The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein Read Free Page B

and he wore his hair short without powder in the “liberty” fashion. “May I take you,” he asked us, “to a place where my sister is employed? It is not far from here. Distress is never far in this city. And there you will see the enemy.”
    He led us through the neighbourhood of St. Giles, as he called it, which was only a few streets from where we stood. It seemed to me the most wretched and depraved district imaginable on this earth. No low quarter of Geneva, however ruinous, had the least resemblance to this foul and degrading patch of London. The streets were no more than paths of mud, or filth, where the effluent ran in rivulets from the ragged courtyards and alleys. The stench was indescribable. “Are we safe here?” I whispered to Westbrook.
    “I am known. But if not—” He took from the interior pocket of his jacket a large knife with a bone handle and long blade. “This is what the French call couteau secret,” he said. “You cannot open it without being acquainted with the secret spring.”
    “Have you ever used it?”
    “Not yet. I keep it for the bloodhounds after me and my companions.”
    There was a shriek from an upstairs window, patched with rags, followed by the sound of confused blows and oaths being exchanged. We hurried on. I had not known that such monstrousness, such abject horror, could exist in any Christian country. How had this fetid body grown in the largest city on earth, without anyone so much as noticing its existence? Wewere only a few moments from the glare of the Oxford Road, as I judged it, but these alleys were like some black shadow forever following its steps. We picked our way around the prone body of a woman, in the last stages of intoxication; her legs were covered with her own filth. If life could become so fearful a thing, then how could it be God’s handiwork? I fully believe that this entrance into the underworld of London took from me the last vestiges of Christian faith. Man was not a creature of God’s making. I thought that then, and I know it now.

    WE CAME INTO AN OPEN THOROUGHFARE , gasping for cleaner air.
    “Just a little further, gentlemen,” Westbrook said.
    Bysshe was scarcely able to stand upright, and was bent double in the street. “Are you unwell?” I asked him.
    “Not me,” he replied. “The world. The world is sick. I am the least part of it.” Then he retched in a corner.
    We came into a narrow street, of which I did not see the name. There was a circular building of red brick, much like a tabernacle of the sects, and Westbrook went up to a little door set in the side of it. He knocked upon it loudly, and then pushed it open. The air within was filled with the welcome fragrance of spice, such as I imagine might have embalmed the body of a pharaoh. The room itself was circular in shape, like the building, and seemed to be entirely populated by girls and young women. They were sitting upon stools along the sides of two long tables, pouring powders into small earthenware jars. I watched them closely for a moment or two, as long as it took to view their whole operation. They cut out a piece of oil paper from a sheet beside them, placed it over the opening of thejar, and then secured a piece of blue paper over that; then they tied it with string around the neck of the jar. Their speed and dexterity were extraordinary; they seemed to be imitating some mechanism with their nimbleness and efficiency.
    “Here is my sister,” Westbrook said. “Harriet.” He went over to one of the girls, and touched her shoulder. She smiled but she did not look up at him; she was too intent upon her labours. Her hair was pinned and held up in a linen cap, and it was clear that she had great beauty and delicacy of features. She could have been no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Bysshe quoted some words of Dante, or so he informed me later, and I must say that I was also smitten with some secret wound. I noticed her strange pallor, no doubt from the