The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 27 A PLEASANT NIGHT CRUISE UPON THE THAMES

The pursuit went on for miles, Conan Doyle and Wilde shadowed the stuttering figure from a distance. Afraid to follow too close. Afraid to lag too far behind in the dense fog. They moved at a steady jog that kept their bodies warm, although now and then each would be racked with a convulsive shiver.

“Explain something to me, Arthur. We just barely escaped from that thing with our lives. Why are we now pursuing it?”

“In the hopes it will lead us to its lair.”

The monster strode on, untiring and indefatigable, while the two friends struggled to keep up. Finally, under the grinding accumulation of footsore miles, both men began to flag as the monster gradually outpaced them. As they approached Westminster, it had shrunk to a tiny figure in the distance. And then the fog thickened and erased it from sight.

“Gone… it’s gone,” Conan Doyle admitted wearily. “We have lost it.” The two stumbled to a standstill.

“What now?” Wilde asked. “There is another monster loose in London… and this time I refer to the mad marquess.”

Conan Doyle looked around. A flyer plastered on a nearby wall caught his eye:

The Scottish author frowned. His shoulders slumped in resignation. “You and I have done our utmost, Oscar, but this is beyond us. I think this is a matter best handled by Cypher and his people.” Remembering something, he fumbled in his top pocket and drew out the small envelope the little man had given him, thoroughly dampened from their dip in the Thames.

“What’s that?” Wilde asked.

“Cypher gave this to me. He said to only use it in the direst situation. I think we have reached that juncture.” He tore off one end of the soggy envelope and drew something out.

Conan Doyle looked at his friend with a sour expression.

“You appear far from happy, Arthur. What is it?”

“Two steamer tickets.”

Wilde’s face grew grief-stricken. “Dear God! Not the Thames, again? Not twice in one night!”

The paddleboat Poseidon was tied up at Lambeth Palace Pier, but the decks were deserted, the wheelhouse dark.

“No one about,” Wilde said, and made to walk away. “We shall just have to try elsewhere.”

“No. Wait. Look.” Conan Doyle clapped a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder and pointed to the smoke purling from the flared smokestack. “The boilers are lit. That means someone is aboard.”

Conan Doyle banged on the wheelhouse door with the meat of his fist. After a pause, the door flung open and a gruff bearded man in a salt-stained uniform leaned out, jaws working at the mouthful of tobacco he was chewing. He gave the two friends a wire brushing up and down with his flinty eyes. “Yeah? Watcha want?”

“From the faded salt stain on your uniform and the rum on your breath, I’d wager you are an ex-navy man and currently the captain of this vessel.”

The man’s head tilted back, warily. “What’s it to you?”

Conan Doyle flourished the tickets under the captain’s nose. He took one look and choked down his mouthful of ’baccy, sobering instantly. He turned and bellowed down the stairs, “On deck, you lot. We’re casting off.”

With its boilers constantly shoveled with coal, the boat soon made a head of steam. Minutes later, Conan Doyle and Wilde stood in a pair of smelly and scratchy uniforms the captain had rustled up. Both men had blankets around their shoulders and sipped at battered metal mugs that held Barbados rum spiked with a tiny splash of tea.

“I am nostalgic for sensation in my feet,” Wilde said, shivering beneath his blanket. “I feel as waterlogged as that wretched rowboat.”

Conan Doyle did not answer. He could not tear his gaze from the fog cleaving about the prow as the steamer churned ahead, shafts of light from its powerful carbide lights probing the fog ahead. “I feel as though I am sailing through the clouds in one of Jules Verne’s aerial contrivances.”

One of the steamer’s crew moved to the prow of the boat. He was equipped with a signaling light and sent out a series of flashes into the darkness. Moments later he was answered by pulses of light emanating from the dark silhouette of Tower Bridge.

“What on earth is that chap doing?” Wilde asked.

“He is semaphoring a coded message made up of long and short flashes. If you notice, the message is acknowledged and then repeated on up the line, from bridge to bridge. Cypher will have word of our coming long before the boat arrives.”

