The List Of Seven

"I see," Doyle said, and took the beer.

"Now, Doctor, I have confided in you the true nature of my business," Sparks said, leaning back and relighting his pipe. "Are you still of a mind to cast your lot with me, or shall I instruct Larry to put in at the next negotiable beach?"

Sparks seemed perfectly content to wait him out indefinitely. For a moment, South America leapt irrationally into Doyle's mind as a third, immensely attractive alternative. He drank his beer and tried to brake the wheel of fortune spinning in his head.

"I'm with you," said Doyle.

"Good man. And glad we are to have you," said Sparks, energetically pumping his hand.

"Welcome aboard, sir," added Larry, beaming.

Doyle thanked them, smiling wanly, secretly yearning for even the smallest confidence in the wisdom of his choice. The question of his enlistment settled, they busied themselves with trimming of lines and sails to fit the changing conditions of the sea. As the sun reached its ascendant, land appeared on the southern horizon.

'The Isle of Sheppey," Sparks said, pointing south. "If the wind holds, we should make land at Faversham by sundown. It's a full night's ride from there to Topping. If you don't mind, I think it advisable we push straight on through."

Doyle said he didn't mind.

"The late Lady Nicholson's husband is a man by the name of Charles Stewart Nicholson, son of Richard Sidney Nicholson, the earl of Oswald, who over the years has quietly become one of the wealthiest men in England," said Sparks, with a note of contempt. "I'm most eager to meet Charles Stewart Nicholson. Would you like to know why?"

"Yes," answered Doyle neutrally, content now to let Sparks dictate his own rate of revelation.

"Lord Nicholson, the younger, came to my attention last year when he sold a large tract of family land in Yorkshire to a blind trust. Surrounding this seemingly commonplace transaction was a legal miasma that proved tremendously difficult to penetrate: Someone had gone to considerable lengths to conceal the identity of the buyer from the public view."

Sparks paused, watching Doyle's confusion with amused interest.

"Would it surprise you to learn that the man who purchased Nicholson's land was Brigadier General Marcus McCauley Drummond?"

"Yes, Jack. Yes, it would."

"Yes. It did me, too."

chapter ten TOPPING

THEY DID INDEED REACH FAVERSHAM BY NIGHTFALL. NeGOTI-

ating the outer reaches of the Isle of Sheppey, they sailed up the generous arm of the sea known locally as the Swale, took a narrowing channel upstream, and put in at the edge of the oyster beds in shallow waters outlying the old town.

Larry leapt off the bow, pulled them ashore, grabbed their bags, and scampered up an embankment, disappearing from view. Doyle and Sparks gathered the remainder of their possessions and followed his path up the hill. Waiting for them on the ridge above was a brougham with a brace of fresh horses, and helping Larry load in was none other than brother Barry. Doyle found it nigh onto impossible to discern one from the other until he moved close enough to spy Barry's disfigurement. Larry took evident pleasure in properly rein-troducing Barry to his valued friend, the esteemed Dr. Doyle. Barry was not nearly so talkative as his brother, quite the contrary, but between the two of them Larry's generous endowment of gab amounted to an equitable disbursement of verbal capital. Doyle found his chilly opinion of the twins beginning to thaw with prolonged exposure to Larry's homely warmth. The only dissonance he experienced came while attempting to reconcile Barry's sour mien and retiring disposition with Larry's characterization of him as a rampant, indefatigable womanizer.

Once the carriage was packed and travel-ready, Larry bid Doyle a friendly farewell—he was leaving on some undisclosed assignment—and walked blithely off into the night. Barry assumed the driver's seat, Doyle joined Sparks in the enclosed cab, and they drove away.

"Where's Larry off to?" Doyle asked, looking back

through the curtains at Larry's receding figure, already missing him a little.

"Cover our tracks and make his way to London. There's work to do," said Sparks. A dark mood had crept over him with the night. He was remote and avoided eye contact, mulling over something tough and disagreeable. With no invitation to engage, Doyle did not press for conversation and eventually drifted off to sleep.

He awoke to weight shifting overhead. The carriage was still moving. Sparks was no longer in his seat. Doyle fumbled for his watch: half past midnight.

The door opened, and a small steamer trunk appeared in the opening.

"Don't sit there, Doyle, give us a hand," he heard Sparks say.

Doyle helped wrestle the trunk onto the seat opposite as Sparks pushed it through, reentered, and shut the door behind him. His color was high again, his spirits burnished to their former brightness.

"How is your weekend etiquette?" asked Sparks.

"My what?"

"Houseguest skills, billiards, table talk, all that rubbish."

"What's that got to do with—"

"We're visiting a gentleman's country house for New Year's Eve weekend, Doyle. I'm trying to ascertain your aptitude for the upper crust."

"I know which fork to use, if that's what you mean," said Doyle, his ears burning with pride.

"Don't take offense, old boy, I need to determine which part you're going to play. The less suspicion we arouse among Lord Nicholson and his posh crowd, the better."

"What are my choices?"

"Master or manservant," said Sparks, throwing open the trunk to reveal its two halves packed with wardrobe appropriate to either role.

"Why don't we just tell them I'm a doctor?" Doyle asked, hoping he wouldn't have to shed his comfortable middle-class skin for a vertical move in either direction.

"That's boxing clever. There's every reason to suspect your enemies may be waiting for us there. Why don't you have cards printed and solicit for patients while we're at it?"

"I see," said Doyle. "You're suggesting we arrive incognito."

"Baron Everett Gascoyne-Pouge, and valet, R.S.V.P.," Sparks said, producing an invitation to the year's end party, addressed to same.

"How did you come by this?"

"It's a facsimile."

"But what if the real Gascoyne-Pouge should decide to

come?"

"There is no such person," said Sparks, barely concealing his displeasure at Doyle's puny leaps of imagination.

"Ah. Printed yourself. I'm with you now."

"I was starting to wonder."

"Sorry, I'm always a bit thick just after sleep," Doyle explained, yawning. "Takes a moment to stir the soup again."

"Quite all right," Sparks said, handing him the working-class clothes. "And I'm sure you'll find the servants' quarters at Topping will be more than adequate."

"But, Jack, don't you think they'll see right through this charade?" Doyle stuttered, staring down at the valet's vestments. "I mean I suppose I can muddle through playing the part well enough—"

"No one ever looks at the servants, Doyle. You'll blend in like a black cat in a coal bin."

"But I mean, what if they should notice me, Jack? They may not have a clear idea of your appearance, but they certainly know what I look like."

Sparks stared at him hard. "Right," he said. He rummaged around in the trunk and pulled out a razor. "We'll have Barry pull over so you don't endanger your sense of smell." Doyle's fingers flew protectively to his mustache.

Gray dawn of New Year's Eve found them entering an arched gate and making the approach to Topping Manor down a straight and narrow lane lined with stately oaks, their sere branches reaching out to form a craggy canopy. Dressed in the unfamiliar garb of his new profession, Doyle had managed only a few minutes' more rough sleep, troubled by dreams of hopelessly incompetent servitude, followed with unmasking and capture by unknown figures. Queen Victoria had figured prominently; he remembered serving tea only to have her discover a dead mouse floating in the pot. That distressed him far more than the hard treatment he suffered at the hands of his shadowy captors, and he woke with a start, bathed in a sheen of cold sweat.

He realized his waking had been precipitated by the carriage braking to a stop. Doyle heard the door open and close before his eyes could properly inform him that Sparks was leaving the coach. Fumbling for the door, Doyle dragged himself outside.

The rows of oaks ended abruptly where Barry had brought them to a halt. The majestic trees had at one time apparently marched on ahead, accompanying the road for an additional hundred yards; now not only the oaks but every tree from that point forward had been felled, stumps scorched and blasted, and all ground cover burned. Rising abruptly out of the torched flatland before them was a solid wall thirty feet high, makeshift, unbalanced, constructed from the untrimmed bodies of the downed trees, coarsely mortared with rocks, bricks, straw, dead grass, and wattles. Early light reflected off chunks of broken glass set in the binding caulk and all along the rampart. The wall ran off for a considerable distance in both directions and then doubled back, appearing to entirely enclose the manor house and grounds inside. The highest parapets and crenellations of Topping Manor itself, a late Gothic masterpiece, were visible above and beyond the mysterious fortification. No smoke rose from any of her chimneys. No gates or entrances interrupted the unbroken face of the wall. Viewed from their perspective, this crude eruption of a barrier spoke of nothing but terror, haste, and madness.

"Good Christ ..."

"It would appear the fate of our party is in some jeopardy," said Sparks.

"What's happened here?"

"Barry, take the carriage round, see if they've left a way in. The doctor and I will investigate on foot," Sparks instructed.

Barry tipped his cap and drove off to circumnavigate the fortress as Sparks and Doyle picked their way forward through the devastated field.

"What do you see, Doyle? What does this tell you?"

"The fire was set recently, I'd say within the week. Probably the last step in the disfigurement. Discoloration around the stumps is similar; suggests they were all cut down within a short period of time."

"A great number of men, working together," said Sparks.

"How close is the nearest town?"

"At least five miles. The wall isn't the work of craftsmen, Doyle. The servants of the manor must have done the work."

"Without supervision or any evident design."

"No joints or mortises. No thought to quality or longevity."

"Someone wanted a barricade put up quickly."

"Why, Doyle?"

Doyle stopped and looked at the wall, ten feet away, trying to feel the panic and urgency of its builders. "No time. Something coming. Something that needed keeping out."

"They started building before Lady Nicholson and her brother were killed. How long did she say her son had been missing?"

"Three days before the seance."

"Before he was kidnapped as well; that could've been the reason. Fear of abduction. Protect your young—the oldest instinct in the human heart."

"A child can be moved, sent away," countered Doyle. "It's almost too rational a reason. This feels like the work of someone who's gone utterly mad."

"Or been driven there."

Sparks stared grimly up at the wall's vast reach. Two sharp blasts from a cabbie's whistle pulled their attention away to the right.

"Barry," said Sparks, taking off at a sprint, shouting back over his shoulder at his less agile companion. "Come along, Doyle, don't dawdle."

Doyle ran after him, rounded the corner, and turned left, Barry waved to them, standing beside the brougham, a quarter-mile away, half the visible length of the wall. Doyle labored to keep pace with Sparks and was completely breathless by the time he reached them.

Barry had summoned them to a rough passage hacked through the barrier, a head taller than a man and twice as wide. Wood chips covered the ground, mostly outside the entrance. A weathered ax lay on the ground nearby. Gazing through the opening, they could see stables and the house beyond. There was no sight or sound of activity inside.

"Complete your survey of the wall, please, Barry," ordered Sparks. "I predict we'll find this provides us with our only access."

Barry jumped aboard the cab and headed off down the wall.

"Someone was cutting their way in, not out," said Doyle, examining the edge of the gap.

"And after its completion."

Doyle nodded in agreement. "Who cut through. Friend or enemy?"

"Keeping something out favors the latter, doesn't it?"

Nothing stirred within, but they stayed where they were, as if some invisible obstruction as solid as the logs remained between them and the grounds of Topping Manor, until Barry returned from his survey to confirm that this portal was indeed the only entrance.

"Shall we have a look, then?" Sparks said casually.

"After you, Jack," said Doyle.

Sparks instructed Barry to remain with the horses, slid his rapier from his walking stick, and ventured through the hollow. Doyle drew his revolver and joined him. They began by patrolling the wall's interior perimeter, hugging the redoubt as they worked their way around. It was evident that most of the wall's labor had been completed from inside. Ladders and stacks of unused logs were abundant. Bales of hay and other binding materials lay near pits packed with congealed clay. The wall ran a consistent fifty yards from the front of the building proper, but in the rear, where the architecture of the manor was more irregular, the wall moved considerably closer, in spots no more than ten feet away.

The grounds, once clearly immaculate and groomed, were a ruin. Hedges crushed, statuary toppled, grass trampled and slashed. One stretch of wall barreled through the remains of a topiary garden; odd bits of the animals' spiny bodies extruded from the base as if severed by a train. A child's playground had been equally mangled, smashed toys scattered about. A weathered hobbyhorse lay where it had fallen in a pile of sand, its painted exertions a parody of rictus.

Ground-floor windows had been barricaded from inside the house, curtains drawn around planks, tables, unhinged doors that had been randomly employed. Some windows were bro-

ken, glass fallen to the inside. Every door they tried was locked and immovable.

"Let's try the stables," said Sparks.

They crossed to and entered the freestanding stable on the far side of the graveled drive. No like effort had been made to secure it; the door stood open. Saddles and gear lined the shelves and pegs of the tack room. The grooms' quarters were neat and tidy: beds made, personal effects filling the drawers and bed stands. A half-eaten kidney pie sat on a plate on the table in the common room, beside it a teapot and cup of cold tea. The orderliness of the place in the shadow of such monstrous chaos felt deeply unsettling. Sparks eased open a creaking door that led directly to the stables proper. The barn appeared empty.

"Listen, Doyle," Sparks said quietly. "What do you hear?"

After a moment. "Nothing."

Sparks nodded. "In a stable."

"No flies," said Doyle, realizing what was missing.

"Nor birds outside, either."

They moved down the center, opening the stall doors one after the other. All were empty, but in some the ripe memory of horses lingered.

"They set most of them free early on," said Sparks.

"Must've used some to pull in the wood, don't you think?"

"The drays, yes. They let them go once they had the logs they needed. But there have been horses boarded in at least three of these stalls since the wall was finished."

The last door wouldn't budge. Sparks silently indicated his intentions. Doyle nodded, took the rapier from him, and raised his pistol. Sparks took two steps back, whirled, and kicked the door full force. It flew open with a loud crack. Inside the stall a body lay on its stomach in the straw, its left leg jutting out from the knee at an impossible angle.

"Easy, Doyle, he's well past causing us harm."

"Must've had his foot against the door," said Doyle, lowering the gun.

They stepped cautiously in toward the body. It wore high boots, breeches, a shirt and waistcoat, the working costume of a footman.

"What's this then?" asked Sparks, pointing to the floor.

Straw throughout the stall was clotted with thick trails of a

dried, murky secretion: shiny, almost phosphorescent, laid down in a rambling, crazy-quilt pattern. From the body, the trails separated and led up and over the walls. It emitted no odor, but something about the silvery hue and oleaginous composition of the substance prompted one's gorge to tumble.

"No smell from the body, either," said Doyle. "It hasn't decomposed."

Sparks looked at him with comprehending curiosity. They knelt beside the corpse. Its clothes shone, polished and glossy, coated with the same strange residue. They put their hands under it and turned the body over; it was shockingly weightless, almost entirely devoid of mass, and then they saw why: The face was mummified, only the barest netting of flesh covering the bones. The eye sockets were empty, shrunken, the hands as delicately skeletal as a dried flower buried in the pages of a family Bible.

"Ever seen the like?" asked Sparks.

"Not in a body that's been dead less than twenty years," Doyle replied, examining it more closely. "As if it's been preserved. Mummified."

"Had the life sucked right from his bones."

Sparks squeezed one of its clutched fists in his hand; it collapsed into a thousand dusty fragments, like a broken filigree of frozen lace.

"What could have done this?" Doyle said quietly.

A form moved behind them outside the stall.

"What is it, Barry?" Sparks said, without turning around.

"Some'fin' you ought have a look at out here."

They left the stall and followed Barry outside. He pointed to the rooftop of the manor. A thin ribbon of smoke issued from the tallest chimney.

"Started 'bout five minutes ago," Barry said.

"Someone's alive in there," said Doyle.

"Good. Let's ring the bell and announce ourselves."

"Do you think that's wise, Jack?"

"We've come all this way. Don't want to disappoint our host."

"But we don't know who's in there, do we?"

"Only one way to find out," answered Sparks, striding purposefully toward the house.

"But the doors and windows are all obstructed." "That won't prove much of an obstacle to Barry." Sparks snapped his fingers. With a tip of the hat, Barry ran ahead and without skipping a beat leapt onto the front of the house, grabbed purchase for hand and foot in the margins between bricks, and scampered up to the second floor with the ease of a spider on a web. Pulling a jemmy stick from his coat, within seconds he persuaded a window to yield, pushed it open, and poured himself through to the interior.

Doyle was fraught with anxiety at what horror might be lying in wait for the little man. Sparks calmly pulled a cheroot from his jacket, struck a match with his thumbnail, and lit the smoke, all the while keeping a cool eye on the entrance. "Just be a moment now," Sparks said. They heard movement on the other side of the door, the ragged scratch of heavy weight being dragged across a tiled floor, then a lock disengaging. A moment later, Barry opened the front door, and they entered Topping.

Tables and chairs had been stacked and jumbled against the door, which Barry now had the good sense to lock again behind them. Loose paper and rubbish littered the great hall. A decorative suit of armor lay defeated and broken on the black-and-white tile. With no daylight penetrating the occluded windows, the air was close with a heavy and oppressive gloom. Glimpses into vast public rooms opening out on either side of the entry revealed no substantial abuses, only disarray and neglect.

"Yes, I'd say the party is definitely off," said Sparks, casually flicking away an ash.

"There's a gent upstairs in 'a hall," Barry said unobtrusively, pointing to the grand staircase before them. "What was he doing?" asked Doyle. "Looked like 'e was polishing the silver." Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. "Why don't you have a look around down here, Barry," Sparks said as he started up the stairs two at a time.

Barry nodded and moved off into an adjoining room. Doyle found himself standing alone at the bottom of the

stairs.

"What about me?" Doyle asked.

"Wouldn't fancy walking these halls by myself," answered

Sparks, as he reached the top. "No telling what one might bump into."

Sparks waited as Doyle ran up to join him. They moved into an intersection with a rambling hall that zigzagged off in both directions. Closed pairs of opposite doors lined the walls. There was no less light, but the air of menace was palpably thicker. Moving to the left, they turned the first corner and came across a thick white line of some granular substance poured across the width of the hall; Sparks knelt down and wet a finger, dabbed, sniffed, and then tasted it.

"Salt," he said.

"Salt?"

Sparks nodded. They stepped over the salt and continued down the hall. Mirrors and canvases hung in the spaces between doors; every one had been turned to face the wall. They stepped over a second line of salt and rounded another turn. Here the hallway stretched away into the murk as far as the eye could see. At the far end, there was both movement and light; a candle was burning. As they moved closer, eyes adjusting to the dark, they saw the person Barry had described.

He sat on a three-legged stool, a pear-shaped, balding hulk of a man, middle-aged, pasty, and hollow-eyed. He wore butler's livery, stained and grimy, buttons missing or fastened askew. Swallowed in folds of excess flesh, his features were doughy, ill defined. His buttery neck spilled over a collar gray with sweat. Laid out before him was a silver service, full settings for forty, set in precisely measured rows. In his pudgy hands, he held a tattered rag and a gravy boat, rubbing and buffing one with the other obsessively, polish and a basin of water on the floor at his feet. He muttered darkly as he worked, his voice a raspy whisper with plummy undertones.

"The forequarter of lamb requires three hours . .. two hours for the oyster pudding—must find the whetstone; carving knifes aren't sharp enough—rosettes and a pastry bag for the charlotte a la Parisienne ... for the ptarmigan a Madeira sauce ..."

He took no notice of Sparks and Doyle as they approached and stopped at the edge of the silver display.

"Croquettes of leveret ... a fricandeau of veal ... boned snipe stuffed with forcemeat ..."

"Hello," said Sparks.

The man froze without looking up, as if he had imagined the sound of another voice, then, dismissing the possibility as unimaginable, returned to his handiwork.

"Shells for the quail and pigeon pies ... yeast dumplings with truffles and foie gras ..."

"Here's a bright specimen," Sparks whispered to Doyle, then: "I say; hello there!"

The man stopped again, then slowly turned and looked up at them. His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing; he blinked and squinted repeatedly, as if the sight of them was too much to hold within a single field of vision.

"Yes, hello," said Sparks congenially and, now that he had the man's attention, more quietly.

