Read Online Legion of the Dead by Paul Stewart - Free Book Online Page B

seemed to confirm the professor’s theory, and I wanted to believe that the ghastly apparition I’d seen in the graveyard was indeed a figment of my imagination brought to vivid life by the venom of an exotic sea creature. Perhaps all I’d really seen was an empty grave, ransacked by graverobbers. The rest was simply a terriblehallucination, just as he had said. Yes, I really did want to believe him – yet it had all seemed so real that doubt still gnawed at the back of my mind …
    Just then, there came a light
tap-tap
at the window and I looked up to see Will Farmer peering through the grimy glass. I beckoned for him to come in. He pushed the window open and dropped down lightly to the floor.
    ‘Barnaby, where have you been?’ he said. ‘I was beginning to—’ His gaze fell on the sling and a look of concern crossed his face. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Pull up a chair, Will,’ I said, ‘it’s a long story.’ I shook my head. ‘A story which I’m still trying to get straight in my own mind. Some of it is pretty hard to believe …’
    ‘Try me,’ he said.
    And so I recounted the strange events that had taken place over the previous couple of days. Will listened attentively, his eyes growing wider and wider as I described my trip outinto the harbour and the underwater battle with the black-scaled lamprey. And when I got to the incident in the graveyard, he jumped back so violently I thought he was going to tumble from his chair.
    ‘Unbelievable,’ he gasped.
    ‘I know, Will, I know,’ I said. ‘The professor says the poison from the lamprey’s bite affected my mind, made me see things.’
    ‘So Firejaw O’Rourke didn’t rise from the grave?’ asked Will, his voice little more than a whisper.
    ‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ I said. ‘It was so real, and yet …’ I shook my head. The nagging doubts remained. ‘He
can’t
be alive, can he, Will? The pair of us saw him being buried two weeks ago.’ I looked down and tapped the newspaper folded on my lap. ‘Now I read that, according to the
Daily Chronicle
, O’Rourke was dug up by a gang of grave-robbers and his corpse sold for dissection.’
    ‘Dissection?’ Will repeated quietly. He frowned. ‘Sunday night you were in the graveyard, right?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ he said, ‘because I noticed something odd on Monday morning. In the early hours, it was.’
    ‘Go on,’ I said, leaning forward in my armchair.
    ‘I’d had a dawn drop to do for Mr Tilling the apothecary,’ Will went on. ‘There’d been an outbreak of damp-lung at St Jude’s Hospital and I had an emergency consignment of sulphur and morphia pillules to deliver. Old Mr Tilling had been working all through the night to complete them … Anyway, it’s half-four when I arrive at the hospital, and still pitch-black. Just as I get there, I see this old wagon pull up, and these two rough-looking types jump down and drag out a long wooden crate …’
    ‘A coffin?’ I asked.
    ‘Same size,’ said Will, ‘but not the same shape. Just a long box, really.’
    I nodded. ‘And what did they do with it?’
    ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Will. ‘Instead of going in through the front entrance, they took it round the back, where Bentham was waiting for them.’
    ‘Bentham?’ I said.
    ‘The morgue attendant,’ said Will, his top lip curling. ‘Bulgy eyes and warty skin. None of the nurses can stand him … He’s a slippery character at the best of times, but he was looking more furtive than ever that morning. Kept glancing round, and I was sure he gave money to the men …’ Will looked up at me. ‘I didn’t give it much thought at the time, Barnaby, but it could well have been a body.’
    ‘Firejaw O’Rourke, perhaps?’ I asked him.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Will. ‘The crate was big enough. And after all, it did arrive the morning after his body went missing …’
    I nodded as a shiver ran down my spine. Sowhat exactly
had
I