The Choir Boats (7 page)

The first of the two attackers cursed and bolted, then the other.
Barnabas and Sanford were prepared to accept the newcomer as
their rescuer . . . until they saw the dog and realized why the two
footpads had fled. As the man in the glistening coat moved around
the corner, so did the dog on the leash. Rather, the dog flowed
around the corner, an impossibly long body that bent and formed
itself around the corner as if hinged. Its forelegs were at a right angle
now to its back legs and still it oozed around the corner. The growl
intensified. The man in the antique coat was about to slip the leash.
Sanford saw that the dog had ape-like hands.

Sanford gripped his cane for a blow before going down.
Shouts erupted from the other end of the alley. Two figures raced
by Barnabas and Sanford, shouting in a foreign language, and
brandishing very large pistols. The dog, or whatever it was, barked
loudly once — a hoarse, wet sound as if its tongue was too large for
its mouth. Darkness swallowed man and dog. A few seconds later,
the two newest newcomers returned out of the darkness. In the
gloom, Barnabas could just make out a magenta flash on each of
their skullcaps.

“Salmius Nalmius Nax!” he shouted.

“At your service.”

Half an hour later, seven people crowded into the partners’ office at
the McDoon comptoir: Fraulein Reimer, Sally, Barnabas, Sanford,
the Purser, the proprietor of the Piebald Swan, and Tom. The cook
and the maid had returned just before Barnabas and Sanford and,
after determining that Sally was well enough to talk, and that the
kitchen was un-invaded, they made for their room in the back-house. “Poor brave little smee,” said the cook. “The German miss
with a pistol! Housebreakers! Niece, you bar that window!”

While the cook and niece barred the windows of their room, the
seven in the partners’ office were in an uproar. Only Yikes seemed
unflapped, looking on from his position by the fire. Sally lay on a chair,
Isaak licking her face. Sally was bruised and her right arm in a sling,
but she smiled grimly at her brother. “. . . and then,” she continued,
“right outside our back door, up pops Fraulein Reimer.”

“Fraulein Reimer!?” exclaimed Tom.

“Yes,” said Sally. “Cool as can be, with this huge great pistol, yelling
‘
Halten Sie jetzt
!’ or ‘halt now,’ I don’t know exactly because I was in
shock on the ground.” Everyone looked at Fraulein Reimer, a plump
woman whose hands now held needlepoint, and who steadfastly
refused to look at the others, though she was blushing. Shaking his
head, Barnabas asked the fraulein what had happened.

The fraulein stopped working the needlepoint, looked up shyly,
and said, “Those, those . . .
boese Leute
. . . bad men, they stopped only
for an
Augenblick
, a moment, and then they ran around me, jumped
over the wall, were gone.” She paused, looked down again at her
needlework. “It is the most shockingest thing, the most shockingest
thing.” Her undertone suggested, however, that she would have shot
the burglars if necessary.

Barnabas and Sanford added this news to the evening’s growing list
of wonders. Fraulein Reimer chasing off burglars was as remarkable
as their rescue by the Purser and the proprietor of the Piebald Swan.
“Oh,” grinned Barnabas. “Isaak tried to bite one of the attackers,
isn’t that right, Fraulein?” The fraulein said “Ah,
ja, stimmt
,” and all
members of McDoon & Associates. agreed that Isaak probably would
have slashed the man to death had she only been a little bigger or the
man a little smaller. Barnabas turned to Salmius Nalmius Nax and
asked once again for an explanation of the evening’s events.

Salmius Nalmius Nax cleared his throat. “It has to do with Yount,
and with the key, and the danger that surrounds the key.” Though her
head and arm throbbed, Sally strained to hear every word. Tom hardly
breathed. “We have watched McDoon & Associates for a long time.
I have been in London since just before your sister died, Barnabas.”
(Salmius Nalmius made a gesture with his left hand that the McDoon
household understood to be a sign of respect and mourning.) “I
am also known here by another name, as the merchant Oliveire de
Sousa, a trader who left Amsterdam during the revolution in 1795,
a trader with connections from Smyrna to Lisbon, from Antwerp to
. . . Hamburg. I have not been alone. This is my brother, not merely
the proprietor of a coffeehouse but one of Yount’s greatest military
leaders, Captain of the Fencibles: Nexius Dexius Nax.” He pronounced
it “Nex Dex Nax.” He spoke of the Piebald Swan as their hidden base of
operations, a haven from those who wished them harm. He said that
those same foes had taken an interest in the McDoons, which is why
the Naxes had sent for the McDoons earlier than expected.

