The Anubis Gates

An old man was sitting by a wall at the corner of St.-Mary-at-Hill, and as Doyle drew up to him he saw the placard hung on his chest: ONCE A DILIGENT TAILOR, it read, I AM NOW DISQUALIFIED FOR THAT TRADE BY BLINDNESS, AND I MUST SELL PEPPERMINTS TO SUPPORT MY WIFE AND AILING CHILD. CHRISTIAN, BE GENEROUS. He held a tray of dirty-looking lozenges, and when Doyle paused over him the old man pushed the tray forward, so that if Doyle had not stopped he couldn’t have helped spilling them.

The old man looked a little disappointed that Doyle hadn’t, and glancing around Doyle guessed why; there were a number of well dressed people out strolling in the early evening, and they’d doubtless have been moved by pity to see the old man’s candies spilled on the pavement. “Would ye purchase some fine minties from a poor blind man?” he whined, rolling his eyes imploringly at the sky.

“No, thank you,” said Doyle. “I need to find Horrabin. Horrabin,” he repeated when the beggar cocked his head with a look of earnest inquiry. “I think he’s some kind of beggar master.”

“I’ve got minties to sell, sir,” the beggar pointed out. “I couldn’t turn my attention from them to trying to remember folks without a penny to pay for my time.”

Doyle pressed his lips together, but dropped a penny into the old man’s hand. Night was coming on, and he desperately needed a place to sleep.

“Horrabin?” said the beggar more quietly. “Aye, I know him. And this being a Sunday evening, he’ll be in parliament.”

“Parliament? What do you mean?”

“I could take you there and show you, sir, but it’d mean losing at least a shilling’s worth of minties sales.”

“A shilling?” Doyle said despairingly. “All I’ve got is ten pennies!”

The beggar’s hand darted out, palm up. “You can owe me the tuppence, sir.”

Doyle hesitated. “Will he be able to give me food and a bed?”

“Oh, aye, no one is ever turned away from Horrabin’s hall.”

The trembling palm was still extended, and Doyle sighed, dug in his pocket and carefully laid his sixpence and four pennies in the old man’s hand. “Uh… lead the way.”

The old man swept the coins and peppermints into a pocket and stuffed the tray under his coat, then picked up a stick from the pavement behind him and poled himself up. “Come on, then,” he said, and strode away briskly west, the way Doyle had just come, swinging his stick in an almost perfunctory way in front of him. Doyle had to take long steps to keep up.

Dizzy with hunger, for he’d lost his soup and mashed potatoes lunch at the Morning Post office, Doyle was blinking against the sunset glare and concentrating on keeping up with the beggar, and so despite being vaguely aware of a loud rattling nearby he didn’t notice the person pacing him until a well-remembered hand clutched his pant leg. He was off balance, and went down painfully onto his hands and knees on the cobblestones.

He turned his head angrily and found himself looking up into the bearded face of Skate Benjamin. The legless man’s cart had come to a halt by colliding hard with Doyle’s ankle. “Damn it,” Doyle gasped, “let go. I’m not begging and I need to follow that—”

“Not with Horrabin, man,” said Skate, an earnest urgency in his low whisper. “You’re not bad enough to thrive with that crew. Come with—”

The old beggar had turned around and was hastening back, staring so directly at Skate that Doyle belatedly realized that his blindness was a fraud. “What are you interferin’ for, Benjamin?” the old man hissed. “Captain Jack needs to go recruiting these days?”

“Give it over, Bugs,” said Skate. “He ain’t your sort. But here’s your finder’s fee anyway, courtesy of Copenhagen Jack.” He fished two sixpences out of his waistcoat pocket and tossed them. Bugs snatched them both out of the air with one hand.

“Very well,” he said, dumping them in with his minties. “On a basis like that you can interfere any time.” He cackled and set off back toward Billingsgate, beginning to tap his cane ahead of him when he was a hundred feet away. Doyle stood up, gingerly trying his weight on his ankle.

“Before he disappears,” Doyle said, “you’d better tell me whether this Copenhagen Jack of yours can give me food and abed.”

“Yes, and a more wholesome sort of each than you’d have got from Horrabin. God, you are a helpless one, aren’t you? This way, come along.”