The List Of Seven

Larry whipped the horse and drove the hansom due east on Oxford to an address on Montague, directly across from the British Museum: number 26, a whitewashed, well-kept, but otherwise nondescript Georgian town house. The carriage was stabled in the rear, they entered, and Doyle followed Larry up a narrow flight of stairs.

"Come in, Larry, and bring Dr. Doyle with you," Sparks shouted through the door before they'd even knocked.

They entered. Sparks was nowhere to be seen, the room's only human presence a ruddy-cheeked, middle-aged, roly-poly Presbyterian clergyman. He was seated on a high stool, conducting an experiment at a long chemistry bench covered with a mystifying array of apparatus.

"Charcoal dust on your fingers; you've something interesting to tell me," said Sparks's voice out of the minister's mouth.

If one wasn't aware of his genius for disguise, thought

Doyle, the only possible explanation would be demonic possession. He replayed for Sparks his visit to Spivey Quince.

"Eminently worth investigating," said Sparks.

Doyle squelched a prideful impulse to shame Larry with a look and glanced around the room. Shades were drawn— Doyle doubted they were ever opened, so close and musky was the air—and every inch of available wall lined with bulging bookshelves. A stack of index cabinets filled one corner. Above them a bull's-eye target of thatched straw with the let-ters VR spelled out in bullet holes. Victoria Regina. A strange way for Sparks to demonstrate devotion, but a sort of tribute nonetheless. The largest map of London Doyle had ever seen, studded with legions of red- and blue-headed pins, consumed the wall behind the chemistry bench.

"What do the pins signify?" asked Doyle.

"Evil," said Sparks. "Patterns. Criminals are generally thickheaded and inclined to ritualize their lives. The higher the intelligence, the less predictable the behavior."

"The devil's chessboard," said Larry. "That's what we calls it."

A tall glass-front highboy standing in the opposite corner caught Doyle's eye. It displayed a diverse collection of an-tique or exotic weaponry, from primitive Stone Age daggers to flintlock muskets to a cluster of octagonal silver stars.

"See anything in there that you'd prefer to your revolver?" asked Sparks.

"I prefer the predictable," said Doyle. "What are these lit-tle silver gewgaws?"

Shinzaku. Japanese throwing stars. Absolutely deadly. Kill within seconds."

Doyle opened the cabinet and picked out one of the gad-gets: expertly crafted from high-tensile steel, edges serrated lik.e fishhooks that were thin and viciously sharp. It sat as lightly in the hand as an oyster cracker.

I must say, Jack, wicked as it feels to the touch, it doesn't look all that dangerous," said Doyle. Of course you have to dip them in poison first." "Ahh."

"Care to try a few? Terribly easy to conceal. You just have be careful not to prick yourself with them."

"Thanks just the same," said Doyle, gingerly replacing the star.

"I've collected these lovelies around the world. If man could apply half the ingenuity he's exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there's no limit to what he might yet accomplish."

"May be 'ope for the rotter yet," said Larry, sitting on a corner of the bench, rolling a cigarette.

"What's in the filing cabinets?" asked Doyle.

"It's plain to see my secrets aren't safe for a moment with you in the room," said Sparks, with a wink at Lam1.

"That's the Brain," said Larry.

"The Brain?"

"Inside that cabinet is a painstakingly detailed compendium of every known criminal in London," said Sparks.

"Their criminal records?"

"And a great deal more. Age, date, and place of birth, family history, schooling and service records; recognized methods of operation, known confederates, cell mates, bed mates, and habitats; physical description, aliases, arrests, convictions, and time served," said Sparks, without interrupting his chemistry experiment. "You will not find a more encyclopedic assemblage of information useful to the tracking and apprehension of felons in the Scotland Yard or, I daresay, any other police department the world over."

"Surely the police must have something similar?"

"They haven't thought of it yet. Fighting crime is both an art and a science. They still treat it like a factory job. Go on, have a look."

Doyle randomly pulled open one of twelve drawers; it was lined with rows of alphabetically arranged index cards. Picking a card from the drawer, Doyle was surprised to see it was covered with a handwritten scrawl of what appeared to be incomprehensible gibberish.

"But how can you read this?" asked Doyle.

"Information as sensitive as this by rights has to be rendered in code. Wouldn't want this particular body of knowledge falling into the wrong hands, would we?"

Doyle studied the card from every angle. The method of encrypting went far beyond the limits of any code he'd ever attempted to decipher.

"I take it the encoding is of your own invention," said Doyle.

"A random amalgam of mathematical formula, Urdu, Sanskrit, and an obscure variation of the Finno-Ugric root language."

"So this is all really quite useless to anyone but yourself."

"That is the point. Doyle. It's not a lending library."

"What does this say?" asked Doyle, holding up the card for Sparks to see.

"Jimmy Malone. Born Dublin, 1855. No education. Fifth son of five: father a miner, mother a char. Wanted in Ireland for assault and highway robbery. Served local apprenticeship with brothers in a roving gang, the Rosties and Fins, County Cork. Emigrated to Britain 1876. First arrest London; assault, January 1878. Served two years, six months Newgate. Came out a hardened criminal, began work as a free-lance stickup. Favors the spiked cudgel. Suspect in at least one unsolved murder. Last-known residence: East End, Adler Street off Greenfield Road. Five-eight, twelve stone, green eyes, thinning sandy hair, favors a wispy goatee. Vices: gambling, drinking, and prostitutes—in other words, the lot. Also known as Jimmy Muldoon or Jimmy the Hook—"

"I get the idea," said Doyle, carefully replacing the card in the file.

"That Jimmy," chuckled Larry, shaking his head. "What a silly prawn."

"Ever worry you'll wake up one day and find you've forgotten the key to translating all this?"

"Should anything untoward happen to me, the decoding formula is in a safe-deposit at Lloyd's of London, along with instructions to deliver the archives to the police," said Sparks, pouring a beaker of smoking substance into a larger container. "Not that they'll ever make good use of it."

"Are you at all concerned someone might break in here and steal it nonetheless?"

"Open that door," said Sparks, hands full, nodding toward the opposite door.

"What do you mean?"

"Just open it."

"This one here?"

"That's right," said Sparks. "Give it a go."

Doyle shrugged, grabbed the knob, and pulled. In the instant before he slammed the door, Doyle was overwhelmed by an impression of a pair of crazed, red-rimmed eyes, a slathering tongue, and huge canine teeth leaping for his throat.

"Good Christ!" said Doyle, his back pressed against the door, trying to hold back whatever beast from hell lurked on the other side. To add to his aggravation, Larry and Sparks were having a good laugh at his expense.

"If you could see your face," said Larry, holding his sides and whooping with delight.

"What the devil was that?" demanded Doyle.

"The answer to your question," said Sparks. He put two fingers in his mouth and gave two piercing whistles. "You can open the door now."