“It’s
Fraulein
Reimer!”
Sally
blurted
out,
looking
away
from
the drowning men in the prints of the foundering East Indiamen.
“Fraulein Reimer has been our guardian all this time . . . isn’t that
right?” The others turned towards her. Fraulein Reimer blushed and
quickened the pace of her needlepoint.

“Yes,” said Salmius Nalmius. “The fraulein is a long-time ally of
ours. She has a more varied experience than you can guess. She has
been our chief source of news about you, and your chief guardian all
these years. You recall who recommended her to you at the start of
her employ?”

“Why, the Landemanns,” said Barnabas. “Of Hamburg.”

“Yes,” said Salmius Nalmius. “The Landemanns. We have worked
with them for two generations now, father and son. Both on the
matter of Yount, and incidentally on purely mercantile matters.
Oliveire de Sousa has done some profitable business with the firm
of Landemanns, if I may say so, especially in the matter of salt from
Cagliari and Setubal.”

“We know something of that business, sir, indeed we do,” said
Barnabas. “So you were the mysterious investor, the undisclosed
capital, that Lindemanns spoke of. Don’t I feel a capital chub-gudgeon for not knowing anything about any of this! Buttons and
beeswax!”

Sanford felt order returning, patterns reasserting themselves.
Sally, from another point of departure, felt the same. She stared at
the white boy threatened by the grey shark in the mezzotint, while
she said: “So what were they looking for here tonight?”

Salmius Nalmius spread his hands, his skullcap bobbed, its
magenta embroidery catching the candlelight. “The key,” he said.
The room fell silent, except for the “chock, chock” of the parrot.
Sally and Tom looked at Barnabas and Sanford. Barnabas quickly
told them about the entire package, was surprised (but not much) to
hear that the book was known to them.

Sanford stirred. “The dog, the man?” he asked.

Salmius Nalmius moved to reply but his brother the soldier put
a hand on his arm. Speaking in a low voice, Nexius Dexius said, “We
call him the Cretched Man, on account of the coat he wears.”

Barnabas interrupted, “The Wurm fellow? Is that him?”

“No,” said Nexius Dexius. “But the Wurm’s chief lieutenant. Very
dangerous. The thugs he used tonight, both here and in the street,
were just common London criminals. We were lucky.”

“I saw him!” Sally cried, relieved that her “eidetic imagination”
had not been so fanciful after all. “In Mincing Lane last week. Ugh,
his coat seemed to move on him, gleamed almost.” The Nax brothers
nodded. The tall man’s rusty virgated coat was his trademark. The
fraulein said something that sounded like a prayer, of which Sally
caught in German the words “a cloth of wonder with strange figures
in-woven.”

Nexius Dexius went on: “Very dangerous, the Cretched Man.
Also, his creature . . . very dangerous. Almost never brought here, to
your world. The Wurm’s need is great. We call the beast ‘shaharsh-harsh.’ In your language, that is ‘knuckle-dog.’ Scholars say they are
the Hounds of Tindalos. As may be . . . knuckle-dogs.”

Barnabas and Sanford thought of the wolf-thing sliding bonelessly
around the corner, gripping the paving stones with simian hands.

“‘Outside are the dogs and sorcerers . . . and murderers and
idolaters’,” recited Sanford under his breath.

“A bird,” Sally yawned and winced but wanted one more question
answered before sleep took them all. “I saw a wren last week keeping
watch on us.”

Salmius Nalmius replied, “Ah, a wick-wren, a hyter-spirit.
Another one of
their
creatures. Not really a bird. A phantom made
flesh. A spy.”

