The Third of Two
Mr. Croup, short and foxy, and Mr. Vandemar, tall and dark, watched the young man enter his club from the pool of shadow around the base of an unlit streetlamp. Mr. Croup watched intently; Mr. Vandemar, who was still trying to remove a gristly fragment of lamplighter from between his teeth, rather less so.
"I do hope," said Mr. Croup, his china blue eyes still riveted on the warm, smoky windows of the club, "that our young gadabout will not dally overlong. It would be most vexing to waste more than a single a night on so trivial an undertaking."
"He's not dead yet, Mr. Croup," said Mr. Vandemar. He inspected the end of his antique ivory toothpick and, finding it innocent of gristle, returned it to his mouth.
"I am perfectly cognizant of that fact, Mr. Vandemar," said Mr. Croup, his oily voice caressing every syllable, "Were the human gadfly under advisement no longer among the living, then our employer would have no longer have any need of our inimitable services."
"He would if we were undertakers," pointed out Mr. Vandemar, "the way you said."
Mr. Croup sighed. "Undertaking, in the sense of venture, enterprise, campaign, or endeavor, Mr. Vandemar. I was not suggesting that you and I are, by trade, morticians."
Mr. Vandemar thought about this. Inside the club, voices were raised in the singing of an old school song. The tempo lurched back and forth like a green cabin boy skittering across the deck of storm-tossed vessel but the notes were, surprisingly, more or less the right ones.
At last Mr. Vandemar said, "All right then."
He stowed his toothpick in the breast pocket of his grimy suit with a sigh. Then he reached up and seized one of the offending teeth between two thick fingers and with very little fuss and not a drop of blood, wrenched it out of its socket. With a sucking sound, he swallowed the freed up lump of lamplighter and then replaced the tooth, pushing it back into alignment with a dull click.
Mr. Croup, ignoring all this, had produced a straight razor with a tortoiseshell handle and a small oilstone and was, as it were, maintaining the edge. Inside, the singing had given way to a round of toasts. Mr. Croup couldn't make out the words, but every so often there would be a burst of laughter or applause or, more rarely, the loud scrape of a chair being pushed back.
Mr. Croup did not enjoy having his time wasted. And while he would never go so far as to describe any opportunity to exercise their skills in a professional capacity as "a waste of time", he nevertheless found himself wishing, as he and Mr. Vandemar lurked in the shadows, that their target this evening were likely to prove a bit more of a challenge.
Upworlders were, by and large, quite stupid, almost blind and nearly deaf when set beside the canny, feral people of the Underside. But this upworlder was worse than most. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar had been tailing him assiduously and all seemed to do was drink, smoke, and run the occasionally errand for one of his aunts. The most dangerous thing he had done all day was to join a game of darts.
At length, the revels inside the club ended at their target emerged along with a gaggle of other young men, all weaving tipsily. After a round of loud farewells, the target—a willowy young man, clutching a rather loud alpine hat—began to walk determinedly in the direction of Berkeley Mansions. Mr. Croup tucked the razor away and began to follow him, Mr. Vandemar bringing up the rear. He did not rush. He did not need to. Death walks like Mr. Vandemar.
The target reached his block of flats and, after a momentary fumble with his latchkey, let himself in. The door locked behind him with a click. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar walked up to the door. The was a shiver in the world and then Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were standing in the Berkeley Mansions front lobby.
"It is quite disgraceful," said Mr. Croup, "how lax and complacent the modern Londoner has grown, is it not, Mr. Vandemar?"
"Yes, Mr. Croup."
"In the old days, the landed gentry knew full well that vicious Picts and savage Saxons might be lurking just beyond moonlight's reach. And they were better for it."
"Much better, Mr. Croup."
Mr. Croup sniffed and started up the stairs that led to the target's flat.
The instructions given to Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar by their employer had been quite specific: kill the master and frame the servant, ensuring the destruction of both. To that end, they had decided to stab the young man to death in his bed, hide the gory knives among the servant's effects, and abscond with a number of valuables to provide a plausible motive. Not watertight case perhaps, but after all their employer had plenty of contacts among the city's magistrates. By now Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar well knew which bedroom in the little home belonged to their target—they were professionals after all—and they started thither at once.
Mr. Vandemar was leading now, his long knife in his hand, and it was as he was crossing the sitting room, in fact just as he was stepping from a patch of silver moonlight to a patch of purple gloom, that the cosh struck him on the corner of the jaw.
The rubber bludgeon had a great deal of force behind it, as these things go, and Mr. Vandemar went sprawling on the axminster carpet. He started to get up again. It would take a very great deal of force indeed to put Mr. Vandemar down and keep him there. A leg swept out, smoothly and elegantly, and knocked aside the assortment of limbs currently supporting Mr. Vandemar. He hit the carpet again with a soft thump and without any noticeable exhalation of breath.
"I would advise you to stay down, Mr. Vandemar," said his assailant.
Mr. Croup, who had been walking a few paces behind his partner, goggled at the speaker, his slack jawed expression revealing a row of teeth like little brown tombstones. Then, slowly, the goggle narrowed down into a glare and the teeth began to gleam with an unhealthy light.
"You," hissed Mr. Croup.