"I don't think."

"Go on, man, I've given the signal, I assure you, he's perfectly harmless."

Doyle hesitantly moved away from the door, cracked it open, and concealed himself behind it as a colossal mass of dappled black-and-white canine muscle squeezed through the gap. The dog had a head as big as a melon, floppy ears, and a long, solid snout. Around its neck was a studded leather collar. It paused in the doorway and looked to Sparks for instruction.

"Good boy, Zeus," said Sparks. "Say hello to Dr. Doyle."

Zeus obediently sniffed Doyle out in his hiding place around the corner of the door, sat down before him, his head well above the level of Doyle's waist, looked up at him with impossibly alert and intelligent eyes, and offered a hand in greeting.

"Go on, Doc," urged Larry, "he'll get testy if you refuse the hand of friendship."

Doyle took and shook the dog's extended paw. Thus satisfied, Zeus lowered his paw and looked back at Sparks.

"Now that you've been properly introduced, why don't you give Doyle a kiss, Zeus."

"That really won't be necessary, Jack—"

But Zeus had already reared up on his hind legs, perfectly balanced, and looked Doyle straight in the eye. He leaned forward with his paws on Doyle's shoulders and pinned him

gently to the wall. Then, tail wagging, out came his tongue for an affectionate lashing of Doyle's cheeks and ears.

"Good boykins, Zeus," said Doyle uncertainly. "There's a good bowser-boy. Good doggie. Good doggiekins."

"Wouldn't talk to him like that, Doc," cautioned Larry. "Complete sentences, proper grammar; otherwise he'll fink you're patronizin' him."

"Can't have that, can we?" said Doyle. "That's quite enough now, Zeus."

With uncanny comprehension, Zeus lowered himself, resumed his place at Doyle's feet, and looked back at Sparks.

"As you can imagine, with Zeus in constant attendance, any concern one might have about the inviolability of the fiat is completely unfounded," said Sparks, ending his experiment with a flourish. He poured the resulting contents down a funnel into three vials and set them to cool in a rack.

He was a handsome and impressive animal for all that, thought Doyle, reaching down to give Zeus a scratch behind the ears.

"Remarkable creature, the dog," said Sparks. "No other animal on earth so willingly gives up his freedom to serve man, a devotion unapproached by the hypocritical custodians of our so-called human faiths."

"Helps if you feed them," said Doyle.

"We feed our vicars and our bishops, too. I've never known one to give his life to save another."

Doyle nodded. Looking around, he was struck by the room's lack of amenities. There wasn't even another place to sit besides the stool at the bench. "Is this your home, Jack?"

Sparks wiped his hands on a towel and began to peel off the applied features of his false identity, setting a brace of white eyebrows down on the table. "I do on occasion sleep here and, as you've surmised, use it as a base of operations. The considered answer is, I regard myself a citizen of the vorld; consequently I'm at home wherever I find myself, therefore I have no home, per se. I have had none since my brother reduced the one place I ever called home to ashes. Is -at a satisfactory answer?"

"Quite."

"Good." Sparks removed the cleric's collar, unfastened his plain coat, and extracted from underneath it the stitched padding that had shaped his ample stomach. "If you're at all curious about where this company of characters issue forth. follow me."

Doyle stepped after Sparks as he moved into the room where Zeus had been quartered. The walls in this cramped chamber were lined with racks supporting an array of costumes imaginative enough to keep the Follies in business for a year. A makeup table ringed with lights sported every conceivable paint pot and brush of the cosmetic arts. A jury of featureless wooden heads wearing a rainbow of wigs and facial hair presided over one corner. There were stacks of hat-boxes, drawers of cataloged accessories, wallets with platoons of forged identities, and an armory' of padding to form any desired body shape. A sewing machine, bolts of fabric, and a tailor's dummy—bearing a half-completed brass-buttoned tunic of an officer in the Royal Fusiliers—suggested this vast wardrobe originated from strictly local labor. Sparks could enter this room and emerge as virtually any other man, or woman, for that matter, in the city of London.

"You've made all this yourself?" asked Doyle.

"Not all my seasons in the theatrical trade were spent in wanton dissipation," said Sparks, hanging up his parson's jacket. "Excuse me a moment, would you, Doyle, while I become myself again."

Doyle walked back to the other room, where Larry was feeding Zeus a pocketful of soup bones, which he crunched and cracked delightedly.

"Amazing," said Doyle.

"Be honored if I was you, guv. First time I've ever known his nibs to bring an outsider here. Strictly off-limits, it is, and for good reason."

"Forgive my ignorance, Larry, but is Jack well known in London?"

Larry took a thoughtful pull of his cigarette. "To answer, there's three sorts of folk wot fall under different classifizations. There's folks wot never hear of Jack and never had no call to—your majority of Londontowners, decent sorts going 'bout their business who don't know nowt about that hidden underbelly called the world of crime. Second lot's a most fortunate few who's experienced firsthand the benefit of Mr. Jack working on their behalf—a limited number, seeing as how his efforts been spent in secret gov'ment service but has on occasion been known to spill over into the so-called private sector. Then there's a third category of your garden-variety crook, bandit, twister, and scoundrel, who by virtue of their vice has the greatest familiarity with Mr. S—and his name tolls in their hearts the bells of doom. This bunch is far more numerous and career-minded than the other two categories would like to believe. Also the type to which you, in your life as a respectable physician, to your credit, would be the least familiar. So I can well understand your asking."

Larry gave the last of the bones to Zeus and scruffed him under the chin.

"Happens to be the category to which brother Barry and I once accounted ourselves, and not so long ago. Nothing to be particular proud of, but there it is."

"How did you come to meet Jack, Larry? If I may ask."

"Yes, you may, sir. And may I take this opportunity to say it's one of the great pleasures of the work we do to find myself in the acquaintanceship of such a fine, upstanding gentleman as yourself."

Doyle tried to wave off the compliment.

"I mean it serious true, sir. The only chance I might otherwise had of meeting you face-to-face would've been by your unexpectedly arrivin' home in the midst of a misguided attempt on my part to burgle you, or my seekin' emergency medical for injury taken during the commission of a similar crime. We was sorry lads, Barry and I, and no blame to attach to none but ourselves for it. Our Dad was a good, hard-workin' railroad man who provided for us best he could. Even with him alone as he was, his worst was a damn sight better than most from what I've seen. It was the strain of a twin birth, see. Our Mum was of such a delicate nature, so he told us—here, I got a picture of her."

Larry took a cameo from his vest and opened the clasp. A photograph of a young woman rested inside: close, blurry, her hair in a fashion twenty years out of date. Attractive in an unremarkable shopgirl way, but even the shabby, faded quality of the picture couldn't obscure the same light dancing in the eyes that so distinguished her two sons.

"She's very pretty," said Doyle.

