The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 7 SHANGHAIED IN WATERLOO

Conan Doyle panted into Haslemere station, stiff-legged and red-faced, only to find that he was annoyingly early as the persistent fog made nonsense of railway timetables. Fortunately, this gave him time to snatch up a copy of The Times, and during the train ride to London he read with great interest the official version of Lord Howell’s assassination. Prime Minister Gladstone expressed outrage at the murder, which he laid at the feet of “International Anarchists” and other shadowy groups (made up mostly of foreigners) striving to topple the legitimate government of Great Britain. Somehow the paper had produced a highly accurate sketch of Vicente, Lord Howell’s Italian valet, whom Gladstone thundered, “Would feel the lash of British Justice!”

With just ten miles to London, he tossed the paper aside, flipped open his leather portfolio, and slid out his Casebook: a slim leather volume secured by a strap and a tiny padlock. He reached beneath his collar and drew out a key on a long ribbon. The key sprung open the lock and Conan Doyle took out a fountain pen and turned to the blank first page. For the remainder of the journey, he scribbled an account of his adventure of the previous night and the mysteriously vanishing body of Charlie Higginbotham. When he finished his account, he snapped the cap back on his fountain pen and took out the newspaper cutting tucked between the Casebook’s pages.

His eyes dropped to the large photograph and the cadre of high-powered politicos and industrial magnates seated around the table. He scanned the line of puffed-up faces and stopped at the figure whose features registered only as an anonymous gray blur indentified by the enigmatic caption as UNKNOWN.

A whistle sounded as the London train passed the signal and began its rumbling deceleration into Waterloo Station. He closed the journal in his lap and studied it. Written across the cover in his own neat hand was: Casebook No. 2 followed by a hovering colon waiting to complete the thought. The man who created Sherlock Holmes considered a moment and then uncapped his fountain pen, touched its gold nib to smooth leather, and penned in a careful, steady hand: The Dead Assassin.

Conan Doyle hurried through the crowded train station, banging shoulders and muttering excuse-mes and dreadfully sorrys as he jostled through teeming shoals of rail passengers. Finally breaking free of the crowds, he sprinted across the echoing transepts, coattails flying, one hand clamping the gray homburg to his head. Puffing wind, he raced up Platform 2 where a train stood waiting on either side, hissing steam.

He spotted Jean Leckie as she gathered her skirts and stepped down from the carriage. She did not see him immediately, and for a magical moment she looked about herself, unaware she was being observed. She was wearing the same hat and the same violet dress as the previous evening. She stepped to the middle of the platform and paused to smooth her crinolines. It was a delightfully unguarded moment and his heart cartwheeled at the sight. A notion struck him, and he quickened his pace — he would touch a hand to her arm to surprise her. It would not be unseemly. Waterloo Station was a vast, echoing vault of arching steel and glass clangorous with the chuff and hiss of arriving and departing railway stock, the yawps of porters, and the loud-hailer announcements of trains. It was a place a called-out name could not be heard. He had an entirely appropriate excuse for a touch.

A railway engine with a single carriage had drawn up one side of the platform. A porter straining at a luggage cart piled to overflowing trundled toward him. A large ginger man in a black bowler idled on a bench, twirling a pocket watch by its chain. Close by, another large man in a long coat and a matching black bowler hunkered behind his newspaper.

As Conan Doyle sidestepped the luggage cart, Miss Leckie began to turn his way. She would see him at any moment. He had lost the element of surprise. He began to raise his hat, a smile beaming on his face. And then she turned to face him full on, her eyes met his, and he stumbled to a halt.

It was not Jean Leckie. The young woman was a total stranger.

At that moment a train whistle shrieked and the parked railway engine jetted a swirling cloud of steam across the platform. As it engulfed him, Waterloo Station vanished. Suddenly, a powerful hand gripped his right arm. Another gripped his left. To his shock and surprise, Arthur Conan Doyle, a large, athletic man, was lifted off his feet and whisked sideways across the platform, the toes of his shoes scuffing the concrete. The side of a railway carriage appeared. A door opened and he was hurled inside and bounced into a seat with the bowler-hatted bullies dropping heavily on either side of him.

