Beneath London Read Online Free PDF

His carriage was that of a much younger man, however, and he possessed obvious strength and vigor. His own skin had a green pallor to it, although it was not as pronounced as that of Willis Pule. His smile was very nearly perpetual – an evident mask to his acquaintances (for he had no friends).
    “I wonder if you’d fancy a holiday, Dr. Peavy – a little jaunt into Kent, at most overnight, but more likely a single long day. I require your considerable skills. I believe you’d find it good sport, and profitable, too. I can guarantee you a head or two, immensely interesting heads, at no risk whatsoever.”

FOUR
THE PAWNBROKER ’ S
    T he yellow glow of the gas lamps hissing along Peach Alley was obscured by fog, the narrow alley angling down toward the river from Lower Thames Street, very near Billingsgate Market and to the west of the Custom House. The alley resided in nearly perpetual shadow, light falling directly upon it for an hour before and after noon or on cloudless nights when the moon hovered for a brief period right above the looming buildings. Even in high summer there wasn’t enough sun to dry up the damp filth that stood in runnels between the cobbles. The air was heavy with the constant reek of fish from the market and, at low tide, of river muck from the Thames, which flowed some sixty feet beyond the dead end of the alley. The tops of ghostly masts moving along the river were just visible beyond the roof of the Goat and Cabbage Public House.
    Beaumont the Dwarf stood outside a pawnbroker’s shop near the mouth of the alley. He carried four pocket watches in his leather purse, three of which he had liberated from their owners, most recently from Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who was unlikely to miss it, now that he dwelt among the toads. The chain that had come with the watch was silver, the ruby genuine. Beaumont had hidden the ruby and chain away, part of the treasure that he was hoarding against old age, when he was past work and his fingers were no longer nimble. The fourth watch was no longer a watch, because he had turned it into a simple automata. Its bulbous case was very like the round carapace of an insect. He had painted it with many coats of black lacquer and then laid on fiery red daubs, the exact shape and color of a four-spot lady beetle, although many times the size. Its jointed, wire legs made little swimming motions when it was wound by means of twisting the head, and it could walk an erratic line across the floor, its head turning from side to side until it wound itself down. He had no idea of trying to sell the object, which he had built merely to pass the time, and because the watch inside the case wasn’t worth repairing.
    Beaumont wore an old beaver hat that he had purchased from a hatter in a Piccadilly shop some ten years ago, when he was gainfully employed as a watchmaker. He had remarkably nimble fingers and a sharp eye, but he had come down in the world since those days, his last situation being employment as a coach driver for Dr. Narbondo, which he had liked well enough, being partial to horses. The beaver hat added a foot to his height, making him something over four feet tall. A complementary beard of the same length and shape mirrored the hat in a startling, topsy-turvy way, so that his wrinkled face seemed to peer out from the center of a hairy, elongated egg. At the moment he was down on his luck, having lost his position as coachman a year ago and not having found steady employment since. Now he was compelled to earn a hard living by the quickness of his hand, and he dwelt in squalid lodgings in Limehouse, which was better than sleeping on a filthy porch in a damp and stinking alley such as this.
    The pawnbroker had been recommended to him as being “discreet.” The shop was unlicensed, given the absence of the usual golden balls on the sign, which meant that there would be no questions put to him when he displayed the watches, all three of which were of fairly high