As my circulation returned to double figures, I remembered that I had no reason to complain. It had been my idea to go out at midnight, and then do my best to make a healthy start on cutting out my airship gasbag. But that didn’t stop me grumbling as I stumbled, zombielike, to the front door to collect the milk. What I saw when I opened the door woke me up more thoroughly than any alarm clock could have done.
Harry was on the step by my milk jug, and was turning inside out.
“Eurgh,” you might be thinking. “What a combination.” I have to confess, that did cross my mind, too, but the surrealness of it kept me watching in awe as Harry heaved and generally cascaded the spider equivalent of diced carrots. I noticed little footprints leading to the top of the jug, and it was quite clear what had happened.
“That serves you right, you greedy thing,” I told him sternly. “You shouldn’t take what doesn’t belong to you. I expect Jasper’s been leading you into bad ways.”
Well, I wasn’t even sure I wanted my milk if Harry had been in it. His helplessness made him less frightening, and more able for me to deal with as an abstract problem. But then I began to wonder if this abstract problem had been going on too long. Harry didn’t seem able to stop convulsing.
“Wait there,” I told him, trying to fool myself that he’d be able to understand me. There was only one thing I could do. Ask someone’s advice. Stepping over the prostrate spider, I ran to the shop and scribbled a note to Mr Whybrow.
“Please come at once, serious illness here.”
Gawd, that was so clumsy. But I was in a panic-hurry and hoped it’d do the trick as I fwoofed it up in the Lamson. I stood there fretting as I awaited his reply; the more I thought about it, the more dangerously ill Harry appeared.
I received no reply, but my message had obviously had the desired effect; Mr Whybrow’s usually well-metred pace thundered down the stairs like a herd of elephants. When he burst through to the shop counter, it was no surprise that he was already dressed and with a first-aid bag slung from his shoulder. He gave me a quick look up and down to reassure himself that I was not the sick party.
“What’s this all about, Miss Bluebird? Where’s the casualty?”
“Right this way, sir.”
I ran out, leaving him to follow. It would have only wasted time to explain. Breathless, I bolted along the street and indicated the miserable Harry, leaving Mr Whybrow to deduce what he could. He stood there, taking in the situation, his expression flitting between disbelief and anger at having his time wasted.
Finally, he blurted, “Harry the spider? He’s the patient?” His face knitted with exasperation; I suspected he was about to solve the problem by stepping on Harry. I gave him a glare to warn him to attempt nothing of the sort.
“Well, look at him, sir! Does that look like any healthy spider that you ever saw?”
Mr Whybrow rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I presume you feel all right, Miss. I wouldn’t like to think there’s a fever starting, hereabouts.”
“He’d been at the milk, sir. They’ve dried up now, but when I first found him, I could see little wet footprints from the jug. Maybe milk is poisonous to spiders?” I tried.
Snort from Mr Whybrow. “I think he’d have learned that for himself by now! He’s certainly old enough.” He picked up the jug and sniffed at it carefully. “This ain’t right. This ain’t right at all. That lad’s been poisoned, Miss.”
“Poisoned!” I clapped my hand to my chest in horror. (Why do people do that? Are they afraid their hearts will burst out?) “But I can’t believe our dairy would – “ Oh, come on, silly. The truth is staring you full in the face. “Jasper,” I murmured. “That was meant for me.”
Mr Whybrow nodded. “Those two won’t give up on us, will they? We’ll stick to Mr McKew’s; we know we can trust him. As for this young feller – “ He dipped his head to Harry. “I don’t know if he’s been caught out by his own greed, or if he knew what was going on and tried to warn you. Either way, you owe him your life, Miss Bluebird. I know he isn’t pretty, but I think we should do our best for him, don’t you?”
A big lump burst in my throat. I’d seen heroic purging in the workhouse, or the occasional case of fever, but never a poisoning. Seedling tears pricked at my eyeballs; I felt utterly useless.
Mr Whybrow had the answer. He rummaged in his first-aid bag and handed me a small light package. “Give him one of these. Otherwise, keep him warm and hydrated, and the rest will be up to the hand of nature. Let me know how you get on.”