“What the devil! What is the meaning? Who are you people?”

Perched on the seat opposite was a small man with a head the shape of a blown-glass bulb. He was entirely bald on top, apart from a single pomaded forelock, which curled upon his brow like a question mark.

The carriage jerked as the railway engine began to move, accelerating out of the station, iron wheels squealing for traction on the rails. It traveled several hundred feet before an unseen railway switch was thrown and the train swerved off the main track and plunged into the black maw of a tunnel. Out the carriage windows, the perpetual night of the Underground network hurtled darkly past.

“Who—?”

“You may call me Cypher,” the little man interrupted before Conan Doyle could spit out his question.

“Cypher?” Conan Doyle grunted. “You must have had very imaginative parents.”

The diminutive figure smiled indulgently. “Not my real name, obviously. And given your intellect, Doctor Doyle, you have probably already surmised that you have been duped for a reason. I know that you and your friend Oscar Wilde were present at the scene of Lord Howell’s assassination last night.”

Conan Doyle shifted in his seat. Was the man trying to somehow entrap him into confessing something?

“I was there at the request of the Yard. Despite that fact, my friend and I were warned in no uncertain terms by the commissioner of police himself to have no further involvement in the case. The fact that you have snatched me, tells me you are not the police. Then who, indeed, are you?”

Conan Doyle eyed the little man up and down. He was short: under five feet, so that the tips of his polished shoes swung free of the carriage floor, like a child’s. However, the finely made suit, immaculately tailored down to the last stitch, and the fastidiousness of his dress, complete with boutonniere and round, gold-rimmed spectacles that sparkled in the electric carriage light, suggested a man of power and influence.

“Someone from the government, I presume. A spy master?”

“Not a bad guess, as I would expect from the author of Sherlock Holmes. I confess, I am an enthusiast of your clever fictions but that does not appertain to this—”

“Kidnapping?” Conan Doyle interrupted.

“Summons,” the man who called himself Cypher corrected. “I represent a higher authority. One greater than the government, comprised as it is of grubby politicians who are merely temporary holders of office.”

“Who, then, God?” Conan Doyle challenged, his sense of outrage recovering after the shock of being shanghaied in the middle of Waterloo Station.

Cypher’s small face attempted to mold itself into something approaching a smile; he flashed a collection of tiny, peg-like teeth, aiming at geniality, but managing instead to convey the menacing look of a playground Napoleon.

“God and country,” he answered cryptically. “As you shall soon see.”

The brakes squealed on. The train shuddered as it decelerated and drew up at an Underground station, where it trembled like a whippet straining at its lead, anxious to be released. By the sparkle of electric lamps, Conan Doyle read the name spelled out on the porcelain tiles: ORPHEUS STREET STATION.

The ginger behemoth flung open the door and stepped out, holding the door. Cypher slid from the bench onto his feet. “Come along, Doctor Doyle. And no heroics, please. I do not wish for an unfortunate accident.”

Conan Doyle had been planning a dozen such scenarios in his head. His hands were balled into fists, and he had already decided he would punch the larger of the two thugs first; but at Cypher’s words, his fists unclenched. They stepped out onto the deserted platform. He casually eyed the steps leading up into the station, wondering whether to run for it, but up close he saw to his surprise that the steps ascended a mere five feet before abutting a wall. The remainder of the staircase was a painting, like cheap scenery from a theatrical production. And then he realized the stunning implication: the entire station was a ruse.

Cypher caught the bafflement on Conan Doyle’s face and smiled. “Quite right, Doctor Doyle, there is no Orpheus Street in London and no station. A personal joke of mine.” He stepped to the wall and depressed a blank white tile in the middle of the O in Orpheus. It sank beneath his gloved fingers. A sound followed — the clunk of a mechanism releasing — and then a section of wall cracked open and swung inward: a secret door leading to a lighted tunnel. At the end, a staircase.

