“And then?”
“He was arrested and questioned. He was taken before the Lunacy Commission. He is now in St. Luke’s Hospital for the Insane.”
The story made a strange impression upon me. I excused myself and retired to my bed, but I could not sleep. I had been seized by a sudden fear that banished all thought of repose-what if I felt an overwhelming need to speak and to confess? In that very thought I planted the seed. Yes. Of course I wished to divulge all the horrors for which I was responsible. To unburden myself of the fact that I had brought life to this creature. But did I sense within myself triumph rather than guilt? Of this I was not sure. I believe that I burned with a sudden fever and, when eventually I slept, my dreams were frightful.
I AWOKE LATE on the following morning. I could hear Polidori talking to Fred in the kitchen, and I listened more eagerly. Polidori was questioning him about the customary routine of my day-my meals, my hours, and so forth-and I sensed that Fred was reluctant to answer him.
I rang my bell and waited.
“Yes, sir?” Fred put his head around the door.
“The usual,” I said.
He brought in the tea, and began preparing the soap and razor. “You are entertaining our guest, Fred. What were you discussing?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing can come of nothing.”
“Sir?”
“Speak your mind.”
“He says he is concerned for you. Doctors, he says, are always concerned for others. Then he says something about equations. I don’t know what equals what, sir, and I told him so.”
“And what else did you tell him?”
“I told him nothing that was a lie, sir. But nothing that was a truth neither.”
“You have done well, Fred. Now watch Dr. Polidori when I have left the house.”
I DRESSED MYSELF and walked towards Covent Garden. It was the day that Londoners call Sweep Fair and, much to my disquiet, I saw a gaggle of climbing boys at the other end of the Piazza. They were a queer sight. Their clothes were in rags, so sooty and black that they betrayed their profession at once: they might just have been dragged out of a chimney, except that they were trailing white ribbons, tied to their arms and legs. There was silver foil on their hair, and their cheeks were painted. As I walked closer to them, I could see patches of gold and silver foil plastered to their dirty clothes and faces; it was altogether a most forlorn spectacle. Then, to the sound of drums, the boys began their march. They waved their climbing tools, their rods and brushes, in the air above their heads; they sang some frightful song, full of oaths and execrations, at which the spectators laughed. Then I saw Polidori, just by the portico of the church there. He was looking around with great eagerness, and I knew at once that he was searching for me. He had been following me. I turned the nearest corner, and hailed a cab for Limehouse.
IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT when I returned to Jermyn Street. I called for Fred, but there was no reply. I went over to the window and looked down at the dark street; for a moment I thought there was a movement among the shadows, but then the moment passed. So I retired to bed.
On waking the next morning, I noticed that my clothes had not been laid out. I arose quickly, and left my room: the kitchen door was open, but there was no sign of Fred. He had never absented himself before, and I could think of nothing that would have detained him for the whole night. I dressed myself and went out into the street, with no definite course of action, and wandered into Piccadilly. There was a coffee-stall there, by the corner of Swallow Street, that I knew to be patronised by Fred. “Have you seen my manservant? Fred Shoeberry?” I asked the young girl pouring the coffee into tin mugs.
“Fred? The one with the crinkly hair and the tooth missing?”
“Him.”
“I have not seen him since yesterday morning, sir, when he commented on the state of the weather. Foul it was.”
I moved on, carried as much by the crowd as by my own volition. Of course I had no chance of finding him. London can be a wilderness, for those who seek out a particular face. And although I knew that Fred was experienced in all the ways of the city, I also knew how easy it was for a boy to vanish altogether as if snatched from the streets into oblivion. I believe that many were forcibly impressed as seamen; as for the fate of others, I had no notion. Of course I feared that the creature might have seized him; but in my last interview with him he had exhibited such shame and repentance, had so eagerly forsworn any further violence, that I dismissed the speculation. What possible motive could he now have in perpetrating such a deed, when he was anxiously anticipating the end of his earthly life?
I came back into Jermyn Street despondent. Many would have treated the sudden departure of a servant with no great emotion, but I had not realised how attached I had become to Fred. And then I remembered Mrs. Shoeberry. It was possible that she was sick, or ailing, and that Fred had been obliged to stay with her. I knew from him that she lived in one of the courts off Drury Lane, at the upper end of that street, and I made my way there on foot. Everyone knew Mrs. Shoeberry in that quarter, and I was directed to the tenements in Short’s Rents where I was assured she would be “rinsing.” There was another laundress by the pump in that court, with soap and pumice stone, and I supposed that the water ran more freely here: I asked her for Mrs. Shoeberry’s lodging, and she pointed to an open window on the second floor. “She,” she said, emphasising the word, “is in there.” I made my way up the staircase, not so clean as it might have been, and found Mrs. Shoeberry’s apartment. The door was ajar, and I could already smell the familiar sour odour of London laundry. I knocked, and pushed open the door, but I could see no sign of the laundress herself. Sheets and linen were hanging in profusion all about the room.
“Whoever is it?” Mrs. Shoeberry’s voice came from behind a sheet.
“Victor Frankenstein.”
“Why, Mr. Frankenstein. Beg your pardon.” She stepped out, clutching a brace of wooden pins and a roller. “What has Fred done now?”
“He has done nothing, Mrs. Shoeberry. I was hoping to find him here.”
“He ain’t been here, Mr. Frankenstein. He only comes on a Sunday, when I need him for the lifting.” I had no idea what she meant. “Has he gone, then?”
“I have not seen him since yesterday evening.”
She considered the matter for a moment. “That is not like Fred.”
“I know.”
She looked at me steadily. “Has he been in any trouble, sir?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“There will be something on his mind. I know that boy. When the late Mr. Shoeberry passed off, Fred hid himself away for two days. Said he had been sleeping on the boats. He never mentioned it again. He is deep, that boy.” She went behind the sheets, from which came the sound of an enormous sneeze. After a few moments, she recovered. “Never you mind it, Mr. Frankenstein. He will be back by Sunday. He would not leave me to the lifting.”
I departed a few minutes later, having given her a florin for her “trouble,” and walked back to Jermyn Street. I had been to some degree reassured by her confidence that Fred would return by Sunday, and so once more I devoted myself to experiment. I went to the workshop each day, where I refined the galvanic mechanism in the light of my further researches: the problem of reversal was still one that exercised me, and led me to a thousand different variations in the batteries and machines. I was confident of a solution, however, and did not weary in my efforts.