Page 37 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“And this is criminal trespass with allegations of sorcery and, as I have told you many times, Ms. Haas, you are not allowed to break the law. And I know, as you have toldmemany times, that you could turn my bones to sand and my blood to living fire, but I’m still taking you in.”
“You know I only allow this because I feel sorry for you.” Ms. Haas presented her wrists with theatrical contempt, and a nervous young Myrmidon came forward to put her in irons.
Second Augur Lawson then turned to me. “You as well, I’m afraid. Though I suspect you were not the primary instigator of the affray.”
I own that my feelings, on being placed for the first time in chains by a member of the official force—especially one with whom I was already acquainted and who had been so civil to me at our first meeting—strayed perilously close to mortification and I found myself utterly unable to meet the Second Augur’s gaze.
“For pity’s sake.” Ms. Haas did not say “pity” and, in light of our circumstances, I dearly wished she had. “You may play your littlegames with me all you like, but let Mr. Wyndham go. As I told your colleague not last week, he’s plainly harmless and would do nothing exciting whatsoever without my setting him a bad example.”
The Second Augur closed his metallic fingers around my companion’s silk-gloved forearm and began leading her away. “Well, maybe you should think about that the next time you get him to do something illegal.”
“On your head be it, Second Augur.”
And with that we were transferred into a black carriage drawn by a mechanical bull. So incarcerated, we were taken through the city at none too urgent a pace towards New Arcadia Yard.
My upbringing had taught me very strictly that when one has transgressed one must bear whatever punishment is deemed suitable with grace and stoicism. In this particular circumstance, that was proving more than usually difficult. I had, of course, undertaken my role in the evening’s proceedings by choice and could, in theory, have walked away the moment the notion of infiltrating a respectable woman’s home by sorcery was suggested, but Ms. Haas’s force of personality and bullish assumption that any course of action she suggested would automatically be undertaken by those to whom she suggested it had carried me along despite my better judgement. This does not, of course, excuse my behaviour and nor does it excuse the unbecoming sense of resentment that I felt towards my companion in the moments following our arrest, although it does go some way towards explaining them both.
Ms. Haas, who possessed the uncannily cat-like ability to make herself comfortable in the most precarious of positions, had sprawled out across one of the rough wooden benches that were bolted to the walls of the carriage. By the uncertain light that filtered in through the windows she was leafing idly through the volume of Mrs. Benamara’s poetry she had been given at the salon. The activity was hampered slightly by the fact that her hands were manacled together at the wrists,but she negotiated the impediment with a facility suggestive of familiarity.
After a while, she looked up. “I am capable of many things, Mr. Wyndham. But change is not amongst them.”
I was not certain what had prompted my companion to offer this seemingly non sequitous observation. Not trusting myself to respond appropriately, I waited to see what would follow.
“I am aware,” she continued, “that I often speak of such things lightly, but you should understand that of the very small number of people I have genuinely considered friends almost all have come to bad ends. I cannot live in the world that people such as yourself find comfortable, and the world in which I live is perilous to visit, worse to inhabit.”
I was growing accustomed to Ms. Haas’s moods and there had been evenings over the past month during which her conversation had taken a decidedly melancholy tone, but this was the first time, and it was close to being the last, that she spoke to me with quite this level of candour. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I simply mean that I know my actions tonight have”—she frowned—“inconvenienced you. But you should understand I do not have it in me to regret taking them. Should you persist in keeping my company, this is far from the most”—another pause—“inconvenient thing that will happen to you.”
All of these predictions proved typically prescient. Although I flatter myself that Ms. Haas’s long acquaintance with me did not leave her totally uninfluenced, she retained her capricious will, her merciless intellect, and her tendency to reduce the world, and everyone in it, to either a game to be played or a problem to be solved. Even so, I have never regretted the years we spent together and, as astute readers may no doubt deduce from the existence of this document, her disregard for my comfort was never so absolute as to prove fatal.
Looking back at what was to prove the first of many incarcerations, I believe I made a decision in that moment. Over the then-short duration of our relationship, Ms. Haas had always accepted me for who I was without question or hesitation and it seemed only fitting that I should extend her the same courtesy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
New Arcadia Yard
Our carriage arrivedat New Arcadia Yard, a custom-built facility to which the organisation had recently moved, and the Myrmidons assisted us with a kind of rough courtesy from the back of the vehicle into the main building, down a warren of discreet side passages, and into separate cells. I found myself in a small room, containing one chair, one item of furniture that may have passed for a bed, and another the function and purpose of which I shall not describe in detail. The window was, of course, barred and the door likewise, but the walls were of whitewashed brick, meaning that I had no sense of my location within the complex or of where Ms. Haas might be. While my situation clearly left a great deal to be desired, I was at least grateful that I had not been thrown into company with some genuine hoodlum, against whom I might have been required to defend myself.
The Myrmidons having confiscated my pocket watch, I was not at all certain how much time had elapsed between my confinement and my eventual summons to a nearby interview room. Like my cell, it was sparse and functional. Second Augur Lawson awaited me behind a plain wooden table, upon which rested a wax cylinder recorder. This he turned on with a click and hiss once I had taken my place in the other available chair.
He leaned forward, propping himself on his elbows. “Fifth day,seventh month, third year, Twenty-first Council. Interview commencing ten fourteen p.m., Second Augur Lawson conducting. The suspect was apprehended in Ecet’s Cove outside the home of Mr. Jamal and Mrs. Yasmine Benamara on suspicion of aiding and abetting housebreaking by sorcery. Please state your name for the record.”
I had never been less certain what to do in my life, so I turned my head to speak into the recording trumpet, which had the fortunate side effect of sparing me the embarrassment of having to look directly at the Second Augur. Perhaps I was merely self-conscious owing to the inauspicious circumstances surrounding our interaction, but there was something almost amused in his otherwise stern countenance, and I could not shake the conviction that his mirth was at my expense.
“John Wyndham,” I said, as clearly as I could.
“And what were you doing in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Benamara?”
It occurred to me many years after the fact that I could simply have remained silent, or requested the services of a lawyer-priest of Estra (a notable irony since Mrs. Benamara’s husband was, to the best of my knowledge, still an anointed member of that ministry), but the thought of being anything other than cooperative simply did not cross my mind. “I had been invited to a literary soiree as the guest of Mr. Percy Lutrell.”
“And Mr. Percy Lutrell was, in fact, the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, disguised by means of illusion?”
“Yes.”
“And you were aware of this at the point of your entry into the building?”
“I was.”
