An idea struck him, and he stopped a boy and asked him for a pencil and some sheets of paper. And when it arrived he began to write out, from memory, the entire text of “The Twelve Hours of the Night.” In composing the original PMLA article on Ashbless’ work, and later while writing the biography, he had read the poem hundreds of times, and in spite of his sick dizziness he had no difficulty in remembering every word. By twelve-thirty he was scribbling the somewhat awkward final eight lines.
He whispered,
There, he thought, letting the pencil clatter to the table. Now when the bastard finally gets around to keeping his historical appointments I’ll just hand him this—and I’ll say, If you’re curious about this, Mr. William Hell-of-a-fellow Ashbless, I can be reached at Kusiak’s, Fickling Lane, Southwark. Ho ho.
He folded up the sheets of paper and sat back smugly, content now to wait.
When the gargling screams started, Jacky broke into a run down the narrow alley toward Kenyon Court, the old flintlock in her shoulder pouch bouncing painfully against her left shoulder blade. She swore, for it certainly sounded like she was too late. Just as she burst out of the alley into the littered court a gunshot echoed between the dilapidated buildings.
“Damn it,” she panted. Under the ragged curtain of her bangs her eyes darted this way and that, trying to spot anyone—from a toddler to an old woman—leaving the court, especially with a too nonchalant air; but the entire population of the area seemed to be hurrying toward the house from which the shot had sounded, and shouting questions to the people that lived there, and cupping their faces against the dust-frosted windows.
Jacky sprinted, ducked and elbowed her way nimbly through the noisy crowd to the house’s front door, and just pressed down the latch, swung the door open and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her and shot the bolt.
“And just who the bloody hell are you?” came a voice with more than a hint of hysteria in it. A heavy-set man in a brewer’s apron stood on the first landing of the stairway on the other side of the front room. The smoking gun in his right hand seemed to be something he hadn’t noticed yet, like a fleck of mustard on one’s moustache, and right now it only served as a weight, keeping that hand from flying about in aimless gestures as the left was doing.
“I know what you just killed,” Jacky panted, her voice urgent. “I’ve killed one myself. But never mind that for now. Are any people, any members of your family, not here? Did anyone leave the house in the last few minutes?”
“What? There’s a goddamn ape upstairs! I just shot it! My God! None of my family are at home, thank all the saints! My wife will go mad. I may go mad.”
“Very well, what was… the ape doing? When you shot it?”
“Was it yours? You son of a bitch, I’ll have you clapped in jail for letting that thing run wild!” He began clumping down the stairs.
“No, it wasn’t mine,” Jacky said loudly, “but I’ve seen another like it. What was it doing?”
The man waved with both hands, clanking the gun against the wall. “It was—Jesus!—screaming like somebody on fire, and spitting pints of blood out of its mouth, and trying to crawl into my son Kenny’s bed. Damn me, it’s still there—the mattress will be—”
“Where is Kenny right now?” Jacky interrupted.
“Oh, he won’t be home for hours yet. I’ll have to—”
“God damn it, where’s Kenny?” Jacky shouted. “He’s in terrible danger!”
The man gaped at her. “Are the apes after Kenny? I knew something like this would happen.”
Seeing Jacky open her mouth for another outburst, he said hastily, “At the Barking Ahab, around the corner in the Minories.”
As Jacky sped out the door and ran back toward the alley she thought, you poor bastard, it’s a blessing you’ll never find out that it was probably your Kenny you shot, as, crowbarred into an unfamiliar and fur-covered and poisoned body, he tried to crawl into his bed.
The Minories was blocked by a line of wagons carrying bales of clothing from the Old Clothes Exchange in Cutler Street toward London Dock, and Jacky ran to the nearest one, scrambled up the sideboards and from this vantage point looked up and down the street. There it was—a swinging sign with an Old Testament-looking man painted on it, his head tilted back and his mouth an O. She swung down from the wagon just as the driver behind was beginning to shout about thieves, and she made a beeline for the Barking Ahab.
Though the door was open and a breeze fluttered the smoke-yellowed curtains in the windows, the place smelled strongly of cheap gin and malty beer. The owner looked up irritably from behind the counter when Jacky came clattering and panting in, but changed his expression to a doubtful smile when the pop-eyed, out-of-breath newcomer slapped a half-crown onto the polished wood.
“There’s a lad named Kenny drinking here?” Jacky gasped. “Lives over in Kenyon Court.” Be here, Joe, she thought. Don’t have left yet.
A voice sounded from a table behind her. “You a Charlie, Jack?”
She turned and looked at the four poorly dressed young men around the table. “Do I look like a Charlie, mate? This isn’t a law matter—his father’s in some trouble, and sent me after him.”
“Oh. Well, maybe Kenny heard of it; he got up and dashed out of here five minutes ago like he’d remembered something left on the fire.”
“Aye,” said another, “I was just coming in, and he shoved by me without a glance, much less a ‘hullo’ for a chap he’s been pals with nigh a decade.”
Jacky sagged. “Five minutes ago?” He could be half a mile away by now, she thought, in any direction, and I could never get a good enough description of Kenny to be sure of him even if I found him. And even if I was sure I’d found him, I couldn’t shoot him just because I’m almost certain that Kenny was shot in his own bed, and that his body is now occupied by old Dog-Face Joe. I’d have to question him, trick him, somehow get him to betray himself. Maybe once I could have killed him on the almost certainty, but not anymore—not after having almost punched a hole through the skull of poor old Doyle.
She got a fair description of Kenny anyway—short, fat, red hair—and then left the place. Well, that’s what he’ll look like for the next week or two, she thought. Judging by the areas where the “apes” have tended to show up, he likes the East End—probably because disappearances are not uncommon here, and it’s easier to evade pursuit among the mazy alleys and courts and rooftop bridges of the rookeries, and any crazy stories coming out of the area would be more likely to be discounted as products of drink, opium or lunacy—so for the next couple of weeks I’ll search the low lodging houses of Whitechapel and Shoreditch and Goodman’s Fields for a short, fat, red-haired young man who’ll have no close friends, be a bit simple-minded and talk about immortality to anybody who’ll listen, and maybe need a shave on his forehead and hands—for evidently the thick fur begins to grow all over a body as soon as he gets into it. I wonder what sort of creature he is, she thought, and where he came from.