Tears sprang from the man's eyes, and great lachrymose heaves erupted from deep inside him, rippling the fabrics encasing his slack, corpulent belly. His eyes disappeared into the mountainous recesses of his brow as waves of moisture skied shamelessly down his wobbling cheeks.

"There now, fellow," said Sparks, with a concerned look at Doyle, "can't be as bad as all that, can it?"

The gravy boat danced in his dangling hands as thunderous sobs racked his body. If his center of gravity had not been so low and prodigious, he would surely have plopped off his stool.

"Now, now, what seems to be the trouble here?" asked Doyle, slipping into his best bedside manner.

A succession of wheezes, gasps, and explosive eructations followed, as the man attempted to navigate the hot torrent overwhelming his emotional creek bed. His wet pink mouth convulsed like a trout beached in the mud.

"I'm ... I'm ... I'm ... I'm ..." A lame stutter was all the man could manage between palpitating spasms.

"It's quite all right. Take your time," said Doyle indulgently, as if cajoling a widow to discuss her neuralgia over a glass of elderberry wine.

"I'm ... I'm ..." The man inhaled mightily, captured and held the air at its apex, struggling as it vibrated hotly inside him, until he grabbed hold of his breath by the scruff of the neck—one could almost see him do it—and expelled it explosively out of his throat: "... not the cook!"

The man seemed shocked by the sound of his own voice, his lips stuck in a quizzical O.

"You're not the cook," Sparks repeated back to him, to clarify.

The man shook his head violently to confirm, then fearing he'd been misunderstood, nodded vigorously in agreement, accompanied by a swelling orchestration of bovine snorts, braps, snurrs, and gleeps, as he was clearly not yet equal to another assault on the peaks of articulation.

"Has someone . . . mistaken you for the cook?" asked Doyle, perplexed.

The man moaned most unhappily and shook his head again, his jowls whipping around him like an aspic.

"Let me make absolutely certain we all share in the same common understanding," said Sparks, with a complicit look to Doyle, "that you, sir, are most assuredly ... not the cook."

The rationality of Sparks's reply appeared to hammer a plug into the punctured keg of the man's misery. The waterworks subsided. His shuddering flesh slowly settled. He looked down and seemed genuinely bewildered to discover the gravy boat in his ham-sized hands—then, as if there were nothing else to do when one found a gravy boat in one's hands, he began idly to polish it again.

"What's your name, my good man?" Sparks asked gently.

"Ruskin, sir," the man replied.

"I take it that you are currently in the employ of this good house, Ruskin," said Sparks.

"Butler, sir. In charge of pantry, plate, and scullery," said Ruskin, without a hint of pride. "Worked my way up from the knife and brushing room. Fourteen years old when I came to the Manor. The Master and I, we grew up together, after a fashion."

"Why are you polishing the silver, Ruskin?" asked Doyle gently.

"Got to be done, doesn't it?" Ruskin replied calmly. "No one else to do it, is there?"

"Not the cook, certainly," Sparks said, sympathetically leading him on.

"No, sir. A very wicked and a lazy man, the cook. Pa-ree—si-an," he intoned, as if no further explanation were necessary. "No discipline in him. Cuts corners. Never learned the value of a day's labor for a day's wage, in my opinion. Better off without him, we are. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if I may speak candidly, sir."

"So you've been left with the cooking as well," said Sparks, with a nod to Doyle, now able to trace the root of the man's despair.

"That I have, sir. Now the menu, that was settled weeks ago. Had it printed up for the table settings." He patted his pockets, smearing himself with polish. "Have a copy here somewhere."

"That's quite all right, Ruskin," said Sparks.

"Yes, sir. And a glorious dinner it is, too," said Ruskin, with a faraway light in his eye that Doyle associated with the dangerously unbalanced. Or perhaps it was the contemplation of all the food that so transported him.

"And there's a problem with the dinner, is there?" asked Sparks.

"We find ourselves a bit understaffed at the moment, and with the cook gone as he is, well, I'm afraid it's all a bit beyond my reach...."

"Cooking the dinner," said Doyle helpfully.

"Exactly, sir. I plan to get on to the cooking straightaway, after discharging my other responsibilities. There's a great deal to do, and one needs time to cook the dinner properly, but I've committed the menu to memory should there be any confusion," said Ruskin, absentmindedly patting his pockets again. "Dear. Dear, dear. I've misplaced my watch."

"Quarter to nine," Doyle said.

"Quarter to nine. Quarter to nine," he repeated, as if the whole idea of time were alien to him. "The guests will be arriving—oh, are you gentlemen here for the dinner?"

"We've arrived somewhat ahead of schedule," said Sparks, trying not to alarm him.

"Then you are the first, actually—welcome, welcome—oh dear, I beg your humble pardon; gentlemen, I haven't offered to take your bags," Ruskin said, attempting to rouse his quivering mass off the stool.

"It's all right, Ruskin; our man has the situation well in hand," said Sparks.

"Are you sure? I should drive your carriage round to the barn—"

"Thank you, Ruskin, it's taken care of."

"Thank you, sir." Ruskin settled back down. He sagged visibly, and his skin turned a deeper shade of gray.

"Are you all right?" asked Doyle.

"I'm passing tired, sir. Truth is I could do with a bit of a lie down before the festivities, just a few minutes is all, but you see, there's so terribly much to do," said Ruskin, short of breath, dousing the abundant sweat from his forehead with the rag, streaking his brow with metallic black.

"Are you expecting quite a lot of guests for New Year's Eve, Ruskin?" asked Sparks.

"Yes, sir, near to fifty. Quite the gala. Quite exceeding himself this year, the Master is."

"The Master's here in the house, is he?"

"Yes, sir," said Ruskin with an exhausted sigh, a hint of moisture appearing at the corners of his eyes. "Not himself. Not himself at all. Won't leave his rooms. Shouts at me through the door. Won't take his breakfast."

"Could you show us to him, Ruskin?" asked Sparks.

"I don't think the Master wishes to be disturbed at the moment, sir, all due respect. He hasn't been well lately. Not well at all."

"I understand your concern, Ruskin. Perhaps it would set your mind at rest if Dr. Doyle here were to have a consultation with him."

"Oh, are you a doctor, sir?" Ruskin said, looking up, his face brightening, an effect not unlike a full moon rising.

"I am," said Doyle, holding up his bag by way of evidence.

"If you could direct us to the Master's chambers, we'll leave you to your work," said Sparks, and then, in response to Ruskin's second elaborate attempt to rise: "No need to announce us, Ruskin, I'm sure we can manage—are his rooms on this floor then?"

"Far end of the hall. Last door on jour right. Knock first, if you would."

"Thank you, Ruskin. The silver looks splendid."

"Do you really think so, sir?" Ruskin said, eyes whelming with pathetic gratitude.

"I'm sure the dinner will be a great success," said Sparks.

He gestured for Doyle to follow and started back down the hallway. Doyle hung back.

"What's the wall for, Ruskin?" Doyle asked.

Ruskin looked at him, screwing his face into a puzzle. "What wall, sir?"

"The wall outside."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, sir," said Ruskin, with blank but attentive concern.

Sparks signaled Doyle to discourage pursuing the point. Doyle nodded, then stepped carefully forward through the field of silver. As he moved closer to Ruskin, Doyle could see the man's lips were parched and blistered, his eyes as red as embers. He put a hand to Ruskin's pale forehead; it was burning with fever. Ruskin stared up at him with the blind adoration of a beloved and dying dog.

"You're not feeling very well, are you, Ruskin?" Doyle said softly.

"No, sir. Not very well, sir," he said weakly.

Doyle took out his handkerchief, dipped it in the water basin, and tenderly wiped the grime off Ruskin's forehead. Beads of moisture ran down his broad face; Ruskin dabbed at them hungrily with his tongue.

"I think it would be a very good idea," said Doyle, "for you to go to your room now and rest for a while."

"But the preparations, sir—"

"You needn't worry, I'll speak to the Master. And I'm sure he'd agree that the dinner will proceed much more smoothly if you're properly refreshed."

"I am so very tired, sir," he said, pathetically grateful for the kindness, his mouth drooping, his chin trembling with the approach of more tears.

"Give me your hand now, Ruskin. Let's help you up ... here we go."

With all his strength, Doyle was able to leverage the fevered wretch to his feet. Ruskin wobbled like a tenpin struck with a glancing blow. Doyle wondered just how long the man had been sitting there. He retrieved a vial from his vest pocket, asked Ruskin to hold out his hand, and tapped into his pillowy mitt four pills from the vial.

"Take these with water, Ruskin. They'll help you to rest. Promise me you'll do as I ask."

"I promise," Ruskin said, with the grave docility of a child.

"Off you go then," said Doyle, handing him the candle and patting him on the shoulder; the fabric of his shirt was wet and clammy.

"Off I go," Ruskin echoed with cheerless, empty mimicry.

Ruskin's lumbering steps down the hall recalled to Doyle's mind a shopworn elephant in leg irons he'd once seen in a circus parade. After Ruskin had shambled out of sight, Doyle and Sparks moved back along the corridor the way they'd come.

"We can be sure of one thing," said Sparks. "Ruskin didn't chop that hole in the wall. He couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding."

"I don't think he's left the house in weeks. The Master's most loyal servant."

"At this late date, the Master's only servant. This house employed a staff of thirty in its heyday. Not the most congenial atmosphere at present, .wouldn't you say?"

They reached the intersection just as Barry was coming up the stairs.

"House is empty. Boarded up," Barry said—more to the point than his brother, thought Doyle—"Kitchen's a mess. Been up to a fair amount of spud-bashin' without botherin' 'bout washin' up."

"The work of the lamentable Ruskin, no doubt," said Sparks.

"Two queer things," Barry continued. "There's salt been poured in all the hallways and across the thresholds—"

"Yes, and the other?"

"There's a false wall in the larder off the kitchen. Behind it's a door—"

"To where?"

"Couldn't get it open without me tools. Below stairs by the smell—"

"To the cellar."

"Already been to the cellar: This ain't the cellar. And there's an odd wind coming up under that door."

Sparks showed keen interest. "Bring our bags in from the carriage if you would, Barry. And then open that door."

Barry doffed his hat and headed back down the stairs.

"So if we agree Ruskin was on the inside and couldn't have managed it, who cut the hole through the wall?" asked Doyle, as they continued down the hall.

"It was our late friend from the stables, the footman. Peter Farley's his name; he'd been away on business, the transfer of four horses to Topping from family property in Scotland," Sparks said, handing Doyle a paper.

"What's this?" Doyle asked, unfolding the paper and reading.

"A bill of lading: a list of horses' names, their descriptions, analysis of their health. Signed Peter Farley. I found that in the pocket of the footman's coat, hanging on a peg in the groom's bedroom. Sometime during the last few days— follow my thinking—Farley returns with the horses. The wall has gone up in his absence; clearly some madness has overwhelmed his home. He's four prized horses to tend and feed after a hard ride and perhaps a wife or family working inside—he must find a way in."

"That's why he cut through instead of scaling the wall." "There's broken glass set on its edges to discourage such access. And remember the dimensions of the hole." "Just high and wide enough for a horse to pass." "He worked fast for the better part of a day. He had to get those horses in quickly; there are a great number of deep hoofprints in the ground around the entrance."

"Something was spooking them. Something approaching." "Unfortunately for our brave stablehand, the door he carved to save those horses proved his undoing." "I don't follow."

"Reason it out: The hole is finished, he leads the horses to stable, which he finds deserted but otherwise unaffected. He doesn't venture into the main house, that's not his place; he's a simple man, his world is in that barn. If the Master's gone off his kilt and built a big wall, it's no concern of his. He puts the horses up, brushes them down, feeds them. He makes himself some tea and heats up a meat pie. He hears something outside, something disturbing the horses, leaves his supper on the table and goes to the barn to investigate, where he's done in by something his doorway has allowed to follow him inside the compound."

"Poor devil. What could have done such a thing to him?" They had negotiated their way to the end of the hall, out-

side of what Ruskin had described as the Master's doorway. The floor at this end of the corridor was completely covered with a layer of salt.

"What good is salt? What does it provide defense against?" pondered Sparks.

The air was shattered by a loud crash of breaking crockery and an angry holler from inside the room.

"Foppery! Fops and frippery! Ha!"

Sparks put a finger to his lips, asking for silence, and knocked on the door. No response, but the sounds inside ceased. He knocked again.

"Everything all right, sir?" asked Sparks, but what issued from him was an uncannily accurate rendering of Ruskin.

"Go ... away! Go away and play trains!"

"Begging your pardon, sir," Sparks continued with the guise, "but some of the guests have arrived. They're asking to see you."

"Guests? The guests have arrived?" the voice trumpeted, with equal measures of incredulity and contempt.

"Yes, sir, and the dinner's ready. We should be sitting down; you know how you disfavor a meal when the entrees go cold," Sparks went on. Doyle could have closed his eyes and never suspected the obese unfortunate wasn't nearby.

Footsteps moved to the door inside. A series of bolts were thrown.

"If there's one thing I can't bear, you gelatinous cur," the voice said, rising in pitch and volume, "it's the squalid per-Petuation of lies!" More latches unlatched and locks released. "There is no party, there are no guests, there is no dinner, and if I hear another word from your wormy, liverish lips about any of this slumgullion, I shall with my own hands strangle the life from your swinish neck, boil your corpse in a pit, and render the fat for Christmas candles!"

The door was pulled open, and they were confronted by a man of average height and build whose blandly pleasant fea-rares were framed by a wild nimbus of matted blond beard and hair that had known no recent acquaintance of brush or comb. His eyebrows sprang up like untended hedges overrunning the ridges of his forehead. The eyes were bulbous, opalescent, and light as cornflowers, set wide apart on either side of a sharply beaked nose. He had attained at least forty years,

but his face had an unlined schoolboy youthfulness that seemed less due to sound breeding than a petulant refusal to assimilate experience. He wore a black silk dressing gown over a loose blouse, peculiar cork-soled boots, and jodhpurs. And he was holding a double-barreled shotgun half a foot from their faces.

No one moved. "Lord Nicholson, I presume," Sparks said, as pleasant and collected as a missionary on call.

"You're not Ruskin," Nicholson said with conviction, and then, unable to resist the opportunity for another disparagement: "That postulant oaf."

"Baron Everett Gascoyne-Pouge," Sparks said, affecting the diffident accents of a jaded dandy, as he produced the New Year's Eve invitation with sardonic detachment. "I understand you've canceled the party, old boy; somehow my invite seems to have slipped through the net."

"Really? How odd. Quite all right, come in, come in! Delighted!" said Nicholson, lowering the gun, instantly the exuberant host.

"The bags, Gompertz," Sparks snapped at Doyle, who realized with a jolt he was suddenly required to perform the functions of his assigned role.

"Right away, sir," Doyle said.

Doyle brought his bag, the only bag they carried, through the door, which Nicholson quickly closed and bolted behind him. There were at least six locking devices, all of which he engaged.

"I'd given up hope, you see," said Nicholson boyishly, pumping Sparks's hand. "Wasn't expecting a soul. Put it out of my mind, really. Truly an unexpected pleasure."

If ever there is an individual more desperately in need of the company of his own class, thought Doyle, I never hope to meet him. The truculent ranting against his pitifully stalwart manservant had already disposed Doyle to an instant dislike of Lord Charles Stewart Nicholson.

Heavy curtains were drawn in the high-ceilinged room, broadening the somber mood set by ponderous medieval furnishings. Dust lay deep. A musk of urine and fear-sweat lathered the thick atmosphere. The floor was littered with broken cups and plates and the remains of old meals: bones, crusts of

biscuit. Bladed weapons and a tarnished and dented coat of arms hung above the weak fire sputtering in the fireplace.

Nicholson crossed to the mantel, feverishly rubbing His hands together. "How about some brandy?" he asked, plucking the stopper from a cut-crystal decanter and sloppily filling two tumblers without waiting for a reply. "I'm having some." He greedily gulped down half a ration and poured a refill before conveying the second glass to Sparks. "Cheers, then."

"Thanks ever so," said Sparks disinterestedly, making himself comfortable in front of the fire.

"Shall we have your man go below stairs?" said Nicholson, lurching into a seat across from Sparks and slurping his drink. "I'm sure Ruskin could use the help, the incompetent podge."

"No," Sparks replied, with just the right tinge of listless authority. "I may need him."

"Very good," said Nicholson, eagerly deferring to the superior rank suggested by Sparks's indifference. "Tell me, how was the journey down?"

"Tiring."

Nicholson nodded like a marionette. He sat on the edge of his chair, eyes wide with empty enthusiasm, took another floppy drink, and wiped his moist lips with his sleeve. "So it's New Year's then, is it?"

"Hmm," replied Sparks, gazing apathetically around the room.

"Do you see my boots?" He held up his dressing gown like a dance-hall coquette, raising a foot and wiggling it before them. "Cork-soled. They do not conduct electricity. Three pairs of socks. No, sir. No e-lec-tro-cu-tion for me. Even if it will make the trains run faster. Ha!"

Sparks demonstrated the wherewithal to recognize this as a remark to which there was no proper response. Nicholson collapsed back in his chair as if every other idea had been drained from his head. Then, furiously animated by an impulse of abject courtesy, Nicholson sprang from his seat, grabbed from the mantel a red Oriental lacquered box, ran to Sparks grinning like a deranged monkey, and with a flourish snapped it open. "Smoke, Baron?"

Sparks sniffed sourly, picked out a cigar as if it were a foul kipper, and held it poised in front of his face. Nicholson's hands flew wildly through his gown until he found a match, casually struck it against the box, and held it for Sparks. Sparks puffed and rolled the cigar delicately around in his mouth, evening out its ignition.

"From Trinidad," said Nicholson, lighting one for himself as he sat back down. "Father has a plantation down there. Wanted me to run the bleeding place for him. Can you imagine? Ha!"

"Bloody hot," Sparks offered, with token empathy.

"Bloody hot," he amplified. "Bloody hot, and the niggers steal you blind besides. Bloody backward sods with their native smells and their chanting at night and their black faces sweating. But may I tell you? Beautiful women. Bee-you-tce-ful women."

"Really."

"Whores, every one of them, even with little tar babies hanging round their necks like macaques in the bugging zoo. They'll drop their knickers in the street for the change in your vest pocket," said Nicholson, hoarse with illicit carnality. "You could have yourself a go down there, I'm here to say. Fancy a little dark meat on your dolly mops, you could have a bit of fair sport, let me tell you, that's a bit of tropical splendor, that is. Ha!" He brushed his hand licentiously along his crotch and poured another brandy. "I could do with some sport about now; satisfy the inner man. Comes a point you don't much care what sort of package it comes by way of, either." He winked at Sparks suggestively.

The idea of Lady Nicholson as his spouse, that her handsome refinement had ever been subject to the vicissitudes of this baboon's degeneracy, filled Doyle with moral outrage. If some unspeakable horror was hot on the heels of this besotted wastrel, he was suddenly of a mind to pick up an andiron and finish the job himself.

"How is your father, the Earl?" asked Sparks, his tone betraying no reaction or judgment.

"Still alive!" said Nicholson, as if it were the funniest thing imaginable. "Ha! Clinging to life, the mean bastard! No title for young Charles here, living on a pittance, tied to the old man's purse strings—and you don't think that's the way he likes it? You don't think the thought of me scraping by, hardly able to sustain my house with the barest necessities, doesn't treble his heart at night when the Angel of Death

hovers? Ha! Spite in his veins. Gone scatty. Spite and ice water and horse piss and why isn't he dead yet\" In a paroxysm of wrath, Nicholson flung his tumbler into the fireplace and jumped repeatedly up and down, knees reaching to his shoulders, spinning and screaming in the grip of an infantile frenzy.

Doyle and Sparks stole a look that wondered just how hazardous a lunatic the man was. Then, just as suddenly as he'd begun raving, Nicholson snapped out of his fit and strode to the mantel for another tumbler, which he calmly filled, all the while gaily singing a chorus from the latest Gilbert and Sullivan.