With that, he left me to deal with Harry. Well, what else could he have done?
Taken him indoors for me, for a start! Thank you so much, sir!
Returning inside, I collected a newspaper and scooped up Harry on the end. I shook him off onto my chair and moved it closer to the fireplace, and then had a look at what Mr Whybrow had left me.
Oh, of course! Charcoal biscuits! In the workhouse, those had been Dr Augerbit-Spozzytree’s panacea! I placed one on the cushion before Harry, who regarded it with eight disinterested eyes.
“You’re supposed to eat it, sir. I hope you can work that out for yourself.”
While he blearily studied the strange black object, I built up the fire to a low glow, and banked it with the previous night’s embers. I stood, with a weary crackling of knees, and knelt before the chair.
“Come on, Harry. Num num num!” I mimed eating the biscuit and, to be sure, nibbled at a second one. It tasted every bit as disgusting as I’d expected, but I was careful to hide that from my expression. There was no point in putting the patient off the medicine. It made no difference; Harry merely gave an apathetic shudder and sagged. Mercifully, he didn’t lose anything over my cushion. With a sigh, I went to the kitchen to fill a saucer of water from the pump, and placed it next to the biscuit.
“I hope that’ll be enough. I have to go to work now, Harry, but I’ll look in later.”
I hadn’t even had time to wash. I’d have to remedy that later, too. I felt a little self-conscious as I dressed with Harry looking on, but in his present state, I don’t think he’d have cared if I’d danced the can-can for him.
It was a crushing, grey sort of morning as I stood in the shop, with Mr Whybrow adding an irritating percussion from the yard. All my triumphs of the previous night were forgotten. In their place was the little chap lying on my seat cushion. It was too much of a coincidence that out of all the things he could have found to drink, he should have settled on my milk so soon after it had been poisoned. I wasn’t dwelling on my own escape from death, either. Harry had proved that he had a true heart inside his thorax, or wherever spiders kept that part of their anatomy, by taking the poison to warn me. I’d never be able to handle him the way Jasper did, but I’d no longer have to flee the room whenever I saw him. He’d earned too much respect for that.
Yes, Jasper. Could it be that Harry had sickened of his activities, and decided to switch sides?
Suddenly, I was jolted back to life by a yell from the yard. The hammering stopped, and in its place was a crash of heavy stonework. It did not bode well. For a moment, I tried to imagine what could have happened as the clatter died out brick by brick. Then the silence which followed filled me with dread.
Mr Whybrow!
I charged through into the back office, but he’d locked the door to the yard. I rattled the handle furiously, banged on the door and yelled.
“Mr Whybrow! Are you all right in there?”
No reply. I peeped through the keyhole but he’d hung his coat on it. Ohhhh!
There was another way. Dropping my skirts to the office floor, I didn’t care if every Countess in Caledon saw me as I ran out to the drainpipe. At a second thought, I shed my stockings too. They’d interfere with my grip, and only get ruined. I shinned up as swiftly as I could and scampered over the roof, blessing my luck that there was another drainpipe going down to the yard. But before I started on it, I squatted at the eaves and looked down. The yard had a pile of bricks in one corner, with a bulky tarpaulin covering other stuff I couldn’t identify. Other than that, the yard’s most prominent feature was a big hole. And of Mr Whybrow, there was no sign.
My limbs trembled from fear as I enveloped the downwards pipe and began my descent. Not fear of my own prospects, but fear of what had befallen Mr Whybrow. When my feet met the cobblestones, I gazed into the hole; it was so dark I could not see how deep it was. Neither was I any happier about the echo that answered my call.
“Hello? Mr Whybrow?”
By my third call, my worry had turned into seething panic. But then I was rewarded by his voice; faintly, as though coming from a long way away.
“Miss Bluebird? Hang on – “ Footsteps skittered on loose stones and after a few moments, he appeared at the bottom of the hole. Somewhat dishevelled, but very much alive and apparently uninjured. He had to squint to shield his eyes from the sunlight. “Miss Bluebird? How did you get there?”
“Never mind that,” I threw back. “What on earth happened? How are you?”
