The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

NINETEEN The Nautilus

Mina Harker worked at her intricate chemistry setup, tinkering with vials and retorts. She removed a test tube from an atomizer and examined it with sharp green eyes.

Her cabin door was ajar, and Dorian Gray pushed it farther open. "Brewing tea, Mina? Or something stronger?"

She looked up at him, but showed no pleasure at his arrival. "I'm identifying a powder that Nemo found in the control room. Residue of magnesium phosphorus." From his bored expression, she saw that the chemical meant nothing to him. She explained. "Photographers use it to create a flash."

"A camera?" Gray said. "Why would someone carry a clunky old camera aboard a submarine, much less use it?"

"It appears that someone wishes to capture this vessels secrets." Mina went back to her work.

Gray hovered close to her—too close. He drew a deep breath to inhale her scent. "I thought you should know. I told those who've asked that I'm an old friend of your family."

"To spare me embarrassment? I'm above what others think. We were lovers once upon a time. Our love died. Many things die."

"Many things don't."

Mina finally looked up from her chemistry work to meet his gaze. "I was surprised that you ultimately agreed to join the League, Dorian. You are a selfish man. This task requires heroes… not vain hedonists."

"Perhaps I mean to undo the flaws in my character through selfless action. Maybe I want to face my demons."

Mina scoffed, turning away. Foul odors bubbled from a flask over a Bunsen burner. "What do you know of demons?"

"Maybe more than you know." He remained maddeningly close to her, even as she tried to work. "Do you recall the space on the wall of my home, Mina? Where a picture was missing?"

"Yes. It was glaringly obvious. What of it?"

Gray drew a long breath. "Its time — long past time, actually — that I tell you a story."

Outside in the corridor, Henry Jekyll paced back and forth, looking and listening to the sounds of the ship and the secret tales told between passengers. Mina's door was open, and chemical smells and soft voices wafted out into the passageway. He came close enough that his shadow barely fell on the edge of the door, then he cringed and backed away.

Yes, Henry — look, but don't touch. Dont risk anything. Don't get your fingers dirty. That's your way.

He hated the mocking voice. Jekyll hurried away shame-faced, but in the mirror-bright shine of the Nautilus corridor fittings the brutish taunting reflection of Edward Hyde followed him.

"Shut your mouth," Jekyll said, just loud enough to answer the voice in his head.

Did I just hear a mouse squeak? Or was it just a worm stirring? Certainly nothing of any consequence.

"I won't be tricked again."

Tricked? You've known what I was about each time you drank the formula. I know about it, Henry. I know you. Hyde's deep voice ended in a gruff chuckle. You like it.

"Liar! I'm a good man." Jekyll whimpered. "I am a good man."

Who's lying now? Repeat it to yourself, keep saying the same thing… but it still won't be true.

"I make my own decisions."

So make your decision. You know which one I mean. You want it, Henry. Even more than you want… her.

Jekyll quailed, stumbled into the curved metal wall. Hyde chuckled again with a note that sounded like triumph. You cant shut me out forever. Drink the elixir.

"No."

She barely even looks at you, Hyde taunted. She wants a big, strong, decisive man. Not a little weakling.

"Be quiet!" Jekyll said.

She'd look at me!

Hyde appeared large in front of the doctor's eyes, rising up like a nightmarish simian demon. He loomed into reality, and with a powerful, blunt-fingered hand he grabbed Jekyll's throat, ready to wring it like a chicken. Drool trickled between crooked, broken teeth; his yellow eyes were bloodshot with thin scarlet lava flows.

In voice as hard and firm as an iron anvil, Captain Nemo said from behind him, "Contain your evil, Doctor."

Jekyll spun with a yelp, his knees weak. The feverish apparition of Hyde vanished like smoke in a cold wind.

Nemo stepped forward, and Jekyll seemed to fear the Nautilus captain as much as he trembled from his inner demons. "I'll not have that brute free upon my ship. Must I take drastic steps and keep you confined?"

"I'm… in control." Jekyll's teeth chattered together. He wiped a clammy hand through the perspiration on his forehead and smeared back his lank hair.

"In control, sir? I doubt that very much," Nemo said. "Even the strongest of men know evils allure."

Flustered and reddening, Jekyll gathered his courage. "Your talk is all well and good, sir — but your own past is far from laudable!" He immediately regretted his outburst. "I–I'm sorry, Captain." He started to slink away, shamed and tortured.

"Has Hyde ever killed?" Nemo asked, crossing his arms over his blue-uniformed chest. "Has he actually broken a neck or torn out a throat with his bare hands?"

Jekyll looked back wearily and nodded. "He's done all the evils a man could do. And it is my terrible curse that I… recall every one of his actions, even though I could not stop them." He let out a low moan of misery.

"I sympathize. It is my curse that I recall my own."

Jekyll scampered away without looking back. Nemo watched him go. A shadow larger than normal followed him as he retreated down the Nautilus corridor…

Before Nemo could return to the control bridge, he heard low voices through the partially open door of Mina's cabin. He hesitated, normally a man who respected privacy and a persons right to keep their dark secrets… but Mina Harker had also spied on him while he'd made his prayers to Kali in his own cabin.

Intent on the woman in front of him, Dorian Gray continued his explanation. "So although the picture is my portrait, I doubt you'd recognize the face upon it."

"How so? I'm quite familiar with your features — and they haven't changed a bit in all the time I've known you."

His thin smile seemed self-satisfied. "For each year that passes, my portrait ages instead of me. I'm sure that my every dark, selfish, shameful act is there, too, in the way that men wear their pasts about them. And I have committed plenty of such acts…"

"When did you last see the portrait?" Mina asked.

"I dare not look upon it myself, or the magic of the painting will be undone," Gray said. "I have taken it from my wall, leaving an empty space. I have hidden it, kept it safe…"

Nemo turned silendy on his heel, not wishing to hear any more. He understood science and invention, and he had studied Eastern philosophies, trained his body to become a machine that he controlled. He had cruised the seas in his armored submarine boat — but those things were comprehensible, explained by a strict set of laws and rules.

The sorcery and superstition of which Dorian Gray spoke — that was not part of Nemo's universe.

He marched back to the bridge to see if Ishmael had learned anything more about whoever had tampered with the controls.

In Jekyll's cabin, the thin and fidgety doctor sat on the edge of his bunk, wringing his hands.

Let me play, Henry. Come on, let me play. Hyde's noxious, whining voice whispered in his head. I'll win. I always win.

Jekyll rubbed his eyes, tempted.

Why fight it? Enjoy me, Henry. Enjoy me…

He glanced over at the small medical case on his desk. Just one dose, a gulp of the elixir that would change him, free him, give him the strength to follow Hyde's — and his — every desire.

Let me out, Hyde urged.

But Jekyll stared at the case, shocked. The clasp had been undone while he was away.

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear I already had," Jekyll said, shaking his head. He looked at his fretful hands, expecting to see his nails blacken and coarse hair sprout from his knuckles. But they remained his pale, damp, weak hands and fingers…

He looked inside the case, afraid it might snap shut and bite his wrist. He stared in surprise, then rooted around among the small glass bottles and cylinders.

Jekyll looked sharply at his cabin door, expecting to see someone there. The door was closed, and he was safe. But someone had been here.

One of the vials of his elixir was missing.