"And how's your wife?" Sparks asked.

Nicholson stopped humming, his back to them.

"Lady Nicholson. How is she?"

"My wife," Nicholson said, coldly.

"That's right. I saw her recently in London."

"You saw her."

"Yes. She wasn't looking very well."

"Not well."

"Not well at all. Her color was very poor."

What is he on about? thought Doyle.

"Her color was poor," said Nicholson, his back still turned to them. He put a hand in the pocket of his gown.

"Poor to positively unhealthy, if you ask me. Perhaps she was worried about your son. How is your son?" An unmistakable antagonism was creeping into Sparks's tone.

"My son."

"I say," said Sparks, with a chuckle, "do you just parrot back the words when you're asked a polite question, or didn't your father ever teach you to answer them properly?"

Nicholson turned back to Sparks. He was holding a pistol. His lips curled in a malicious smile.

"Who are you?" Nicholson asked.

"So you won't answer—"

"She sent you, didn't she?"

"You're confused."

"My wife sent you—you're her lover, aren't you? The filthy whore—"

"Mind your words carefully—"

"You're fucking her, aren't you, don't try to deny it—"

"Put that gun down, you stupid boy!" shouted Sparks with ringing authority, without moving a muscle. "Put it down this instant!"

Nicholson froze like a dog hearing a whistle above the range of human hearing. The twisted smile melted off his face, revealing the bereft, self-pitying mask of an unloved child. He lowered the gun.

"Now, young man, you will answer properly when you're spoken to," Sparks said.

"I'm sorry," whimpered Nicholson.

Sparks rose quickly, snatched the gun from Nicholson's hand, and slapped him twice, hard, across the face. Nicholson crumpled to his knees and began to weep like a baby. Sparks emptied the chambers of the pistol, pocketed the shells, and tossed the gun to the floor. He grabbed Nicholson by the lapels and pulled him roughly to his feet.

"If you ever speak rudely to me again," Sparks said intently, "or speak of your wife rudely, or make any more crude remarks on any subject whatsoever while in my presence, you will be very severely punished. Do I make myself clear, boy?"

"You can't speak to me that way!" Nicholson sniveled. Sparks shoved him back into a chair, where he landed with a startled cry. His red weeping eyes were fixed on Sparks, who picked up his walking stick and advanced on him.

"You are a mean and wicked child—"

"I'm not either!"

"Hold out your hands, Charles."

"You can't make me—"

"Hold them out this instant."

Whimpers bubbling from his lips, Charles offered up his trembling hands, palms raised.

"How many does our naughty boy here deserve, Gompertz?" Sparks asked Doyle, flexing the stick in his hands.

"I should give him one more chance to be cooperative, sir, before administering any reinforcement," Doyle said, not bothering to quell his revulsion at Nicholson's utter collapse.

"Right. Did you hear Gompertz, Charles? He's suggesting I be merciful. Do you think that's a very good idea?"

"Y-y-y-yes, sir."

Sparks whacked him heavily across the palms. Nicholson howled.

"Where is your wife?" Sparks asked.

"I don't know—"

Sparks hit him again.

"Ahh! London, London, I think. I haven't seen her in three months."

"Where is your son?"

"She took him," said Nicholson, sobbing, tears and snot running freely down his face.

"Have you seen your son since?"

"No, I swear!"

"Why did you build the wall, Charley?"

"Because of her."

"Because of your wife?"

"Yes."

"Did you build it after she left?"

Nicholson nodded.

Sparks raised the cane. "Why?"

"Because I'm afraid of her."

The cane crashed down on Nicholson's hands again. "You are a very obstinate boy: Why are you afraid of your wife, Charley?"

"Because ... she worships Satan."

"You're afraid of her because she worships Satan?"

"She worships Satan, and she consorts with devils." Sparks hit him hard again across the palms. "It's true, it's true, I swear to Jesus it's true," Nicholson cried out miserably. His ability to offer continued resistance was absolutely shattered. Doyle could see that Sparks realized it; he leaned down beside Nicholson now, his voice boring into him like a drill bit.

"What does your wife do that makes you so afraid?"

"She makes the bad things come."

"What bad things are those, Charley?"

"The things that come at night."

"Is that why you built the wall, Charley? To keep the bad things out?"

"Yes."

"Is that what all the salt is for?"

"Yes, yes. It hurts them."

"What kind of things are they?"

"I don't know, I've never seen them—"

"But you've heard them, haven't you, at night?"

"Yes. Please don't hurt me anymore, I'm begging you," Nicholson groveled, trying to wrap himself around Sparks's boot.

"You sold some land of yours last year, Charley. Quite a lot of land, do you remember that?" said Sparks, kicking him away. "Answer me!"

"I don't remember—"

"Listen to me: You sold some land in the north that was deeded to you; it belonged to your family. You sold it to a man: General Drummond."

"The General?" Nicholson looked up, stupid and grateful at the sound of something familiar.

"Do you remember, Charley? Do you remember the General?"

"The General came here. He came with my wife."

"The General is a friend of your wife's, is he?"

"Yes, yes, they're good friends. The General's a nice man. He brings me sweets and caramels. He brought me a pony once. A dappled gray. I named him Wellington," Nicholson babbled, retreating further into childhood. Whatever starch had kept his adult personality intact throughout the siege of Topping evaporated before their eyes.

"He made you sign some things, didn't he, Charley, the last time the General was here. Legal documents. Some pieces of paper."

"Yes, so many, so many papers. They said I had to sign, or he'd take away my pony," he said, beginning to cry again.

"And immediately after you signed these papers, that's when your wife left you, isn't it? She left with the General?"

"Yes, sir."

"And she took your son with her, didn't she?"

"Y-y-yes, sir."

"How long were you married?"

"Four years."

"Did she live here with you at Topping that entire time?"

"No. She came and went."

"Where did she go?"

"She never told me."

"What did your wife do before you married her?"

Nicholson shook his head, drawing an honest blank.

"Did she ever tell you anything about her family?"

"She said her family owned a ... publishing company."

"In London?" Doyle asked involuntarily.

"Yes, in London," said Nicholson, now indiscriminately servile.

"Where in London, Charley?" said Sparks.

"I went there once. Across from the big museum—"

"Russell Street?"

Nicholson nodded. There was a loud hammering at the door.

"Out the window," shouted Barry from the hallway.

From somewhere below, they heard the sound of breaking glass. Sparks moved to the window and drew the curtain. Doyle joined him.

The figure in black from the inn at Cambridge was moving across the courtyard toward the front door, a half-dozen gray hoods fanning out across the grounds behind him.

"More of them this time," said Sparks calmly.

"Is it her?" cried Nicholson in terror. "It is, isn't it? She's come for me!"

"We're going to leave you now, Charles," said Sparks, not without some kindness. "Load your gun, lock the door after us. don't open it for anyone, and happy New Year to you."

Sparks tossed the bullets toward Nicholson and stepped rapidly to the door. Working together, Sparks and Doyle had iie locks undone in moments, and they moved out to join Barry in the hall. Doyle's last glimpse before Barry pulled the door shut behind them was of Lord Nicholson keening hysterically, scrambling on his hands and knees trying to gather up :he scattered bullets.

"Brought in the bags," Barry said as they ran down the hall. "Went back to feed the horses; that bleedin' growler's flyin' hell-bent down the lane."

"All the exits blocked?" Sparks said, drawing out his blade.

"Yeh. We've lost the coach. More of them hoods this go-around."

"Did you manage to open that door in the pantry?"

"I've had me hands full, haven't I?" said Barry, showing a bit of crust.

"Quickly, Barry, they won't be long getting in."

"Shouldn't we bring Lord Nicholson?" asked Doyle.

"He's done enough damage."

"But they'll kill him—"

"He's past redemption."

They ran down the stairs and through the great hall. A heavy pounding began at the door. Windows shattered all along the front wall; an arm groped through an opening, hand looking for a latch. Barry led them away, through a knotted sequence of rooms to the kitchen and into the adjacent larder.

"Watch this," said Barry.

Barry pulled a sack of flour off a shelf in the larder; the opposite wall rose up and disappeared into the ceiling like a sash-weighted window, revealing behind it the mysterious door he'd described.

"Ingenious," said Sparks. "My compliments to the architect."

"Got a lock on it you won't find in some banks," said Barry, as he unfolded a cache of his tools and went to work on the formidable padlock.

A crash from somewhere deep in the house announced the invaders had breached the outer fortifications.

"Give me a hand here, Doyle," said Sparks, pushing a table against the kitchen door. They piled the rest of the room's furniture on top of the table, readied their weapons, and waited for Barry to punch through.

"What's your diagnosis of the woeful Charley?" asked Sparks.

"Incipient madness. Probably tertiary syphilis," said Doyle.

"Dead from the neck up. More holes in his brain than a beehive."

They heard hurried, muffled footsteps on the stairs and floors above. The thwack of Barry driving a spike into the lock resounded in that small space like a gunshot."

"Easy on, Barry."

"I'd use a blancmange, but I don't fink it would have the same effect," said Barry, annoyed.

"Thank you, Barry," said Sparks, batting back the sarcasm.

"I wish he'd remembered the name of that publishing house," Doyle said.

"We'll find it easily enough. Provided we make it back to London alive—how's it coming, Barry?"

"Have it off in a pig's whisper."

"Even allowing for the delusions common to his illness, it appears Lady Nicholson wasn't quite the innocent we took her for," admitted Doyle.

"Women seldom are."

Barry broke through the lock and pushed open the door. The smell that greeted them on the wind that rose from below was dank, ageless, and as stale as the grave. Sparks took the lead, and they went down the first few steps. Carved right out of the earth, they were steep, slippery with moss, and crudely crafted. The light from the kitchen penetrated only a short distance beyond where they stood before the steps disappeared into Stygian blackness.

"Got a lantern here," said Barry, plucking an oil lamp off a hook on the earthen wall. He struck a match and lit the wick; its pale amber glow plowed only a small dent in the subterranean murk. Sparks took the lantern and started down.

"Mind your step. It's slick as ice," said Sparks.

"Pull that knob by the jamb, if you'd be so kind, guv," requested Barry.

Doyle gave the knob a yank; the false wall slid smoothly back down into the larder, concealing the entrance.

"The door, too, if you would," advised Barry.

Doyle shut the door and laid across it a welcomely substantial iron bar sealing them in, committing them to their descent. The stairs seemed to go on interminably. Their footsteps echoed flatly, as the mossy dirt steps gave way to rough-hewn rock. The walls soon receded; sheer drop-offs into darkness fell away to either side. The lantern's faint illumination could only hint at the ghostly limits of a vast cavern opening around them. Wind whistled and howled. They heard the squeak and rustle of vermin below them scurrying away from human approach.

"What is this place?" asked Doyle.

"The only hand of man in here are these steps," said Sparks. "A natural formation. Topping house was constructed over it. Maybe a sea cave."

"We're a good fifteen miles from the shore."

"Thank you, Barry. An underground river then."

"Don't hear any water," Barry said skeptically.

"That doesn't mean there couldn't have been one here once, does it?"

"No," said Barry, his tone admitting to only the faintest possibility.

"Perhaps Lady Nicholson dug this pit so she could commune with Satan during the full moon," said Sparks, with a wink at Doyle. How could the man joke about such a thing? Doyle thought. And at a time like this.

"Will they follow us?" asked Doyle.

"It'll take some doing to find that door."

"Unless Nicholson gives it away." -

"The man can barely remember his name."

No sooner were those words spoken than their feet hit level ground. They paused to establish their bearings. The cavern felt as forbidding as a dark and deserted cathedral.

"A stiff wind's blowing through from somewheres," said Barry, sniffing the air.

"Then it's simple; we'll follow it to find our way out."

They moved away from the stairs into the cave proper, each step kicking up puffs of a fine black dust. Small wings fluttered in the currents above them, swooping acrobatically through the artificial night.

"Bats," said Sparks, prompting Doyle to reach for his hat. "Don't bother, Doyle. They see a good deal better down here than we do—"

With a loud clang, Sparks crashed into a solid obstruction and dropped the lantern, plunging them into a void of darkness.

"Hell!"

"You s'pose 'at's where we've wandered to?"

Despite the circumstances, Doyle was beginning to appreciate Barry's terse waggery.

"Be quiet, won't you? Help me find the lantern."

Doyle reached out and put his hands on the object with which Sparks had collided; it was rounded, cold and smooth, with machined edges, and it was massive. He knew what it was, but deprived of sight was unable to put a name to it.

"I fink you broke it."

"You think so, do you?"

"Seeing as how all I can feel wot's left is little pieces.

Would you like me to light the candle I've got 'ere in me pocket?"

"Why, yes, Barry, I'd like that very much."

Just as Barry's match was struck, Doyle realized what they had found.

"Good Christ! Do you know what this is?"

They were in darkness again.

"What's wrong now, Barry?"

"Dropped the candle, 'fraid the Doctor gave me quite a start—"

"Jack, do you know what you've found?"

"I would if Barry could find his candle—"

"Got it," said Barry as he lit another match.

"It's a train!"

And so it was. A jet-black iron-forged full-gauge steam engine, with a trailing coal car bearing a full load, on steel tracks curving away ahead of them into the darkness.

"A Sterling Single," said Barry. "A real beauty."

They climbed into the engine cab and examined the mechanics by the light of Barry's candle. Gauges and pumps were intact and seemed in working order. Water tank full. A bad of coal already sitting in the furnace.

''Looks as if someone was anticipating a hasty departure," ventured Doyle.

"Remember his repeated incoherent references to trains. I'd venture to say we have Lord Nicholson's indelicate condition to thank for this good fortune," said Sparks, as Barry lit an oil lamp set into the wall of the cab.

"'Why didn't he use it himself?" asked Doyle.

"Chances are he forgot it was here. Know anything about piloting a train, Doyle?"

"Light the coal in the firebox, for starters," said Barry, before Doyle could answer.

"Thank you, Barry, why don't you run ahead down the tracks and see if any switches need throwing?"

"I knows about engineerin'. Our old dad was a brakeman, see. Took us out on runs all over the south of England when he weren't drinkin'—"

"That's fine, Barry, do you suppose I'm entirely ignorant to the ways of the railroad?"

Muttering, Barry leapt down with his candle and moved along the tracks. Sparks contemplated the array of gears and handles that confronted them.

"Let's light the coal as Barry suggests, Doyle, and then"— Sparks bit on a finger as he pondered—"which one of these ooja-ka-pivvies do you suppose we should pull?"

They nurtured a fire in the furnace and bellowed it to full, red-bellied life. Barry returned to report that the track looked in good condition and ran ahead uninterrupted for at least a mile. Sparks asked if there was reason why they shouldn't proceed, gracefully allowing Barry an opportunity to scan the pressure gauge and humbly advise that they should wait until the boiler had built a full head of steam, then release the hand brake, engage the drive shaft, and shift the engine into forward gear.

"Have a go at it, Barry," said Sparks, as if having to call on his prodigious and intimate storehouse of train lore was the most tiresome task imaginable.

"Right," said Barry, with a privately amused smile.

Barry turned on the headlamp; its Cyclopean beam pierced the darkness like a ray of wisdom. Doyle and Sparks stood on the open platform at the rear of the cab, looking back anxiously from time to time at the stairs. No assault on the door above had reached their ears, but waiting was difficult nonetheless. Time seemed to stand still in the funereal vault. The rhythmic schuss of the steam valves echoed through the chamber like the breathing cycle of an enormous, slumbering beast. The weight of the cavern walls led them to feel they were in the belly of some monstrous, watchful dragon, patiently waiting for all human endeavor or ambition, no matter how grand and willful, to fail the test of mortality. The story of the great manor house on the rocks above, a three-hundred-year pageant of continuous human history—loves, births, schemes, marriages, victories, reversals, deaths, intrigues, betrayals, madness, melodrama; all reducible to dust—would scarcely constitute a single intake of breath in the life span of this leviathan. Kings and kingdoms might fall, but these walls would remain, self-sufficient, silently mocking. Few things are more routinely and cheaply regarded than human existence, thought Doyle, seldom less so than by those in full-blooded possession of it. An hour spent in the bowels

of this frigid, aboriginal cave was a harsh reminder that nature itself radiated the same heartless indifference.

Barry threw down the hammer; the pistons spasmed twice and then caught steel on steel. Friction threw sparks into the air. With the protesting shriek and groan of rusty muscles, the wheels inched slowly forward on the tracks.

"We're movin'!" Barry shouted over the engine. He stuck his head out the side window and guided them toward the tunnel, controlling his impulse to blow the steam whistle out of sheer exuberance.

"Where will it take us?" asked Doyle, nearly sagging with relief.

"On to London if our fuel holds and the tracks don't end," said Sparks, patting the cab wall like a canny horse trader. ¦I've always fancied a private rail car. This little charmer could come in right handy."

The chamber closed down around the tracks at the far end. Barry had to pull his head back inside the window as they rolled slowly into a narrow tunnel cleaving naturally through the earth. The walls squeezed in until their clearance was only a scant few inches.

"Do you suppose they'll kill them, Jack?" Doyle asked soberly, his mind still on the madman and his manservant.

Sparks grew more somber. "Yes, I imagine they will. I would imagine they already have."

"'Nicholson had something they wanted," said Doyle after a moment.

"Two things: his land and his son. Both of which they've now had in their possession for some months."

"The land could be for any number of purposes—"

"Agreed—too early to speculate. We need more information."

"But why the boy?"

Sparks thought for a moment. "Control. A way to control his mother."

"But it seems clear, doesn't it, that she was a confederate ill along," said Doyle, much as it pained him to think poorly :f the woman.

"A possibility, although we can't know what sort of coercion they brought to bear on her—precisely what the boy would have been good for."

"That seemed to be the case on the night she was killed."

"Consider the scenario that, feigned or genuine, her grief over the child's 'kidnap' was skillfully employed to lure you into their trap. Her usefulness expired, they double-crossed and murdered both the Lady and her hapless brother."

"It fits, although the brother's role is rather ill-defined."

"He's called away from school on urgent business; she's enlisted his help against coconspirators she can no longer trust. Or perhaps he was in concert all along, putting pressure on from another angle. You said he seemed to be berating her while they waited at the door."

"If I didn't know better, Jack, I'd almost think you were defending the woman." But in the dim glow of the lantern, Doyle could see a dark dissatisfaction lining Sparks's face.

"Something's not right," he said.

"On the other hand," said Doyle, remembering the light in her deep blue eyes, "all we have to support the idea she was in league with them are the semicoherent ravings of a deranged and jilted husband."

Sparks didn't reply, eyes withdrawn, lost in some private ratiocination. They rode slowly through the narrow tunnel in silence.

"There's a light up ahead!" Barry announced.

As best as the walls would allow, they peered out into the tunnel ahead where the beam of the headlamp was losing ground to the emerging light of day. Moments later the train broke free of the confines of the earth and spirited them into the open air for the first time since they entered the misfor-tunate house.

"Bravo, Barry!"

The tracks hugged the slope of a sheer ravine, a river running swiftly below. In the distance behind them, up a steep slope and above the trees, peered the machicolations of Topping's highest towers. Thick, quarrelsome pillars of black smoke spewed around them into a threatenmg gray sky. There might be rain, those clouds suggested. But even a deluge would not come in time to spare the venerable life of Topping Manor.

"They've put the torch to it," said Barry in dismay. "All that silver ..."

"Maybe they didn't find the door. Maybe they think we're

trapped inside," said Doyle hopefully. "If they believe we're dead, they'll slacken off the chase."

"He would see me quartered and then watch the body burn before making such an assumption," said Sparks grimly.

Doyle studied Sparks as he looked back at the burning building, sweeping the horizon for any sign of pursuit, his eyes as taut and feral as a predatory bird.

"Who is he, Jack?" Doyle asked quietly. "The man in black. You know him, don't you?"