"Her name was Louisa. Louisa May. That was their honeymoon: a day and two nights in Brighton. Dad had that picture taken on the pier." Larry closed and repocketed the locket. "Louisa May was seventeen. Along Barry and I come to spoil the party later that same year."

"You can't blame yourself for that."

"You wonder about such things. All I can muster up is that Barry and me, we had some unstoppable reason to be bom into this life together that was not to be denied. Destiny. I'm tempted to call it. Cost us our Mum, but life is hard and sorrowful and filled with trouble, and your own is no exception. If our old Dad took it hard on us for losin' her, we never knowed it. But wot with him on the rails and his poor relations hard-pressed to manage their own, let alone such a pair a devils as us, it weren't long 'fore we came to mischief. School couldn't hold us. A pair of whizzy boys, pickpockets, that's how it started. How many thousand times have I asked myself, Larry, wot was it led you and Brother B to a life of such criminal destitution? After years of deliberation, I think it was shop windows."

"Shop windows?"

"Used to be you'd go right by a place of business and never know what they had to offer without venturing inside. Nowadays walk past any decent establishment, the stuff's all laid right out for your perusal, and the best of it, too. A tease, that's wot it is. Lookin' in those windows, seeing all this booty and not being able to have, that's what pushed over the edge. By the time we turned ten, the lure of loot by pilfery captured our imagination. Dedication to craft's wot we practiced from that day on, there's few limits to what a couple eager country boys with a bit of know-how and a burning desire to make good in the city can set their minds to. That is, till we met the Master hisself."

"How did that happen, Larry?"

Finished grinding the bones, Zeus circled twice and curled up under the chemist's bench. With a mighty yawn, he settled his head down on a foreleg and watched Larry alertly for signs that he might produce additional delicacies.

"It was late one night, near three. Barry's turn at the pub— not long after his unfortunate set-to with the fishmonger; we'd grown beards to cover the scar—I'd hit a house in Ken-

sington for a healthy haul of collectibles, and we're back at our flat feelin' more than a bit eager—we'd been through some lean weeks waitin' for Barry's scarification to settle— when the door flies open and standing there like the wrath of God was the Man, a stranger to our eyes, and a pistol in either hand that spelled serious business. The game was up. A few baubles ain't worth dying for. Don't get hurt for the loot, that was our motto. So this gent first-off confiscates our ill-gotten gains, as expected, but then gives out the confounded-est confabulation we'd ever heard: Forsake this petty life of crime, he says to us. Come work for me in the service of the Crown, or else. Or else what? we wants to know. Or else our fortunes will turn sharply downward and future events go badly for us, with a decided lack of details as to how this might transpire. We've a lunatic in our midst, that's what Barry and me are thinkin'—and our thoughts are ofttimes as loud to each other as speakers in the House of Commons. So we posthaste agree to this malarkey, let him take the loot and be done with the mucker, and the man blows out of there like June rain. A thief steals from a thief. No tears shed. Hazards of the trade. Plenty of other flats in London, so we flies ourselves out of that coop and sets up across town by the very next afternoon.

"Four days pass, and we can't help notice we're not gettin' any richer, so we pull another job. Barry hits a silversmith— he's always been partial to silver, useful with the ladies—and he's no sooner through the door of our new crib when this selfsame avenger crashes in and seizes the bag right out of Barry's mitts. This is our second chance, he spells it out for us; put your lawless ways behind you and follow me, or the end is near. He don't even wait for an answer, just takes the swag and scoots. Now Barry and me got our monkeys up, we're spooked: How'd this bloke pick us out of all the crooks in town; if he's so hard up for boodle, why don't he rob his own houses; exactly what's he mean the 'end' is near; and how on earth do we stop this moke from hittin' us where we live again?

"So it's desperate measures for desperate times. We lay lower than dirt. Move our base around like fireflies in a bottle; four times in a week. Not a word to nobody. Watch our tail religiously for the slightest sign of this troublesome shade, and all we draw are blanks. Three weeks go by, and we've got stomachs to feed. Safe as houses by now, we figure. Maybe the bloke's spied one of us in the pub and followed us home, that's how he's capered us, so for luck we got out on the stoush together this time, and there'll be no more unpleasant surprises. We picks our target more careful than a bleeder shaves. An antique store down Portobello, far off the beaten path. In we go down the air shaft easy as pie, ready to grab and stuff.

"And there's the selfsame bloke sittin' in a chair, cool as iced tea, pistol in hand. Cornered bang to rights. Not only that, this time he's brought a copper; he's behind us ready to make application with his nightstick and hear our confessions. This is your final opportunity, the man says as a how-do-you-do. And he knows our names and our latest address and everywhere else we been up to the minute.

"It's the second time in me life the hand of Destiny reached down and smacked me in the north and south. This is the end, Larry, I says to myself. Third time's the charm, I says to Brother B, who's by nature a bit more pigmy-minded than yours truly. Turns out he's had a sudden rush of brains to the head. Stranger, we says, you is too much for us; we will do our best to answer the call. The gent proves good as his word; he gives the high sign, the copper takes his leave without so much as a good-night kiss from his stick. The Stranger says follow me, boys, and so we marched out of the antique store on Portobello Road with Mr. John Sparks six years ago, our brilliant criminal careers at an end."

"He threatened you with arrest?"

"He did better than threats: He convinced us. 'Course, it wasn't till months later we find out the 'copper' was one of his Regulars in costume."

"His Regulars?"

"That's what he calls us, those of us in his employ," said Larry modestly.

"How many of you are there?"

"More than a few, never enough, and as many as necessary, depending on your point of view."

"All former criminals like yourself?"

"There's a few recruits from the civilian side. You're in good company, if that's the worry."

"Did he tell you right off he was working for the Queen?"

"He told us a great many things—"

"Yes, but regarding the Queen, specifically?"

"Now it won't do any good your outthinkin' the chief, I can tell you straight away," chided Larry. "Transmogrification, that's the ten-pound word for what he does. And you has to give yourself over to it."

"What work is that?"

"Transmogrifying: You know what that means, don't you?"

"The transformation of souls."

"That's the ticket. And I'm here to give witness. Gave me appreciation of the finer things that in my thickheaded way I was sorely lacking. I goes to plays regular now and sits in the stalls like a genuine swell. I listens to music. Taught me how to read proper, too. No more penny dreadfuls for yours truly, I enjoys lit-ter-a-ture. There's this French feller, Balzac, I'm partial to; writes about life in a real sort of way. Common folk and their predicaments."

"I'm partial to Balzac myself."

"Well, one day we should have a proper chat about him, and I do look forward to it. That's what the guv'nor does, see; provokes you to think. Has a way of askin' questions that takes you up the next rung of the ladder. Hard work. Surprisin' how few folks ever develop the habit. This is where you want it, right here." Larry tapped himself on the side of the head. "So what do I owe Mr. S, you ask? Only my life. Only my life."

