The Revenant of Thraxton Hall

CHAPTER 26 THE DEATH OF A GREAT PSYCHIC

Bedraggled peacocks parading in the gathering twilight screamed in a mixture of terror and outrage as the black hearse thundered up to the phoenix steps of Thraxton Hall, wheels churning gravel. Dusk was quickly falling. Toby the gardener was wheeling a barrow of shovels and rakes toward the potting sheds, cleaning up at the end of a day’s labor. Seeing the hearse, he dropped the barrow handles and rushed forward to catch the reins tossed to him as Conan Doyle jumped down from the driver’s seat.

“Hide the hearse around the back of the house,” he said. “Somewhere out of sight.”

“We thought you wuz on a train for London by now, sir.”

“There has been a change of plans.”

“How did you hear, sir?”

Conan Doyle’s feet were already ringing up the stone steps, his suitcase swinging at his side, when Toby’s words froze him on the spot.

“Hear what?”

“Your friend. He’s near death. I doubt he’s gonna last the night.”

Conan Doyle’s mouth bittered with the taste of copper pennies. If something had happened to Oscar, he would never forgive himself. Dreading the answer, he forced himself to ask: “Who is near death?”

Toby tugged at his cap. “The Yank: Mister Daniel Dunglas Hume.”

Conan Doyle relaxed a little, thanking the stars it was not Oscar, but the news still perturbed him. “Has a doctor been sent for?”

Toby shook his head. “Mr. Hume said it was too late for what ailed him. He did predict you would return. He’s asked to see you afore he passes.”

Conan Doyle burst into Daniel Dunglas Hume’s bedroom to find the American slumped upon his bed, his head floating on a cloud of pillows.

“I just received the news,” Conan Doyle said.

The American’s ravaged gaze followed Conan Doyle’s journey across the room to his bedside. Hume had the look of a creature fished from the bottom of the sea, and when he spoke, the words came out in an underwater gurgle. “I am on the final journey, sir.” He had to pause to suck in a labored breath before he could continue. “The Genie is just about used up.”

Hume’s face was veiled in shadow. Conan Doyle slid the lamp forward on the bedside table, but to his puzzlement, the shadow remained.

“It is death,” Hume explained. “A shadow no amount of light can chase away. I have kept it at arm’s length for many years. But I can restrain it no longer.”

Conan Doyle nodded sadly as he checked the pulse at Hume’s throat and then pressed an ear to his chest, listening. The American’s congested lungs made a sound like the ocean sucking in and out of a sea cave. When Conan Doyle stood upright, his expression was grave.

Hume smiled up at him, which had a rather ghastly effect. He had lost his good looks and seemed to have aged forty years. His features were sunken, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes peering out from dark hollows like death-row prisoners skulking behind bars. “I’m dying, Doctor Doyle. I can no longer hold back the shadowy tide.”

Conan Doyle nodded.

“So at least I’m no longer a suspect?”

Conan Doyle smiled gently. “No. You were only briefly a suspect.”

“Believe in Fate, Mister Doyle. It controls our destinies, despite our best efforts to elude its influence. Years ago, I foolishly used my powers to foresee my own death. The knowledge was a poison kiss to my soul. I knew I was fated to die here, in this place. I tried to avoid it. I traveled around the world. I have freely spent the money of the rich. I used my powers like a fool. But I was too busy running from death to live the life I had. Sadly, in the final throes, it ends for me as it ends for all men… in a deathbed.”

Conan Doyle contemplated the American’s words for several moments before speaking. “You are a man whose vision penetrates the veil,” he said quietly. “Is there nothing we can do to prevent the murder of Hope Thraxton?”

Daniel Dunglas Hume was about to speak, when his voice cracked and a wicked coughing spasm shook his frame until it seemed it would tear him apart. Conan Doyle held him up with a hand beneath his shoulders as Hume hacked and gagged into the lace handkerchief clamped to his mouth. The coughing spasm finally petered out, not because Hume had successfully cleared his lungs, but because he was simply too exhausted to continue.

“Fate is a slippery path,” Hume gurgled. “We can seek to hide from it. We can dodge it momentarily, but we cannot escape its grasp. For a moment it seemed as though you would not be here for the final seance, but something has drawn you back. Fate is difficult to thwart… although…” He flashed a final, memento-mori smile. “… although I have learned that seeing the future and truly understanding what the vision means are not always the same thing.”

Conan Doyle leaned over Hume and laid a hand on his clammy brow. “If you need anything to make you comfortable… please summon me.”

He went to turn away, but Hume seized his wrist with a bruising grip surprisingly powerful for a man lingering on the verge of death. “Before I kick loose of this earth, I will summon the final glimmerings of everything I am to assist you. I may not be there with you in body, but if I can hold back the hand of death a while longer, trust that I shall endeavor to be there in spirit.” His grip slackened. The hand fell limp. His eyes grew heavy-lidded. Exhaustion dimmed his face. “But now I have a long way to go, and must prepare myself for the journey.”