"He's my brother," said Sparks.

chapter eleven NEMESIS

THE TRACKS RAN TO THE SOUTH AND EAST ALONG THE RAVINE,

parallel to the river for the next few miles, the slope descending gradually down to join the river on the flat seacoastal plain. Through their constant vigilance, the three men aboard the train were given no indication that the enemy had gained awareness of their escape. Not long after reaching level ground, they intersected a sweeping half-moon curve of rail that bowed off to the east. At Sparks's instruction, Barry brought the engine to a halt, leapt from the cab, and threw the switch that would jump them to the tracks leading away from the river. As the engine came back up to speed, Sparks and Doyle stripped to their shirts, shoveled coal from the tender to the scuttle, and shouldered the scuttle to the furnace. Despite their exposure to the frigid winds, the hard labor soon had them soaked in sweat. They banked the fire to maximum blaze, pulling as much power from the roiling steam as the boiler would yield, the throttle wide open, exacting as substantial an advantage on the race back to London as they could from their sturdy iron steed.

Nothing further was offered by Sparks about his brother. He entered another of those spells of remoteness that invited no inquiry, and they had the intensity of what soon became backbreaking work to divert them. Barry spurred the train on ferociously, taking curves at precarious speeds, never slowing for occasional stray livestock, using only the whistle and the sheer power of his will as he screamed at the animals to clear the tracks. More than one rural stationmaster ran out from his office as they roared past his post to stare dumbfounded at Barry, who responded with a wave and a roguish tip of the hat, an unscheduled juggernaut jeopardizing the methodical orderliness of the world of trains. Barry displayed an intimate knowledge of the spidery network of tracks that laced the Kent and Sussex countryside, switching them on every occasion away from primary routes onto seldom-used freight lines. At one point, when they came alongside a parallel set of tracks and began to gain on the passenger train carrying New Year's Eve travelers from Dover to London, Barry whipped his charge like a jockey in the homestretch of the Irish Sweepstakes, whooping and hollering and throwing his hat in the air as they raced past the unnerved rival engineer. Barry was a daredevil, plain and simple.

Well before dark, Barry by necessity slowed their pace when they entered the labyrinthine tangle of switches and turnarounds congesting the arteries of every approach to London, the time their breakneck sprint across the open countryside had gained them forfeited by these final miles. When they finally pulled onto a sidetrack off a private yard in Bat-tersea, owned by some unnamed acquaintance of Sparks, night had firmly fallen. Leaving Barry to secure the engine's harbor, Sparks and Doyle walked to a nearby busy thoroughfare and hailed a hansom cab. Sparks directed the driver to an address across the river, somewhere on the Strand.

"Where do we go, Jack?" asked Doyle. "They seem more than capable of finding me anywhere."

"They've anticipated our movements, which have up until now been necessarily and painfully predictable. It's a new game. A crowd's the best refuge on earth, and London's riddled with more holes than a bloodhound could suss out in a lifetime," said Sparks, fastidiously wiping the coal dust from his face with a handkerchief. "I say, Doyle, you should get a look at yourself; you're as black as the ace of spades."

"From this point on, I would greatly appreciate being consulted about our plans and movements, Jack," said Doyle, trying largely in vain to remove the grime with his sleeve. "I daresay I'll have the occasional thought or opinion that could have some positive effect on our efforts."

Sparks looked at him with affectionate amusement, which he nipped under cover of solemnity before Doyle could take offense. "That has been established beyond dispute. The hardships of these last few days would've reduced most men to runny porridge."

"I do appreciate it. But to put it more bluntly, I should like to know exactly what you know. That is, everything you know."

"You're perilously close already—"

"Close will, I'm afraid, no longer be sufficient to my needs, Jack. I shall honor whatever secrets you impart to the death. 1 trust my actions to date give you no reason whatsoever to doubt the sense of taking me further into your confidence."

"I have no such doubts."

"Good. When should we begin?"

"After a hot bath, over oyster brochette, lobster, and caviar, accompanied by the sound of vintage corks popping," said Sparks. "It is New Year's Eve, after all. What do you say to that?"

"I would have to say," said Doyle, his mouth already watering, "that is a plan I can endorse without the slightest reservation."

The cab deposited them in the center of the Strand, one of London's liveliest avenues, never busier than on this moonlit New Year's Eve, before a not particularly inviting lodging hotel. A dingy awning announced it as the Hotel Melwyn. Two steps up from a doss house, a full flight down from even the threadbare middle-class accommodations to which Doyle was accustomed, it was nonetheless one of the few places in town where two gentlemen—rather, a gentleman and his valet—blackened head to toe by a day's hard labor in a coal car, could draw nothing more from clientele and staff than a passing disinterested glance.

With a wink at the knowing clerk, Sparks signed the register as "Milo Smalley, Esquire" and paid cash for two adjoining rooms near the stairs on the second floor. Baths were requested for both men and inestimably enjoyed in a communal chamber at the far end of the hall where more than a few gentlemen were taking the waters. A cursory monitoring of the room's level of chat gave Doyle to realize that, however modest its exterior, the Melwyn seemed the way station of choice for an entire class of discriminating, and sporting, men-about-town. As he emerged from the bath, for the first time since shedding his mustache and muttonchop whiskers,

Doyle caught sight of himself in a mirror. Add the cosmetic wire-rimmed glasses Sparks had lent him from his bag of tricks, plus the valet's haircut Barry had administered, trimmed to the bristle, and Doyle was greeted by a face he had to look at twice to be certain it was his own.

Heartened by the substantial changes wrought in his appearance, scrubbed, shaved, and the first to return to their rooms, Doyle was surprised to discover unfamiliar luggage near the door, fresh evening clothes laid out on the bed, and the esteemed Larry-brother-of-Barry lighting a fire in the hearth. Delighted by this unexpected reappearance, Doyle was near to the point of embracing their diminutive accomplice, who seemed as equally pleased to clap eyes once again on him. Though Doyle was unreasonably desirous of relating to Larry an account of their adventures, Larry held up a hand to silence him before he'd uttered a word.

"Beggin1 your pardon, guv, but me brother's already dealt me the hand, from soup to nuts to the hail and rain—train, that is: There's the gods smilin' if ever they hav&—and a passing strange tale it is, too, sir—and by the way, if I might comment, I do congratulate you on the haircut; I see my brother's fine handiwork in evidence here—he was apprenticed to the service of a barber for a few misguided months many moons ago; it was the barber's daughter he wished to service, truth be known—but I must say, Doctor, that with the new trim and the removal of your side levers there you have in the totality of your being more than achieved the desired effect of deflecting one's apprehension of your own true na-ture; why, truth is, if I hadn't known it was you, I'd've hardly known ya."

"You've been busy, I see, Larry," said Sparks, toweling off as he reentered the room. "Will you tell what you've discovered, or shall I?"

Larry glanced trepidatiously at Doyle.

"No confidence will be violated," said Sparks. "The Doc-:or has put down such roots into the secret soil of our campaign, it would take dynamite to dislodge him. You may speak freely—no, wait!" Sparks narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Larry, who smiled bashfully, well acquainted with the routine to follow.

"After your pleasure, sir," said Larry, and then with a wink to Doyle, "Fancy this, then."

"A survey of Drummond's house informed you the General has not returned since we last spied him departing for the north two days before Christmas. You have discovered the London address of Lord and Lady Nicholson, a yellow-brick two-story detached in Hampstead Heath, a house equally devoid of occupants at the time of your visit. You have within the hour rendezvoused with Barry at your favorite public house, the Elephant and Castle, where he told you of our recent enterprises while you drank two pints of bitters and ate a ... shepherd's pie."

Larry shook his head and smiled broadly at Doyle. "See? I love it when 'e does that."

"Come now, Larry, tell me; how have I done?"

"Spot on, sir, 'cepting it wer'n't shepherd's pie, sir; it was a bit of kate and Sydney for me tonight."

"Steak and kidney, of course, it's a holiday night; you splurged," said Sparks, as he began to dress himself, then to Doyle, "Crumbs on his jacket."

"And a spot of gravy on his cravat, here," said Doyle, pointing, up to the challenge. "Not to mention the clinging, persistent odor of stale hops and cheap rolling tobacco common to public houses."

"Mary and Joseph, don't tell me: Not you, too, sir?"

"Go on, Doyle; tell him how I arrived at my conclusions," said Sparks.

Doyle studied the incredulous Larry for a moment. "Determining General Drummond's whereabouts would have been your primary task upon returning to London. If he were in town, I doubt you'd have had time to even enjoy that drink with your brother, let alone find and fetch us fresh clothes. Therefore, the quick resolution of your first objective allowed you to proceed with the second; by no mean stretch of logic a search for the Nicholsons' London home. There is a fine yellow powder ground into the knees and elbows of your clothes, no streaks or tears indicate that any sudden or violent movements were undertaken, so the two-story house of yellow brick you then methodically climbed and gained entry to was also fairly obviously empty. The distinctive red clay on the edges and soles of your boots is peculiar to the hills of

Hampstead Heath. By the way, the Elephant and Castle is also my favorite- public house, and I have enjoyed many a fine steak and kidney pie there in my day."

"Well done, Doyle!"

" 'Cor . .. 'cor blimey .. ." Larry took off his hat and shook his head.

"If Larry's been rendered speechless, we should alert the newspapers: It's a phenomenon more rare than a full solar eclipse," said Sparks.

"And 'ere I was thinkin' me and Barry was the only twins in our immediate circle," said Larry, regaining the use of his tongue. "Two halves of the beechnut is wot we got 'ere. Romulus and Remus. Flip sides of the same shillin'. We've done more than well to have you with us, sir," he said sincerely.

"Thank you, Larry. I take that as high praise indeed," replied Doyle.

"Aren't you two the old sentimental sweethearts," said Sparks, finishing the loop on his bow tie. Larry and Doyle separated, somewhat abashed, Doyle to his dressing, Larry to the crumbs on his jacket. "Larry, what about our dinner?"

"Nine-thirty at the Criterion—oysters on the half shell, lobsters on the boil, gay and frisky and a bottle of whiskey— they're expectin' you."

They finished dressing for that happily anticipated appointment and presented themselves on the stroke of the half hour not far down the Strand at the revered doors of the Criterion Long Bar. Their elegant evening wear rendered them invisible among the flood tide of swells frequenting the dining room, the perfect camouflage on this most festive of London nights. Many was the time that Doyle, the beleaguered medical student, had pressed his nose to the windows outside, viewing the haute monde in their natural habitat with the curiosity and envy of a snubbed anthropologist, but never had he crossed over the storied threshold until this evening.

Sparks was well known to the maitre d'. Chilled champagne awaited them, a platoon of attentive captains and waiters standing by to assure that their glasses never emptied. An unctuous manager extended personal felicitations of the house, and a sumptuous, gout-inviting succession of mouthwatering comestibles proceeded to rain down on them like the fortuitous bounty of a culinary god. Doyle scarcely had breath to speak between bites and gulps, throwing himself into the consumption of the feast with bacchanalian abandon. The champagne carbonated the shadow of doom that had dogged their last few days and effervesced it to oblivion. Around them the room seemed impossibly lithe and gay and filled with light, women glowing with Athenian glamour, the men fortified by some Herculean ideal. What a place! What a city, what a dynamic race of people! It wasn't until an am-brosian flambe of cherries, meringue, and vanilla ice cream had landed in front of them that the weightless balloon of Doyle's undivided pleasure begin to sink back into the range of conscious awareness. The dinner was not yet at an end and already felt like a dream, for he knew that the moment their discussion, which up through the supernatural dessert had been as carefree as a clergyman's Monday, turned back to the life that awaited them outside of this cloistered Olympus, the bill would come due in more ways than one.

The last dishes were cleared away. Sparks lit a cheroot and warmed the honeyed nectar of his brandy over a candle. "So ..." he said, gaveling the proceedings back to order, "... as to my brother."

Doyle had not expected him to open with that trump card, but he was more than willing to accept candor from the man as he found it. He nodded, betraying no impatience, willing his mind to focus in again, as he meditatively rolled the Benedictine around in his snifter.

"Do you find it as troubling as I that the corpus of human hope is pegged so directly to the concept of our social progress?" asked Sparks. His tone was open and inviting, far from rhetorical. What this nonsequiturial tack had to do with his brother, well, Doyle had waited out far more tortuous tangents than this with far less expectation of return.

"Yes, Jack, I do," said Doyle, warming to the task. "I look around at this golden room, the pleasure it gives me, all these fine, handsome people, the meal we've just enjoyed, and I am tempted to say ... this is the best civilization has to offer us: the human harvest of education, scientific advancement, social evolution.

"But these are transitory satisfactions. An illusion. And how infinitesimal a percentage of the people alive in our

world this sample represents. As we sit here priding ourselves on our refinement, not a stone's throw from these windows there is a surfeit of human suffering and misery as terrible as any human being has ever endured. And I am forced to consider: If so many are left behind, do our achievements count for nothing? What value does our passing through this life leave behind us? What gifts, if any, will our age bequeath to the generations that follow?"

"That question's not for us to answer," replied Sparks. "Following generations make up their own minds about our contributions. And how is any age remembered? By the work of man's hand or of his mind? The Elizabethans left us poetry that speaks to us because we share a language. The Egyptians built the pyramids, but we can't know their secret thoughts. Their greatest discoveries may be beyond recovery. Perhaps it's simply a matter of what survives."

"But which is more important? Will our age be judged by our monuments, our bridges and train stations, or by our science and arts?"

"Our expanding knowledge of medicine has certainly succeeded in prolonging the physical span of human life," said Sparks.

"Yes, but the conditions imposed by our prosperity have necessitated most of those discoveries. I won't dispute that the convenience and comfort of life, for some, even many, are greatly enhanced by the objects we're now able to mass-produce. But weigh against it the cost, the by-products of industry: subhuman labor conditions, scarring of the earth, poisonous air. Without these medical advances, most of us might not long survive our 'prosperity.' And for many of the lower classes that do survive, even if their physical lives are lengthened, what value does that surplus provide if that life is stripped of joy, of kindness, or the time to enjoy the fruits of their labor?"

"The suffering of the unfortunate aside—and all men suffer, don't they, each to his measure, in his own way—doesn't it seem clear that science has us on the cusp of a new epoch? Think of the marvelous inventions they say we'll soon enjoy: electricity in every house, the motorized car. Telephone, typewriter. Enhanced communication, freedom to travel. Warmth and light in the home. Ignorance banished by education."

"You assume that surrounding ourselves with these new, arguably liberating devices will fundamentally change some persistent qualities in the human character." "Which qualities are those?"

"The will to power. The impulse to hoard. The instinct to fend for ourselves at the expense of others."

"The instinct to survive," said Sparks, as if Doyle were taking him exactly where he wished to go. "Ensuring the survival of the strong." "At the expense of the weak."

"Just as in nature—like as a competition, Doyle, a fight: for air, light, for strong, attractive mating partners, for space or food. Nature does not announce to its components, 'Life requires of you no aggression, for I have provided on this earth an abundance, an embarrassment of riches,' " Sparks said, vehemently tapping his fingers, rattling the glasses on the table.

"And when those same powerful impulses are expressed by the human animal, as in every other kingdom of nature—" "Dominion. Domination. Material greed. The root of human conflict."

"We are in agreement," said Doyle. Sparks nodded, his eyes hot with discovery. "It's inescapable. Man is compelled to obey the instinct to dominate, because of our unconscious imperative to survive. And this message is so persuasive and commanding it overrides every other biological impulse—compassion, sympathy, love, any of the niceties sacred to the privileged lives in this room— well after our physical safety has been secured and every serious threat to our existence completely eliminated."

"A paradox, then," said Doyle. "Does man's will to live present the single greatest danger to our survival?"

"If human nature does not soon demonstrate the ability to willfully change its course, I submit to you that it does," said Sparks, leaning forward, lowering his voice, holding Doyle taut in his gaze. "I offer in evidence the life of one Alexander Sparks. Born to wealthy parents, a beloved first child, indulged and cosseted through early childhood by every creature comfort known to man. Nurtured and protected to a fault, a world of privilege and possession opening to him as generously as the petals of an evening primrose. Quite independent

of these influences, the boy soon demonstrates a remarkably headstrong native character. An insatiable curiosity. An intellect of cold and calculating genius. A will like tempered steel. By anyone's standards, an exceptional child.

"Through his first years, he remains blissfully unaware of the vagaries of fortune flesh is heir to. With his father stationed half a world away on diplomatic assignment, the boy grows up surrounded by women who want nothing more than to pamper and indulge his every waking whim. The jewel set in the center of that adoring circle is the child's mother: a celebrated beauty, a woman of style, strong moral fiber, and fierce intelligence. She dotes slavishly on her boy, devotes herself to him without limit. He comes to perceive himself as God's chosen one, an infant Sun King, with absolute power over a domain extending in every direction as far as his eye can see. A boy who wanders the woods of his estate feeling command not only of the people around him, whom he regards as his subjects, but the wind, water, and trees as well. His world is a paradise, and he its undisputed master.

"Then, one day, in his fifth summer, the adored and loving mother of the king disappears from sight, gone a second and then a third day, without explanation. Even the boy's tempestuous rages, the most potent weapons in his considerable arsenal, are not sufficient to effect her reappearance. None of his subjects offers any reasons for her absence, only winks and Gioconda smiles. Until the fourth day, when he is once again allowed access to her bedchamber, and discovers, to his astonishment and horror, that in her arms lies a hideous usurper. Helpless, wrinkled, crimson-faced, pissing and mewling like a cat. A baby. In an instant, the boy sees through the fiend's pathetically transparent, manipulative deceptions, but is stunned to discover his mother has fallen completely in thrall to his tiny demon. This monster has the temerity to lie before him on his mother's breast, mocking him, demanding and receiving her loving ministrations that in his clear understanding of the world were intended solely for him and him alone."

"You?" asked Doyle quietly.

Sparks shook his head. "A sister. It even has a name. Madelaine Rose. The Sun King is wise enough to recognize that when an enemy holds a superior position, his best course is to withdraw and marshal his forces to fight another day. He smiles and offers no protest to this hideous affront, understanding only too well the danger he is facing. He conceals his disgust that such a puny, feckless creature could wield enough influence to threaten the life of his glorious reign. How could this vile incubus have so unequivocally mesmerized the woman, who had never demonstrated anything but the greatest good sense to worship him without end or reservation? The boy leaves that room with his map of the world cracked to its foundation. He lets no one see the slightest hint of his humiliation. His instinct for survival tells him the safest strategy against this unprecedented challenge to his absolute rule lies in letting his subjects continue to believe that nothing in the kingdom, or within their king, has changed. He waits a week, two weeks, a month, to see if his mother's deranged infatuation with the pretender will break like a fever. He examines his adversary dispassionately, satisfying his curiosity as to its form and evident weaknesses, giving his mother to believe that he finds the repellent, sluglike bundle as irresistible as she does. He endures the collective enslavement of his subjects to the monster's hypnotic allure—these stupid women want nothing more than to prattle on about it incessantly with him! He lets them chatter, watches his rival bask in their affections, and all the while formulates his revenge. He insinuates himself into his mother's confidence, encouraging her to talk with him about the thing, hoping to find the key to its terrible appeal. He familiarizes himself with the demon's routine—-sleeping, waking, crying, eating, shitting—all it seems capable of doing, what a dim mystery the source of its magnetism remains. The contempt that knowledge brings serves only to multiply his determination to take action: decisive, swift, and merciless.

"Not long after, late one warm summer night when the house is at rest, he creeps silently into his mother's chambers. She is in bed, sound asleep. The monster lies in a cradle, on its back, awake, smiling a toothless grin, cooing, happily kicking its arms and legs about, as if an arrogant belief in its own invulnerability renders it immune to the treachery the Sun King has come to realize lurks behind every friendly face. Illuminated in a shaft of moonlight, the thing's eyes catch his as he peers down at it, and in a moment his steely

determination to act stands on a precipice—he's flooded with shame and remorse at his hatred of the little creature, he wants to take and hold the baby in his arms, feel its happiness enveloping him in a warm, beneficent, healing sphere of love and forgiveness. Feeling himself pulled inexorably into the monster's orbit where he's seen so many fall before him, at the last possible instant he tears his eyes away. Horrified to realize how close the thing has come to ensnaring him. For the first time fully comprehending the danger this evil genius presents."