Larry stopped to roll a cigarette, using the distraction to veil some deeper vein of emotion. Just then Sparks emerged from the inner room, dressed again in his customary black. Zeus immediately scrambled from under the bench to shake his hand.

"Gentlemen, let's be off," Sparks said, cuffing Zeus affectionately. "The hour is late, and we've a full night of burglary and stealth ahead of us."

"I'll fetch me tools," Larry said eagerly, as he skipped to the door.

"All for the cause, Doyle," said Sparks, seeing the hesitancy on his face. "Sorry, Zeus, old man, we shan't be taking you with us tonight."

Sparks pocketed a handful of vials from a rack on the bench and straightaway left the flat. Doyle bit his tongue and followed. Zeus dealt with his disappointment admirably and resumed his solitary vigil.

Except for the occasional after-theater cab, Montague Street was deserted by that time of night, and a fleecy mass of fog made subterfuge all the easier. The imperial facade of the British Museum presided over the street like a tomb of the ancients. As they made their way to Russell Street, Doyle glanced back at the windows of Sparks's apartment and was surprised to see a light burning and the silhouette of a man framed in the sill.

"Tailor's dummy," said Sparks, noticing his interest. "Took a sniper's bullet intended for me once: never complained. There's a soldier for you."

Ducking through a cobbled alley, they arrived at the rear of the building Doyle recognized as the one seen earlier in the photograph of the woman. They blended into the shadows; then, with a nod from Sparks, Larry skipped silently across the alley and up the steps to the back door.

"Larry always appreciates a chance to polish his cracks-manship," said Sparks quietly. "Barry's no slouch, and he's a damn sight better scaling a wall, but Larry's touch with a lock is second to none."

"So this is breaking and entering, plain and simple," said Doyle, a touch of fustian unease creeping into his tone.

"You're not going to blow the whistle on us, are you, Doyle?"

"How can we be sure this is the right establishment?"

"Our friend the Presbyterian minister made the rounds of Russell Street today, peddling his deathless monograph on advanced cattle-breeding techniques in the Outer Hebrides."

"I had no idea I was earlier in the company of such an esteemed author."

"As it happens, I did have such a monograph in my files, dashed off on holiday there a few years back. I don't know about you; hard for me to sit quiet on holiday. All I think about is work."

"Hm. I do like a bit of fishing."

"Casting or fly?"

"Fly. Trout mainly."

"Gives the fish a sporting chance. In any case, imagine my surprise this afternoon when one of the Russell Street firms made an offer to purchase my pamphlet right on the spot."

"You sold your monograph?" asked Doyle, feeling the sour drip of authorial envy.

"Snapped it right up. I tell you, there's no accounting for people's taste. I hadn't even gone so far as to invent a name for the man: a monograph-bearing Presbyterian is usually more than sufficient to ward off even the most inquiring mind. Had them make the check out to charity. Poor chap: four hours old and already denied his proper royalties." Sparks looked across the street, where Larry was giving them a wave. "Ah, I see Larry has completed the preliminaries. Here we go, Doyle."

Sparks led the way across the alley. Larry held the door as they slipped inside, then followed and closed up behind them. Sparks lit a candle, throwing reflections off a building directory on the corridor wall.

"Rathborne and Sons, Limited," read Sparks. "There's a service door round the corner that I think you'll find preferable, Larry."

Down and left around the hallway they moved to the entrance, where Sparks held the candle aloft as Larry went back to work.

"Let me get this monograph business straight: They paid you on the spot right then and there for it?" said Doyle, unable to let go of his fixation.

"Not a princely sum, but enough to keep Zeus in soup bones for a stretch."

Larry eased open the door to the offices.

"Thank you for those kind words, Larry, why don't you keep an eye on the hall while we have a look inside?"

Larry tipped his cap. Not a peep from him since they'd left the flat, observed Doyle, whereas Barry went positively jabberwocky in a tight spot: How odd, their patterns of speech are directly reversible.

By the dim light of the candle, they explored the offices of Rathbome and Sons. Subdued reception area. Rows of clerks' desks: sheaves of invoices, contracts, bills of lading. It seemed a neat and orderly concern, handsomely accoutred, ran with a minimum of fuss, but other than that, utterly unremarkable.

"So this is the last house to which you submitted your manuscript, and you don't recall receiving it back from them," said Sparks.

"Yes. So Lady Nicholson's father and brother must be involved somehow."

"One brother we know of. The late George B. Other than that, nothing's available on the Rathborne family in public record. I've found no reference to a Rathborne the Elder whatsoever."

"That's odd."

"Perhaps not. This firm is six years old. Hardly an enduring tradition passed down for generations."

"You're suggesting there is no Rathborne the Elder?"

"You do ran a fast track, Doyle. I wanted to have a look back here," said Sparks, leading him toward the rear. "Our friend the clergyman was rather firmly denied access to any of the senior executives."

They moved to a row of closed doors. Finding one with chairman emblazoned on the smoked-glass window panel locked, Sparks handed the candle to Doyle, took a small set of twin picks from his pocket, and worked them into the keyhole.

"No interest in cattle-breeding?"

"From what I could gather during my visit, they didn't seem terribly interested in books generally."

"Whatever do you mean, Jack?"

"I fingered a catalog of their published works. Singularly unimpressive; works on the occult seem to be the specialite de la maison, a trickle of legal publishing—hardly enough volume of trade to support such a well-appointed concern as this—and no fiction whatsoever," said Sparks, manipulating the picks like a pair of chopsticks. A click was heard inside, and the door popped open. Sparks pushed it open the rest of the way.

"I now recall it was their interest in the occult that prompted me to send my manuscript here originally. In my amateurish eagerness, I didn't take the time to discover if they had an ongoing interest in fiction."

"I didn't wish to put it so indelicately," said Sparks as he took back the candle and entered the office.

"Quite all right; any author worth his salt needs to inure himself to criticism. So, if they have no interest in fiction here, the question is why wasn't the book simply returned to me straight off?"

"I suspect your title—"The Dark Brotherhood"—must have caught someone's eye."

"Ipso facto, Rathborne and Sons must be the intersection from where my work fell into, as you put it, the wrong hands."

"Just so," said Sparks.

He crossed to and rifled through the drawers of the massive executive desk that anchored the spare furnishings of the sober, oak-paneled office.

"And if I interpret your observations correctly," said Doyle, "your feeling is that Rathborne and Sons is in its primary purpose not a publishing company at all, but a front for some far more sinister concern."

"Sinister. Or Left-Handed," said Sparks, producing a correspondence with masted letterhead from a desk drawer. "Have a look at this, Doyle."

