandalized by the wild children of the rookery. “It is very dodgy, Harold. Keep your whip handy. If anyone challenges you—man, woman, or child—use the whip on them and then on the horses.”

Thraxton turned to Aurelia’s father. “Sir, I’d prefer it if you stayed in the carriage.”

“What?” Greenley roared. “This is my daughter who has been kidnapped!” He barged out of the carriage, shouldering aside the two friends.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Algernon said. “You’re hardly in any condition—”

“Condition? Condition?” Greenley blustered. “In my day I’ve knocked down some of the hardest men in London.” He raised a scarred and calloused fist the size of a sledgehammer head and shook it angrily. “I’ll show these bastards what my condition is!” But then his knees buckled and he had to hang on to the carriage for support.

Thraxton put a hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Mister Greenley, we appreciate your bravery and your skill at fisticuffs. That is precisely why we need you to stay with Harold. He is just a young lad. We need your powers to help protect the brougham. When Algy and I return with Aurelia, we must have the carriage ready to make good our escape.”

Greenley’s fists fell to his sides, his head drooped. “Yes, very well…” he muttered in an exhausted voice.

Thraxton patted his shoulder. “Stout fellow.”

He looked at his friend. “Come on, Algy, we’ve not a moment to spare.”

The two men left the safety of the brougham and entered a narrow alley plunged in a darkness so unfathomable they had to feel their way by dragging one hand along a cinderous, loose-bricked wall. Finally they emerged at a junction of alleyways lit by the diffuse light of the moon, orange and swollen as a rotten pumpkin. As they walked along the narrow lane, they passed huddled forms slumped in doorways which proved to be the homeless poor sleeping rough on the streets.

“How will we ever find our way?” Algernon asked.

“The police sergeant mentioned a wooden bridge that marks the entrance to the rookery proper.”

Sure enough, they soon came upon a small arched wooden bridge. Someone had dumped a bundle of rags in front of it. When they approached, the bundle of rags sat up—a beggar. A small chalkboard dangled from a string around the man’s neck and was scrawled with a single word:
BLIND
.

“Who approaches?” the man shouted, hearing their footsteps.

“We’re looking for Mordecai Fowler,” Thraxton said.

“To cross the bridge you must pay a toll.” The man held out a hand to beg. When he lifted his head they could see only empty black sockets where eyes should have been. Algernon handed the man two shillings. He took the coins, pressed them into his empty eye sockets and looked up at them, giggling inanely. “Ah, now I see you. Oh, and there is a third who walks with you… Death!”

“Come, Algy.” They brushed past the gibbering blind man and clomped across the bridge, which shivered and swayed beneath their feet.

“God, the stench!”

“An open sewer!’”

Both Thraxton and Algernon quickly produced handkerchiefs and clamped them over their faces.

On the far side of the bridge they entered an intractable maze of blind alleyways and narrow ginnels—everywhere a study in entropy. Buildings leaned as if wearied by the weight of their own masonry, spilling their guts, brick by brick onto the roadway. Some had bulging walls propped up by huge beams; others were missing walls and had roofs that had collapsed, opening rooms to the elements.

Someone threw open an upstairs window, shouted “gardyloo” and emptied a full chamber pot out the window. Thraxton and Algernon dodged as filth splattered across the cobbles at their feet and trickled into the gutter that ran down the middle of the narrow street. Suddenly a door banged open and a gang of boys charged out: ten, fifteen, twenty, they seemed to keep coming forever, all shrieking and whooping at the top of their lungs. The boys surged in a mob around Thraxton and Algernon, tugging at their coat sleeves, slapping them on the back, pinching their legs, so that in the confused melee, neither man noticed small, quick hands dipping into their pockets. The mob of boys dispersed as rapidly as it appeared, laughing and cat-calling as they dashed away and were swallowed by the darkness. Only one remained visible: a diminutive tyke who lagged behind his compatriots.

“You there, boy!” Thraxton called. “What’s your name?”

“They calls me Titch, ’cause I’m small for me age.”

“How’d you like to earn a nice, shiny sixpence, Titch?”

The boy turned to look back, a silhouette at the far end of the alley. “Wot I need a poxy sixpence for when I got me a purseful of sovs?” Titch tossed a purse in his hand.

Thraxton’s hands reflexively went to his pockets, only to find that his money had been lifted. “He’s got my sovereigns!”

Algernon batted at his pockets and found that he had also been robbed.

“And mine!”

“Quickly, after him!”

Thraxton and Algernon sprinted after the boy who seemed always to remain just beyond their reach and then suddenly vanished. The two men stopped to catch their breath.

“It’s useless,” Algernon said, panting hard. “We’ll never catch him.”

“I have a feeling they were merely sent to delay us. No doubt Mister Fowler already knows we are about.”

With no illumination save for the moonlight oozing through bilious clouds of fog, they stumbled down blind alleyways that forced them to turn back time and again, until their minds had become as knotted as the streets and they lost all sense of direction.

“You were right, Algy. Truly we have entered a labyrinth.”

But in their slow, stumbling progress, the two friends were being watched. Shadowy figures looked down from rooftops whistling to alert one another of the invaders’ progress. Titch, the boy who had lifted the purse of sovereigns, had also scaled to the rooftops. He tossed the bag he held and caught it just to hear the pile of sovs chink, and laughed as he watched the two gentlemen’s bumbling progress. He put two fingers to his mouth and let out a long and low whistle.

Thraxton heard it, looked up and saw the glitter of eyes among the tiles.

“We’re being watched.”

They passed another courtyard, overgrown with waist-high weeds and strewn with rubbish. Suddenly a pack of ferocious dogs burst from the shadows, barking madly as they galloped straight toward them.

Thraxton and Algernon took to their heels, but the snarling pack quickly overtook them as they ran, the fastest dogs leaping up and snapping at their legs, trying to bring them down. They saw a partly collapsed house up ahead with the front door cracked slightly. Without a word they threw themselves at the door, barging it open then kicking it shut after them. The door resounded to the thud of dogs throwing themselves against it. Thankfully, the door still retained its bolt and Algernon quickly threw it, locking the dogs out. “It appears we are trapped,” he said, looking around. They were in a small, bare, windowless room.

The dogs continued to growl and hurl themselves at the door with such ferocity that the screws holding the bolt to the door frame began to tear loose. Thraxton rushed to the far wall and rapped it with his knuckles. As he suspected, the building lacked even the illusion of solidity: the wall was little more than a skimming of plaster over thin wooden laths. His foot burst through with the first kick. He and Algernon took turns and soon kicked a hole large enough to crawl through.

The hovel they emerged into on the other side of the wall was inhabited by a family of sorts—five children of varied ages, dressed in rags, the youngest, a boy of two, playing naked on the dirt floor. The other children huddled together, shivering under old sacking. On a tattered mattress stained with every kind of filth a skeletally thin woman with a huge mop of frizzy gray hair held the top of her dress down as she nursed a baby.

The woman looked up at the men distractedly, not in the least perturbed by their crashing entry through the wall.

“Have you a ha’penny for a pound of praties, sir?” the woman asked in a thick Irish accent. “Only we ain’t eaten this week. Me paps have dried and the babby will na take suck.”

It was the most abject scene of hopelessness either man had ever witnessed. The woman’s enormous, vacant eyes rolled over them as she rocked back and forth clutching the child.