Read Online My Clockwork Muse by D.R. Erickson - Free Book Online Page B

found a little glass vial. I
saw at once that it too was free of dust and my pulse quickened. I
brought it out from its hiding place and held it close to the light
of my lantern. It was unstoppered and empty and bore a hand-written
label. The label was torn and one corner of it had curled away from
the glass, but I smoothed it out and read. "Laudan..." The paper
had torn right through the 'n', but I knew what it was. My heart
raced. This was exactly what I had told Gessler to look for. And
here it was: Laudanum.
    This was a discovery even greater than the
trowel. The murderer had no doubt used the drug to sedate his
victim, allowing him time to entomb the man within easy reach of
his unbound hands. I was all too familiar with the stuff, for Dr.
Coppelius had often administered small doses to Virginia in her
final days to calm her suffering. I passed the vial under my
nostrils, but the bottle had been so long empty that the substance
within had left no trace of a scent behind. Being also familiar
with the taste, I was just about to touch the rim of the vial to
the tip of my tongue when a faint sound reached my ear from out of
the darkness beyond the range of my lamp. I paused, listening.
    I didn't move a muscle. I strained to hear
the sound again. When it failed to recur, I resumed my effort to
taste the vial—when there it came again. This time there could be
no doubt what it was. My hand shook violently in my fright and I
nearly dropped the precious glass.
    It was the sound of jingling bells!
    Faint, yes, but there was no doubt as to the
nature of the sound. Bells. Or, rather, bell. It was as a single
little bell tinkling, as if moved by the wind.
    I engulfed the vial in my fist and took up my
lantern, thrusting it toward the source of the sound.
    "Who's there?" I whispered, not daring to cry
aloud, though my voice quavered with fear.
    When there was no reply, I crept forward and
the light of my lamp illuminated the passage at the base of the
stairs.
    "Inspector?" I intoned tremulously. Of
course! The man had followed me. He had waited for me to leave and
then watched my every step. He had now secreted himself on the
stair and was having sport with me. No sooner had the thought
flashed in my mind than it seemed obvious. What a fool I was! "A
fine jest, Inspector. But—"
    The sound came again, louder this time. And
not a single bell, but several, jingling and jangling, a discordant
melody borne not on a gentle breeze but in a violent gust. I
whirled. My lantern cast an arc of light on the wall of Fortunato's
tomb.
    What I saw next, I scarcely dared to
believe.
    A leg dressed in tight-fitting motley
appeared from out of the hole in the wall. Then I saw skeletal
fingers clutching the broken bricks on either side of the aperture.
These were followed by a head, the face turning towards me, and
then the entire body of a man. But not just any man—a man dressed
as a fool with bells jingling in his jester's cap.
    And not just any fool, either. But Billy
Burton!
    I questioned my sanity. But there could be no
doubt. Though the face that grinned at me was green and oozing with
putrescence, it was beyond a certainty that it was Burton. But it
was not possible! The man whom I had embraced with such relief only
twenty-four hours before appeared in front of my eyes, days dead
and walking towards me.
    "Burton!" I cried, knowing instantly the
futility of my words. "Now, look here. If it is for revenge that
you rise, know that it was not I who killed you." I held my hands
before me, the lantern in one, the vial tightly clenched in the
other. With a ponderous step, dead-Burton strode towards me, and I
backed away before him. A length of chain dangled from his waist. I
could now see his swollen black tongue protruding between his
teeth. His eyes, which now appeared lidless, were clouded in death
and incomprehensive of my pleas. I doubted my senses, my very
sanity.
    I was sure of only one fact and that was that
this dead ... thing meant to