Avram Davidson - What Strange Stars And Skies

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What Strange Stars And Skies

by Avram Davidson

created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *

The terrible affair of Dame Phillipa Garreck, which struck horror in all who knew of her noble life and

mysterious disappearance, arose in large measure from inordinate confidence in her fellow-creatures--

particularly such of them as she might, from time to time, in those nocturnal wanderings which so alarmed

her family and friends, encounter in circumstances more than commonly distressed. This great-hearted

and misfortunate woman would be, we may be sure, the first to deplore any lessening of philanthropy,

any diminution of charity or even of charitable feeling, resultant from her own dreadfully sudden and all

but inexplicable fate; yet, one feels, such a result is inevitable. I am not aware that Dame Phillipa ever

made use of any heraldic devices or mottoes, but, had she done so, "Do what is right, come what may,"

would have been eminently appropriate.

It is not any especial sense of competency on my part which has caused me to resolve that a record of

the matter should and must be made. Miss Mothermer, Dame Phillipa's faithful secretary-companion, to

say nothing of her cousin, Lord FitzMorris Banstock, would each-- under ordinary circumstances-- be

far more capable than I of delineating the events in question. But the circumstances, of course, are as far

from being "ordinary" as they can possibly be. Miss Mothermer has for the past six months, next Monday

fortnight been in seclusion at Doctor Hardesty's establishment near Sutton Ho; and, whilst I can state

quite certainly the falsehood of the rumour that her affairs have been placed in charge of the Master in

Lunacy, nevertheless, Doctor Hardesty is adamant that the few visitors she is permitted to receive must

make no reference whatsoever to the affair of last Guy Fawkes Day, the man with the false nose, or the

unspeakably evil Eurasian, Motilal Smith. As for Lord FitzMorris Banstock, though I am aware that he

has the heart of a lion and nerves of steel, his extreme shyness (in no small measure the result of his

unfortunate physical condition) must advertise to all who know him the unlikelihood of his undertaking the

task. It falls to me, therefore, and no one else, to proceed forthwith in setting down the chronicle of those

untoward and unhappy events.

Visitors to Argyll Court, which abuts onto Primrose Alley (one of that maze of noisome passages off

the Commercial Road which the zeal and conscience of the London County Council cannot much longer

suffer to remain untouched), visitors to Argyll Court will have noticed the large sign board affixed to the

left-hand door as one enters. Reading, "If The Lord Will, His Word Shall Be Preached Here Each Lord's

Day At Seven O'Clock In The Evening. All Welcome," it gives notice of the Sabbath activities of Major

Bohun, whose weekdays are devoted to his sacred labours with The Strict Antinomian Tram-Car and

Omnibus Tract Society (the name of which appears on a small brass plate under the sign). Had the major

been present that Fifth of November, a different story it would be which I have to tell; but he had gone to

attend at an Anti-Papistical sermon and prayer-meeting holden to mark the day at the Putney

Tabernacle.

The foetid reek of the Court, which has overwhelmed more than one less delicately bred than Dame

Phillipa, bears-- besides the effluvia of unwashed beds and bodies emanating from the so-called

Seaman's Lodging-House of Evan-bach Llewellyn, the rotting refuse of the back part of a cookshop of

the lowest sort, bad drains, and the putrid doors of Sampson Stone's wool-pullery-- the tainted breath of

the filthy Thames itself, whose clotted waters ebb and flow not far off.

On many an evening when the lowering sun burned dully in the dirty sky and the soiled swans squatted

like pigs in the mud-banks of London River, the tall figure of Dame Phillipa would turn (for the time

being) from the waterfront, and make her way towards the quickening traffic of the Commercial Road

and Goodman Fields; proceeding through Salem Yard, Fenugreek Close, Primrose Alley, and Argyll

Court. The fashionable and sweet-smelling ladies of the West End, as well as their wretched and garishly

bedaubed fallen sisters, smelling of cheap "scent" and sweetened gin, just at this hour beginning those

peregrinations of the East End's mean and squalid streets for which those less tender than Dame Phillipa

might think them dead to all shame; were wearing, with fashion's licence, their skirts higher than they had

ever been before: but Dame Phillipa (though she never criticised the choice of others) still wore hers long,

and sometimes with one hand she would lift them an inch or two to avoid the foul pavements-- though

she never drew back from contact, neither an inch nor an instant, with any human being however filthy or

diseased.

Sometimes Miss Mothermer's bird-like little figure was with her friend and employer, perhaps

assuming for the moment the burden of the famous Army kit-bag; sometimes-- and such times Dame

Phillipa walked more slowly-- Lord FitzMorris Banstock accompanied her; but usually only quite late at

night, and along the less-frequented thoroughfares, where such people whom they were likely to meet

were too preoccupied with their own unhappy concerns, or too brutalised and too calloused, to stare at

the muscular but misshapen peer for more than a second or two.

The kit-bag had been the gift of Piggott, batman to Dame Phillipa's brother, the late Lt. Colonel Sir

Chiddiock Garreck, when she had sent him out to the Transvaal in hopes that that Province's warmer and

dryer air would be kindlier to his gas-ruined lungs than the filthy fogs and sweats of England. The kit-bag

usually contained, to my own knowledge, on an average evening, the following:

Five to ten pounds in coins, as well as several ten-shilling notes folded quite small. Two sets of singlets

and drawers, two shirts, and two pair of stockings: none of them new, but all clean and mended. A dozen

slices of bread and butter, wrapped in packets of three. Ten or twenty copies of a pamphlet-sized edition

of the Gospel of St. John in various languages. A brittania-metal pint flask of a good French brandy. A

quantity of hard-cooked eggs and an equal supply of salt and pepper in small screws of paper. Four

handkerchiefs. First aid equipment. Two reels of cotton, with needles. A packet of mixed toffees. The

Book of Common Prayer. Fifteen packets of five Woodbine cigarettes, into each of which she had thrust

six wooden matches. One pocket-mirror. A complete change of infant's clothing. Several small cakes of

soap. Several pocket-combs. A pair of scissors.

And three picture-postcards of the Royal Family.

All this arranged with maximum efficiency in minimum space, but not packed so tightly that Dame

Phillipa's fingers could not instantly produce the requisite article. It will be observed that she was

prepared to deal with a wide variety of occasions.

Tragic, infinitely tragic though it is, not even a person of Dame Phillipa's great experience among what

a late American author termed, not infelicitously, The People of the Abyss, could have been prepared

either to expect or to deal on this occasion with such persons as the man wearing the false nose or the

hideously-- the unspeakably evil Eurasian, Motilal Smith.

The countenance of Motilal Smith, once observed, is not one likely ever to be forgotten, and proves a

singular and disturbing exception to the rule that Eurasians are generally of a comely appearance; it being

broad and frog-like in its flatness, protuberance of the eyes (which are green and wet-looking), reverse

U-shaped mouth, and its multiplicity of warts or wart-like swellings. Most striking of all, however, is the

air of slyness, malevolence, of hostility both overt and covert, towards everything which is kindly and

decent and, in a word, human.

Motilal Smith has since his first appearance in the United Kingdom been the subject of unremitting

police attention, and for some time now has gained the sinister distinction of being mentioned more often

in the Annual Report of the League of Nations Commission on the Traffic in Women and Children than

any other resident of London. He has often been arrested and detained on suspicion, but the impossibility

of bringing witnesses to testify against him has invariably resulted in his release. Evidences of his nefarious

commerce have come from places so far distant as the Province of Santa Cruz in the Republic of Bolivia

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