“I’m fine, don’t worry. I seem to have cut through into an old outfall or something, it goes on for quite a way.”
“Why were you digging up the yard?” I demanded. It seemed such an illogical thing to be doing.
He answered with a terse sigh that rushed in the tunnel like one of those new-fangled underground trains. “Look around you, and you’ll see all the ingredients necessary for putting up a wall. But I needed to be sure how deep the hard standing is, or it’d fall down again. Anyway, I fell through. That bomb I threw into the harbour must have loosened up the roof.”
I was sure that if I asked him directly what he was doing in the yard, he’d dodge the question, but there was no harm in a probe. “This’ll make things harder for whatever you’re doing, then.”
“If anything, it’ll make things easier. Anyway, there’s some sort of tunnel here; I’m not sure that it isn’t man-made. I was just having a look when you yelled down at me.”
Of course, the echo in that tunnel would have made my shouts hit him like hammers. “Wait,” I told him, my panic giving way to a mild embarrassment. “If you’re going to explore, you shouldn’t go alone.”
He weighed it up for a moment. “The air isn’t too wholesome down here, but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous. But you’re right. There’s a ladder up in the corner. And bring a lantern. The key to the office door is in my coat; right hand outside pocket.”
Now perhaps you won’t bother locking the door, I reflected as I retrieved the key and grabbed a lantern from the office. I lowered the ladder to him, and shinned down. He offered no comment on my skirtless state; that alone would have told him how I’d reached him.
“Thankee, Miss.” He took the lantern and shone it about. The tunnel appeared to have been cut from raw rock; it continued ahead of us only, the wall behind being occluded by rocks which were too solidly-packed to have been shaken loose by Jasper’s bomb. “All right, I’ll go first. If there is any foul air, it might strike without warning. If you see me drop, no hero stuff. Get out fast and tell Mrs Boltclyster.”
“Very good, sir,” I replied, having no intention of leaving him without at least making an effort to pull him back. It smelt damp and seaweedy, but the floor was quite dry, which reinforced my theory that it had been cut from living rock by some persons long gone.
Mr Whybrow advanced carefully, holding the lantern as high as he could. The rock was smooth underfoot, but not slippery. We’d only gone a few yards when the flame guttered and nearly went out; Mr Whybrow had to clap a hand to the light to steady it, momentarily putting us in the darkness.
A few yards further, he stopped. “Good Lord. Do you see that?”
It wasn’t easy, with the light full in my face, but I did see it. Barrels, cases, smaller boxes – Mr Whybrow stood the lantern on one of the bigger cases and we took in our find. Brandy, cigars, even my favourite perfume, “Phagueache.” And, infuriatingly, silk. If only I’d known!
“Very interesting,” Mr Whybrow mused. “This lot can’t have been here long; none of it’s damp. No smuggler would store cigars down here for any length of time, they’d be ruined.” He paused, an idea coming to him. “But this means there must be another way in here.”
“The roof levels out a little way further along, sir,” I remarked.
“Why, so it does.” Taking up his lantern, Mr Whybrow led the way to the point I’d indicated. Where had been rock, was wooden planks the size of floorboards. As we drew nearer, we saw steps leading up to a trapdoor. I had a feeling that the mystery was about to be solved in full.
Mr Whybrow ascended the steps and found that the trapdoor opened easily. He went through, leaving me to follow, and we found ourselves in a small squarish brick chamber.
“We would appear to be in someone’s cellar,” he remarked. Then he was answered by another trapdoor above us banging open, and a shaft of light transfixing us. I had to squint against the sudden dazzle, but I could not miss the huge gun barrel poking down at us. Or our Postmistress’ roar.
“Come on out! This thing does work!”
“It’s only us, Mrs Boltclyster,” Mr Whybrow called back. “Mind if we come up?”
The gun barrel dipped and then retracted. Mr Whybrow ushered me up first. Mrs Boltclyster’s eyes bulged out at my skirtlessness; a peculiar choking noise arose in her throat but never made it to the surface. Fortunately, Mr Whybrow then emerged, to take her attention from me.