Cypher sent the ginger mauler ahead and fixed Conan Doyle with an unequivocal look. “If you would follow, please.”

At the end of the tunnel they reached a wrought-iron staircase and rang the metal steps with their feet as they climbed two stories to a stout wooden door reinforced with metal straps and heavy iron rivets. It looked like the door to a castle, so Conan Doyle was surprised when it opened and they stepped into a sumptuous room with wallpapered walls, and high ceilings with chandeliers and elaborate plaster cornices.

Cypher nodded for his hulking minotaurs to take a seat on a fussy floral sofa and eyed Conan Doyle coldly. “Everything you have seen and everything you are about to see or hear is a state secret. You will say nothing of this to a living soul. Do you understand?”

The fineness of the room and the cryptic warning kicked over the hornet’s nest of speculation in Conan Doyle’s mind and set it abuzz. He was finally beginning to suspect where he was. “Y-yes, of course,” he stammered.

Cypher flayed him with a final, scorching look. “You would do well to remember that.” He stepped to a second door and Conan Doyle followed. The interior door was painted gleaming white with elaborate gilt door handles. Cypher rapped at it with his tiny knuckles and bewigged servants in royal-blue satin uniforms and knee breeches immediately swept the door open.

“Leave your coat and hat,” Cypher commanded. A servant stepped behind Conan Doyle and slipped the wool overcoat from his broad shoulders while the other took his hat and gloves.

“Follow me closely.”

Conan Doyle shadowed Cypher along a long plush-carpeted corridor. His attention was drawn by the many fine paintings in enormous gilt frames that hung on either side. Most were portraits of English kings and queens stretching back centuries. He longed to stop and study them, but the little man was setting a cracking pace and he hurried to keep up. Abruptly, they turned sharp right into a large room with vaulted ceilings bedecked with plaster frieze works. Dazzled by the opulence of scarlet walls and glittering gilt, his eyes roved wildly, until his focus was drawn, by deliberate intent of the architect, to the far end of the room. Beneath a proscenium arch, a dais of three steps ascended to a throne. Seated upon the throne, still wearing her familiar dress of mourning black and white lace headdress, was a figure whose face was struck into every coin of the realm.

Victoria Regina.

Pike-wielding beefeaters hovered in every corner of the room, while red-tunicked soldiers of the queen’s life guard stood at attention on either side of the throne, cutlasses drawn and held ready. Cypher stopped fifteen feet shy of the throne, bowed his head, and uttered in a reverential voice, “Majesty.”

Conan Doyle echoed the salutation and by pure reflex fell to one knee and bowed deeply.

“Your zeal is noted, Doctor Doyle,” Victoria answered in a quavering, old ladie’s voice, “but men have not bowed from the knee since Elizabeth’s time.”

Feeling foolish, Conan Doyle rose and bowed again, this time from the waist. When he finally summoned the courage to stand tall and raise his head, he was shocked by Victoria’s appearance. It had been ten years since the death of Prince Albert. In deep mourning, Victoria had withdrawn from public life and soon became a mystery to her own subjects. People whispered that she had secretly died and that the news was being suppressed to delay the succession of her dissolute son, Edward, Prince of Wales. Other scuttlebutt was far more vicious — the aging queen was stricken with disease: consumption, heart failure, even syphilis (contracted from Albert).

As a trained physician, Conan Doyle could not fail to notice the ailing condition of the seventy-eight-year-old monarch. She had lost weight, he could tell from previously taken photographs, but she retained the pudding-in-a-sock physique. She slumped upon the throne. Her face was waxy and pallid. Her glassy brown eyes protruded like a spaniel’s. Her chest rose and fell unevenly — he could hear the leather-bellows wheeze of her respiration. And when she spoke, Victoria’s voice was faltering and distant, as though it had traveled a wearisome journey from her lips to his ears. In point of fact, she was barely audible.

“Doctor Doyle, your Sherlock Holmes stories have been a great source of diversion to us during our retreat from the world.” She raised a hand in a series of palsied jerks and let it drop heavily in her lap. “Now it is our hope that a mind as ingenious as yours might be employed to save your queen, your country, and the great Empire we represent.”

