Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories Page 4

‘Our stock issue is closed,’ announced Leo Dare. ‘Those not aboard by now have missed the omnibus.’

  The consortium was dining out, no longer in a private room.

  Now, part of the game was to be seen, to be envied and admired, to cut a dash before those who matter. We had taken a table at Kettner’s and were very visible. Leo Dare had insisted Varrable and myself be taken to Sir Marmaduke’s tailor and outfitted in a manner befitting ‘men on the rise’. Suits of American cut would not do.

  Envious glances were tossed at us. The maître d’hôtel presented a succession of inscribed cards from plutocrats and captains of industry. Leo Dare glanced at any message before smiling noncommittally across the room and not extending invitations to our table. The cards from journalists and editors were handed to me, those from churchmen and society leaders to Lady Knowe, those from scientists (who would a month ago not have cared to recognise his name) to Varrable. Between us, we had enough cards for a deck – we could have played whist with them, to show our indifference to those outside the consortium.

  ‘I’m no longer at home to fools clamouring for an inside chance at a few shares,’ chuckled Sir Marmaduke, mouth full of well-chewed beefsteak. ‘Barely a month past, I offered the bunch of ’em a chance to buy in. To a man, they said I was cracked, sirrah, cracked.’

  We all laughed, heartily. Even Lady Knowe, whose mode of dress dropped a decade each time we convened. She still wore black, but her gown was less widow’s weed than dark blossom.

  Leo Dare, whom no one had ever seen eat, oversaw our gustatory indulgences and, begging permission from Lady Knowe, lit up a black Cubano cigar. He exhaled clouds that seemed to take sculptural shape before dissipating.

  ‘Our conquest of the market has been so complete,’ he said, ‘that the “smart money” has stayed away. Some call us a “bubble”, you know. They predict a “smash”! Soon, they’ll learn that the old certainties have gone. In the coming age, men – and women, Lady Enid – such as we shall set the pace, make the decisions, reap the profits. The twentieth century shall belong to us.’

  When Nietzsche writes of an ‘Overman’, the philosopher means Leo Dare.

  ‘So we are smarter than “the smart money”,’ I said.

  In my mind, I held the picture of Hilary Belligo, trying to get out the words, the light of inspiration dying in his eyes, to be rekindled as a physical and mental need far stronger than any poetic impulse would ever be.

  ‘There’ll be no limit to the demand for the Tonic,’ said Varrable. ‘We could ask five pounds a thimble, and some would pay it.’

  I thought of the Hon. Hilary. Varrable was right.

  ‘Let us not be over-greedy,’ said Leo Dare, which made Mr Enfield giggle. As usual, the controller of the Utterson-Jekyll estate was slightly soused.

  ‘Think of the poor,’ said Lady Knowe, sipping champagne. ‘The poor poor.’

  A card was delivered to her, not from a churchman, but from a golden-haired Guardsman. She giggled at the inscription and placed it separately from the others. I wondered if she’d been at the Jekyll. Samples were already in circulation among the consortium.

  ‘I have been reconsidering the matter of price,’ said Leo Dare. ‘I don’t think sixpence a bottle is unreasonable. Any objections?’

  Heads shaken all around the table.

  ‘Passed,’ said the entrepreneur. ‘Now, let us drink to the memory of the late Dr Henry Jekyll, without whom, et cetera et cetera…’

  ‘Et cetera et cetera,’ we chanted, raising glasses.

  * * *

  Varrable and newly hired assistants continued the course of volunteer tests, making slight refinements to the formula, and the consortium stock continued to gain value by the proverbial leaps and bounds. Shoreditch’s first telephonic lines were strung, with matching sets of the apparatus installed in my sanctum, once the snug nest of the proprietor of Mercury Carriages, and Varrable’s command post above the factory floor. Varrable became addicted to the gadget, ‘ringing up’ on it several times a day to pass trivial messages, though a perfectly adequate speaking tube between our offices was left over from the Mercury days.

  As my role in the enterprise became paramount, I closeted myself with secretaries to take dictation, commercial artists to work up sketches and a few trusted experts to bounce ideas against. For weeks, we ‘brainstormed’.

  A Marvel of the Modern Age!