As if she understood, Isaak arched her back at the description
of the wick-wren. Salmius Nalmius nodded in her direction: in
Yount, cats were given special honour. Turning back to McDoon &
Associates, he said: “It is late. My brother and I withdraw for the
night. But please, let us talk again tomorrow.” Barnabas and Sanford
agreed, convinced now of a threat but still uncertain of its origin,
and how best to meet it.

At the door, Salmius Nalmius said, “They will try again, and
soon. Please, I beg you: the key must leave London. The key must
go to Yount.”

“Chock,” said the parrot, and then the house fell silent.

No one slept well that night except for Yikes. The cook and the maid
had the first word of the day, to one another as they lit the fires.

“Beetle-headed I said I was, and so I am!” said the cook. “We
never should have gone last night to the bishy-barnybees. ’Stead of
mardling there, we should have been here fighting off those reasty
devils.”

The maid looked none too certain of that, but the cook pulled out
her sharpest hulking knife and declared, “I would have gutted any
man as came into this kitchen, same’s I hulk a chicken.”

The maid admired her aunt, and had no doubt of the cook’s
abilities with any kitchen utensil, but thought she’d rather have
Fraulein Reimer’s pistol to hand. She was on good terms with
the fraulein, even though they did not always understand one
another’s accents. She wondered if all German women were as brave.
Altogether it had been an unnerving evening, what with the talk
among the Norfolk women about the dreadful Ratcliffe Highway
murders in December (someone knew a man who knew a brother of
one of those murdered, so small the world could be!), and now this.

The cook bent over to give Isaak some milk. “Well,” she said.
“From what I hear, you did
your
best, didn’t you, little lion?”

Straightening up, she said, “Now, my dear, there’ll be no falling
apart here, then. Pass me the eggs, let’s make the best duff-pudding
we can.”

Bolstered by pudding (the cook insisted everyone have seconds,
and she gave Isaak another saucer of milk), McDoon & Associates
spent the day in caucus. Correspondence was suspended, a first in
the history of the firm. Three times someone used the dolphin door
knocker to announce themselves, and each time Sanford asked the
visitor to come again the next day.

Barnabas was for counter-attacking immediately. “Like Lord
Rodney against the French!” he said, waving in the direction of
the picture in the hallway of Rodney in the
Formidable
leading the
British fleet through the French line off the Dominican coast.

Sanford liked the precision with which the engraving was
subtitled (“at fourteen minutes past nine a.m., April 12, 1782”), but
nevertheless shook his head.

“Why not, old friend?” asked Barnabas, mentally arranging
cannons on the foredeck.

“For three reasons, my dear Barnabas,” said Sanford. “First, Lord
Rodney knew his enemy, and we do not.”

Barnabas considered the point, as he beat his gun-crews to
quarters. He thought he looked rather fine in his tall admiral’s hat,
and that his vest went well with the scarlet coat. But Sanford was
right.
Quatsch.
Coat, hat, and cannons faded. For now.

“Second, we cannot be sure what game the Nax brothers might
be playing at,” Sanford continued. “Are they truly our friends?”

“A fair pigeon, that one,” said Barnabas, looking at the print of
Diana and Acteon, and then at the sandalwood box.

“Due diligence,” Sanford said. “We need to learn more about the
Naxes before we act. Just possibly last night’s events were arranged
by the Naxes.”

“To what end?”

“A scheme to defraud the firm perhaps, or simply a hoax, a
monstrous great prank, who knows?”

“Aye, reason is all on your side, Sanford,” said Barnabas. “And we
all know it, but still . . .”

“No,” said Sally. Like a burst of wind that topples a tree, her word
overwhelmed the edifice of Sanford’s logic, to the relief of all.

“No,” agreed Sanford. “No indeed, Miss Sally. Something ill is at
work here, but the Naxes are not working it. I cannot say how I know
that, but I do.”

Barnabas said, “Because your heart tells you. So does mine. All
of us.”

“The fraulein,” said Tom. “She is with the Naxes, and we know
her. She is part of this house.”