The man, if man he was, who had laid out Mr. Vandemar did not smile at this but a brief spasm of the muscles abaft the mouth betrayed a faint amusement. He had finely chiseled countenance well suited to his expression of grave attention. He might have been cut from marble, save for his head, which was unfashionably large and bulged slightly towards the back.
"Good evening, Mr. Croup," he said.
"What is the meaning of this?" Mr. Croup demanded.
Again, the barest flicker of a smile. "I'm am afraid that Mr. Wooster is not receiving visitors at the moment. I would not advise calling again in the morning."
"You work for him now? That young…" Mr. Croup spat the word, along with a fine spray of foul droplets, "…popinjay?"
"I do."
"Are we talking now?" asked Mr. Vandemar from the floor. "Or are we still fighting?" He was annoyed to realize that in the process of falling he seemed to have lost track of his knife.
Mr. Croup ignored him. "How thoroughly domesticated you have let yourself become, Mr. Jeeves. Why I doubt anyone seeing you in your present state would believe even a tithe of the things I could recount about our years together."
A white gloved hand shot out and lifted Mr. Croup off the floor by the front of his greasy suit. He bobbed there on the end of Mr. Jeeves' arm like a hot air balloon crewed entirely by drug-abusing ferrets moored to the end of a long stone pier.
"As always, Mr. Croup, I would advocate for tact and the utmost discretion."
Mr. Croup, his feet still not touching the carpet, began to laugh and his laughter was a very bad thing to hear.
"There he is," he cackled.
"I beg your pardon?"
Mr. Croup continued to laugh. Behind Mr. Jeeves, Mr. Vandemar stood up very quietly. He still had not found his knife, but he reached out with one massive hand, raven skull rings glittering on every finger, for the back of Mr. Jeeves' neck. With that hand he had throttled the life out of antipopes and snapped the spines of margraves.
He never even touched Mr. Jeeves.
Mr. Jeeves dropped Mr. Croup as he turned and, almost magically, the long knife Mr. Vandemar had lost appeared in Mr. Jeeves' white-gloved hand. He drove the knife down hard, through the back of Mr. Vandemar's reaching hand, and pinned it to the arm of an expensive chair.
Mr. Croup bounced up again, like a rubber ball if rubber balls ate human flesh, and flew at Mr. Jeeves with his straight razor. Mr. Jeeves darted out the hand that still held the cosh and hit Mr. Croup directly between his china blue eyes.
Mr. Croup staggered back, blinking and cursing, while Mr. Vandemar struggled to free his hand. The chair lifted easily from the floor but the knife, having made new friends, seemed reluctant to part company either with the chair or with Mr. Vandemar's hand.
"If you would kindly leave this flat," said Mr. Jeeves, watching them dispassionately, "and never, if you will pardon the cliché, darken its door again, I would take it as a personal favor."
Mr. Croup snarled and raised his razor again, only to find that the tricky little weapon had been flicked closed over the flesh of own finger. Long shreds of material were now curling away from his knuckles. There wasn't any blood just something grey and vaguely spongy, like rotting sailcloth or the innards of toadstool.
Mr. Croup hawked and spat into the wound then pressed it shut. The spittle held it shut like surgical glue. Then Mr. Croup put away his razor and turned back to Mr. Jeeves.
"Very well, Mr. Jeeves. We shall leave you in peace." He spoke the word as though it choked him. "Passivity, paralysis, putrescence and peace."
"Thank you, Mr. Croup," said Mr. Jeeves.
Mr. Croup gave him a look that would have curdled not merely the morning milk but also living blood of the unfortunate milkman and all his descendants even unto nine generations. All he said however was, "Come Mr. Vandemar. If we cannot complete this assignment, we must return our principle his deposit."
"And then kill him and steal it back, do you mean?" asked Mr. Vandemar, removing the chair's arm with a sudden wrench and then proceeding to ignore it as the broken length of the wood bumped against his leg.
"Possibly," grounded out Mr. Croup, "Very possibly, Mr. Vandemar. But let us discuss these minutiae of our business somewhere else, where they might not disturb our host's delicately nurtured ears, hmm?"
Mr. Vandemar nodded and followed Mr. Croup out of the flat. Mr. Jeeves showed to the door. As they neared the exit, Mr. Croup seemed to become aware of the bumping caused by the ornate wooden chair arm still pinned to his partner's hand.
"Stop that," he hissed and, reaching over, tugging the knife out of Mr. Vandemar's hand. The chair arm clattered to the floor and Mr. Croup hand Mr. Vandemar his knife back.
"Thanks," said Mr. Vandemar, smiling.
Mr. Jeeves maintained a prudent silence.
The three men, if men they were, paused for a moment on the stone stoop outside Berkeley Mansions. In the yellow light of the lamp over the door they looked, just for a moment, like a fox and a wolf and great, hulking hound.
"It's not the same without you," said Mr. Vandemar suddenly.
"Hush now," ordered Mr. Croup.
"It isn't," Mr. Vandemar insisted.
Mr. Jeeves turned and began to go back inside the block of London flats and for a long moment Mr. Vandemar thought he wasn't going to say anything more to them.
Then Mr. Jeeves said, "In my experience, Mr. Vandemar, nothing stays the same save when one is dead. Good night to you."
And with that he shut the door, leaving the cutthroats outside in the fog and the damp and the dark.