Here is how it all came to pass with blistering velocity:
Alice Trimmers stood beneath the window through which she had espied her mother and father. My niece expressed shock at having found her father returned and hiding and possibly diseased and spreading same to her mother and in only a matter of time to everyone in the contagionprone valley. “We must tell someone! Oh, Cecilia — we must tell someone this very instant!” pressed Alice, still staring up at the window even after the curtains had been pulled together, the occupants having failed to register their daughter’s appalling discovery of them.
What supervened thereafter was a hasty, hurtling return to the Pupker Emporium for the two girls, where they had opportunity to describe what they had seen not only to Montague Pupker, but to Dr. Fibbetson as well (that venerable surgeon having just come to seek permission to carry along with him into the Outland an extra valise containing his precious morphia suppositories). Also there was Sheriff Billy Boldwig who had wished to confer with Pupker over arrangements that would employ his constabulary in the offices of protection for the privileged pilgrims in their procession to the Northern Ridge.
In hardly less than an hour there was a pounding upon the Lumbey door that went unheeded, and then a storming of the dress-making redoubt by the increasingly intrepid Boy Sheriff Billy Boldwig and two of his accompanying deputies, the aforementioned Dr. Fibbetson (who contributed not much to the proceedings beyond rear-guard panegyrics to the success of the venture), and Montague Pupker, who was most eager to find cause in the way of conspiracy to harbour a diseased Returnee that would implicate every one of those who defied him upon the day of his elder daughter’s involuntary hospital confinement.
What a perfect turn of events for Pupker and Towlinson and Lord Mayor Feenix! Now there was a legal pretext for putting all of those who darkened the path to that impending day of release directly into the gaol, there to be held without bond (for the seriousness of the charge settled the issue of remanding on the side of the Moles) until such date and time as their incarceration became moot.
In a matter of two hours several individuals of great import to this story were rounded up and put under lock and key within the compound known as the Inn-of-Justice, the place in which courts sat in session, and where prisoners sat (upon hard iron cots), and where the newly promoted Billy Boldwig sat in his newly-gained lodgings, and pridefully polished his very own gun (when he was not abroad upon his shrieval rounds).
I was taken along with my sister-in-law Charlotte, my landlady Mrs. Lumbey, and her assistant Miss Casby, from the premises of Mrs. Lumbey’s Ladies’ Fine Dress Shop and from those rooms situated behind and above it. The arrest employed use of the threatening end of Sheriff Boldwig’s shiny new firearm and a growing measure of self-assurance on the part of the newly-minted lawman. The arrest included as well an ancillary report for all ears, just relayed from the remote coal-town of Blackheath, concerning the deaths of Sir Dabber, Nurse Ruth Wolf, and young Bevan Dabber.
Hearing the report, I was at first too staggered to speak. Likewise, Mrs. Lumbey could not bring herself to say a word. Charlotte and Amy Casby wept. It was my brother Gus, very soon to be relegated to a dismal cell at Bedlam, who found voice to ask of no one in particular, “Who could have done such a thing?”
“Drunken colliers, no doubt,” volunteered Fibbetson. “I’ve seen far worse from that low and murderous bunch of black-skinned reprobates.”
In a low voice, Montague Pupker broke into sudden soliloquy, perhaps not realising that he was employing his tongue to the audit of all the ears round him: “And fine riddance to you, Miss Wolf. And to your every misplaced attempt to heal those who did not deserve your secret ministrations and for your every act of treachery.” Then recalling himself, he addressed us all in fulclass="underline" “I’ll mourn Dabber — a good man in his quixotic way. I’ll not mourn the death of the self-styled Miss Nightingale. As for the young man, I haven’t an opinion one way or another. Those Rokesmith Ruins are a rather inconsequential bunch, wouldn’t you say? Now, now, Deputy, you’re being far too rough in attaching the handcuffs to Miss Casby’s wrists. Please remove them, sir, and allow me to shew you how it is more gently done.” This Pupker proceeded to do with equal parts care and equal parts palpable, pawing lechery.
Having newly secured the restraints to that whimpering innocent, and having taken as much delight as he was able to take from such a proceeding in a public place, Pupker drew breath to address me with a self-satisfied look: “Sheriff Boldwig has neglected to give the second obvious charge that now arises to put you even deeper into the Dinglian gaol, Mr. Trimmers: We have evidence that you assisted Miss Wolf and Sir Dabber and his son in their ill-fated escape. This constitutes a criminal act, sir.”
“Indeed, it does not!” I protested.
“As of yesterday morning it is most assuredly become one,” responded Dr. Fibbetson. “For the Petit-Parliament met and voted it into the Book of Criminal Statutes. From that point forward, Trimmers, anyone who attempts to leave this valley or assists in the escape of another will be charged with a felony.”
“Upon what grounds?” Mrs. Lumbey demanded to know, her wonted dander finally taking voice.
Pupker laughed. “There is no requirement that the Petit-Parliament must give grounds for any law it passes, my dear woman. Though if grounds you must have, let me say that we no longer wish to bring disease into the valley through those who escape and then do us the injurious disservice of returning.” Here Mr. Pupker looked hard at my brother, who should be diseased to such an extent that he would be put into summary confinement, but was, instead, most casually and negligently handled by Boldwig and one of his deputies, such as to give a ready lie to all that had just been said.
After Gus was put into Bedlam, and Mrs. Lumbey and Amy Casby and my sister-in-law Charlotte and I were placed into cells within the Dinglian Gaol (the cruelty of this most recent sundering of Gus and Charlotte making the scene one that would be most wrenchingly difficult to describe), the extended roundup of co-conspirators and suspected accomplices continued in earnest. Muntle was found at the Fagin jewellry shop. Because my friend regarded the capture (in addition to his other objections in concert with my own) as representative of a vanquished opportunity to finally see his brother George after a twenty-five year separation, he did not go easily. Muntle resisted every moment of the apprehension and did so with such energy and industry as to draw a sympathetic and combative Herbert Fagin into the cause, his obstructive enlistment resulting in his arrestment as well, much to the horror of his onlooking wife and daughter.
Antonia Bocker was taken without struggle from her stationer’s shop and it was all that she could do to secure continued liberty for her clerk Miss Abbey Hexam, for the hastily-drawn warrant named this young woman as well for having committed no greater crime then being in close proximity to Antonia by reason of her daily employment in the fine and everyday stationery line. Equally troubling was the arrestment of Dr. Timberry’s parents for protesting the seizure of their son, who was visiting his mother and father at the time. There succeeded quite a row when Charles Timberry began to take swings at Sheriff Billy with a cricket bat in the manner of his anarchic Punch puppet, and Mrs. Julia Timberry, in a futile attempt to aid and abet her handcuffed son, began to scream at the top of her lungs in the most animated fashion of a battered Judy puppet.