The letter itself was of no apparent concern, a routine memorandum regarding contractual dealings with a bookbinder. But the list of company directors on the masthead was something else again:

Rathborne and Sons Publishing, Ltd. Directors

Sir John Chandros

Brigadier General Marcus Drummond Maximilian Graves

Sir Nigel Gull

Lady Caroline Nicholson

The Hon. Bishop Caius Catullus Pillphrock

Professor Arminius Vamberg

"Good heavens," said Doyle.

"Let us put our minds to work. This room bears ho stamp of personality at all: no pictures, no personal effects. At the very least, executives tend to display their distinguishing

marks of achievement: diplomas, honorary titles. This office is for show, along with everything else we've seen. And as far as we can determine, there has been no Rathborne Senior."

"Which explains the presence on the board of Lady Nicholson."

"Unusual enough to find a woman in a position of such responsibility, although times are changing. Without knowing exactly what the nature of that position is, it's safe to assume that she is the true power behind Rathborne and Sons."

"Or was."

"I shall have more to say about that very soon." Sparks directed their attention back to the list. "What distressed you about these other names?"

"One in particular. Until his recent retirement, Sir Nigel Gull used to be one of two physicians exclusive to the royal family."

"I believe his primary responsibility was tending to young Prince Albert."

"That's a full-time job," said Doyle scornfully. The Queen's grandson was a notorious roue, a reputed simpleton, and a dependable source of minor scandal.

"Most unsettling. And I can tell you this: Gull's orderly retirement—he's a man of about sixty now—was merely public perception. There was a strong scent of impropriety surrounding his final days in sendee, the details of which shall now require my fullest attentions. Who else do you recognize on this list?"

"The name of John Chandros is familiar, but I can't quite place it."

"Former members of Parliament, from a northern district, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Land developer. Steel plants. Enormously wealthy."

"Wasn't Chandros involved in the prison-reform movement?"

"And chaired the prison commission for two terms. His name also surfaced in my investigation of the Nicholson-Drummond transaction; he owns a sizable freehold of land adjacent to the property sold by Nicholson to General Drum-mond."

"No coincidence there, I'd say."

"There is no such thing as coincidence. We now have a twofold connection from Chandros to Drummond to Rathborne Nicholson. How Gull fits into this mesh we have yet to discover."

"What of the others?"

"I am acquainted with the name of Bishop Pillphrock. Church of England. His diocese is North York, near the port of Whitby. Vamberg and Graves are unknown to me. What is the common thread?" asked Sparks searchingly. "Wealthy, powerful, prominent citizens. Four with ties to Yorkshire, where those convicts were allegedly sent. Chandros on the penal commission. All united through a false business front ..."

"Isn't it possible, Jack, that this company is nothing other than what it appears: a small, albeit well-capitalized, firm of modest ambitions, with a board of experts to advise them on various areas in which they wish to publish—Drummond for military works, Gull for medical text, Chandros political perspective, Pillphrock the theological, and so on?"

Sparks nodded thoughtfully. "With due consideration given to the other variables, I'd say there's a ten percent chance of that. If not, there is every reason to believe that what we have in our possession here is nothing less than a list of the Dark Brotherhood's innermost council. Seven names: Seven is a profane as well as sacred number."

"Strikes me as a bit of a leap of faith," said Doyle, as a thin line of white under the blotter on the desk caught his eye. He lifted the blotter and pulled out a creased square of slick paper, unfolding it to reveal a poster advertising a theatrical troupe's appearances in London. The play dates listed were for a run of one week in late October of the previous year.

"The Revenger's Tragedy," read Doyle. "I'm not familiar with it."

"Court melodrama, late Elizabethan, attributed to Cyril Tourneur. Adapted from Seneca. Grim piece of business: plot-heavy, lots of onstage violence. Deservedly obscure. I don't recall this production."

"Seems they came and went fairly quickly," said Doyle. "The Manchester Players."

"I don't know them, but there are dozens of companies touring around Britain at any one time. More to the point, what was this doing here?"

Doyle refolded the poster and lifted the blotter to slide it back into its hiding place. As he did so, a fountain pen rolled off the blotter and fell to the floor. Sparks pushed the chair away, knelt with the candle to retrieve the pen, and noticed a set of matched diagonal scratches at floor level on either side of the desk.

"Hold this for me, would you, Doyle?"

Doyle took the candle. Sparks inspected the edges of the desk where it rested ponderously on the varnished wood. He took a small vial of liquid from his pocket, uncorked it, and poured its contents out onto the floor. Mercury.

"What is it, Jack?"

"There's a seam here in the flooring where there shouldn't

be one."

The quicksilver beaded up on the wood, and then, in a single rush, vanished down in between the floorboards. Sparks leaned in and ran his hands around and under the desk.

"What are you looking for?"

"I've found a hook. I'm going to give it a pull. I shouldn't stand just there for the moment, Doyle."

Doyle stepped away from the desk. Sparks pulled the hook; the flooring at the hidden seam lifted up and slid neatly back under the desk, diagonally scratching its facing on either side and leaving a hole two foot square directly under where the president's chair had been resting.

"Uneasy sits the head that wears the crown," paraphrased

Sparks.

Leaning over to have a look, Doyle saw a bolted steel ladder descending straight down a masoned shaft too deep by the light of his candle to spy the end of. The air wafting from below was fresh and smelled of water.

"I daresay your garden-variety publishing company would have little use for such an exit as this," said Sparks excitedly.

"None I can immediately think of."

Sparks clapped his hands. "By God, we've found them out! The Brotherhood quartered less than half a mile from my flat. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight."

Sparks gave one quiet bird whistle, and moments later Larry appeared in the doorway.

"Tunnel, Larry. Have a look, eh?" asked Sparks.

"Straightaway, sir."

Larry stripped off his jacket, took out his own candle, cadged a light from Doyle's, and nimbly scampered one-handed down onto the ladder.

"Perhaps you'd better take this as well," said Doyle, extending his service revolver to him.

"Thanks just the same, guv," said Larry, lifting aside his vest to display a brace of bolstered knives. "I'm a blade man myself."

Larry began his descent. Doyle and Sparks watched the warm glow from his candle quickly diminish to a thin, shimmering halo.

"How is it, Larry?" asked Sparks down the shaft, his voice husky and low.

"There's an end to it just ahead." Larry's voice echoed metallically back up to them, along with his footfalls on the ladder. "The ladder stops here. Open space beneath. Can't tell how big. Somethin's down there ... I can see ... wait a moment ... good 'eavens ..."

The light from the candle disappeared. Then silence. They waited.

"What is it, Larry?" asked Sparks.

No answer from below. Doyle looked to Sparks, who appeared equally concerned. "Larry? Are you there, lad?"

Still no reply. Sparks gave out the whistle with which he'd summoned Larry into the room. Again nothing, Sparks took off his jacket.

"I shall have to go after him, Doyle. Coming with me?"