Finally, the skeletal shape of a jetty loomed from the fog. The captain shouted to the man in the wheelhouse, who threw levers back and forth. Poseidon roared and shuddered, releasing a whoosh of spray as one set of paddle wheels slowed, and then one reversed with the other paddle wheels powered forward, spinning the boat about so that it paralleled and gently snugged up to the dock. Waiting crewmen, agile as monkeys, leapt from the boat and cinched ropes around bollards.

A diminutive figure stood waiting on the dock’s worn planking — Cypher. He was flanked, as always, by two large figures in black coats and bowler hats — Dandelion and Burdock.

The crew swung out the gangplank, bridging the gap from deck to jetty, and Conan Doyle and Wilde stepped from the paddle steamer.

“You have something to report?” Cypher asked. He had evidently been waiting for some time; his round spectacles were fogged into opaque disks.

“We have a great deal to report,” the Scottish author replied.

The two friends related their story, Conan Doyle providing the narrative with Wilde jumping in now and then, chiefly to provide details of his fright, his physical discomfort, and the loss of his beloved green coat and the irreparable damage thereby done to his wardrobe. When the full story had spilled out of Conan Doyle, Cypher stood mulling in silence.

“Well,” the Scottish author demanded. “What are you waiting for? The police must be dispatched. DeVayne must be arrested. This must be stopped, and stopped now.”

“Thank you, Doctor Doyle for your efforts.”

“What about my efforts?” Wilde peevishly added.

“Both your efforts. We knew something of the marquess’s delusional plans for revolution. He bragged about elements of it to the doctors at the sanitarium. I had considered it the ramblings of a deranged mind, but apparently he has convinced others to participate in his madness.”

“What about the monster that chased us across half of London? The reanimated corpses they are using as assassins?”

The puppetlike head nodded slightly. “Scarcely believable, but regrettable if true. It greatly concerns me when the state goes to the trouble and expense of executing a prisoner who then refuses to lie down and stay dead.”

“What shall we do about it?” Conan Doyle demanded.

“We, meaning the Crown, will do what is necessary. You, meaning yourself and Mister Wilde, will return to your respective domiciles and do nothing further.”

“Do nothing further?” Wilde burst out. “Surely you are jesting. The creature that pursued us is a ruthless killing machine. We looked on, helpless, as it butchered two constables. The people behind this abomination must be—”

“Thank you, Mister Wilde,” Cypher interrupted. “But now is the time to remain silent. Our enemies lurk in our midst, from the lowest to the highest echelon of society. Even — it distresses me to confess — within the royal palace. But rest assured, I have an end game in place. For now we must remain silent, hidden, and allow the conspiracy to unfold. Once all the players have revealed themselves… then we shall strike.”

“So that’s it?” Conan Doyle said. “Oscar and I are simply to go home and do nothing?”

“Precisely that,” Cypher said with a taut smile. “Nothing.” And with that, he turned and walked away. But then, remembering something, he stopped and turned back.

“I have made a carriage available. It will take Doctor Doyle to the train station and then drop Mister Wilde at his house on Tite Street. You are both to remain at home, where it will be safest for you and your family. Her Majesty thanks you gentlemen for your efforts, but you are now released.” Cypher walked on until the shadows drowned him.

After their long ordeal, both men were bruised, battered, and totally exhausted. Wilde fell asleep immediately during the carriage ride. Although weary with fatigue, Conan Doyle could not close his eyes. Once again, he felt his soul torn by two concerns: his wife and family in Sussex, and the safety of Jean Leckie, here in London. When the carriage dropped him at Waterloo station, he did not bother to wake Wilde to say good-bye, but let him snore on, mouth wide open, head lolled back on the seat cushion.

When Conan Doyle reached the ticket counter he found the Surrey train hissing at its platform, delayed by fog. He purchased a ticket and then bought a second, to be held in the name of Miss Jean Leckie. He then arranged for a telegram to be sent to Jean urging her to join him at his Sussex home.

“Won’t be delivered until the morning, sir,” the ticket counterman said. “What with the fog.”

Conan Doyle nodded morosely and took his ticket. He could not imagine what he would say to Touie. How he would explain their need to play host to a beautiful young woman his wife already suspected him of having an illicit affair with. But he reasoned that the consequences could not possibly be as terrible as hearing of Jean Leckie’s murder.