Bellefontaine's Return
Night had fallen hours ago in the London borough of Southwark. The intersection of Borough avenue and Newcomen street was crowded with carriages flowing north and south, east and west; drovers pushed their teams to pull wagons often overloaded at risky speeds. The intersection was also a dangerous but necessary crossing point for pedestrians out on nocturnal errands: common menials performing heavy labors, ladies maids procuring whatever their wealthy patrons might need, poorly paid clerks rushing to get home before returning to the counting house by dawn, and everywhere the unwholesome business of crime went on in the shadows.
No one on the street below or those looking through grimy widows in nearby buildings discerned the old man. There was little reason that they should distinguish him as he was primarily dressed in somber shades of black. Doubtless someone did see him, but failed to recognize what their eyes observed, in part this was due to the utter darkness of the stormy night and to the uncanny stillness of the old man. Only during flashes of lightening was it even possible to see him and what would such a geriatric be doing perched five stories from the earth upon the eves of a decrepit Georgian rooming house on a cold stormy night?
For his part, the old man stared down into the streets intently, he did not seem to mind the freezing rain and chill gusts of wind that assailed him upon his self appointed roost. His patience was great for he rarely moved more than the incline of his head as he surveyed the muddy streets below.
The storm was mostly spent and the old man soaked to the skin when the object of his interest appeared in motion along the wooden sidewalk that ran the length of the far side of the street. The target of his reconnaissance was a man, easily marked out from the throng with which he moved by of aĺl things a umbrella of red Chinese silk, nothing else was visible about the man at this elevation. The old man's only reaction was a derisive snort and then he rose from the one kneed crouch that he had maintained for the length of the storm.
The old man made his way from the front of the flophouse roof to its rear through a forest of brickwork chimneys stained black with age and soot to the opposing corner of the building and from there he peered down into a light-less three-way intersection of filthy alleys. So dark was it the old man should not have been able to see anything and yet he did see something that pleased him for he smirked silently to himself and then stepped off the ledge into open air.
Without a cry he fell fifty feet and landed in a swollen pool of black-water that occupied the center of the narrow intersection. A wave of mucky water and semi-solid night-soil exploded in all directions, when it subsided the old man slowly rose from a crouch and hissed into the fetid dark. The elderly fellow's attempted suicide left no sign of injury and indeed his raspy laughter bespoke a feral joy and thirst for life.
That thirst for life was soon to be quenched when from all directions rodents crawled from every sewer-pipe and crevice in the brickwork of the alley. They formed a loose circle several deep around the pool in which he stood. The gaffer spun in a mad little circle and then plucked a particularly large buck from the crowd and brought it before his face in a curious manner. For several moments the geriatric and the rat locked gazes, all was silent, and then the old man broke out in a staccato burst of hisses and squeaks. Strangely the great brown buck responded in kind, whether the noises made the large brown buck pleased the gaffer seemed in doubt, for the old man immediately bit the head of the buck completely off and drained its furry brown carcass like a drunk drains a bottle.
