"There," said Norton when we had finished, "is a job well done."
Nodding, we went back to reclaim Martin, who left off charming the night watchman. That worthy stirred as he came back to himself. He touched his grizzled forelock. "You chaps 'ave a good evenin' now," he said respectfully as we walked past him. We were none too soon, for the sky had already begun to pale toward morning.
"Well, my comrades, I shall see you this evening," Titus said as we prepared to go our separate ways. I am embarrassed to confess that I, along with the rest of us, stared at him in some puzzlement over the import of his words. Had we not just vanquished Jack? Seeing our confusion, he burst out laughing: "Have you forgotten, friends, it will be Club night?" As a matter of fact, we had, having given the day of the week but scant regard in our unceasing pursuit of Jack.
On boarding my train at St. Mary's Station, I found myself in the same car as Arnold, who as luck would have it had spent the entire night in the eastern portion of Whitechapel, which accounted for his nose failing to catch the spoor that led the rest of us to Jack; he had entered the train at Whitechapel Station, half a mile east of my own boarding point. He fortunately took in good part my heckling over his absence.
After so long away, our return to the comforts of the Sanguine Club proved doubly delightful, and stout Hignett's welcome flattering in the extreme. Almost I found myself tempted to try eating cheese for his sake, no matter that it should render me ill, our kind not being suited to digest it.
Despite the desire I and, no doubt, the rest of us felt to take the opportunity to begin to return to order our interrupted affairs, all of us were present that evening to symbolize the formal renewal of our weekly fellowship. We drank to the Queen and to the Club, and also all drank again to an unusual third toast proposed by Titus: "To the eternal restoration of our security!" Indeed, at that we raised a cheer and flung our goblets into the fireplace. A merrier gathering of the Club I cannot recall.
And yet now, in afterthought, I wonder how permanent our settlement of these past months' horrors shall prove. I was not yet in London when Peter of Colechurch erected Old London Bridge seven centuries ago, but recall well the massive reconstruction undertaken by Charles Lebelye, as that was but a hundred thirty years gone by; and there are still men alive who remember the building of New London Bridge in its place by John Rennie, Jr., from the plans of his father six decades ago.
Who can be certain Tower Bridge will not someday have a similar fate befall it, and release Jack once more into the world, madder and more savage even than before? As the French say, "Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse"?everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls. We of the Sanguine Club, to whom the proverb does not apply, know its truth better than most. Still, even by our standards, Jack surely will not find freedom soon. If and when he should, that, I daresay, will be time for our concern.
THE BORING BEAST
Lest unwary readers reckon this story the product of a diseased mind, they should know it is the product of two. My longtime friend Kevin R. Sandes must bear his full share of responsibility for its contents; so must the Anheuser-Busch Corporation. I don't normally compose surrounded by potables. This once, it seemed to work.
An excerpt, O Prince, from an ancient chronicle:
A brisk westerly breeze drove the galley Wasteful into the port of Zamorazamaria. At the Wasteful's helm stood Condom, the Trojan, one massive fist clamped round the wheel. The other clutched a skin of wine. Six feet and a span in height, he would have been taller yet had the fickle gods favored him with a forehead. Only a leather kilt hid his bronze skin and bulging thews from the sun. His hide was crisscrossed with scars, all too many of them self-inflicted.
A sudden roll spoiled his aim, spilling wine over his face and down his lantern jaw. Muttering an oath, he groped for a rag?and the ship's ram crunched into the side of a beamy merchantman tied up at a Zamorazamarian quay.
Condom took in the situation with one fuddled glance. "Back oars!" he bellowed. The ram pulled free, and the merchantman, a six-foot hole torn in her flank, promptly began to sink. Her crew scrambled like fleas on a drowning dog, cursing and screaming and diving over the side.
"What's going on here?" shrilled Captain Mince, emerging from his cabin. "How is a person to sleep with this crashing about? Why, I was thrown clear out of my hammock, and I ripped my new culottes." He fingered the pink silk regretfully. The cries of the foundering ship's sailors drew his gaze. "Condom, how clumsy of you!" he exclaimed, slapping the barbarian's muscly buttocks.
"Captain, I told you I'd break your arm if you did that again."
"You know I despise rough trade. Let's see if we can't give these dears some help, shall we?"
While Mince bickered with the dripping, furious merchants, his crew, Condom among them, roared into the dives and brothels of the decaying harbor district. The Trojan got hopelessly lost in the twisting back streets of Zamorazamaria. He put his faith in his innate barbarian instincts. Stepping up to the first man he saw, he wrapped an overmuscled arm round the fellow's neck and growled, "Tell me where the nearest grogshop is before I tear your head off!"
The man's mouth moved soundlessly. His hands scrabbled at Condom's flexors. The mighty warrior loosed his grip a trifle. Gasping, the man wheezed, "The Lusty Widow is two doors down. Its name is spelled out right in front."
Condom could not read six different languages. "Thanks, bud!" he said, giving his benefactor a slap on the back that sent him reeling into the curbside offal. Condom swaggered down the street until, with the keen-honed senses of the barbarian, his nose caught the sweet scent of beer.
Shaking his square-cut mane of black hair from his dull blue eyes, he strode into the tavern and threw himself into a chair. It collapsed. He picked himself up, only to face the irate proprietress bearing down on him with a bludgeon. She had time for one quick curse before Condom, whose sense of chivalry was rude indeed, decked her with a right. He snarled, "I want beer and I want quiet. After three bloody months cruising with Captain Mince, I need beer!"
She crawled away to fetch it. Condom settled back in a new, stronger chair for some serious drinking. Little did he suspect (which was true most of the time) that he was being watched from afar. Know, O Prince, that in long-ago Zamorazamaria lived the infamous necromancer, wizard, and unholy priest Sloth-Amok. He dwelt in his dark Tower of the Bat like a spider in its web, controlling the lives and destinies of the port city's inhabitants.
Sloth-Amok was a tall, dingy man, with scaly shoulders and aloof, toadlike features. From warty skull to webbed feet, his skin was a deep, venomous green. His bulbous eyes peered into a scrying-cauldron of cold split pea soup. "Heh-heh." He chuckled, flicking a fly from his eyebrow with his long pink tongue. He turned to his familiar, whose name was Gulp, saying, " 'Tis a pity one so stupid as Condom, the Trojan, must die, but die he shall, for I have read in the guano of a thousand starlings that he is the only man alive who might thwart my schemes."
His familiar leered evilly and slobbered, "Can I help, master? Does master want poor ugly Gulp to help?"
"Indeed you may, good Gulp. And I know how." The wizard strode to a table across the chamber; it was there that he conducted his most fiendish experiments. The wooden surface was strewn with eye of newt, toe of frog, wing of bat, ring of bat, rope of bat, mobile of bat, and other exotica. The sorcerer produced a bowl filled with puffy-looking purple stuff. "This is it, Gulp!"