“Indeed, your highness, it is an honor to be asked,” Conan Doyle answered, and bowed again, quite unnecessarily.

“The queen’s representative, Mister Cypher, will describe in detail the task you are asked to perform. But we wanted to meet you personally, so that you do not labor under any suspicion of this being the highest possible service you could render to the nation.”

Throughout her speech, Conan Doyle leaned forward, straining to hear. He threw a worried frown at Cypher. “Her Majesty’s voice is very faint,” he whispered out the side of his mouth. “Might I approach the throne?”

“You may, but at the risk of being skewered on a pike staff,” Cypher replied beneath his breath.

“But I am not quite certain what is being asked of me,” Conan Doyle whispered to Cypher. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Simply say ‘yes’ and bow,” Cypher replied. “Your acquiescence to a royal request is a foregone conclusion. Say ‘yes,’ bow to Her Majesty, and then we shall back away before we turn and leave the royal presence.”

“Do you know what the French term, coup d’état means, Doctor Doyle?”

They were back on the private underground train, the bowler-hatted bruisers squeezed tight on either side of the Scottish author. This time the train was rumbling in the reverse direction, toward Waterloo Station.

“A coup d’état? Yes, I believe so. It is a kind of palace revolution, is it not?”

Cypher’s face soured, as if the words left a vile taste upon his tongue. “You have no doubt read in the newspapers of the assassination attempts made upon Her Majesty?”

“Of course.”

“There have been eight ‘official’ attempts. All were the handiwork of lunatics or disaffected outcasts from society. They were not ruthlessly planned, but rather the slapdash bumblings of delusional cretins discharging pistols at the royal carriage and such — more public nuisance than serious assassination attempt. However, there have been four attempts that you have not read about — because I forbade the newspapers from publishing them.” Cypher’s demeanor grew grim. “And because those four attempts were very nearly successful. By contrast these outrages were masterminded by organized groups: Fenians, anarchists, and in two cases by agents we believe are homegrown.”

“What do you mean by homegrown?”

“Britain is one of the few European countries never to have suffered a revolution. But now I fear there is a threat to the monarchy from within. Of late there have been a number of carefully targeted assassinations. Lord Howell was the fourth victim.” Cypher saw the question poised on Conan Doyle’s lips and preempted it. “Yes, the other three were officially described as accidents. We believe some shadowy group is planning the equivalent of a palace coup. As a smoke screen, they are stirring up agitators — anarchists, Fenians — to commit random acts of terror. Meanwhile key members of the government and aristocracy are being eliminated. I fear these actions will culminate in a palace coup where Victoria will be murdered and a new government will sweep to power, most likely under the pretense of protecting a nation about to descend into chaos.”

“But what of the Prince of Wales? If the queen were to be murdered, would he not accede to the throne?”

At mention of the heir presumptive, Cypher’s mouth puckered in a moue of disgust. “There are those who would seek to delay the Prince of Wales’ accession for as long as possible. I am one of them. Albert Edward is a frivolous gallivanter who does not possess the temperament required of a monarch. Still, as you say, he is the rightful heir to the throne. And so, as an insurance policy, I have dispatched him on a diplomatic mission to Europe. He should be in Prague about now.”

“Out of harm’s reach?”

“Hopefully,” Cypher grudgingly conceded.

“I am baffled by your interest in me. Surely you have spies, police officers, people more suited than myself?”

“I sought you out precisely because you are not of the government. Nor the police. Nor the military. Each of these bodies has been compromised and harbors traitors to the crown. I summoned you because your ability to fathom out the plots of your ingenious stories may help us to fathom out this plot… or, at the minimum, provide us with valuable information.”

