Lord Kelvin's Machine - By James P. Blaylock Page 0,20

simply to allow the creatures to slide down my throat. I fly in the face of custom there.”

“Aye,” she said. “Can you imagine a man’s stomach, full of beasts such as these, whole, mind you, and sloshin’ like smelts in a bucket?” She dipped again into the caldron, picked out another mussel, and ate it with relish, then grimaced and rooted in her mouth with a finger. “Mussel pearl,” she said, holding up between thumb and forefinger a tiny opalescent sphere twice the size of a pinhead. She slid open a little drawer in the cart on which sat the caldron of mussels, and dropped the pearl in among what must have been thousands of the tiny orbs. “Can’t stand debris,” she said, grimacing.

The entire display rather took the edge off St. Ives’s appetite, and the heap of mussels in his basket, reclining beneath a coating of congealing butter and bits of garlic and shallot, began to remind him of certain unfortunate suppers he’d consumed at the Bayswater Club. He grinned weakly at the woman and looked around at the hurrying crowds, wondering if he and Hasbro hadn’t ought to join them.

“Man in here this afternoon ate one shell and all,” she said, shaking her head. “Imagine the debris involved. Must have given his throat bones some trouble, I daresay.”

“Shell and all?” asked St. Ives.

“That’s the exact case. Crunched away at the thing like it was a marzipan crust, didn’t he? Then he took another, chewed it up about halfway, saw what he was about, and spit the filthy thing against the wall there. You can see bits of it still, can’t you, despite the birds swarming round. There’s the smear of it against the stones. Do you see it there?—bit of brown paste is all it amounts to now.”

St. Ives stared at the woman. “Big man?”

“Who?”

“This fellow who ate the shells. Big, was he, and with a beard? Seemed ready to fly into a rage?”

“That’s your man, gents. Cursed vilely, he did, but not at the shells. It was at the poor birds, wasn’t it, when they come round to eat up what your man spit onto the wall there. You can see it there, can’t you? I never...”

“Was he in the company of a hunchback?”

“Aye,” said the woman, giving her pot a perfunctory stirring. “Greasy little man with a grin. Seemed to think the world is a lark. But it ain’t no lark, gentlemen. Here you’ve been, wasting my time this quarter hour, and not another living soul has bought a shell. You’ve frightened the lot of them off, is what I think, and you haven’t paid me a penny.” She glowered at St. Ives, then glowered at Hasbro.

“What time this afternoon?” asked St. Ives.

“Three hours past, say, or four. Might have been five. Or less.”

“Thank you.” St. Ives reached into his pocket for a coin. He dumped a half crown into her outstretched hand and left her blinking, he and Hasbro racing through the terminal toward the distant exit, each of them clutching a bag in one hand and a paper satchel of mussels in the other. The streets were wet outside, but the clouds were broken overhead and taking flight in the gray dusk, and the wind had simmered down to a billowy breeze. A bent man shambled past in trousers meant for a behemoth, clutching at a buttonless coat. St. Ives thrust his mussels at the man, meaning to do him a good turn, but his gesture was mistaken. The man cast him a look of mingled surprise and loathing, fetching the basket a swipe with his hand that sent the entire affair into the gutter. St. Ives hurried on without a word, marveling at misunderstood humanity and at how little space existed between apparent madness and the best of intentions.

In a half hour they were aboard a train once again, in a sleeping car bound for Amsterdam, Hamburg, and finally, to Hjørring, where on the Denmark ferry they’d once again set sail across the North Sea, up the Oslofjord into Norway.

St. Ives was determined to remain awake, to have a look at the comet when it sailed in over the horizon sometime after midnight. But the sleepless nights he had spent in the observatory and the long hours of travel since had worn him thin, and after a tolerable meal in the dining car, and what might likely turn out to be, on the morrow, a regrettable lot of brandy, he dropped away at