  Ladies – Make of Yourself What You Will!!!

  Release the Young Man Inside You!

  A Kitten Can Be a Tiger!

  Transformed and Improved!! Transmogrified and Reborn!!

  It has always been a credo of mine that an advertisement cannot have too many exclamation points.

  We bought space on public hoardings and in the press, and sent sandwich-men out onto the streets. We put up posters on the platforms of the London Underground Railway and inside the trains themselves, where passengers had no choice but to look at them. We were plastered on the sides of buses, in the windows of chemists’ shops and on any walls that happened to be bare before our trusty regiment of boys with paste pots passed by. Striking illustrations, engraved by the best men in the business, were augmented by ‘unsolicited’ testimony from our volunteers, much the best of it genuinely unsolicited. I decided to keep the Hon. Hilary in the background, for he was now almost permanently in his secondary personality and the quality of his rhyming, while undoubtedly visionary, was of a nature to prove alarming rather than reassuring. Varrable insisted we keep supplying our initial volunteers with the Tonic so he could study the effects of repeated use. He also asked for more bruisers at the laboratory, to guard against possible riots from the much-swelled cabbie crowd. It seemed our people couldn’t get enough of the Jekyll. Varrable tried to water the formula down, to make its effects less immediate and lasting.

  Some use could be made of the statements of cabbies and longhairs, but willing participants were also found among the better classes. We prominently displayed sworn testimonials from gracious ladies, leading churchmen, military officers and, inevitably, Sir Marmaduke Collynge. I interviewed all manner of folk who had sampled the Tonic, helping them set down in appropriate words the benefits they genuinely felt had accrued to them. Major General Cogstaff-Blyth, ‘the Hector of Maiwand’, was quoted as saying, ‘With this spiffing stuff in him, your British soldier shall never lose another battle!’ I had the Maj-Gen put on his best medals and troop down to Speakers’ Corner to harangue passersby with the merits of Jekyll Tonic, and lobby for a bulk purchase of the wonder fluid by the War Office.

  In any enterprise, only so much can be done by buying space to hawk your wares. True success can only be achieved if the press find themselves so harried by the interest of their readership that they are obliged – nay, forced – to augment paid advertising by running stories that pass as unbiased journalism but which essentially serve to boost your reputation. To reach this point, you have to worm your way into the public mind by fair means or foul. Firstly, I provided the lyrics for an entire songbook of ditties which were set to tunes by a couple of tame music students willing to work in lucrative anonymity. The theory was that one at least of our songs was bound to catch the nation’s fancy. Certainly, for a time, ‘Changing for the Better (Through a Course of Jekyll Tonic)’ was heard on every street corner – Leo Dare magnanimously promised me a fifty per cent cut of the songsheet income – and hardly less success was met by ‘An Inspirational Transformational Super-Sensational Stuff’ and ‘You’ve Got to Be a Jekyll Tonic Girl (to Get the Boy You Want)’.

  The greatest success of this campaign was, I venture to say, the affair of the Jekyll Joke.

  It took no little negotiation and expense to arrange for the ‘patter comic’ Harry ‘Brass’ Button to conclude his turn at the Tivoli Music Hall with an apparent ad lib remark of my own coinage. ‘With Jekyll Tonic I feel like a new man,’ said Button, then adding with an indescribable leer, ‘…luckily, the wife does too!’ The results were as startling to the pe
rformer as anyone else. Not only was Button’s ‘punchline’ greeted nightly with gales of laughter but also applause that lasted for minutes, delaying the first act curtain. The audience could only be quieted if he agreed to give the ‘Jekyll Joke’ over again, as much as seven times. Attendances were up and expectant patrons turned away in crowds. A sticker across the posters outside the hall announced ‘the Jekyll Joke will be told’. Eventually, new posters were put up claiming the Tivoli as ‘Home of the Hilarious Jekyll Joke’.

  Harry Button, whose check suit and mobile eyebrows had been rather falling from favour, was precipitously elevated to the top of the bill, displacing an entire family of acrobatical contortionists and an opera singer who had conducted a famous amour with a Ruthenian prince. Button only sampled the Tonic once that I heard of. He wept for six hours, then swore off it for life. But he told and retold the Jekyll Joke. I don’t doubt that though his top-of-the-bill days are now but a memory, he still tells it at the drop of a hat. Certainly, he truly believes his was the brain that conceived the marvellous line and he’ll try to thrash anyone who says different.