"I don't know that I'm properly equipped—" said Doyle evasively.

"Fine, then if I disappear as well, you will have to come after me alone."

Doyle took off his coat. "Will you go first, or shall I?"

"Me first, with your revolver, you following with the candle."

"Right," said Doyle, handing over the revolver, his heart beating wildly. He was not overly fond of heights or tight places, and the shaft below served up a generous helping of both. And if whatever was down there had already gotten the better of the ever-capable Larry—that's quite enough of that line of thinking, Doyle; one rung at a time, Jack in the lead, hold the candle and your peace. Sparks went down. Doyle steadied himself on the edge of the trap, then lowered himself in until he found purchase on the ladder with one foot and then the other.

"Mind my hands as you go," said Sparks, a few rungs below. "And don't speak unless you absolutely must."

Breathe, Doyle, don't forget to breathe. He quickly realized that much as he'd like to keep eyes forward, he was going to have to look down continually, if only to keep from crushing Jack's hands. Fortunately the supply of candlelight was so meager that the sheer dizzying depth of the shaft beneath him lived only in the mind, not the eye. Unfortunately, in the absence of the visual, his mind perversely manufactured images far more terrifying than any hazard that was likely to be waiting below.

The descent was laborious. The first thirty feet took nearly ten minutes but seemed endlessly longer. In order to obtain the vaguest idea of what lay ahead, Sparks was obliged to stay within a few rungs of Doyle and their source of light. One-handed as he was, Doyle refused to take the next step down until his free arm was securely entwined in and around the ladder. A steady drizzle of hot wax spilled onto his candle hand. Both palms were slippery with sweat.

What if I should drop it? thought Doyle. What if a gust of wind comes up; how would I ever relight the damn thing?

"Stop there," said Sparks finally.

"Where are we?"

Glancing up the shaft no longer gave any indication of where the door above was in relation to their position, a limbo precisely defined by the limit of the candlelight.

"Hand me the candle, please, Doyle."

Doyle carefully transferred the light down to Sparks's outstretched hand,.grateful that for the moment he was now able to hug the ladder with both arms. Sparks hung down by one hand, leaned over, and held the candle as low as he could carry it.

"The ladder ends here, as Larry said," said Sparks. "There's a drop-off."

"How far?"

"I can't make out. This is where he called us from: I hear water moving somewhere below." "What should we do?"

Just then they heard the scrape of wood on wood from far above and a sound like the sealing of a tomb. The silence that followed was deafening. "I say, Jack...." "Ssshhh!"

They listened. Doyle kept quiet as long as he could bear. "I think someone's closed the trapdoor," he whispered. "Do you hear anyone above you on the ladder?" Sparks whispered back.

Doyle slowly turned to look up the shaft. "I ... don't believe I do."

"It's possible that the trap closed automatically. That it has some sort of mechanical timing device." "Yes, well, anything's possible, isn't it?" "Do you prefer to believe someone's just imprisoned us in this vertical hell?"

"No harm in considering the full range of possibilities, Jack." Doyle's heart hammered like operatic timpani. He struggled to keep it from bleeding into his voice. "What do you suggest we do?"

"I don't recommend climbing. Even if we find a way to open the trap from this side, if someone is waiting for us—" "With you all the way on that one." Sparks paused and peered down into the Stygian darkness below. "You will have to lower me by hand." "Is that our only alternative?"

"Unless you prefer that I lower you. Need I point out you're a good deal more stout than I—" "Point well taken."

"Can you get your braces off? We're going to need some sort of reinforcement."

"I don't really fancy my trousers falling down in the middle of this—"

"Without belaboring the point, your buttons are near enough to bursting that I don't honestly see it as a problem—"

"Right, you will have them," said Doyle, irritation getting the momentary better of fear.

Maneuvering one hand at a time, Doyle peeled the braces off his shoulders, unbuttoned them from his waist, and handed them to Sparks. He looped both ends through the tops of his own braces, which he still wore, and handed them back to Doyle.

"Ever done any mountain climbing?" asked Sparks.

"No."

"Then there's no point in my describing what we're about to do in mountaineering terms. I shall hang down by hand from the last rung as you wrap the braces twice around the bottom of the ladder. Hold the ends tightly in your hands; give me any additional slack if I ask you for it."

"What if they won't hold?"

"We'll find that out soon enough, won't we?"

"What are you doing to do with the candle?"

"For the moment, I shall hold it in my mouth. Quickly now, Doyle,"

Sparks bit down on the candle and lowered himself, hanging off the bottom rung with both hands. Doyle crabbed cautiously down to the ladder's final station, quickly wrapped the braces twice around the steel as instructed, and grabbed hold of the reins.

"All set, Jack."

Sparks nodded, let go of the ladder with one hand, and took the candle from his mouth.

"Here I go then," said Sparks.

He let go with his other hand and fell away. The force of his weight hit the braces hard and nearly pried Doyle loose from the ladder, but the braces held. Sparks bounced and swung gently below in the open air, holding the candle out into the darkness.

"It's an entirely new shaft," said Sparks. "Runs horizontally. Much wider. Ours empties out into its middle. Water trickling down the center."

"Sewer tunnel?" said Doyle, straining to hold him.

"Doesn't smell like it, does it?"

"Thankfully, no. Any sign of Larry?"

"Not as yet."

"How far to the ground?"

"Another twenty feet or so."

"What do you suppose Larry was reacting to?"

"Must have been the large Egyptian statue standing directly below me," said Sparks.

"Large Egyptian statue?"

"I can't quite make out who it is from this angle. Looks jackal-headed—"

"Did you say large Egyptian statue?"

"Yes. Possibly Anubis or Tuamutef—funereal deities, similar purpose, concerned with weighing a man's soul as he passes to the other side—"

Doyle's muscles were shaking violently with exertion. "Could we forgo the mythology lesson long enough to decide if you're heading up or down? I don't know that I can hold on much longer."

"Sorry. If you let me down slowly, Doyle, I think I can grab hold of the statue, let go the braces, and climb down the rest of the way."

"Fine."

Doyle lowered Sparks until he could reach down with one foot and steady himself against the statue's shoulder. He un-snapped his own braces, and both pairs flew into the air. Doyle reached out, caught them, and slumped back against the wall in relief, the knots in his arms relaxing into merely agonizing spasms.

"I believe it's definitely Tuamutef," said Sparks, sliding down the figure's body to the ground. "Quite rare outside of Egypt. Remarkable. I can't actually recall ever seeing one this size before."

"How interesting for you. What do you suggest I do now, Jack?"

"Tie off the braces and lower yourself down. You really shouldn't miss this, Doyle."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Doyle collected himself, tied the braces as securely around the ladder as his knowledge of seafaring knots would allow, and let himself ever-so-gently down into the arms of dog-faced Tuamutef.