"No ..." said Doyle involuntarily.

"He picks up a small satin pillow, and he puts it over the thing's face, and he holds it there hard until the creature stops kicking its arms and legs and lies still. It never makes a sound, but as it dies, the mother awakes with a scream! How pernicious was its hold on her! It's had communion with the woman even as life took leave of its tiny body. The Sun King runs from the room:—his mother has seen him, he is sure she has seen him leaning over the cradle—but when she moves to its bed and finds the inert remains of his midnight work, her mind comes undone. Such a heart-stopping wail shakes the very walls of the house that if allowed to rise unimpeded into the night might shatter the gates of heaven. As the boy lies quaking in his bed, bis mother's cry drives a spike deep into the frozen reaches of his heart. It is a sound he will call upon the memory of for many years to come, and it gives him more pleasure than a thousand kisses.

"His mother collapses. The house is within minutes of her discovery awash in a sea of grief. To the king's surprise, he is smothered by the sympathetic comforts of his bereaved subjects, imagining, these stupid peasants, that he must be every bit as stricken as they. The bewilderment he offers in response tends only to confirm that conviction, and they clasp him ever closer to their heaving bosoms. His mother disappears again into guarded seclusion. This time the women are only too eager to bring him constant reports of her condition; she's had a setback today, the night did not go well, she's resting comfortably, she took no food again this morning. He rejoices at the fervor with which the woman appears to embrace her just punishment for his betrayal. A week passes, and his father returns from his distant overseas post; he had never even seen the usurper. His eyes are clouded with sympathy as he greets the young king, but after spending an hour behind the closed door of mother's chamber he goes directly to his son and takes him alone into his room. He doesn't speak. He holds the boy's chin in his hand and gazes at him for the longest time. It is suspicion with which the man searches the young king's eyes—so she did see him in the chamber, this look tells him, but there must be some uncertainty—suspicion, not naked accusation. The king knows well enough how to conceal the entrance to the place he keeps his secret. He shows his father nothing: no remorse, weakness, or human feeling. Blank opacity, open and un-reachable, the boy returns the look and sees something replace suspicion in his father's eyes. Fear. The father knows. And the boy knows his father is powerless against him. The man withdraws from the room. The king knows the father will never challenge his authority again.

"They bury the thing in a lavender box, adorned with garlands of spring flowers. The boy stands quietly, watching his subjects weep with abandon, allowing them to lay their hands on his head as they pass by the grave, atonement for their transgression, paying obeisance to their one, true master. After the funeral, when his mother reappears and they meet, formally, in a public room, he sees something has irreversibly changed between them. She never again looks upon him with the loving gaze that had been her custom before the pretender came. She hardly ever dares to meet his eyes at all. He is no longer allowed entrance to her private chamber. Over the following days, he overhears many tearful, whispered conversations between mother and father, brought quickly to an end when his presence is detected, but he's confident no overt action will be taken against him. His father leaves to resume his duties overseas in Egypt. The boy spends more and more time in contented isolation, pursuing his studies, feeling his powers grow, in solitary walks of peaceful contemplation. Over time, the shroud of silence spreads from his mother to overtake all the subjects of his kingdom. There are no more pretenses of affection toward him. The currencies of exchanges with his inferiors are reduced to their basest coin: power and domination. His storehouse is filled to bursting with both commodities. He has retaken his throne."

"Good Lord ..." said Doyle softly, wiping a tear from his eye. "Good Lord, Jack ..."

Sparks seemed singularly unmoved by the story. He calmly took a drink and then continued: a cold, dispassionate recitation. "The next summer, the woman discovers she is once again with child. The news is kept from the boy, but as a precaution Alexander is packed up and sent away to boarding school the moment her condition becomes visibly self-evident, months before the child is expected. This proves no hardship to Alexander. He is more than ready to expand his sphere of influence beyond the confines of the garden walls. Fresh meat, he says, looking about hungrily at the new world that greets him; populated not just with adults, who he can already manage easily enough, but boys his own age, whole battalions of them, as pliant and malleable to his tools as uncut stone. And they are, none of them, parents or headmasters alike, witting enough to realize they have crowned the fox and set him up a palace in the henhouse. The next spring, hidden from his view and far from the reach of Alexander's grasp, a second son is born."

This time Doyle's question was left unspoken.

"Yes, Doyle. My entrance onto the stage."

"Did they ever let him near you?"

"Not for the longest time, for years, was he even aware of my presence, nor I of his. Alexander stayed at school through terms and all the holidays, even Christmas. Summers he was sent to stay with distant relations overseas. My parents paid a visit only once a year, every Easter week. My father, who had been serving all this time in the diplomatic corps, retired to stay close to myself and my mother. In spite of the damage done, I believe they were able to find some small measure of happiness in the home we made together. It certainly seemed that way to my unknowing senses; I was well and fairly loved. I suspected nothing of my brother's existence until I was near ready for schooling myself, when a man who worked in the stables, my confidant and favorite among the staff, let slip some reference to a boy named Alexander who'd ridden there years before. My parents had never spoken his name, but when I confronted them with my discovery of another boy riding at our stable, they admitted his existence to me. I did not interpret their reticence as having anything at all to do with their feelings toward Alexander— needless to say, no mention was ever made of my late sister—but once I learned that I had an unknown older brother, my curiosity became insatiable. After realizing my parents were not to be more forthcoming, I pumped the servants endlessly for news about this mysterious boy. They were clearly under orders to tell me nothing, and this blanket of silence surrounding Alexander only served to increase my eagerness. I ached to know him. I tried in vain to secretly gain his address so I might write to him. I prayed that God would soon acquaint me with the boy who I was convinced existed solely in order to serve as my companion, protector, and coconspirator."

"They never let you, did they?" asked Doyle, alarmed at the prospect.

"Only after two years of relentless campaigning and six months of bargaining—I was never to write to or accept letters from him; I would never be alone in his company: I eagerly accepted every one of their conditions. That year we paid our Easter visit to my brother's public school together. I was seven. Alexander was thirteen. We greeted each other formally, shaking hands. He was a striking boy: tall, sturdy, with black hair and riveting eyes. He seemed to me the soul of comradeship. Our parents were not prepared to leave us alone even for an instant, but after a few hours in which he exhibited such polite and openhearted enjoyment of both my company and theirs, their vigilance relented as we walked back from dinner through the gardens. As we turned a hedge ahead of them, Alexander pulled me from view, pressed a note into my hand, urging me to conceal it from our parents at all costs and to read it only when my absolute privacy was secured. Along with it he gave me a black polished stone, a talisman, which he assured me was his most treasured possession, and which he fervently wished me to have. I accepted the terms of his offerings gladly and, for the first time in my life, willfully concealed an event of such import from my parents. The first wedge between my life and theirs had been driven, the narrowest gap opened that had never before existed, and it was of my brother's conscious design."

"What did the letter say?"

"Predominantly innocent schoolboy chat—his daily rou-

tines recounted in prosaic detail, victories and tribulations in the classroom and on the playing fields, anecdotes about his colorful collection of classmates, what to expect of school myself, the clubby whys and wherefores of getting on with both teachers and chums—all in the confident tone of the wiser, worldlier brother advising a young charge on the eve of embarking on his own educational career. It assumed a comfortable familiarity that played as if we'd known each other all our lives. Friendly, generous, evenhanded, more than a little funny—in short, precisely the sort of letter I had dreamed about receiving from the idealized older brother I'd imagined. Nothing overt that would have upset my parents if they had ever found it, which I took every precaution to prevent. There was no self-pity, bemoaning our parents' abandonment of him. No complaints at their lack of interest. To the contrary, he wrote about them with the greatest consideration and affection, grateful for the opportunities they had given him at this wonderful school, how proud he hoped to one day make them, how he longed to repay their kindnesses to him a thousandfold. Not until the last paragraph did he conceal the hook around which he had spun the fiction. The ingenuousness, the absence of rancor toward my parents, his heartfelt openness toward our mutual discovery—all evidence of a clever, cunning, even exceptional personality. It wasn't until this last reference that the full extent of his malignant genius was manifest."

"What was it?"

" 'Although it seems clear that we must face all the difficult trials of our lives alone, just to know that you are alive, my brother, gives me the secret strength I have always sought to carry on.' " Sparks spoke the words quietly, with grave exactitude. "The stoic bravery, the hinted-at but unnamed difficult trials—how magnified, how operatic, they became in my imagination—and the suggestion that I could in my small, seven-year-old way somehow ease the pain of this shining exemplar was irresistible to my freshly minted mind. I was far too green to resist such an appeal. It whispered that he must know my capacities better than I knew myself. That in time, in his wisdom, he would reveal them to me, leading me to the discovery of my true identity, which I of course hoped would be in partnership with him, united against the world. If he had asked me even then, in that first letter, I would have thrown myself onto a bayonet."

"How did you respond?"

"He ended with instructions on how, if I so desired, I might safely write him back. The school had strict orders from my parents to intercept and return to them all of Alexander's arriving correspondence. I was to address the letter to a classmate of his—a fiercely devoted cadre of boys had served him unswervingly since his arrival; their number increased every year—and the letter would be discreetly passed on. Of course, the clandestine nature of it only served to amplify my enthusiasm: I wrote him back at once, emptying the contents of my heart; the longing I had for just such a champion in my life came running out of me like spring water. I made a sweet, simple fool of myself."

"You were only a boy," said Doyle.

Sparks showed himself no such clemency. His eyes were reduced to black pinpricks of self-directed rage. Draining his brandy, he promptly called for another. "I've never told any of this to another soul. Not a word."

Doyle knew Jack would accept no solace from the hollow sympathies he had to offer. Sparks's drink arrived. He fortified himself before continuing.

"I sent my letter to him. He of course anticipated my letter and had seen to it that arrangements allowing an exchange to continue were already in place—his writing back to me was problematic; sending it directly was out of the question. With an embroidered account of parental cruelty, he had recruited one of his adjutant's cousins, a quiet, reliable youth who lived in the village near our home. Under his cousin's signature, the man would receive Alexander's letters—which, once the dam broke, arrived at a steady rate of at least two a week— bicycle out to our estate, and leave them in a biscuit tin I had buried near an ancient oak, a landmark on our property that I frequented, well out of sight from the main house.

"So my correspondence with my brother began. It was from the start voluminous, the contents academically vigorous and far-reaching. Alexander's interest in and ability to penetrate the deeper workings of the world, and in turn make them explicable to me, was astonishing. His command of history, philosophy, art, and science, prodigal. He was able to

engage his schoolmasters on a level of discourse that far surpassed what most had experienced at university and to do so in such a charming, unassuming manner that Alexander was generally regarded as more colleague to them than student. His school had in its halcyon past produced generations of MPs and a handful of prime ministers—you can see how effortlessly this sort of thinking takes root; here was the sort of boy, they swooned, who appears once in a generation.

"Alexander had polished himself to a shine very bit as supremely dazzling in the social graces as he was natively in the academic. He realized his ultimate goals, which were at this stage of his life already remarkably articulated, would require of him an uncommon brilliance of form as well as mind: manners, voice, wardrobe. As a result, he could at the age of twelve not only pass muster but positively thrive in any class or social setting far exceeding his years. To develop the physicality he would need to meet his objectives, he followed a brutally rigorous regimen of exercise, spending the hours other boys squandered in play or with their families alone in the gymnasium. He stayed to this discipline so single-mindedly that by the time he reached thirteen Alexander was frequently mistaken for a man of twenty. The full, lustrous benefit of his effort at self-improvement—his religion, if you will: The conventional observances of Christianity he was required to endure he treated as an inconvenience, if not an outright joke—he of course passed on in his letters to me. He portrayed himself as the avatar of self-perfection, the first of a new breed: the Superior Man. In crucial but unobtrusive ways, by design untraceable to him by my parents, I embraced his guidelines for self-improvement; they became the keystone of my early life. I wholeheartedly intended to recreate myself in his image. I became his disciple."

"Not altogether to your detriment."

"By no means. The developments and skills he outlined have been in and of themselves supremely beneficial. I would without hesitation recommend their employment as the foundation of any ambitious educational system. But having once achieved them, to the pursuit of what ends these advances were to be employed my brother never went so far to say. Nor did his instructors ever bother to inquire; dedicated excellence in and of itself is so rare and bewitching a quality in the humdrum world that they were blinded by Alexander's radiance."

"What was his purpose, Jack?"

"That has only become clear with time," said Sparks. "He never divulged a hint of it during those early years to me, let alone anyone else."

"You must have had your suspicions."

"I had no inclination to question his motives—"

"But surely his nature must have revealed itself, even inadvertently."

"There were signs along the way, but they remained so cleverly obscured that any connection between them or interpretation of them would have proved impossible for even the most determined observer."

"What kind of signs, Jack?" asked Doyle, feeling a collar of dread draw close around him again.

"Accidents. Happenstances. A month before we met, one of the boys in Alexander's class died mysteriously. They raised honey bees on the campus, part of a science study course. The boy was found one night near the hives. He'd been stung to death, stung thousands of times. A clumsy boy, given to pranks; he must have stirred the insects up in some way, provoked them, the school concluded. The boy had been a close confederate of my brother's, but not in a way that would generate undue scrutiny. No one knew that they had quarreled recently. No one knew that the boy had balked at one of Alexander's imperious commands, threatening to leave his circle of intimates and expose their secrets."

"What sort of secrets?"

"Blood oaths. Violent hazing of new schoolboys admitted to the group. Torture of small animals. All done in the manner of boys being boys, but each act consistently and progressively carried beyond the norm. That is, until this incident. No one knew the boy had been lured to the hives that night by a note from another of Alexander's lieutenants—written by Alexander himself in exact approximation of the boy's hand. Requesting a meeting. Voicing a similar desire to defect from Alexander's influence. When the boy arrived, he was knocked unconscious, the note removed, and his body hurled into the hives."

"He must have told you all this," said Doyle.

"I'll come to that. When we first met, I remember being drawn to a curious necklace Alexander was wearing: a bee, preserved in amber."

Doyle shook his head in wonder.

"There's more. In the fall of Alexander's thirteenth year, in the town near the school, a series of strange sightings were recorded. A number of young women, all from respectable homes—this was for the most part a comfortable, upper-middle-class community—reported that while walking late at night they felt they were being followed. Some thought they were being watched inside their bedrooms. They never saw a face, and only on rare occasions a dark shape, dressed all in black—a man, a good-sized man, of this they were certain. He maintained distance, never approached them, never directly posed a threat, but the sense of menace the figure imparted was nonetheless considerable.

"One night, one of these girls awoke to find this shape standing over her bed: She was paralyzed with fright, unable to cry out, and the figure fled silently out an open window. This incident was sufficient to incite the local constabulary to swift, collective action. Young women were forbidden to walk at night alone. Curtains were shut, windows locked tight. Patrols organized in areas where the figure had been seen. It seemed effective; the sightings stopped abruptly, did not recur over the course of the winter, and as spring approached, the urgency of these extra measures taken months before grew tiresome: Windows were thrown open to the welcoming air, evening walks undertaken again with presumptions of safety.

"Until one night in early April when the town's comeliest young woman was assaulted near the banks of the river. Sexually assaulted. After satisfying himself upon her, the attacker flew into a rage, and she was beaten savagely. She never saw his face. He never spoke, never made a sound; she could identify him only as 'a black shape.' "

"Was Alexander suspected?"

"In the course of their investigation, town officials routinely questioned authorities at Alexander's school—although everyone felt certain a grown man was responsible, as his size and strength would indicate, most likely the same man who'd been seen the previous fall. Students themselves were sequestered on the campus after dark. And all of them accounted for, in their beds at the time of the attack."

"Easy enough to arrange that. It was your brother, oi course."

Sparks nodded. "His interest in the fairer sex was asserting itself, and he had a new hunger to feed. Alexander had seldom chosen to moderate his appetites, and then only as an exercise in self-discipline. He had nothing but contempt for the fumbling chaperoned introductions school and society offered as the rituals of courtship. He stalked these girls and then struck without hesitation or remorse. Moral reservations for such an act fell completely outside the tenets of his philosophy; such considerations were, as he wrote to me, a childish refuge for the weak and indecisive. Most people lived with all the courage and conviction of Jersey cows bred for the slaughterhouse. The Superior Man took what he wanted from the world—and often the world was only too willing to award it—without any concern for the consequences."

"Unless he was caught."

"The chances of that, as he saw it, were too slight to even merit concern. He was supremely confident of his ability to outwit anyone. This attack occurred, by the way, two days before my meeting him. The polished black rock he gave me that day was taken from the riverbed where the girl was violated: his trophy of the conquest."

Doyle swallowed back a wave of disgust. "There must have been talk of the rape during your visit. Did your parents connect him to it?"

"Despite their experience with him—which you realize only resulted in a dread suspicion, never certainty—I don't believe that my parents as yet comprehended the singular wickedness of Alexander's mind."

As yet—Doyle took note of the phrasing.

"A much-ballyhooed search of the countryside for the assailant, of course, yielded nothing. It was a crime of cold calculation, not passion; he had covered his tracks expertly."

"He committed no other crimes?" asked Doyle.

"Not in that town. Not for the time being. At Alexander's request, through an arrangement made by his professors, he spent that following summer in Salzburg, studying chemistry

and metallurgy at the university. For good measure, he studied the foil and epee at the renowned fencing academy, another skill of which he soon gained mastery. A boy of thirteen, remember. His routine was established: He worked to sharpen scientific abilities during the day—this pup among the graybeards, creating new compounds and alloys in the laboratory, his knowledge growing to the encyclopedic—and his stealth and footpad skills at night. Alexander trained himself to require little sleep, an hour or two at most, freeing him to spend the hours between midnight and sunrise on the prowl. His nocturnal ramblings were every bit as directed and purposeful as his scientific studies: designed specifically to test and steel his nerves."

"How so?"

"Gaining entry to people's houses. He'd sit for hours in their bedrooms. Blend into shadows and corners. These people passing within inches of him, and his heart never increased a beat. Watching them sleep, taking small tokens of his visits—trophies again, he always comes back to this— never items of any great value, trifles, trinkets that wouldn't be missed. He became able to see nearly as well in the dark as most people do at noon. He grew to prefer the darkness to the daylight, whose hours he now spent exclusively indoors, in rapt study. By the end of Alexander's Austrian summer, he could move through the night like a ghost, silent, invisible.

"The night before his scheduled return to England, he allowed himself a single indulgence of the burgeoning appetite he had kept in check these many months. There was a particular girl whose room he had happened upon initially by chance. He found the sight of this girl asleep in her bed so powerfully excited him he was compelled to visit her obsessively. A blond beauty of seventeen, the only daughter of a prosperous burgher, she was in possession of many voluptuous charms, made all the more alluring by her seeming innocence of them. His interest assumed the form of a perverse courtship; he took to following her during the day. He found it thrilling to stand beside her in a shop, to pass her in the street and return her unsuspecting smile, but even so he never dared to speak to her. I believe that somewhere in the recesses of his heart he felt for this girl an authentic stirring of romantic love. He wrote poetry for her. Once he left a single red rose in a stemmed vase by the window. Alexander grew bolder with each succeeding visit, drawing back the covers, touching her hair. As he watched his beloved sleep, he began to impart requited yearning into her every unconscious gesture. He longed to reveal himself to her, to hold and possess her. But in the cold light of day, the tremors and weakness that welled up from the summoned memory of her beauty he found intolerable: The Superior Man could not abide such gaping vulnerability to the unruly fancies of another heart.