“Sorry about that,” he told her. “We didn’t know we were in your cellar. Uh, would you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?” He nodded to her weapon, which appeared to be a double-barrelled shotgun of a size that belonged mounted on one of those torpedo-boat destroyers they’d been introducing.
Mrs Boltclyster finally found her voice. “What are you talking about? How can you not know you were down there?”
“I was digging up my yard and discovered an old tunnel,” Mr Whybrow explained. “Don’t worry, we shan’t tell anyone about your stash.”
Mrs Boltclyster was only more confused. “What stash?”
“All the contraband you’ve got down there. Brandy, cigars – “
“Silk,” I added, pointedly.
“I dunno anything about that, luv,” said Mrs Boltclyster, completely puzzled. “I don’t keep anything down there. Come on through to the post office, will you?”
We followed her through; she peeped outside to make sure the coast was clear before opening the official safe and removing a thick old book which I suspected had nothing to do with the transmission of legitimate postage. Thumping the tome onto the counter, which raised a minor cloud of dust, Mrs Boltclyster thumbed through the pages until she arrived at the present time. “Delivered – paid for – housed – there. I knew it. I have been short lately. Stuff has been disappearing between my signing for it and it getting to the warehouse. It’s that Jasper or that woman of his. I used to get him to do the heavy lifting; he must have found that old cave.”
“But didn’t you know it was there?” I asked her.
“Why should I, luv?” Mrs Boltclyster beamed at my innocence. “Wot wiv my rheumatism, arthritis, sciatica and wotnot, I never go down there.”
From the way she’d dished Jasper with that frying pan, I’d never have guessed that she suffered from any of those ailments. But Mr Whybrow spoke the conclusion that was hovering about us all.
“Looks like those two have been pilfering and setting up on their own account.”
An awful idea came to me as I took his logic one step further. “I wonder if that was why he was interested in me? He’d found that the old cave led under the shop, and wanted someone on the inside.”
Mrs Boltclyster caught her breath, but Mr Whybrow merely gave me a solemn look. “I hate to say this, Miss Bluebird, but I very much suspect that to be the case. Since his dismissal, he won’t find it so easy to access his cache, and he’ll have noticed that his tunnel was blocked by a fall. I expect he was looking to come up inside the shop.”
I bit my lip. It’s not as if I’d had a narrow escape from Jasper’s romancing, I’d never been remotely interested in him. But the principle of it – knowing that he'd only wanted me to further his financial interests – made my blood start to boil.
“You’d better make sure they can’t, then,” Mrs Boltclyster warned.
Mr Whybrow shook his head. “Don’t worry. They can’t know what I’m doing, and by the time I’ve finished, they won’t be able to get out that way.” From the corner of his eye, he gave me a cryptic squint.
“Mrs Boltclyster does have a point,” I said. “Those two look to be after our very lives.” I told her about the invalid lying at my fireside.
Mrs Boltclyster’s growl reminded me of a mastiff on the verge of being awoken against its will. “Ooh, the absolute bag of soft, steaming – He should be strung up, he should. Look, luv, if there’s anything I can do to ‘elp, don’t you be afraid to ask, all right?”
I thanked her, and Mr Whybrow gravely added, “I suggest we all look out for each other as well as ourselves, Mrs Boltclyster. Since you’ve occasioned his loss of employment, there’s every reason to suppose you’ll be in as much danger as we are.”
“You’re right there, Mr W,” she agreed. “I’ve no doubt your girl can look after herself, since he came back singing soprano that time. But I’d better keep Oscar handy by my bed.”
“Oscar?” I queried.
Mrs Boltclyster smirked and patted her monstrous firearm. “After Oscar Wilde, my dear. A great big smooth bore.”
“And a reliable counter to most arguments,” Mr Whybrow dryly added. “Come on, Miss Bluebird; let’s find your skirts before you catch cold.”
As he escorted me back to the shop, Mr Whybrow quietly informed me, “I’ll add a bell to the top end of my Lamson. I’ll be able to hear it from my house, you can message me at any time.”
“Thank you, sir.” I was still quite miffed over my silk; had Mr Whybrow made his discovery twenty-four hours earlier, I’d have been spared the need to break into the workhouse.