  Some fellows entirely unconnected with the consortium whipped up a song that Button refused to include in his act on the grounds that it was an affront to the dignity of what had now become a much-loved, therefore respectable, music hall institution. However, every other comic in London sang ‘Have you heard the Jekyll Joke?/It’ll make you laugh until you choke!/Have you heard the Jekyll Joke?/Old Brass Button is the funniest bloke!’ In the Strand, whenever Harry Button was about, children chanted the chorus, especially the repeated refrain: ‘Now tell us another one, Brass!’

  With the departure of Mr Richard Mansfield from the London stage, we commissioned our own dramatisation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, emphasising the positive aspects of the transformation and omitting any mention of the late Sir Danvers Carew. After all, Edward Hyde never came to trial and so was not proved a murderer in any court of law. Our lawyers sent reminders of this fact to any who tried to publish or stage the hitherto-accepted version of the story. On behalf of the Jekyll Estate, Mr Enfield accepted a great many grudging retractions and apologies. Several times in the play, our Dr Jekyll took a swig of his formula and approvingly exclaimed, ‘It’s a tonic!’

  All this, it should be remembered, was well before the Tonic was available in stores. By the time we were ready to begin manufacture and distribution, the consortium had gathered again and concluded that 6d was far too meagre a price to ask for such a highly demanded and beneficial commodity. Lady Knowe bleated a little about pricing the Tonic out of the reach of the poor, but we decided that – though the Jekyll Tonic was of such incalculable good to the public that it must in effect be declared priceless – we would settle upon the trivial sum of 1s a bottle, in order to effect the greatest possible distribution of the wondrous blessing we were about to grant humankind in general.

  ‘A shilling is little enough to pay,’ said Leo Dare.

  * * *

  I was mentally formulating an alliterative sentence employing the words ‘modern’, ‘marvel’ and ‘miracle’ in some fresh order when a discreet rap at the door disturbed my process of thought.

  ‘Go away,’ I shouted at the Porlockian person. ‘It can wait.’

  The office door opened a crack and an unfamiliar individual peeked around, holding up something shiny.

  ‘Generally, that’s not the case, sir.’

  The newcomer was a shabby little man with a London accent. I pegged his section of the market at once – clerk or undermanager, with a little education but no elocution, the son of someone who worked with his hands, the father of someone who’d ‘do better’. He would be most susceptible to advertisements that linked the product with easy living, good breeding and ‘class’. A life lived with unformed needs and aspirations, and thus an ideal customer. He’d be looking for something but not know what it was. Enter: the Jekyll Tonic.

  ‘Inspector Mist, sir,’ he announced, ‘from Scotland Yard.’

  I gave him another look. He had a bloodhound’s big wet nose and a drooping moustache that covered his mouth entirely. His hat was a year or so past style and his topcoat was too heavy for him, as if the pockets were full of handcuffs for felons, packets of plaster of Paris for footprints and magnifying lenses for clues.

  ‘Come in, Inspector. You’re Sheriff of these parts?’

  ‘You would be the American, sir. Mister…’

  ‘Quinn.’

  ‘That’s the name.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Rather delicate matter, sir. Are you acquainted with…’ he consulted a notepad ‘…a Mr Belligo?’

  ‘What has the Hon. Hilary been up to now? Subversive publications with obscene illustrations?’

  ‘Misappropriation of stock is mentioned, sir. In short, theft.’

  ‘I was under the impression that he was of independent means.’

  ‘Ran through ’em, sir. Looked around. Found another source of readies. Only it wasn’t exactly his to tap.’

  ‘Lock the villain away, then. I imagine he’ll find an eager audience for his verses in one of your excellent prisons.’

  ‘Have to catch him first, sir.’

  ‘He’s not around here.’

  ‘Didn’t say he was. Only, it seems you have something the absconder needs. A tonic, I believe. Likely he’ll come nosing about.’

  The policeman picked up a bottle from my desk.