"So on his last night in Austria, Alexander slipped into her room for the final time. He doused a handkerchief in chloroform and placed it over his beloved's mouth. He carried her from the house undetected into the surrounding woods, where he set upon her and indulged his desires upon her like a night demon. When he was sated, he carried her much deeper into the woods, quieting her with the drug whenever she began to stir, bound her hand and foot, and laid her gently down in a bower of pine branches. By the time the panicked villagers found her at the end of the following day, Alexander was on the packet sailing back to England."

"He didn't kill her," said Doyle, surprised and relieved.

"No. Nor did he brutalize her after satisfying himself, as he had the other girl. I believe his feelings for her were more complicated, more personal, than any he had experienced before. With the warring sides of his nature at a standoff, the impulse to despoil had not won out. Upon his return, Alexander wrote eagerly to tell me about his 'summer romance.' When I wrote back with what I suppose was some hint of skepticism—ignorance, really, I had no knowledge of the ways of men and women aside from what he'd told me—as proof he sent me a lock of her hair."

"Always attempting to enlist you as his accomplice."

"But as little as I knew, as I held that blond lock in my hand, I felt the first shudder of misgiving about my brother's true nature. Something unpleasant radiated from that beautiful curl, some residue of suffering. I sensed somehow it was wrong. I discarded it immediately, threw it into the stream near my old oak, and I didn't write to Alexander for a week. In his next letter, he never mentioned the girl, nor did he voice any displeasure that I had not responded, going on as

if nothing had happened. I gratefully buried my uneasiness as an aberration. Our correspondence resumed."

Waiters were turning down the gas jets in the dining room. A small orchestra in another room began to play a Strauss waltz. Handsome couples took to the dance floor. The gay mood prevailing in the room, the dancers swirling about them, made no inroad to the core of Sparks's private burden. He stared into his drink, face drawn, his eyes haunted and febrile.

"And so we went along. The letters. Our yearly Easter visit. The only interruption to our exchanges came when travel to Europe with my family began. Even then there was always a packet of letters waiting upon my return. Alexander was absolutely faithful to me and I to him, always eager to near of my growth and progress, never overstepping the bounds our parents so vigilantly maintained. Never exhibiting anything but loving interest in my development. Or so I assumed. I realize now he was measuring my progress against the meticulous records he had kept of his own—like a rat in a laboratory experiment—to see if his methods for the development of the Superior Man were verifiable. And not least to reassure himself that my rate of advancement lagged well be-hind his; by no means would the student ever be allowed to surpass his master.

"As he entered his last year of school before university, and I neared the age, and nearly the size, he'd been when we'd first met, his letters stopped, without warning. I wrote to him repeatedly, with increasing desperation. No reply. Worse yet, no explanation. I felt as if a limb had been cut from my body, I wrote again and again, pleading with him to answer; what transgression had I unknowingly committed? Why had he forsaken me?"

"His work with you was finished."

"No. His intention was to shock me, by demonstrating how swiftly his favor could be withdrawn, to plant a seed of terror :n me that tightened his grip and rendered me even more dependent. Four months went by. A thousand scenarios of doom flowered in my imagination, until finally I was able to absolve myself of responsibility: It must have been my parents, I decided. They've discovered our link and taken decisive action against us; they've had Alexander moved, quarantined somewhere out of reach. Perhaps they really were as devious and vengeful as his letters over the last year had subtly begun to suggest. Their absolute steadiness of disposition with me did nothing to allay my suspicions, but only increased them. Whenever I inquired into his well-being, which I dared not do too frequently, they assured me Alexander was well and thriving. I knew it was a lie! He must be languishing, cut off from me at their command, every bit as bereft and miserable as I was. I wanted to retaliate, without giving them the satisfaction of knowing I was stung, so I began to willfully conceal my feelings from them, to put up the same stone wall of polite but distant self-sufficiency I'd seen Alexander assume in their presence. They sensed immediately that something was not right with me, but I refused their entreaties and denied any discomfort, all the while counting the days and hours until that Easter, when Alexander and I would be reunited. To my great surprise, our parents made no effort to deny us that meeting, which only served to confirm my conviction that their treachery was of a high and exalted order. "When we finally did meet, Alexander betrayed not the slightest uneasiness or dissatisfaction with our parents, and he was as pleasant and convivial with me in their company as always. Sitting on the veranda sipping hibiscus tea, we looked the very model of the upright English family, spending most of our time discussing Alexander's entrance to university that fall. Calling on the reserves of self-control Alexander had taught me so well, I restrained every impulse to pull him aside and beg for the truth about his withdrawal. The long afternoon was nearly passed before the opportunity came, once again on the walk through the gardens after dinner, ritualized now through the years of our visits, the two brothers ten paces ahead of their parents. Our faces and gestures betrayed no urgency; his words to me were few, but they were resonant with that conspiratorial tone of affiliation that I had longed all these months to hear. 'See your way clear to Europe this summer. In July. Alone.' He suggested Salzburg, famous for its music academy. I was stunned. How shall I manage it? With what resources? It seemed entirely beyond me. He said all that was up to me, but however I should do it, this was by far the most important assignment he would ever give me. I would try, I swore to him. I would try my

best. You must succeed, he said, at any cost. Our parents appeared behind us, and that was the end of our exchange."

"He wanted to meet you there," said Doyle.

'That, of course, was my assumption. Immediately upon our return home, I threw myself into what had up until that point been, at best, my desultory efforts to master the violin. What had been compulsory now became compulsive; I spent hours in practice every day. My dedication to the work was never questioned, only encouraged by my music-loving parents. To my amazement, I discovered mat I possessed no small aptitude for the instrument, almost to the point of prodigality. I was able to coax from those strings the music of a private universe, as if I had discovered an entirely new language that in many ways I found more eloquent than speech. From time to time, I would bemoan the lack of instructors adequate to the rapidly advancing level of my playing. I let mention that I had heard of a musical conservatory in Austria where the great talents of our age had found nurturance for the skills that carried them on to their splendid international careers.

"When some weeks later my parents presented the idea of my enrolling at that very academy for the coming summer, I feigned astonishment and showered them with boundless gratitude for their perceptiveness and generosity. I didn't know which gave me more pride: my cunning in securing the appointment or my actual achievement with the instrument. The next day I wrote Alexander the last letter I would ever send him, one cryptic sentence: 'The job is done.' I received no reply. In the middle of June, my parents accompanied me to Brighton—along with the valet who was to be my traveling companion—where they saw me off on my first solitary European adventure. I set sail for the Continent, arrived in Austria two days later, and was straightaway enrolled in the Salzburg lyceum, where I busied myself in my studies and waited for July and word from Alexander to arrive."

The dance floor was by this time filled with revelers. The orchestra began to assay the sentimental favorites of the day, as the hour of the New Year drew near. A frantic, angular energy animated the crowd, their enjoyment of the occasion hovering uncertainly between bona fide excitement and dutiful obligation.

"Did he send word?"

Sparks looked up at Doyle, his eyes transparent and cold. Doyle saw further into Sparks's private reaches than he had ever been previously allowed.

"Not in the way I had expected. In the second week of July, I was called out of my private instruction and taken to the headmaster's office. My valet was there; the poor man was terrified, pallid and waxen. Whatever is wrong? I asked, but I knew the answer before a word was spoken."

Doyle hung on his every word. Every other eye in the room was on the large dark clock that loomed over the bar. As the last seconds of the dying year dwindled away, the crowd began counting down.

"Ten, nine, eight ..."

"You will have to return to England immediately. Tonight, the headmaster told me," said Sparks, raising his voice in order to be heard over the mob. "There's been a fire."

"Seven, six, five ..."

"Are they dead? Are my parents dead?"

"Four, three, two ..."

"Yes, John, he said. Yes, they are."

The count ended, and the room erupted cacophonous-ly. Streamers swirled through the air. Noisemakers ratcheted. Lovers kissed, strangers embraced. The band played on. Doyle and Sparks sat through the crescendo of the celebration, their eyes locked, unmoving.

"Alexander," Doyle said, although he knew Sparks could not hear him. He could not even hear himself.

Sparks nodded. Without another word, he rose from his seat, threw a pack of pound notes down on the table, and sliced though the crowd toward the door. Doyle followed after, his passage more reminiscent of a rugby scrum than Sparks's surgical maneuvering, pushed through the mad clamor at the door, and squirted out onto the street. Doyle fought his way upstream to his friend, who stood under a lamppost, out of the flow of foot traffic, lighting a cheroot. They walked down a side street, away from the crowds. Soon they reached the river. Across the Thames, a fireworks display threw vibrant sparklers into the air, reflecting darkly on the black gelid water.

"Two days to get home," said Sparks after a while. "The

house was simply gone. Ashes. Locals said the flames could be seen for miles. A conflagration. Started at night. Five servants lost their lives as well."

"Were the bodies ... ?"

"My mother's was never recovered. My father ... had somehow got out of the house. They found him near the stables. Burned beyond recognition. He hung on to life for nearly a day, asking for me, hoping for my arrival. Near the end, he summoned the strength to dictate a letter to his priest. A letter for me. The priest gave it to me soon after I arrived."

Sparks gazed out over the river. The wind blew cold. Doyle shivered in his dinner jacket, too mindful of his friend to draw attention to his own petty discomfort.

"Father wrote to tell me that I had once had a sister who lived for fifty-three days. My brother, Alexander, had murdered the girl in her cradle, my mother half witness to the deed. This was why they'd kept us apart and never told me of him all these years, and now, as he and my mother were being taken from this life, why he implored me with his last breath to forsake my brother's company forever. There had been something wrong in Alexander from the beginning. Something not human. His mind was as glittering and false as a black diamond. Against their better nature, they had always held the glimmer of some persistent hope that he had changed. They had allowed that hope to feed on the lies with which Alexander had deceived them. And now, for the second time—for which my father blamed no one but himself— they had paid the terrible price of relaxing their guard. That was where my father's letter ended."

"There must have been more."

Sparks looked back at Doyle. "The priest went out of his way to warn me that my father was in a deep state of shock when they had spoken, that he might have been, God rest his soul, even quite deranged in the torment of his final hours. Therefore I should not consequently accept everything he, my father, had said to the man as gospel. I looked into his eyes: I knew the fellow, this priest, I'd known him since I was a child. A family friend, kind, well-meaning. Weak. And I knew he was withholding something from me. I was well versed enough in sacred doctrine to threaten him straight-faced with the damnation of Judas if he lied to me about my father's last confession. That quickly melted his resolve. He handed over to me the second half of Father's letter. I read it. It became clear that what the priest had hoped were the mad ravings of a dying man, his mind ravaged by pain, was in fact the unspeakable truth."

Sparks paused, steeling himself before carrying Doyle the last few steps into the core of his nightmare.

"Theirs had never been an easy marriage, my father wanted me to know. Two strong wills, two independent spirits. They had known great passion and caused each other tremendous sorrow. During their life together, he had loved other women. He offered no apology. He expected no sympathy or understanding. Shortly before Alexander was born, their difficulties reached such an impasse that he accepted the post in Cairo as a trial separation. Stung by his withdrawal, Mother formed an unnatural attachment to the little boy, calling upon Alexander to fill a role in her life for which he was quite naturally ill-suited. The effects were unwholesome.

"During a brief, unsuccessful reconciliation, my sister was conceived. Father returned to Egypt unawares. He did not even learn of the pregnancy until weeks after her birth. By the time he could free himself to return to England, the disaster had already occurred. Mother was severed; she desperately craved the comforting, unconditional love she had come to depend on from Alexander, but she was also unable to deny the horror her eyes had witnessed. Father wanted the boy sent away forever, punished, made a ward of the state. Self-divided as she was, my mother threatened to take her own life if he initiated such an action. Thus stalemated, Father took his leave once again. A year later, in a last attempt to salvage the tenuous covenant remaining between them, my father returned from overseas for good and extracted from her the compromise that resulted in Alexander's banishment, a third pregnancy, and the reorganization of their marriage around a second son. The son they would raise together. A son beloved by both parents, not one exclusively. I don't believe they were altogether unhappy during my early years. Far from it. They surrendered to the life they had forged and made their sorry peace with it."

Sparks flicked the butt of his cigar down into the turbulent

current. Doyle was reeling inside. He braced himself, for he sensed the worst of all was about to come.

"On the night they died, my father retired early to his rooms. He read for a while, then fell asleep before the fire. My mother's voice woke him, crying out in pain. Going to her chamber, he discovered her bound hand and foot to the posts of the bed. He was struck from behind and fell, unconscious. When he regained his senses, he was tied securely to a chair. My mother was on the bed as before. A figure was on top of her, assaulting her intimately. A figure all in black. She was screaming as if she had lost her mind. The figure completed the loathsome act and turned and smiled, and my father was greeted by the face of his oldest son."

Doyle turned away, short of breath, gasping for air. He was afraid he might be ill.

"Alexander was in no hurry to take leave of their company. He had already killed all the servants in the house; with gruesome detail, he described how each of them had died. He held my parents prisoner in that corrupt purgatory for more than four hours. He poured kerosene onto the bed, dousing my mother. He lit one of father's cigars and sat beside her, blowing on the tip, reddening the ash. He held it on her skin and told her not to bother with her prayers: They would not be sent to hell when he killed them for their sins against him. They were already there: This was hell. And he, their tormentor, was the Devil.

"Alexander untied my father and presented him with a choice: You can now either make love to your wife for the last time or fight with me. My father attacked him in a blind rage. He was still a strong and powerful man, but Alexander beat him easily, expertly and unmercifully, taking him time and again to the edge of unconsciousness, each time pulling him back only to begin again, administering more refined punishments. Things were said to my father that made him realize this nightmarish automaton they were in the grasp of was not in any recognizable way a human being. At last he slipped away into the refuge of darkness.

"Father was awakened the last time by a terrible heat. His skin was burning and the room consumed by fire, the bed and my mother's body already destroyed. My father somehow got himself out of that room, into the hall. The whole interior was ablaze. He hurled himself through a window. The fall broke his legs. He dragged himself away from the house, where my friend from the stable found him."

Sparks exhaled heavily. He slumped slightly forward, his face in the shadows. Doyle leaned over the rail and was sick into the river. He coughed and sputtered, but it was not unpleasant to void his body of the liquor and rich food. It all seemed foul in the company of what he'd just taken in. He waited for his head to clear.

"Sorry ..." A half-whisper was all he could manage. "Sorry."

Sparks nodded imperceptibly and waited for Doyle to retrieve his dignity.

"I asked to see my father's body. Again the priest resisted, this time without conviction. My friend from the stable took me to a potting shed, the only structure on the grounds the fire had spared, where bodies recovered from the wreckage lay on rough tables under vulcanized sheets. I did not recognize my father's face. I looked at his hands. The gold of his wedding band had melted and reformed around the exposed bone of his ring finger. Then I noticed that in the palm of that hand a queer pattern was burned into the remaining flesh. I studied that pattern, drew it later from memory, and still later remembered where I had seen it before.

"Over the years, my father had brought from Egypt a great number of ancient artifacts. An entire room in our house was dedicated to his collection. I had always been fascinated by a silver insignia in the shape of the eye of Thoth. Aware of my interest, Father made a necklace of it and gave me the insignia on my seventh birthday. When we first met and Alexander gave me that black rock which he said was his most precious possession, to reciprocate I sent him my prized necklace in a letter. My father soon noticed it was missing. I told him I had lost it swimming in the river, never quite sure that he believed me.

"I knew Alexander had taken to wearing the necklace on his nightly visitations. He felt it possessed some mystic property, that its power somehow helped him remain invisible. So I knew that every word my father had spoken to the priest was true; he had ripped the insignia from Alexander's neck as

they fought. He wanted to die with that necklace in his hand. So I would see it, and I would know."

Doyle had by now regained enough self-possession to speak. "But Alexander must have reclaimed it from him."

"Not before it had left its mark seared into his flesh."

"Did they find Alexander?"

Sparks shook his head. "Vanished into the air. The school never saw him again. Alexander's course had been set for years; now his two most profound goals were accomplished. He was already far beyond the pale. Three weeks after the funeral, a package arrived at our solicitor's, addressed to me. Origin of postage unknown. A letter in a neutral hand described the murder of the boy at the beehives, the attack on the woman by the river, and the assault on the girl in Germany. It explained the origin of the keepsakes Alexander had given me over the years. And he included this: the last and most repellent of his trophies."

Sparks was holding the silver insignia in his hand.

"You kept it," said Doyle, mildly surprised.

Sparks shrugged. "Nothing else was left. I needed something ..." said Sparks, more searchingly. "I needed a way to organize my feelings."

"For revenge."

"More than that. I don't mean to suggest it happened overnight. It took many years. I needed ... meaning. Purpose. To be twelve years old and have in that single blow your entire world destroyed, everything you believe in and cherish eradicated ..."

"I understand, Jack."

"There is evil loose in the world. I had dwelled in its shadow. I had tasted it. I had seen its basest products. It flourished in a body and soul that entered into life through the same passage I had taken here. I had willingly placed myself in its hands, allowed myself to be consciously molded by its bearer into his own image." Sparks looked again at Doyle; he seemed youthful and open and filled by the black wind of his terror.

"What if I was like him? I had to ask that, Doyle, do you see? What if the same vile, twisted spirit that drove him to these unspeakable crimes was alive in me? I was twelve years old!"

Tears filled Doyle's eyes in sudden comprehension of the boy the man who stood beseechingly before him must have been. To face such grief, to suffer such a loss, was unimaginable. He could offer his friend no comfort, there was none to be given, other than his silent, heartfelt tears.

"I had to believe that the skills my brother instilled in me I had learned for a purpose," Sparks said, throaty with determination. "They had no innate moral property; they were tools, neutral, still useful. I had to believe that, I had to demonstrate to myself that this was true: There could be more than one sort of Superior Man. The salient point with which I aligned my compass was my choice alone; justice would be my North Star, not mendacity and deluded self-worship. I would stand for the bringing of life, not death. If it was my fate to share his blood, then it was my obligation to balance the scales his presence here disrupted; I would deliver into this world a force to counter the darkness to which my brother had succumbed. I would redeem my family name or die trying. That was my mission. To stand opposed, to set myself in his way. To become his nemesis."

His words revived the faltering pulse of hope in Doyle's chest. They stood in silence for a time and watched the river.

chapter twelve BODGER NUGGINS

THE NIGHT TURNED BITTER COLD. THE WALK BACK TO THE Hotel was one of the longest miles in Doyle's memory. Sparks withdrew; he seemed hollowed out, emptied. Doyle felt equally flattered that Sparks entrusted him sufficiently to confide and burdened by the weight he would now to some degree have to shoulder. Never had the turning of the New Year left such a feeble impression on him. They made their way past drunks, lovers, hordes of young celebrants cheering and carousing because of this dimly conceived passing—the death of the "old," and birth of the "new," the charade of quickly forsaken resolutions to transform one's petty vices into virtues. Man's arbitrary attempts to demarcate time with this imposed significance seemed as profitless as the scratching of hen's feet in the dirt. And how could one presume that man's essential character was capable of change when a being the likes of Alexander Sparks testified prima facie to the contrary?

Entering the hotel by a discreet rear entrance, they settled into their rooms, lit a fire, and broke open a bottle of cognac. Doyle felt his defiled system balk at the infusion of new liquor, then warm to its heat and welcome the soporific soothing. Sparks stared at the fire, the dancing flames reflecting in his dark eyes.

"When were you next aware of his hand at work?" asked Doyle, breaking the long silence.

"He left England, spent time in Paris, then drifted south. From Marseilles he sailed to Morocco and then crossed Northern Africa to Egypt. He arrived in Cairo less than a year after the killings."

"He left a trail."

"Having committed the Original Crimes—patricide, matricide: Shall we call these the Original Crimes, Doyle? I think in all fairness that we may—the last obstacle to the wholesale indulgence of any wanton or dissolute impulse he might suffer was permanently removed. Having achieved absolute dominance of family and school, his original environment, his intention was now to establish himself in the world. His first task was the amassing of capital toward financial independence. The night of my parents' murders, before setting the fire, he stole from my father's collection of Egyptiana the most priceless treasures—there were a great number of them. Alexander went to Cairo to peddle them. The returns he garnered became the foundation for his soon-to-be considerable fortune."

