“Get in a man to block up all the chimneys immediately!” But when I started to toss the fire-irons furiously this way and that way, she says reluctantly: “Oh, very well,” feels under her pillow for a key, takes good care to put herself fair and square between me and the safe so I can’t read the combination, and, in a trice, the door swings open. Aladdin’s cave, inside! the contents shone with their own light, pile upon pile of golden sovereigns, a queen’s ransom of diamond necklaces and pearls and rubies and emeralds piled hugger-mugger among bankers’ drafts, bills of exchange, foreclosed mortgages etc. etc. etc. With a display of the greatest reluctance, she selects five sovereigns, counts ’em out again and, with as much painful hesitation as if they were drops of her dear heart’s blood, she hands ’em over.
‘What a shock I got when I felt the rasp of her fingertips on my palm, for they were indeed hard, as if there were no flesh on ’em. Afterwards, when I was free again, Esmeralda’s old man, the Human Eel, told me how this Madame Schreck, as she called herself, had indeed started out in life as a Living Skeleton, touring the sideshows, and always was a bony woman.
‘As I goes out the bedroom, I glances over my shoulder, to see what the old hag’s up to, now, and, bugger me, if she hasn’t precipitated herself bodily into that safe, and is hugging the riches it contains to her skinny bosom with the most vehement display of passion, making faint, whinnying sounds the while.
‘I trust Toussaint, to whom I have taken an immediate liking, to get these sovereigns straight to Battersea, lay my head on my hard, flat pillow, and take immediate refuge in sleep, to wake hours later, as night approaches. It was the barest, plainest chamber you ever saw, with a little iron bedstead, a deal washstand and iron bars across the window from which I can see the barren trees in the deserted garden and a few lights in the houses over the square. To see those lights in happy homes brought the tears to my eyes, sir, for I am in a house that shows no lights, no lights.
‘Then it comes to me how I might never leave this place, now I have come here of my own free will; that I have voluntarily incarcerated myself among the damned, for the sake of money, even if from the best of motives; that my doom has come upon me.
‘At this apocalyptic moment, the door opens, I see a shadow behind a kerosene lamp, I start up from the bed, crying out – and the shadow speaks, in broad Yorkshire: “It’s nobbut old Fanny, luv, don’t be afeared!”
‘And I will find the companionship of the damned my only solace.
‘Who worked for Madame Schreck, sir? Why, prodigies of nature, such as I. Dear old Fanny Four-Eyes; and the Sleeping Beauty; and the Wiltshire Wonder, who was not three foot high; and Albert/Albertina, who was bipartite, that is to say, half and half and neither of either; and the girl we called Cobwebs. During the time I stayed at Madame Schreck’s, such was the full complement, and though she begged Toussaint to join in some of the tableaux vivants , he never would, being a man of great dignity. All he did was play the organ.
‘And there was a drunk cook in the basement, but we never saw much of her.’
‘This Toussaint,’ said Walser, tapping his pencil against his teeth. ‘How did he –’
‘Eat, sir? Through a tube up his nose, sir. Liquids only but sufficient to sustain life. I’m happy to say that, since I began to prosper on the halls and started to frequent the company of men of science, I was able to interest Sir S—. J—. in Toussaint’s case and he was successfully operated upon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital two years ago last February. And now Toussaint has a mouth as good as yours or mine! You’ll find a full account of the operation in The Lancet for June, 1898, sir.’
She gave him this scientific verification of Toussaint’s existence with a dazzling smile.
It was true that
‘What a shock I got when I felt the rasp of her fingertips on my palm, for they were indeed hard, as if there were no flesh on ’em. Afterwards, when I was free again, Esmeralda’s old man, the Human Eel, told me how this Madame Schreck, as she called herself, had indeed started out in life as a Living Skeleton, touring the sideshows, and always was a bony woman.
‘As I goes out the bedroom, I glances over my shoulder, to see what the old hag’s up to, now, and, bugger me, if she hasn’t precipitated herself bodily into that safe, and is hugging the riches it contains to her skinny bosom with the most vehement display of passion, making faint, whinnying sounds the while.
‘I trust Toussaint, to whom I have taken an immediate liking, to get these sovereigns straight to Battersea, lay my head on my hard, flat pillow, and take immediate refuge in sleep, to wake hours later, as night approaches. It was the barest, plainest chamber you ever saw, with a little iron bedstead, a deal washstand and iron bars across the window from which I can see the barren trees in the deserted garden and a few lights in the houses over the square. To see those lights in happy homes brought the tears to my eyes, sir, for I am in a house that shows no lights, no lights.
‘Then it comes to me how I might never leave this place, now I have come here of my own free will; that I have voluntarily incarcerated myself among the damned, for the sake of money, even if from the best of motives; that my doom has come upon me.
‘At this apocalyptic moment, the door opens, I see a shadow behind a kerosene lamp, I start up from the bed, crying out – and the shadow speaks, in broad Yorkshire: “It’s nobbut old Fanny, luv, don’t be afeared!”
‘And I will find the companionship of the damned my only solace.
‘Who worked for Madame Schreck, sir? Why, prodigies of nature, such as I. Dear old Fanny Four-Eyes; and the Sleeping Beauty; and the Wiltshire Wonder, who was not three foot high; and Albert/Albertina, who was bipartite, that is to say, half and half and neither of either; and the girl we called Cobwebs. During the time I stayed at Madame Schreck’s, such was the full complement, and though she begged Toussaint to join in some of the tableaux vivants , he never would, being a man of great dignity. All he did was play the organ.
‘And there was a drunk cook in the basement, but we never saw much of her.’
‘This Toussaint,’ said Walser, tapping his pencil against his teeth. ‘How did he –’
‘Eat, sir? Through a tube up his nose, sir. Liquids only but sufficient to sustain life. I’m happy to say that, since I began to prosper on the halls and started to frequent the company of men of science, I was able to interest Sir S—. J—. in Toussaint’s case and he was successfully operated upon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital two years ago last February. And now Toussaint has a mouth as good as yours or mine! You’ll find a full account of the operation in The Lancet for June, 1898, sir.’
She gave him this scientific verification of Toussaint’s existence with a dazzling smile.
It was true that
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