“I am flattered by your trust in my abilities, but I am not sure what I can—”

“I do not believe in trust,” Cypher interrupted. “Or luck. Or God. I believe in knowledge. I believe in being two steps ahead of my friends and three steps ahead of my foes. I have had you followed for some time, Doctor Doyle. I know your habits. I know your allegiances. I know the barber you frequent for your morning shave. I know which newspapers you read. I even know that you take your tea with milk and three heaping sugars. In short, I do not trust you can be relied upon, I know you may be relied upon.”

For a moment, Conan Doyle could not speak. The revelation that he was being spied upon chilled him to the quick. Finally, he muttered, with obvious reluctance, “And what exactly is it I am to do?”

“I want you to observe the political climate. Watch the newspapers. Sift every scrap of gossip, rumor and tittle-tattle you overhear and eke from it the inklings of treachery. Conspiracies leave fingerprints. As the author of Sherlock Holmes you are the perfect man to play sleuth and deduce who are the enemies amongst us. Of course, you cannot breathe a syllable of what you have seen today to a single living soul.”

“The other night, my friend Oscar Wilde and I were threatened with Newgate by none other than Police Commissioner Burke should we be discovered interfering in any ongoing investigation. You will have to contact him to—”

“Out of the question.” Cypher interrupted. “As I just said, we do not know precisely which parts of the government have been compromised. Even the police force.”

“And what happens if I am arrested?”

“The answer is simple: be sure you are not.”

Conan Doyle met the little man’s feral gaze squarely and said, “I must tell my friend, Oscar.”

Cypher visibly recoiled.

“You most definitely shall not. Oscar Wilde is a man of questionable character—”

“But not questionable bravery — for that I can personally vouch.”

A look of irritation swept Cypher’s face. “The man’s every move is a public spectacle. We cannot afford to risk secrecy—”

“We cannot afford to fail in this mission. If I am to play Sherlock, I need Oscar to be my Watson. Do you wish me to succeed or not?”

If Cypher attempted to conceal his anger, he was unsuccessful. Strawberries bloomed on the little man’s cheeks. In the gloomy carriage, with his deeply lined face and bald pate, he resembled a performance-worn puppet from a Punch and Judy show. “I repeat once again, you can tell no one else of this. Not Oscar Wilde. Not your wife. Not your mistress—”

“I have no mistress, sir!”

Cypher swallowed a vinegar smile, reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a lilac envelope, and dangled it in front of Conan Doyle, who recognized the letter and the handwriting instantly. It was identical to the one he had received this morning.

“Our agent in the post office intercepted the original letter. I’m afraid we did have to open the letter so our forger could duplicate the young lady friend’s handwriting.” He smiled at Conan Doyle’s obvious discomfort and added, “Are you surprised to find that your correspondence is being opened and read? It is, after all, the Royal Mail.”

Conan Doyle’s stomach clenched. Blood drained from his face. The use of the word mistress made the implied threat obvious: Cypher was threatening to publically expose him. Conan Doyle lunged and snatched the letter from his fingers.

“I’ll save you the bother of reading it, Doctor Doyle. The young lady has invited you to meet her at the round pond in Hyde Park at two o’clock.” Cypher lifted his pocket watch and glanced at it. “I want you to keep that assignation.” The carriage shuddered about them as the private train eased into Waterloo station.

“Say I do discover something. How do I get in touch with you?”

“You must never attempt to contact me directly, Doctor Doyle. Assume you are being watched, because you are. I shall contact you.” Cypher drew something from his top pocket: a tiny gray envelope.

He handed the envelope to Conan Doyle. “Only in the direst emergency, open this envelope.”

“What’s in it?”

“A means of escape that will bring you directly to me. Now I suggest you hurry. You have half an hour to reach Hyde Park, and a gentleman does not keep a lady waiting.”

The train drew up at the platform, trembling with impatience to be off again. The bowler-hatted enforcers never twitched as Conan Doyle rose from his seat. He had the carriage door half open when Cypher called him back. “Oh, and you’ll need this.”

Cypher handed him a bulging paper bag. It was very light and contained something that rattled faintly when shaken.

“What is this? Some kind of disguise? Gunpowder? A signal flare?”

Cypher’s face bowled around a smirk. “Bread crusts… for the ducks.”