"Other crimes were committed as well," Doyle surmised.

"There were a series of distinctive murders that year in Cairo. My father had kept a mistress there, an Englishwoman, a colleague in the foreign service. Soon after Alexander arrived, she disappeared. A week later her head was found in the souk, the marketplace. Beheading is customary with adulteresses in Muslim cultures, which naturally threw suspicion toward a local. Except that a red letter A had been sewn into the skin of her forehead. By the way, the woman's name was Hester."

Doyle felt his gorge rise again. He realized that to be of any value to Jack in the struggle against his brother, he would have to harden his emotional resolve. If there were no limits to what the man could do, which seemed evident, it would prove no advantage to be left reeling with horror in reaction to his every outrage.

"The following week he dispatched a prominent art dealer, an Egyptian man, along with his wife and children. My conclusion: The man extended negotiation on a piece of my father's collection beyond the limits of Alexander's patience. The item in question, a ceremonial dagger, was the murder weapon. Alexander was not above embellishing his handiwork with macabre flourishes. There had been a spat of hysteria in Cairo about the curse of the mummy's tomb, from whence this dagger and a number of other items in the dealer's possession had been plundered. The man's apartment was trampled over with bare, dusty footprints and littered with

strips of decaying linen. Threads of this linen were found lodged in the necks of the wife and children, whom he had strangled, and encrusted on the handle of the knife, with which he had cut out the art dealer's heart. They discovered the missing organ beside the body in a ceremonial bowl covered with the ashes of tannis leaves, believed to be the key ingredient in the ritual formulated by priests of the pharaohs for resurrection from the mummified state. Can you detect the touch of Alexander's hand in all of this?"

"Yes," said Doyle, remembering the death of the London streetwalker.

"The next month an archaeological site in the desert was raided in similar fashion, a tomb only partly uncovered. Two guards were found inside, strangled, and many of the inventoried artifacts inside the crypt were missing, including the mummified remains of the tomb's principal inhabitant. Again the locals found it provident to attribute the killings to a vindictive corpse, risen to exact revenge for the defiling of his grave."

"Alexander was developing an interest in the occult."

"As his mastery of the physical world grew more accomplished, his interest moved naturally toward magic and the immaterial plane. Egypt has had that effect on more than a few Europeans. There's a dread power in those ancient temples. This is where Alexander received his first taste of what dedicated study of the black arts could deliver. Once that hunger was awakened in him, it became the center of his existence. And a hunger fueled by greed is never satisfied by feeding; it only increases the rapacity of the appetite."

·'Where did he go from there?"

"From what I was able to reconstruct, the next few years Alexander drifted throughout the Middle East, seeking entrance to various Mystery schools: Zoroastrians, the Sufis, lashishims—assassins—the murderous cult of the Old Man :f the Mountain—"

"But they were eradicated centuries ago."

"According to official history, yes, their fortress stormed by the Ottomans, their numbers decimated. But some highly placed Turks will tell you that small sects of devotees have survived, in Syria and Persia, secreted in remote mountain freeholds. They also say that the unsurpassed killing techniques of the hashishims are still evidenced in enough unsolved politically motivated murders to lend that theory considerable authenticity. If they do still exist in any form, be assured Alexander was most capable of not only seeking them out, but extracting from them their most treacherous death-dealing secrets."

"When he tame after me, I'm thankful I didn't know then what I know now," said Doyle, with halfhearted levity. "I might have dropped dead at the sight of him."

Sparks's look suggested that possibility was a good deal more than a joke.

"India was Alexander's next destination," said Sparks, "where I believe he infiltrated the Thuggee murder cult, a much more immanent and verifiable band of terrorists. Not easy work for an Englishman, their avowed enemy, but by this point he had mastered languages and the art of disguise. The Thugs are particularly adept at garroting. The double-weighted scarf you so admired on the night of our escape in Cambridge is one of their specialties de la maison."

"You've learned a good number of these techniques yourself."

Sparks shrugged. "As a consequence of tracking Alexander's movements over the years, a rather extensive body of ... profane knowledge has come into my possession. Does that trouble you, Doctor?"

"On the contrary. I shall sleep much more soundly." "Good man," said Sparks, almost allowing himself to smile.

Doyle had that feeling once again of being in a cage with a dangerous animal. God forbid his skills should ever be turned against me, he thought. "And so during these years in the East, Alexander's passion for the occult grew more obsessive."

"Precisely," said Sparks. "While I was in my teens absorbing the principles of geometry and the conjugation of intransitive French verbs, Alexander was scaling the Himalayas, penetrating the legendary yogic schools of northern India and Kathmandu."

"I've read of these places. Surely, if they exist and their morality is as advanced as are their reported powers of mind, they would have refused a man like Alexander entrance."

"No doubt some of them did. No doubt there are others directed toward those who wish to tread the—what was Blavatsky's term for it?"

"The Left-Handed Path."

"The word sinister derives from the Latin for left-handed, did you know that?"

"It must have slipped my mind."

"For all we know, Alexander may have been carried by a legion of chattering, cloven-hoofed demons across the threshold of the Dark Brotherhood's Advanced Conservatory of Thirty-third-Degree Mayhem. As painstakingly as I've attempted to trace his itinerary, the full extent of his matriculations during these years remains at best elusive."

"During your travels to the Far East," Doyle said, stitching another part of Sparks's patchwork quilt past into place.

"The very reason I left university before graduation, having absorbed the better part of what they had to offer. Following in Alexander's admittedly sketchy footsteps has endowed me with a fuller scholarship in the ... practical workings of the world."

Doyle decided to leave that assertion where it lay. "When did Alexander return to Britain?"

"Difficult to say. His trail died in Nepal. I came home and for many years believed he'd vanished into the mysteries that consumed him. My best estimate: Alexander returned to England twelve years ago, not long after I actively began my career."

"How did you know he'd returned?"

Sparks formed a spire with his fingers, pressed them to his chin, and stared intently into the fire. "I had for many years been aware of—call it a directing intelligence behind the acvities of London's criminal community. This web of connec-tive tendrils suggested a shadowy hand manipulating pieces on a game board, a lurking presence felt more than seen. But the faint signals I have been able to verify point consistently to a conspiracy of purpose behind the random and brutal practices that comprise the majority of the underworld's labors."

"Have you no idea what that purpose might be?"

"None whatsoever. As you know, I have recruited a number of these denizens—rehabilitating them in the process,

one hopes. Many can speak to rumors of an overlord sitting at the hub of the city's wheel of vice—gambling, slavery, smuggling, prostitution—the fruits of these crimes flowing always toward the center."

"You believe that this overlord is Alexander."

Sparks paused. "I'm not completely certain such a figure even exists. No single one of my acquaintances can confirm anyone has ever had direct experience of such an individual. But if so, no other man on this earth would be more capable of it than my brother. And in the doing, no other man would be more dangerous."

"Then surely that's been the status quo in London for some time—predating Alexander's tenure, certainly. Crime has always been a regrettably consistent element of the human experience."

"I cannot dispute that: What is your point?"

"Something more than the routine conducting of illicit enterprise is at work here, Jack. Something beyond the scope of their ordinary reach."

"You're referring to the Dark Brotherhood," said Sparks.

"Presumably an organization separate from this criminal organization, with its own distinct and self-interested objectives."

"Indeed."

"And you're quite certain Alexander has sworn his allegiance to the Brotherhood?"

"Alexander's only allegiance is to himself," said Sparks. "If he's aligned himself with them, it is solely for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions. The moment their paths diverge, he will not hesitate in severing the bond."

"But even so, a partnership between two such groups, no matter how provisional—"

"Represents a greater threat to the general well-being of our country than any war or pestilence imaginable. No point in sheltering ourselves from that unpleasant truth."

Doyle let that sink in for a moment. "When was the last time you saw your brother, Jack?"

"Outside the window at Topping."

"No, I mean face-to-face."

"Not since that last Easter, at school. Twenty-five years ago."

Doyle leaned in. "And when did you first realize Alexander was this mastermind you've described?"

"Yesterday. When I saw that great house burning."

They looked at each other.

"So at last you understand the game we are playing," said Sparks.

Doyle nodded. Now it was his turn to stare deeply into the fire and wonder if the New Year die crowds outside had ushered in would be his last.

Larry stood sentinel outside their doors as Doyle sought some small renewal in sleep. He woke from a fitful dream that fled before him to find their luggage packed by the door, and Sparks at the table in the sitting room, poring over a map of London. It was half past five, dawn hardly a rumor in the sky outside. It took Doyle, wiping the grit from his eyes, the entire pot of coffee and tray of cakes Larry brought in to strip the rust from his muscles and brain. Both cried out for a day of rest, but as Doyle suspected, there would be no such luxury for some time to come.

"There are a dozen publishers on Russell Street within hailing distance of the museum," said Sparks energetically. ''Did you by any chance submit your manuscript to the firm of Rathborne and Sons?"

"Rathborne? Lady Nicholson's maiden name—yes, yes I believe I did," said Doyle. "By God, do you suppose—"

Doyle was distracted by a small, boxy contraption he had never seen the like of before weighing down a corner of the map. As he idly reached to examine it, Sparks snatched the box away, dropped it into his pocket, and began vigorously rolling up the map.

"Then that's where we will begin," said Sparks. "In the meantime, Larry will move us to other lodgings. I'm afraid you may not find our subsequent housing as congenial as the Melwyn, but it's prudent we spend no more than one night in a single place."

"I could do with a shave first," he said ruefully, watching Larry carry their bags out of the room.

"Plenty of time for that later. Come along, Doyle, the race is to the swift," said Sparks, and he was out the door as well.

Doyle grabbed the last cake from the platter and hurried after him.

Halfway down the backstairs, they encountered Barry running up to meet them—at least Doyle's blistered eyes thought it was Barry: Yes, there was the scar.

"Found a bloke you should have a bash at," said Barry, with uncharacteristic urgency.

"Be more specific," said Sparks, continuing down.

"Aussie bloke. Boxer. Claims he had the acquaintance of Mr. Lansdown Dilks. After he was hanged."

"Excellent," said Sparks as they exited the hotel. "Doyle, go with Barry. Turn the screws: Find out if the man can enlighten us regarding the estimable Mr. Dilks. We'll meet at noon, Hatchard's Bookshop, Picadilly. Good luck to you!" Sparks jumped aboard a small hansom with Larry at the reins, gave a single sharp wave, a salute really, and they pulled away.

This wasn't how the game was supposed to be played, grumbled Doyle, left to his own devices at six in the morning before a proper breakfast. Doyle looked at Barry, who seemed entirely unfazed by Sparks's sudden departure.

"This way," said Barry, with a tip of the hat, and he started walking.

Doyle stuffed the rest of the cake in his mouth and set off after him. The first light of day peeked over the eastern horizon.

Barry led Doyle briskly through the maze of Covent Garden, where in the stalls of the vegetable and flower sellers the commerce of the New Year was off to a bustling beginning. Yawning flower girls smoked cheap cigarettes and leaned against each other to ward off the chill, awaiting turns to fill their peddler's trays. Costermongers combatively picked over the marketed yields of the farmers' winter gardens. Doyle's digestive juices were whipped to a boil by the marriage of aromas that souped the morning air: Arabian coffee beans, fresh breads leaving the oven, grilled sausages and hams, hot French pastries. His gastronomic longings lurched toward despair when he realized he'd left his purse and all his money in the bag that Larry had transported by now to God-knows-where. Appeals to Barry to pause for a restorative snack—at

Barry's expense—fell on deaf ears. By the repeated tipping of his hat, bobbing up and down as regularly as a mechanical dandy in a Dresden clock tower, Doyle deduced that Barry was passingly familiar with more than a few of the merchants' wives and an unusually high percentage of the female shop attendants. Where there's smoke, thought Doyle: Barry's gay-blade reputation must be authentic after all.

Their trail took them to a gymnasium in a Soho side street, a squat, filthy brick of a building, its walls a palimpsest of posters trumpeting the forgotten but once epic collisions of yesterday's fistic gladiators. A soot-obscured homily traced the arch of the Greek Revival entryway, extolling the virtue of exercise to the development of a sound moral character.

Inside the gym, on the far side of the squared circle, a boisterous knot of wrestlers, bare-fisted boxers, and physique enthusiasts knuckled around a cutthroat game of dice. Well-wrinkled cash and cheapjack gin bottles defined the area they'd set aside for the bones to settle after hitting the musty wall—a most unsavory scene that had seen more than one dawn pass by unnoticed. Barry instructed Doyle to wait some distance from the bunch—he was only too happy to comply—while he waded in to separate the object of their quest from the pack. He returned a minute later with a flat-faced hulking mass of hardened flesh, whose bulging bare arms were adorned with tattoos of mermaids and pirates engaged in a succession of suggestive pas de deux. The man's nose spread out horizontally to the width of his gaping mouth, the only useful organ for breathing he had left. His eyebrows were an omelet of scar tissue and scraggly hair, his eyes set as deep as pissholes in the snow. A well-traveled trail of tobacco juice trickled down his chin. The man's haircut was distressingly similar enough to the one Doyle now sported to suggest that Barry must be the man's barber, if not his confidant.

"I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Bodger Nuggins, former light-heavyweight champion of Her Majesty's colony of New South Wales and Oceania," said Barry, bringing the two men together.

Doyle accepted the behemoth's two-handed handshake; it was flaccid, and the man's palm as soft and moist as a skittish soubrette's. The stink of gin wafted off him in clouds.

"Arthur Conan—" began Doyle.

Barry cleared his throat with emphatic vehemence, followed by a vigorous shaking of the head just behind and out of Bodger's field of sight.

"Maxwell Tree," corrected Doyle with the first name that leapt to mind.

"Bodger Nuggins, former light-heavyweight champion of New South Wales and Oceania," said the boxer redundantly, still holding Doyle's hand in both of his and moving it semi-circularly. "Call me Bodger."

"Thank you, Bodger."

Bodger's eyes were slightly askew, the one on the right cheating in as if it secretly desired a better look at the incredible nose plateau prominent to the south.

"That's what folks who knows the Bodger calls him. Calls him Bodger. Rhymes with Dodger," Bodger elaborated cooperatively.

"Yes. It does at that," said Doyle, trying gently to liberate his hand.

"Cedric," said Bodger mysteriously.

"Cedric who?"

"That's me Christian name. Me muther named me Cedric."

"After ... ?" offered Doyle, trying to help him to his anecdote's destination in the hopes of effecting a release from Bodger's determined grasp.

"After I was bomed," said Bodger, simian brow creased with the profundity of a Mandarin court astrologer.

"Tell the gentTman wot you told me, Bodger," prompted Barry, and then whispered to Doyle: "He's a coupl'a sheep short in the top paddock."

Doyle nodded. Bodger's facial contortions redoubled. His eyebrows rode out the effort like a mechanical wave machine in a stormy melodrama.

"Wot you told me about Mr. Lansdown Dilks," Barry

added.

"Ow, right! Bugger!" Thwap! Bodger punched himself in the nose. Judging by its pancaked state, it had to be a habitual response, whether an aid to jog the memory or stem corrective to the stubborn gears of what remained of his mind it was difficult to say. "Lansdown Dilks! Balls! Bodger Nugs, wot a muffer!" And he punched himself a second time.

"Here, here—perfectly all right, go easy now, Bodger," said Doyle. If the man was indeed a former champion, he didn't want a knockout self-administered before beginning his interrogation.

"Right," said Bodger, finding a sudden forgiveness for himself.

"Did you know a Mr. Lansdown Dilks?" asked Doyle.

"Ahh. There's a story goes with this," Bodger said, intimating that an imperishable drama loomed just around the comer. "Let's see... ."

Being somewhat more familiar with his narrative technique, Barry slipped a pound note into Bodger's mitt.

"Right," said Bodger, his pump primed. "I come from Queensland, see. Down under. Brisbane, to be exactical. Across the deep and briny."

"Yes," said Doyle. "I do follow you: You're from Australia."

Bodger snapped his fingers, pointed at Doyle, and winked broadly, as if he'd just discovered they were brothers in the same secret lodge. "Eggzac'ly!"

"We understand each other. Do go on, Bodger."

"Right. Fisticuffs, that's my nut, see. Bloodsport. A man wants to strut his stuff among men, let 'im do it wit' his hands as naked as a newborn babe, that's what I say. Done all right by Bodger Nuggins, hadn't it? Champeen of New South Wales and Oceania, light heavyweight."

By way of demonstrating his credentials, as boxers are compulsively wont to do, Bodger threw a punch at Doyle's midsection, pulling it an inch away from sending him to his knees in search of oxygen.

"Mind you," Bodger went on, "this Marquis of Queens-berry ponce, he'd like to put dresses on us bare knucklers, wouldn't he, have us dance about and slap each other with lit'le tea gloves." Unable to resist an additional compulsion to editorialize, Bodger contemptuously hawked a plug of tired tobacco to the floor. "The old ponce wants to watch lit'le girlies fight, why don't he go to St. Edna's Academy for Women and Ponces?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Doyle. "Regarding Mr. Lansdown Dilks—"

"I'm gettin' 'ere," said Bodger, flexing his muscles ominously. "So the Bodger takes his leave from his old Homestead to have a go in the fight game on this side of the puddle. England. By boat it was. Uh ..."

"The pursuit of your boxing career brought you to London," said Doyle.

"Promised the Bodger a bash at the heavyweight title, these blokes did, but first they wants Bodgkins to fight this other bouff head. You know, like a ..." He went blank. Frozen as if he'd spilled sand in his gears.

"A tune-up fight," said Barry, after a respectful silence.

"Right," said Bodger, thwacking himself in the face again and jolting his mental machinery free from its rut. "Like a tune-up fight. Some drongo. Want to see what Bodger's made of 'fore they puts their precious title on the line. So the Bodger says to them, wot's fair is fair. Never let it be said Champeen Nuggins is a piker: Old Bodger puts on a show, he does, when some right gents lays out a few sponduliacks to catch my action."

"So you had this tune-up fight," said Doyle.

Bodger nodded and squiffed out another squirt of hot juice. "First thing, they tells me the tune-up's not to take place in your stadium, your gamin' hall, or even in your ring, as such. What they do is, see, they takes me to this warehouse like, down by the ribber."

"This was not a legally sanctioned bout," said Doyle, feeling more and more like an interpreter for some idiot prince.

"Not the full quid, no," said Bodger, seeming to comprehend. "But truff be known, we bare knucklers are not unfamiliar wit' the procedure."

"So I take it that once you reached the wharf, these gentlemen introduced you to your opponent," said Doyle patiently.

"Some ponce," snarled Bodger. "Soft. Face like a stunned mullet. Like he's never tussled wit' the gloves off in his life. So we're off: The ponce won't mangle much, but 'e won't lie down neither. No technical know-how. Bodger blinds him with science. Sixty-five rounds we go: His face is a mask of claret. Ask me, his corner should'a skied the towel long about fifty. But it's not my fate they should take the advice of Bodger, was it?"

"Apparently not, no."

"And now we comes to round sixty-sixth. That's why to this day sixty-six is the Bodger's unlucky number."

Bodger took Doyle by his lapels and pulled him closer as his deathless tale built to its thrilling climax. If I hadn't already shaved my mustache, thought Doyle, Bodger's breath would have torched it right off.

"We comes out and touches fives, good sportsman that we were. Then Bodger greets him with a wicked-fair left hook to the liver. The drongo doubles down. Then the Bodger straightens his starch with a Bodger special: an uppercut to the nozz, a cracklin' good judy settin' him up for the bone-crushin', death-deliverin' grand finale Bodgerific combination to the point of his pozzy that send the wowser airborne. And by the time his head hits the ground, the spirit of man has fled his poncey body."

"He was dead," said Doyle, as agreeably as possible.

"Dead as a duck in a thunderstorm," said Bodger, still holding Doyle close enough to count his back teeth.