  ‘Is this it? Jekyll Tonic?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just a sample of the bottle. The bottle is important, you know. The comforting size, the colour, the quality of the wax around the stopper, the adhesive label.’

  ‘Looks like a bottle to me.’

  ‘Very perceptive, Inspector.’

  ‘That’s as well, then. If Mr Belligo pops up…’

  ‘I’ll send a lad to the Yard.’

  ‘We’d be grateful, Mr Quinn.’

  ‘There is a flaw to your trap, though. At the moment, Jekyll Tonic is a rara avis, obtainable only from our experimental laboratories, downstairs in this very building. As of,’ I consulted my new gold watch, ‘as of eight o’clock tomorrow morning, it will be on sale all across London, then the country. You might have to post a man at every chemist’s shop in the nation.’

  The bloodhound face drooped.

  * * *

  My first thought upon arriving fresh and early in Shoreditch to see a line of policemen outside the factory was that one of our devoted test subjects had done himself or someone else injury while in the grips of Jekyll Tonic fever. The fellow who would now have to be known as the Dis. Hon. Hilary Belligo sprang naturally to mind. It turned out that Leo Dare had merely suggested it would be sensible to take precautions against rioters. I looked about for the dogged Inspector Mist. If present, he was in one of those impenetrable Scotland Yard disguises.

  We understood that the chemist’s shops and apothecary’s dispensaries which would be our main retail outlets would abide by no decree we might make that the Tonic should be withheld from sale until a certain standardised time. I knew enough about storekeepers to guess they would agree to all our terms and then sell the stuff as soon as they got it, probably knocking a penny off the shilling to undercut the fellow across the street.

  So, it was to be a free-for-all.

  At eight o’clock, the old stable gates opened and carts trundled out, laden with straw-packed crates of clinking bottles. Each cart was manned by a former Mercury cabbie (retained at a generous two-thirds of his previous wage) and a bare-knuckle boxer with a handy shillelagh. The purpose of the latter individuals was not so much to prevent any attempts at seizure of the Tonic supply as to suggest to the world at large that the product was so desirable such attempts were highly likely.

  Because it seemed expected of us, we put up a stall outside the laboratory, manned by several smart young women recruited from the chorus of the Tivoli, all neat in abbreviated sailor suits and hats with pom-pom
s. Harry Button had asked an outrageous fee to act as shill at the stall, so we had declined his services. I noticed that the comic had turned up for the historic moment anyway, a little surprised that the eager public were clamouring not for his joke but for the inspiration of same, the Tonic itself. The first Jekyll Tonic offered for sale direct from the factory was available at an introductory price of 9d. Our shutters went up simultaneous with the emergence of the carts.

  We were all there. Leo Dare hung rather in the background, calmly puffing one of his cigars. In press photographs taken that morning, as so often in Kodaks of the entrepreneur and Overman, Leo Dare’s face is indistinct, masked by frozen shrouds of smoke. Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe made speeches, drowned out by the Babel of eager customers beseeching the attention of our becoming sales assistants. Varrable, emerged again from his bucket, still fussed about the vats, already concerned with brewing up tomorrow’s batch of Tonic.

  I found myself in a corner of the stableyard with Mr Enfield.

  He drew a draught from a hip-flask and offered it to me.

  ‘Is that…?’

  ‘Not on your nellie,’ he said.

  I took a swallow. Strong whiskey.

  ‘I saw Hyde trample the little girl,’ he said. ‘Worst thing I ever did see. The look on his face.’

  ‘Monstrous? Evil?’

  ‘No. It was like he was walking over more pavement. As if no one else mattered at all. He was scared all right, when the mob had his collar, scared for himself. A shirty little bastard he was, whining and indignant, with clothes too big for him. That was what was inside Jekyll.’

  The first customers were swigging from their own bottles. On labels they hadn’t read, we had printed a warning advising that the daily dose should not exceed a spoonful taken in a mug of water. It was not our fault some patrons were too excited to read and regard these instructions.

  ‘The formula was lost,’ I said to Mr Enfield. ‘Even Jekyll couldn’t recreate it. You could have kept it that way. If you were really worried, you could have suppressed the Tonic, stopped this even before it started.’