“What are they like?”
Mrs. Puggsley groaned. “They’ve got all sorts down there — mermaid and midgets and a girl who can blow balloons up with her eyes. How can we possibly compete with that?”
Mina came back into the room. “We shouldn’t have to,” she said, absently running a comb through her beard. “It’s a proper disgrace, the way they’ve muscled in on our business.” She sat down beside Moon, gave him a perfunctory, passionless kiss on the cheek and returned to the disentanglement of her facial hair.
Moon barely noticed. “How long have they been here?”
“Rolled in about a month ago.”
“Are there acrobats? Gymnasts? Tumblers? Anyone who’d be able to scale buildings?”
“I shouldn’t care to say,” Mrs. Puggsley said haughtily. “I’ve no wish to visit such a place.”
Clara, the pinhead, spoke up. “I’ve been,” she said. “I saw this man there do this act where he climbs a church steeple and dances on top. He can crawl up anything, they say. They call him ‘the Human Fly’ because of it — and on account of the fact he doesn’t quite look right.”
“Describe him.”
“It’s horrible to see, sir. He got these scales all over his face-”
“Scales? Are you sure?”
Clara nodded vigorously.
Moon got to his feet. Showing no obvious signs of shame, he flung the negligee aside and hurriedly dressed himself before the assembly of women. “Where is this fair?”
“Is it important?” Clara asked.
“More than you could know,” he replied, struggling with his cuff links.
“South of the river. A mile or so beyond Waterloo.”
Moon gave her his thanks and ran for the exit. Mrs. Puggsley lumbered to her feet.
“Always a pleasure, Mr. Gray. Can we expect you again soon?”
“You may rely on it,” Moon called back. He left the house, ran back through Goodge Street, hailed the first hansom cab he saw and raced toward Albion Square.
“Well,” Mrs. Puggsley said as she moved with fleshy inelegance back to her easy chair, “there goes one satisfied customer, at least.”
Moon dashed up to the doors of the Theatre of Marvels to find a street arab loitering conveniently outside. “Boy!” he shouted.
The child, a ragged, underfed scrap of a thing, looked up. “Sir?”
“I’ve a sovereign for you if you can deliver a message to Scotland Yard.” He scrawled a note and handed it over. “Deliver it into the hands of a man named Merryweather. Have you got that?”
“A sovereign?” the waif asked, wide-eyed.
“Two if you hurry. Now go.”
Needing no further encouragement, the child ran headlong into the darkness.
Moon pelted down the steps to his flat, Speight grumbling sleepily as he passed.
Mrs. Grossmith was making herself a nightcap when Moon burst into the kitchen.
“Been for another walk?” she asked, her voice dripping with disapproval.
Moon ignored her. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”
“Asleep, sir, these past three hours.”
“Then we must wake him,” Moon cried, running toward the bedroom.
“Has something happened?” The housekeeper was unsurprised to receive no reply.
Moon shook his friend awake. “We have him!” he shouted. “We have our man!”
Half an hour later, in grim, persistent rain, Moon, Mrs. Grossmith and the Somnambulist stood assembled by the steps outside the theatre. Speight tottered across to see what all the excitement was about. “What’s going on?” he asked. Everyone ignored him.
“This is no night to be out in,” Mrs. Grossmith complained.
“We’ve no choice,” Moon retorted.
“Where is it you’re going at this hour, anyway?”
Before he could reply, a four-wheeler clattered into Albion Square, pulled up by the theatre and disgorged a beleaguered-looking Merryweather and two beefy plain-clothes policemen.
“You’d better be right,” he said. “You’ve dragged me out of bed for this.”
The Somnambulist nodded in weary sympathy.
“We’d best be going before this weather gets any worse. If what you say is true this’ll be the arrest of my career.”
“Have I ever failed you before, Inspector?”
It may be for the best that Merryweather’s reply was lost to the wind and the rain.
As the coach drove from the square, Grossmith and Speight walked back to the theatre ruefully shaking their heads in an unexpected moment of camaraderie. The vagrant settled stoically down upon the steps and Mrs. Grossmith felt a sudden pang of conscience.
“Mr. Speight? It’s a cold night. Might I offer you some broth?”
The tramp nodded gratefully, clambered back to his feet and the two of them retreated indoors to the warm and merciful pleasures of the housekeeper’s kitchen.
By the time they reached the carnival the rain had become torrential, and worse yet a thick fog had begun to descend, lending even the most innocuous scenes an eerie, minatory air.
The travelers had settled a mile or so west of Waterloo, colonizing a small heath beside a row of residential houses. A church sat some way off in the distance.
The fair itself comprised nothing more than a dozen or so caravans grouped together in a rough circle at the center of the heath. A few of them carried signs and placards promising contests, games, spectacles and the like, but everything was long since boarded up and covered over for the night. Most of their owners had retired but for a couple of uncouth, unshaven men sitting listlessly about a guttering, sickly fire. The plaintive wail of what sounded like a penny flute drifted through the camp.
As the investigators walked toward them, one of the men looked up, belligerence glinting openly in his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked. Attached to his left ear was the kind of large metal ring more usually to be found dangling from the noses of cattle.
Merryweather (well used to dealing with persons of this class) chose not to reveal his profession but instead that he wished to see the proprietor with a view to exchanging a sum of money for information. The man with the earring shot the inspector a suspicious look but got to his feet nonetheless and slouched away into the mist. The bolder of the two plain-clothes policemen (Moreland by name) unwisely attempted to make conversation with the remaining Romany, an offer ungraciously declined by means of a single, brusque hand gesture.
At length the proprietor appeared, and the fog must have descended still more heavily than before, as there was little or no sign of his approach — he seemed to materialize fully formed mere inches from the Somnambulist’s right elbow. He looked the giant up and down like a farmer eyeing up livestock at the county fair. “Shouldn’t you be with us?” he asked.
He was a slippery, weasel-faced squirt of a man who introduced himself as Mr. King. “What can I do for you, gents? Must be something devilish important to get you out here at this time of night and in such weather, too.”
“We’re looking for a man,” Merryweather explained.
“Lot of men here,” King replied unhelpfully, and sniggered.
“He is known,” Moon interjected, “as the Human Fly.”
A leer spread itself across the proprietor’s disagreeable face. “It’s the Fly you’re after, is it? What’s he done this time?”
“What makes you think he’s done anything?” Moon said carefully.
“Oh, he’s been in trouble before. He’s sprightly, that one.” King’s tongue darted out to dampen his lower lip. “Very sprightly.”
“May we see him?”
The proprietor shrugged. “I shouldn’t like to wake the boy. He’s got a big day ahead of him tomorrow. Being one of our star attractions, you understand.”
Merryweather produced his wallet and pulled out a five-pound note. “I’ll double this when you take us to him.”
King gave a greasy bow. “Follow me, gentlemen. Stay close. This fog can be treacherous.”
They had good reason to take notice of this warning, as the fog had degenerated into a London particular, rendering vision more than a foot in front of them practically impossible. The fog clutched at their bodies, muzzled clammily up against them and permeated their clothes, dank and cold and seeping through to the skin. As the Somnambulist shivered, Moon touched his arm.