When I had dressed, I returned home to look in on my patient. I found him where I had left him, unmoving. At first I thought he’d died, but a tiny snoring noise came up to me to reassure me that he was just sleeping off his earlier exertions. And he had eaten fully half the biscuit. That was a good sign. If he was going to die, he’d have already done so.
“Thanks, old chap,” I murmured, aping Mr Whybrow’s clipped accent. I couldn’t bring myself to stroke Harry, but as long as he kept away from my bed, he was welcome to my fireside.
When I returned to the shop, I took Mr Whybrow’s revolver with me. I had regarded it as an excessive precaution, but Jasper only had to be lucky once. I would have to be lucky every time. It would be a good idea to find a reticule that could conceal it in public. Perhaps Mrs Boltclyster would be able to advise me, there. In the meantime, it would fit nicely under the counter. I’d placed too much reliance on the cattleprod, with its unwieldy bulk.
I was relieved when the sun set, the street lamps were lit, and I could vacate the shop. I had plenty to do in the cellar, and there I had little to fear from Jasper. There was only one way in or out, and I had my friendly Boxer as companion.
I thanked God and Mr Whybrow’s magpie-like acquisitiveness for the Dreadnought sewing machine. Without it, I’d have needed months to stitch a gasbag big enough for an airship. But I would get it done in no time at all.
Or would I? All this time, something had been nagging at me. Something was missing. And it was when I stood there, regarding my neatly sewn and sealed gasbag, that I realised what it was.
I had no engine. And I wouldn’t be able to swipe one of those from the workhouse! Arrrgh! Sometimes life seemed to consist of stumbling from one problem into another.
This time, I was careful not to stay out too late. I’d got away with one very short night, and two in succession would be pushing my luck. It was a little after two in the morning when I locked up the cellar and went home, toting the revolver quite openly in case anyone should be watching from the shadows.
Harry stirred as I leaned over to check on him; he shuffled himself more comfortably before settling down again with a tiny spider fartlet (I presume spiders were no different to any other animal in that respect). I gave myself a cold washdown before climbing into bed. I did wonder if I’d have trouble sleeping, after the trying time I’d had, but I must have been getting used to all the excitement, as I found myself sinking gratefully into warm snuggliness, and drifting –
I caught my breath. A faint noise of sawing was coming from somewhere. Carefully, I reached for the revolver which was an uncomfortable bump under my pillow, and reassessed the noise as a crunching. Now, that puzzled me as my hand closed around the weighty grip. That wasn’t the sort of noise someone would make if they were trying to get into a house.
Remaining statue-still, I listened harder, analysing the sound. Definitely a light crunching, almost like someone scraping a Vesta along its sandpaper-sided box. But you don’t strike a match like that, you do it sharply. Neither did it have that muffled quality which it would have had if someone was trying to get in through a wall, and that meant it had to be coming from inside the room.
I traced the direction of the sound. Definitely coming from the direction of the door. Then, in the residual glow from the fire, I detected a flicker of movement on my chair.
HARRY!
I leaned over and squinted. At my eyes’ own confirmation, I flumped back onto my pillow with a sigh, damning my overstretched nerves. That noise was Harry, munching merrily through the rest of his biscuit, unaware of the panic he’d just caused.
“Well, I’m glad that one of us is feeling better,” I sourly told him as I tried to regain my former sleeping posture, in thorough bad spirits. I tried to shut the noise out, but the more I tried to ignore it, the louder it became. The most irritating part was that I could not tell him to shut up or at least eat more quietly. Even had Harry understood me, I had no right to deny him his medicine.
Finally, the noise stopped. Two seconds of silence, followed by a tiny little burp. He was definitely on the mend. I gave another sigh, and tried to relax again. I was starting to drift when another noise entered my hearing. Equally minute in volume, but with a metallic ring to it. And this time it was someone who did not want to be heard.
I recognised it instantly, having made the same noise myself only the previous night. Someone was trying to pick my door lock.