'Tuamutef assisted Anubis in the preparation of bodies for mummification and burial," said Sparks, walking around with the candle, inspecting the statue at its base as Doyle attempted a difficult, chafing passage down Tuamutef's bumpy torso. "His particular province was the stomach, specifically the removal and preservation of the viscera for the journey into the underworld."

"This, I can say with some assurance, is as far into the underworld as I ever hope to go," said Doyle, finally touching down beside him.

"The viscera were packed in airtight jars with a compound of herbs and spices that delayed decomposition, so you could take them out and stick the organs right back into place once you reached the other side," said Sparks, preoccupied to the point of obliviousness.

"Fascinating, truly, but Jack, if you don't mind my asking, if someone has in fact sealed us in down here with evil intent—one of many possibilities, I realize, but one we really ought to consider—don't you think it would be a good idea—a really first-rate idea, in fact—for us to quickly find our way out of here?"

"Right."

Sparks looked off in both directions. Doyle couldn't help but notice that their candle was growing perilously small. Behind the statue, he spotted what appeared to be a blackened torch set in a bracket on the wall and quickly retrieved it.

"This appears to be an old Roman conduit—can't seem to shake off those persistent old buggers, can we? London's lousy with them. This one has been rather extensively refurbished. Aside from the parties responsible for the construction of the shaft we just descended, a fairly recent addition, it's likely no one else is even aware this tunnel's down here. And if the used torch you've just handed me is any indication, it has been used by those parties sometime within the last few days."

Sparks ignited the torch from the candle, filling the chamber with twenty times the previous supply of light. A huge, pulsating shadow of Tuamutef was thrown menacingly onto the opposite wall.

"Which way should we go?"

"The tunnel runs north to south." He pointed south, where the walls curved gently away around a turn, just as a muffled scuffling issued faintly from the direction.

"What was that?" asked Doyle.

They listened. The scuffle repeated, slowly and rhythmically. It seemed to be moving toward them.

"Footsteps?" said Doyle.

"The person is injured. Dragging one foot behind." "Larry?"

"No, they're not wearing shoes." Sparks turned back to the north and examined the bricks on either side of the water. "If we follow the wax drippings in this direction, which Larry has thoughtfully provided for us, we will much more quickly discover his whereabouts."

Maintaining the same sluggish pace, the footsteps behind them drew closer to the nearest turn.

"Then who do you suppose that is?" asked Doyle, lowering his voice.

"I never ask questions I don't really wish to know the answer to. Let's move on."

They sloshed through the shallow water and made for the north.

"As to what Tuamutef is doing here a hundred feet below the offices of Rathborne and Sons ..." Sparks mused as they walked.

"You mentioned the removal of the viscera. Similar to what was done to the body of that streetwalker Leboux showed to me, isn't it?"

"The thought had occurred to me. It suggests the Dark Brotherhood is paying obeisance to an ancient Egyptian deity."

"You mean as a sacrificial offering of some kind?"

"These people are dedicated pagans—that opens their field of worship to the collective pantheon—and with his years in Egypt, Alexander is surely up to snuff on his Tuamutef/' said Sparks. "Something has just struck me about one of the seven names on our list."

"Which?"

"Maximilian Graves—what does that bring to your mind?"

Doyle ran it back and forth. "I'm sure I don't know."

"An alias, a play on words. Do you see it? Makes-a-million graves. Precisely the sort of diseased jest Alexander used to play with obsessively in his letters. Beware the inveterate punster, Doyle, it's a sure sign of brewing mental disturbance."

"You think Alexander's responsible for Tuamutef being there?"

"Yes. In which case he's responsible for that woman's murder."

"But if it was a ritual of some kind, why were her organs left at the scene? Surely they would have returned them here, to their shrine."

"Perhaps the ritual was interrupted before completion, that's not a worry—the thing is, I'm puzzled by what the statue itself is doing here."

"Convenience—pop down the ladder with a bowl of guts for the old boy whenever the mood strikes—"

"No, Doyle," said Sparks somewhat impatiently, "we're in complete agreement on the reason for the statue being here; I'm trying to work out how it physically arrived."

A light flickered around the curve of the tunnel ahead. Sparks stopped and gave out with another low whistle. A moment later, the whistle was returned.

"Larry," said Doyle.

"Step lively, Doyle. We're still being followed."

Trotting on a hundred yards around the bend to where the tunnel terminated abruptly, they found Larry working by the light of his candle on the padlock of an immense doorway set into the dead-end wall.

"Sorry for the inconvenience, guv," said Larry as they approached.

"Are you all right?" asked Doyle.

"Never better. The drop down was a bit more steep than I'd bargained for, I can tell you, knocked the Jenny Lind right out of me when I hit bottom. By the time I got my bellows and candle goin' again and caught an eyeful of that bloody dog-man, I thought silence might be the advisable course of action."

"The trap was closed after us," said Sparks, inspecting the doors.

"Figured this for a setup job," said Larry, lining his center bit up on the padlock. "Got in a mite too easy, didn't we?"

"Why didn't you say something?" said Doyle.

"Not my place, is it?"

Sparks knocked on the iron door and got back a booming, hollow echo.

"Listen to that. Hardly sounds like the end of the passageway, does it?"

"We gots a right rusty padlock to get through before we find out," said Larry, pounding on his center bit. "Bloody stubborn."

"I say, Larry," said Doyle, "you didn't happen to venture down that tunnel the other way before coming here, did you?"

"No, sir—come on, give!"

"I only ask, you see, because we heard what sounded like someone walking toward us from that direction."

"I wouldn't know about that—bloody bastard!" Larry hammered away again at the lock.

"Hold up for just a moment, Larry," requested Sparks.

Larry paused. The echo of his last blow faded, and issuing out of the quiet that descended they heard the same relentless step-drag approaching from the south. Only now there were multiple variations of that familiar rhythm: three, four, five footfalls, possibly more—whether there were actually others present or it was simply some acoustic peculiarity of the tunnel was impossible to determine.

"Proceed, Larry," said Sparks, moving back toward the curve.

"Anything I can help you with, Larry?" asked Doyle.

"One-man job, idn't it?" said Larry irritably.

Sparks used the light to scan the walls. Lifting a second torch from the clutch of another iron sconce, he set it aflame and handed it to Doyle.

"Do you think it's gray hoods?" said Doyle quietly.

"They're a good deal swifter afoot than whatever we're hearing at the moment, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes."

"And if someone did close that door with the intention of trapping us here, it's not unreasonable to assume they must be confident something was going to stand rather forcefully in the way of our escaping."

The footsteps grew close enough to hear intermittent splashing and not promisingly, the pace of the steps seemed to be quickening.

"More than one now," said Doyle.

"More like ten."

Doyle and Sparks moved back away from the turn.

"Come along now, Larry," said Sparks. "Speed is of the essence."