"How unfortunate."

"Not for the ponce; he's gone to his reward, 'adn't he? After all that muckabout, it's Bodger who'll have the hard rain fall. In comes the coppers. Manslaughter, they says. Bare knuckles and all, no Marquis of Queensberry, they says. Trial by jury. Fifteen years' hard labor. Hello, Newgate Prison; bye-bye Bodger."

Bodger released Doyle and sent a stream of variegated brown glop ten feet into the air, rattling over the edge of a spittoon in the corner.

"Where I take it," said Doyle, rearranging his clothes, "you at long last make the acquaintance of Mr. Lansdown Dilks."

"Mr. Lansdown Dilks. A hard moke in his physicaliosity, not all that dif'ernt than the Nugger man hisself."

"Somewhat Bodgeresque, you might say," said Doyle.

"A most Bodgerlike top dog indeed," confirmed Bodger. ''All very fine and large to 'ave one such feller in a given coop-up. 'Sonly nature's way. Put two such specimens in the same yard, and wot you's got there is one rumbustrious ruck-us."

"So you quarreled, the two of you, is that what you're saying, Bodger?" said Doyle, with another stab at translation.

"Most violent and frequently," said Bodger, cracking his knuckles: They reported like a rifle volley. "And neither one of these two smug pups ever able to best the better of the other. The first time, Bodgie's not ashamed to say, that the Nuggins ever met his match on either side of the ropes."

"And so you served your time together until the execution of Dilks's sentence."

Bodger's eyebrows knit together again. "Execution."

"Last February. When Dilks passed on."

Bodger's mystification deepened. "Passed on."

"Died. Gone west. Slipped the cable. Hung by the neck," said Doyle, finally losing his patience. "And flights of angels sing him to his rest. Do you mean to say this represents some sort of news to you, Bodger?"

"Not half. Dilksie looked in the pink last time the Bodger clapped eyes on him."

"And when was that, pray?"

"When we gots off the train together—"

"Surely you're mistaken," said Doyle.

"If Bodger means off the train, that's what he'd say, idn't it?" said Bodger, giving vent to no small irritation. "Off the train is what the Bodger means, and off the train is wots 'e's sayin'."

Doyle and Barry exchanged a quizzical look. Barry shrugged: This was fresh embroidery on the story for him as well. "Off the train where?"

"Up north. Yorkshire, like."

"When was this?"

"So happens the Bodger remembers the exactical date, seeing as how it was 'is own bin'day: March the fourth."

"March the fourth of last year?" Doyle was growing more confused with every word the man uttered.

"Say, wot are you, a ponce?"

"Bodger, forgive my thickness," said Doyle. "Are you telling me that you and Dilks took a train to Yorkshire a month after he swung and years before your sentence was due to expire, on March the fourth of last year?"

"Right. Lansdown and me and the others wot signed on."

"Signed on how?"

"Wit' the bloke wot come round the prison."

"Newgate Prison?"

"You catch on fast, don'tcha mate?"

"Please, I'm doing my best to understand: What man was this?"

"Don' know his name. Din't give it, did he?"

"Can you describe him?"

Bodger rolled his eyes skyward. "Beard. Glasses. Looked like a ponce."

"All right, Bodger, what did this gentleman who came around give you to understand you were signing on to do?"

"I can tell you this: He didn't tell us nuffin' 'bout what went on in that bleedin' biscuit factory. No, sir. That's why I run off like I did. And don't think they're not after me for it neither—"

The air was shattered by a piercing chorus of police whistles.

"Coppers!"

The alarm went up, and the men in the dice game scattered. Before Doyle could react, Bodger turned tail and sprinted for the dressing room, the front doors burst open and a squadron of bobbies, batons raised, rushed into the gym. Another phalanx burst through the back exit, and the battle was joined, a half-dozen of them occupied solely with Bodger, whose prowess did not by its demonstration seem in ite least bit overstated. Barry took Doyle's arm, holding him in place.

"It'll go better for us if we don't run, gov," he shouted over the din.

"'But Bodger was just about to tell us—"

"No worries; chances are ripe we'll be sharing a cell soon enough."

"But we're not here to play dice."

"Try telling the grasshoppers that. Rum go, but there it is."

Two policemen were moving toward them. Barry put his hands on top of his cap and advised Doyle to do the same. Doyle instead began walking lively toward the officers.

"Now see here," asserted Doyle, "I'm a doctor!"

"And I'm queen of the May," said the bobby.

The first blow caught Doyle along the side of the head.

Barry's concerned face was the first sight that greeted Doyle when he opened his eyes.

"Feelin' a bit wonky, guv?" asked Barry.

"Where are we?"

"The clink. Gaol. Pentonville, I fink." Doyle tried to sit up, and his head spun like a multicolored pinwheel.

"Easy on, guv," said Barry. "Quite the cue ball you're cultivatin' there."

Doyle raised a hand to the blood-pounding site on his forehead and found a swollen goose egg residing there. "What happened?"

"You missed the ride in the Black Maria. Bein' hauled into lockup was nuffink special. Been ten minutes additional since I set you on this bench."

As his vision stabilized, Doyle perceived they were in a large common holding cell, shared by a milling mix of roughnecks and reprobates, many of whom he recognized from the gymnasium dice game. The room was filthy and reeked to high heaven, a quality, traceable to the common latrine adorning one wall. Roaches the size of thumbs scuttled fearlessly around the margins and over the boots of men who seemed all too accustomed to their company.

"Ever been between the bars before, guv?"

"Never."

Barry regarded him sympathetically. "Not much to recommend it."

Doyle searched the faces roaming the cell. "Where's Bodger?"

"Bodger Nuggins is not among our numbers," said Barry.

"Was he in the Black Maria?"

"I would have to answer in the negative."

"Did you see him escape the gym?"

"No."

Doyle gingerly probed his throbbing head. "What have they charged us with?"

"Charged us? Nuffink'."

"They can't very well hold us here if they don't charge us with a crime."

"This is your first time, idn't it?" asked Barry with a subtle

smile.

"But this is all a dreadful mistake. Tell them we demand to see a barrister," said Doyle, with somewhat hollow conviction. "We have our rights, after all."

"Well . . . suppose there's a first time for everything," Barry replied, trying to make a good show of mulling it over.

Doyle studied him: The irony in Barry's musing quickly communicated the utter futility of pursuing what Doyle had assumed to be the ordinary channels. Instead, Doyle searched his pockets and fished out his physician's prescription notepad; the sight of the Rx gave him a jolt, as if he'd uncovered a relic of some long-forgotten civilization.

"Barry, can you secure me something to write with?"

Barry nodded and sidled over into the flow of convicts. He returned minutes later with a scrounged nub of a pencil. Doyle took it and scrawled out a hasty message.

"Now we're going to need some money," said Doyle.

"How much?"

"How much can you manage?"

Barry sighed heavily. "Stand over here, please, guv."

Doyle stood and shielded Barry from the rest of the room as he turned to the wall, unbuttoned a hidden flap on the in-side of his waistcoat, and pulled out a bulging roll of five-pound notes. "Will this do?"

"Just one, I think, will be more than sufficient," said Doyle, trying to conceal his amazement.

Barry peeled one note off and replaced the rest. Doyle took the note from him and tore it neatly in half.

"Cor ... wot'zat then?" gasped Barry.

"Do you know an officer here you can trust?"

"There's a contradiction in terms—" Let me rephrase that: Do you know one who can be relied upon to do a job for money?"

Barry looked out at the guards patrolling the corridor. "Could do."

Doyle folded the written note around half the bill and handed it to him. "Half now, the rest when we get word the message's been received."

Give it a go," said Barry, sneaking a look at the note as he moved toward the bars. He couldn't help but notice the note was addressed to Inspector Claude Leboux.

Two hours later, Doyle was summarily escorted without

explanation to a small room at Pentonville set aside for ques-

tioning of suspects. Minutes afterward, Leboux appeared alone, his mustache fairly bristling with anger. He closed the door and stared at Doyle.

"Hello, Claude."

"Corralled at a dice game, Arthur? I don't recall gambling as a vice you were given to indulge."

"I wasn't there to gamble, Claude, This is a clear case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Leboux sat opposite to Doyle, folded his arms, splayed out his feet, and toyed with one waxed end of his mustache while he waited for the next line of questions to coalesce in his mind. Trying to heed Sparks's repeated advice about mistrusting the police, Doyle weighed how much he needed to divulge in order to secure his release, without drawing down the unwelcome attention of Leboux's superiors.

"You look like a valet," Leboux finally said.

"There have been repeated attempts on my life by the identical parties who tried the other day. This is by way of avoiding detection."

"Why haven't you come to me?"

"I've been out of the city since you last saw me," said Doyle, thankful to employ some small grain of truth. "Leaving London seemed the safest course."

"Was it?"

"No, as it happens. These assailants have pursued me relentlessly."

"When did you return, Arthur?"

"Last night."

"Have you been to your flat?"

Petrovitch, thought Doyle; he knows about Petrovitch. "I haven't, Claude. I wasn't at all sure it would be safe." Doyle waited, summoning the bland countenance he employed in the presence of patients who had ventured beyond hope of recovery but weren't up to receiving the news.

"Your building was burned down," Leboux finally said.

"My flat?"

"A total loss, I'm afraid."

Doyle shook his head. Fire again. Not hard to reason who's responsible for that, thought Doyle. My flat gone. It wasn't the thought of losing his possessions that troubled him so— he'd considered those lost already. Now not only all evidence of Petrovitch's murder but the outrage they had visited to his

rooms as well was gone forever. A hot coil of anger went red inside him.

"Claude, I want to ask you something," said Doyle. "In your capacity as inspector."

"All right""

"Are you at all familiar with the name . . . Alexander Sparks?"'

Leboux looked up at the ceiling and squinted. After a moment, he shook his head slightly and took out a notepad and pencil. "Let's have it again." Doyle spelled it for him.

"That's the man who's after me. The one you're looking for. The man responsible for these crimes and perhaps a great many others as well."

"And what leads you to believe this is the man?"

"I've spied him pursuing me now on three different occasions."

"What's his appearance?"

"I've never seen his face. He's given to wearing black. And a cape, a black cape."

"Black cape ... what places is he known to frequent?"

"No one seems to know."

"Acquaintances?"

Doyle shrugged.

"Other recent offenses?"

"Sorry."

Leboux's cheeks filled with color. "Do you happen to know his hat size?"

Doyle leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You'll have to forgive my vagueness, Claude. He's an elusive figure, but there's a better than even chance this man is nothing less than criminal mastermind of the entire London underworld."

Leboux shut his notebook and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Arthur," Leboux said, measuring his words like a printer. "You're a doctor. Well on your way to becoming a pillar of our community. I say this to you as a friend: You are not on the straight and narrow to reaching that post by running, around England dressed like a butler going on about plots to murder you in the night by mysterious kingpins of crime."

"You don't believe me. You don't believe I've been under attack at all."

"I believe that you believe that you have been—"

"What about what I found on the floorboards at Thirteen Cheshire Street?"

"Yes. I had that substance analyzed by our chemist—"

"You can't tell me that wasn't blood, Claude."

"That it is. It does appear that you did in fact witness a murder."

"Just as I told you—"

"The murder of a large hog."

There was silence. Leboux leaned forward. "It was pig's blood, Arthur."

"Pig's blood? That's not possible."

"Perhaps someone got carried away caning the Sunday roast," said Leboux. "A bit on the rare side for pork, if you ask me."

What did this mean? Doyle raised a hand to his throbbing head.

"You could do with a nice slab of rare meat about now for that knot on your bean," said Leboux.

"Forgive me, Claude, I'm a trifle confused. It's been a very trying few days."

"I don't doubt that."

Leboux folded his arms and gave him a look that was more parts police inspector than trusted friend. Feeling the leverage of Leboux's scrutiny, Doyle was prompted out onto an even less sturdy part of the limb to which he was so precariously clinging.

"John Sparks," he said, almost a whisper.

"Excuse me?"

"John Sparks."

"Any relation to the other gentleman?"

"Brother."

"What about John Sparks, Arthur?"

"Does the name ring a bell?"

Leboux paused. "Perhaps."

"He tells me he's in the service of the Queen," whispered Doyle.

That brought Leboux to a momentary halt. "What am I to do with this piece of information?"

"Perhaps you could verify it."

"What else can you tell me about John Sparks, Arthur?"

Leboux asked quietly, as close as he had come to an open appeal for Doyle's cooperation.

Doyle hesitated. "That's all I know."

They looked at each other. Doyle could feel bis bond with Leboux stretch to its breaking point; for a long moment there was no telling whether it would hold. Finally, Leboux flipped open his notebook, wrote down Sparks's name, closed the book, and rose.

"My strong advice to you is stay in London," said Leboux.

"Am I free to go then?"

"Yes. I need to know how to reach you."

"Leave word at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I'll make a point of checking there on a daily basis."

"See that you do." Leboux stopped to offer a more considered opinion. "I don't think gambling is at the heart of your difficulty, Arthur; I don't think you're particularly well. If I were you, I would seek out the opinion of a doctor. Perhaps even the services of an alienist."

Fine, thought Doyle, he doesn't think I'm a criminal, he just thinks I'm mad.

"Your concern is not unappreciated," said Doyle humbly, trying not to offend.

Leboux opened the door and hesitated, without looking back. "Do you need a place to stay?"

"I'll manage. Thank you for asking."

Leboux nodded and started out.

"One more name, Claude," said Doyle. "A Mr. Bodger Nuggins."

"Bodger Nuggins?"

"He's a prizefighter. He was at the dice game but apparently wasn't apprehended along with—"

"What about Bodger Nuggins?"

"I have it on good authority the man's an escaped convict from Newgate."

"Not anymore he isn't," said Leboux.

"Sorry? I don't follow."

"We pulled Mr. Bodger Nuggins from the Thames about an hour ago."

"Drowned?"

"His throat was slashed. Like he'd been attacked by an animal."

chapter thirteen ANCIENT ARTIFACTS

IT WAS A LONG WALK FROM PeNTOiNVILLE PRISON TO THE CEN-

ter of London for a man with no coins in his pocket or food in his belly. He hadn't judged it prudent to press Leboux for Barry's release; he was still inside Pentonville and might be for some time. Prison held no surprises for Barry, and fewer now for Doyle. He had already missed his noon rendezvous with Sparks at Hatchard's Bookshop, and he dared not hire a hansom without the surety he could pay for its services at journey's end. Now that hope was gone. The road was muddy and slow going, passing wheels routinely baptizing him with spume. From their sheltered perches, the carriage trade stared down at him with suspicion, disdain, or, worse yet, looked through him as if he were a pane of glass. Doyle experienced a surge of kinship for the tramp's disenfranchisement from the propriety and narrow-mindedness of genteel city life. Riding high in their private coaches from one privileged location to the next, an endless roundelay of social engagements and leisurely luncheons and shopping and smug preoccupation with their beastly children, these upright citizens seemed a species of life as foreign to him as the electric eel. Doyle was stunned to discover he had more innate sympathy for Barry the East End burglar than for these bourgeoisie parading past him on the street. But weren't these prosperous gentlefolk the highest purpose of a civilized society, a permanent, expanding middle class able to enjoy the products of society's labors in safety and freedom? Weren't they the audience he himself aspired so strenuously to entertain, deepening their appreciation of the human condition by exposure to his craft? How close-minded they were! How effortlessly led to accept the values of school, church, or institution. The thought of exerting himself to touch the hearts of these unfeeling brutes in their hermetic carriages suddenly felt empty and profitless as their supercilious pursuit of a happy, carefree life.

Industrialized society demands a terrible tribute from its parishioners, thought Doyle. Did any of us realize how few of our ideas or feelings were truly, originally, our own? No, or how could we go on day after day, enacting the same lifeless rituals, repeating the same deadening actions, if we acknowledged their lack of meaning? So much of our ability to survive is predicated on the conscious limiting of our mind and senses. We're wearing blinders like the swaybacked dray pulling the beer wagon, peering out at the world through a spyglass, peripheral vision denied, excluded, and our choice in the matter removed because we've been taught from birth that such narrowing is compulsory. Because to remove the lens from our eye is to be confronted with the pain and anguish and sorrow we've shunted so diligently away from view. But the misery around us remains regardless, constant, immutable, a legless beggar by the side of the road. Suffering must be the inevitable tariff exacted from spirit for residing in human form. No wonder tragedy wields the only hammer stout enough to crack the resilient bubble of complacency we construct around our petty lives, shrouding our gaze from the furies that patrol the darker corridors of the night. War, famine, mass disaster. That's what it takes to wake us from this sleep. Terror and the sudden severing from everything familiar turns the trick quite neatly, too, I can attest to that, thought Doyle. The scales have surely been ripped from my eyes.

Was such a loss so catastrophic? Doyle turned the question over more thoroughly than a roasting game bird. He might be hungry now, but he knew full well starvation was not to be his fate; there would be another meal somewhere soon along the way, and hunger would only make it taste the sweeter. He had lost his home and possessions, but there was another home to be made, other possessions to replace what had been taken. He had his wits, his strength, his relative youth, good boots, the clothes on his back, and the courage of his convictions. He had adversity, and an imposing adversary, against which to measure his own worth, and in Jack Sparks a comrade-in-arms to stand beside and face this sea of troubles with together. What more did he require?

If one could only remain as aware as I am in this moment, thought Doyle; had he fortuitously stumbled onto the secret of peace of mind? Here it was then: The circumstances of a life must not dictate our terms of living it; that decision resides only in one's reaction to circumstance. And those reactions must be susceptible to our control. The mind, it all began in the mind! How blindingly simple! It bolstered him with a feeling of freedom as expansive as he could ever recall. His step quickened as his spirits soared. The open road ahead was an invitation to discovery, not disaster. He would embrace his hardships, forge ahead and brave the dangers in his path with equanimity and fortitude. Damn the Dark Brotherhood! Let this degenerate Alexander Sparks do his worst! He would consign them all to the same damnation they sought to visit on the earth!

A speeding wagon hit a deep puddle, and a heavy shower soaked Doyle through to the skin. Mud glopped from his forehead in clots. Water ran down his back and into his boots. A sudden gust of wind froze his bones to the marrow. It started to rain, sheets of the stuff, stinging like frozen bees. He sneezed. His newfound resolve fled before him like a flock of starlings.

"I'm in hell!" he shouted miserably.

A cab pulled up beside him. Larry sat in the driver's seat. Sparks threw open the passenger door.

"Come along, Doyle, you'll catch your death out here," he said.

Salvation!

Larry poured a kettle of steaming hot water into the basin where Doyle was soaking his feet. He sat wrapped in a blanket, shivering wildly, a hot plaster planted on his forehead. Larry replaced the kettle on top of the coal fire, on the screen of which Doyle's clothes lay drying in their dingy Holborn hotel room whose meager trappings rendered the memory of the Hotel Melwyn on par with the Savoy.

"Not a first-rate idea, Doyle, seeking out Inspector Leboux. For the second time," said Sparks, stretched out on the room's only sofa, idly forming a cat's cradle from a length of yarn.

"I was in prison. In possession of what I believed to be in-

formation vital to our cause. We had a noon appointment. I saw it as my foremost obligation to obtain the quickest possible release," said Doyle testily, fighting off the ague, in a completely foul humor.

"We would have gotten you out soon enough."

"Gotten me out how?—achoo!"

"Bless you. They know we're back in London now," said Sparks, weaving around the yarn, ignoring Doyle's question. "A considerable disadvantage. We'll be forced to move much more rapidly than I'd hoped we'd have to."

"And just how do they know we're back in London? I trust Leboux implicitly, and I daresay I know him a good sight better than I know you."

"Doyle, you hurt my feelings, you really do," said Sparks, holding out the cat's cradle to solicit the use of Doyle's hands.

Doyle reluctantly thrust his hands out, and Sparks loomed it expertly around his fingers. "How could they possibly know, Jack?"