Though I valued my liberty, I was in no hurry to escape, being nearly as afraid of the public outside the warehouse walls as the public might have been of me. The practical effect of all this was that I enjoyed a much greater degree of freedom than aboard ship, and at night I allowed a natural curiosity to draw me out of my dull, cramped quarters and into the streets of the great city. There darkness allowed me considerable latitude for exploration, without my appearance exciting the wonder and fear of the crowd.
What marvels, though they must have been mere commonplace events to the dwellers in the dock-side hovels, I beheld whilst lurking in the darkness! In this half-world of the befogged metropolis, the few fragmented memories retained by my body of its former life, or lives (if such indeed were the sources of my pieces of inexplicable knowledge)
could offer me no guidance. I observed the terror and struggles of the great city's poor, and the follies, sometimes equally terrible, of her wealthy. I learned, among other things, a little more about what men and women can be like. Keeping to the shadows of the city's night with timid determination, I retreated quickly when any started to take notice of me, and took extreme care that no one should observe my comings and goings from the warehouse.
During the day, I always remained indoors. It was during this time that Victor, carefully measuring my feet—he was always so precise with measurements—arranged that a pair of boots should be custom-made for me.
With his newly gathered equipment, he had quickly improvised a new laboratory, much larger than his workroom had been at Ingolstadt, in an upper room of the otherwise largely disused warehouse. In his new workshop he took measurements of me—never anything so mundane as my simple height—and tested me, on machines that tried my strength and my endurance. And he would sometimes sit for a long time, chin on hand, pondering my existence.
Meanwhile he looked forward to his next series of experiments, which were to provide me with at least one mate. He grumbled frequently about the early difficulty of obtaining the necessary raw materials. Success in that endeavor was not too long in coming, though; in London money could do anything. The Argo had remained in port, and Captain Walton needed very little time to establish contact with a second group of Resurrectionists, who proved to be more competent as well as more peaceful than the first. The leader of this new company was a man named Eli Hammer, whose wife, Matilda played an active role in his enterprise as well. Mrs. Hammer was a rather prim-looking matron of about forty, who, when I observed her through a knothole in an interior wall, appeared well qualified to be a chaperone. Meanwhile I was enjoined, by all four of my first managers, to keep myself at all times out of sight of the new employees as they began to come and go around the warehouse. At the time I supposed that the Hammers would probably never learn of my existence.
Mrs. Hammer possessed a valuable skill at figures, and as part of his agreement with her husband, Saville found regular employment for her at a desk in his warehouse office. The entire small staff, who had formerly conducted the modest normal business of the building, had been dismissed when we moved in.
This epoch also marked the first appearance among us of one who was to become the most dangerous of my enemies. This was a man called Small, a pockmarked, sandy-haired person of about thirty years of age, ugly yet quite vain about his person, distinguished by demoniac energy and a controlled fierceness of manner. I have never heard him spoken to, or spoken of, by any other name than Small. His stature suited his name, and I am sure that his spirit, if indeed he has one—I have no reason to doubt that he still breathes—is smaller yet.
The explanation of Small's presence came to me gradually, through words overheard here and there and actions observed. Saville, evidently thinking matters over after our brawl with the first party of graverobbers, and not wishing to have to depend upon my help in any future violent disagreement, had found this man somewhere—God knows where—and hired him as bodyguard and general factotum; That a man of physically small stature could demonstrate proficiency as a bodyguard says something about his other qualifications.
But the arrival of the abominable Small was not, by far, the greatest alteration in our company. Not only romance but marriage had entered Saville's life, whether shortly before or shortly after his sudden though not unexpected inheritance of wealth I am still not sure. His betrothed was none other than Walton's only sister, Margaret. The couple had known each other at least slightly, I gathered, for years before Saville came into his fortune; but as the date of his twenty-fifth birthday drew near she had acted in a timely way to renew and strengthen the acquaintance. Later I learned that Margaret was a widow, a little older than her new husband.
It was not only Roger's wealth that the lady found attractive; the two of them were in truth kindred spirits. Almost from the time of our arrival in London he shared with her the plans he had worked out to gain advantage from the discoveries of Frankenstein. Their wedding, a quietly-managed affair—somehow I failed to receive an invitation—took place shortly after our business operations had moved into the warehouse.
Several times before the wedding, when Saville was engaged in business elsewhere, his bride-to-be visited the warehouse. Frankenstein at first objected to the presence, just outside his laboratory, of this woman he did not even know, and objected even more strongly to her being given knowledge of his work, and the plans to expand and perfect it. Clerval seconded my creator's protests. But it had long been clear that Saville was the senior member of the partnership, and he would hear of nothing but that his new wife be included immediately and as a full partner. Walton, perhaps knowing his sister well, had no complaint to make.
"She's in, and that's that," Saville said, shortly after completing the formal introduction of his bride to Frankenstein and Clerval. There was little that they could say. I, of course, had not been introduced, but was observing the ceremony through a convenient knothole in the wall between the room of the meeting and a passage leading to my own rude accommodations.
The lady, perhaps feeling somewhat unwelcome, departed soon after the introductions were over, and without actually seeing me. Looking back now, I think that she had not yet grasped the fact that I, the proof of the scheme on which money was to be spent, was physically present somewhere on the premises.
It was not that Margaret ruled Roger, as some women are able to rule their husbands, but that he, confident of his authority, sought to put to use her naturally great abilities.
Her next visit to the warehouse came shortly after the wedding, I think on the very next day. It occurred at an hour when Saville was elsewhere, engaged in some other of the numerous enterprises that consume the time and effort of a man of wealth.
Naturally, since the time when her husband-to-be had first told her about our establishment and its goals, her curiosity had grown enormously. She was now unwilling to wait any longer to learn about the mysterious enterprise in which he was engaged with a sea captain, and a philosopher; and to see and hear what evidence existed of the tremendous secret they possessed, and that had awakened in them all such dreams of avarice and power.
She returned to the building on an afternoon when Victor alone of the gentlemen was present, and bullied him into exhibiting me to her—or, rather, she was well on the way to achieving such a result when I decided that the time had come to take my own destiny more firmly in hand. What harm was this young woman likely to be able to do me? Standing tall and walking boldly, I emerged from my usual place of hiding, into the laboratory where she could see me. My creator turned from the lady to gaze at me in consternation; I had managed to surprise him utterly.