I should have expected this. But I was ready. Anxious to make no sounds that might betray my alertness to the outside world, I slipped Mister Revolver from under my pillow, and took a firmly resolved aim at the door, being careful to aim above the chair that was in the way. I knew that revolvers had hair triggers, and squeezed gently –
I shan’t attempt to describe the sound of the explosion. By the time I heard it, the recoil had thrown my bed over to decant me against the wall in an untidy heap of shopgirl, ironmongery and bedclothes. As I fought my way out, I became aware of heavy footsteps running for their lives which might have been overladen with various blasphemous exclamations, or that could have just been the ringing in my ears.
Finally struggling free, I swung the weighty revolver to the door again, but Jasper had gone. So had my door.
Stumbling past the chair, my nerves starting to tremble, I peered out into the night. Of Jasper, only the echo of his size fourteen boots lingered as they receded into the distance. Of my door – the bottom half might be usable, but the top half was in splinters all over SouthEnd.
I went to check on Harry. I found him cowering into the chair back, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I didn’t know whether he was afraid of his erstwhile friend, or the revolver. I decided to assume it was both. “It’s all right, Harry; he’s gone now. He won’t be coming back.” Yet.
Next, I thought I’d better let Mr Whybrow know what had happened. Returning to the shop, I scribbled by the light of a single candle. “Jasper came back.” I thought of adding something about bringing a new door with him, but I didn’t trust my handwriting that much. I sent up my message, hoping that he’d been as good as his word and installed the bell. In addition, that he would not sleep through it.
He was, and he had not. When he appeared, he was of course fully dressed. I suspected that he slept in his clothes as a matter of routine. He looked me up and down – I must have presented a terrible sight; a great smothering hug would have been greatly appreciated, but this is Mr Whybrow that we’re talking about. Despite our having become much closer, he kept his hands resolutely to himself. Instead, he told me, in that quietly authoritative, almost military snap, “Pull yourself together, girl. Whatever’s happened, is over. Now, what’s this all about?”
“Jasper tried to get in,” was the first coherent sentence I could grasp. “I shot at him through the door; he got away.”
“You didn’t hit him?”
I shook my head.
“You’d certainly know if you had. Come on.”
He led me out into the street. In the poor light, I noticed a bulge under his arm that had not been there before. So he was taking precautions of his own. His pace, swift and determined, slowed when he saw what had been my front door. He stood over the wreckage, riffling indecisive fingers through his hair. I began to wonder if he’d ever actually seen that revolver fired at anything.
“You say he got away?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr Whybrow snorted, buying time to think. “Silly question, really. If you’d hit him in any part of his body with that thing, he’d be lying here. You’d aimed a little high, I trow. When someone picks a lock, they do it on their knees.”
“I know that, sir,” I tersely replied. “I had to aim high to miss the chair.”
“Mmmhm. Looks like I did the right thing giving you that little protection, anyway. Any man born of woman’d need a stiff drink after having that fired at him. Can you get these bits clear of the railway line? I’ll see what I can do for your door.”
While I picked up the splinters, cautiously in my bare feet, he examined the door post. “The hinges are torn clean out of the frame,” he told me. “I can save the hinges, but it’s too dark to see what I’m doing. I’ll fit a new door come daylight. For the present, We’ll have to make do with jamming it in place; there are plenty of splinters about.” He turned to me, his face granite-serious. “It’s clear that you aren’t safe in your own home. If you want to move into mine, feel free. I’ll manage.”
It was tempting, but there was a principle at stake. “Thank you, sir, but I won’t be driven out of what you’ve given me. And that is the only reason, although I do have a patient to think about.”
Mr Whybrow shrugged as though he could not have cared less. As you will. “Oh, yes. How is he?”
“Recovering, but weak.”
“Then change his water and put a sugar lump in it. Energy from sugar’s absorbed faster than any other sort. I’ll bid you good night – what remains of it.”
With that, he was gone. Somewhat curtly, I thought, as borne out by the stiff briskness of his pace as he returned to the shop. But then I remembered how abruptly I’d turned down his offer of sanctuary. He must have thought I didn’t trust him.
After all this time?
Oh, knickers!
That was his problem. I was too tired and grumpy to give the matter any sympathy. I fell asleep sitting up with the revolver in my lap, knowing that anyone trying to get in would make the devil of a racket when the door fell over.