"Got it!" said Larry, as he pierced the lock with a final blow and ripped it off the clasp. "Give a hand, gents."

All three men grabbed one side of the double doors and heaved. The neglected hinges protested mightily but began to resentfully yield. Doyle looked behind them as they labored; he saw the outline of a column of tall black shapes emerging from the darkness fifty feet behind them.

"Pull, damn it! Pull!" exhorted Sparks.

With Sparks's and Doyle's ability to apply useful leverage hampered by the torches in their hands, the gap grew to an inadequate six inches. They dropped the torches and put then-whole backs into the effort, but the door stubbornly gave up only fractions of an inch at a time. Larry squeezed through the crack and pushed back on the door toward them. Hinges wailed like a wounded ox; the breach widened another inch. Doyle chanced another hurried glance backward; the tall shapes formed a picket line of angular, indistinct, but decidedly human silhouettes, lumbering and weaving toward their position at the doors. There were considerably more than ten of them. The three men were apparently visible to their pursuers now, for a collective sound came out of the pack, a hideous, breathy, burbling snarl. Redoubling their assault on the door with the inspired strength of angels, they secured another precious two inches of space.

"Go, Doyle, go!" said Sparks.

Doyle turned sideways, shoved himself through to the other side, put his shoulder to the door, and pushed back with all his might, as Larry stuck out a hand and pulled Sparks through.

"The torches!" said Sparks.

Doyle reached back into the gap. As he took hold of the torch, a blackened, fingery mass of exposed sinew, tendon, and bone, dripping seared and tattered rags, clamped a vise-like grip on his wrist; Doyle bellowed in pain and surprise. In one swift move, Larry drew a knife from its holster and swiped the attacking arm. The blade sliced cleanly through its tissues as through wax paper; an appalling howl clawed the air as the severed limb fell away from the hand. Doyle shook the hand frantically off his wrist as Sparks took hold of his

collar and yanked Doyle back through the opening, the torch still clutched in his hand.

"Pull, pull it shut!" Sparks shouted. "Help us, Doyle!"

Doyle scrambled to his feet and joined them as they grabbed a handle fixed to the inside of the door and pulled for their lives, the memory of their ancestors and their progeny to come. The hinges moved more cooperatively back toward them, and the gap quickly closed, but not before they saw a squalid, feverish windmill of fetid arms and hands foul the air they'd just been breathing. Frantic, frustrated squeals worthy of a saint's last temptation tormented their ears, and a smell of a hundred desecrated sepulchers made a mockery of innocence before the void was sealed. They quickly lifted and slid a thick steel bar designed for such a purpose through the twin handles of the doors, securing their position, at least for the moment; the pounding and pummeling and scratching of nails on the other side of the iron doors that followed made speech, if not thought, impossible. At a signal from Sparks, pointing the torch in the direction he wanted them to go, the three men moved quickly and gratefully away from the doors.

They ran headlong, without a thought to direction or distance. As their senses returned from the brink, and the torchlight revealed their surroundings, they realized this was no continuation of the tunnel; they were greeted by dimly lit vistas of a vaulted, train-station-sized chamber, where boxes and crates of every imaginable size, shape, and function were stacked like building blocks, forming a jagged-toothed skyline* They stopped to catch their breath and still the awful beating of their hearts. The hammering on the doors behind them continued, but at enough remove to allow them the luxury of brief respite.

"Jesus Christ!" said Larry. "Spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch, wot the bloody hell!"

"It was going to crush the bones of my wrist or pull the arm right off my shoulder," said Doyle, testing the area for trauma.

"The devil's own punchbowl is what that was," said Larry. "That was old Horns and Hoofs himself nearly put the pinch on us. Up your uncle, Nick!"

"Easy," cautioned Sparks.

Knife still in hand, Larry would not be stilled, angrily semaphoring an eloquent series of obscenities back in the direction of their attackers.

"Feather and flip you, daisy boots! Back to hell where yer mother waits patiently! I'll carve you like a Christmas pudding, you mingy pross! I'll sort you out large, Sinbad the Sailor your skidgy hide, 'n' have your guts for garters! You twig me, yobbos? A handful a' fives for you!' "

The pounding on the door stopped abruptly. Larry took a couple of deep breaths, then slumped exhaustedly down onto a crate. "Lord, I need a drink," he said, his head in his hands. "I'm whacked to the wide."

They regained themselves in the shelter of a cove of crates. Time slowly resumed its normal curve, and Doyle's attention was drawn to the sea of curiosities surrounding them. He joined Sparks, who was standing on top of the tallest box surveying their position, holding the torch high. "Good Christ ..."

The room stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. The landscape was populated by small principalities of statuary: kings, queens, artists, scholars, scientists, foot soldiers and generals on horseback, heroes and villains of antiquity and folklore captured in their defining moments of triumph or infamy, parliaments of demigods and goddesses, their white marble skins aglow with a milky, luminescent sheen.

"What is this place?" asked Doyle. "I believe we are in a subbasement of the British Museum," said Sparks.

"So there's a way out then, up above," said Doyle, encouraged.

"We'll have to find a door first." "Jack, what in God's name were those—" "Not now, Doyle," said Sparks, leaping lightly down off the box. "Up and on, Larry, we're not clear of this yet."

Larry roused himself to his feet, and they set off trailing after Sparks.

"You all right, guv?" Larry asked Doyle. "Nothing a few stiff yards of scotch wouldn't set right," said Doyle.

His stoicism seemed to put the starch back in Larry's step.

"Second the motion. Thought for a minute you was goin' to chuck the sponge."

"If you hadn't been so quick with that lock, we'd have all turned up our toes by now."

"Easy as winking. Should've had it off before trouble turned the corner."

"No worry," said Doyle. "Worse things happen at sea."

They hustled to catch up to Sparks, who led them by torchlight willy-nilly through the immense storeroom. There were no paths to follow, no aisles or columns through which to plot a course. The cavern's wonders seemed to have been scattered recklessly, without benefit of any discernible design. Each turn through the dreamworld delivered them to a cargo of new wonders: a colony of urns as big as boxcars, others as delicate as acorns; ponderous sarcophagi of silver and lead inlaid with precious stones, baroque coronation carriages of alabaster and gold leaf, catafalques of ebony, ivory, and shining steel, headless mannequins in ceremonial costume from Africa, Asia, and the subcontinent; immense tapestries illustrating wars of lost and legendary kingdoms; a comprehensive zoography of savage animals taxidermed to passive domesticity—bears from every corner of the earth, great cats, ravenous wolves, rhinoceroses, elephants and ostriches, crocodiles and emus, and a spate of stranger, night-dwelling species undreamt-of or never seen before; a gallery of epic paintings in gilded frames assaying every imaginable scene, battles, seductions, royal births and deaths, bucolic Arcadias and nightmarish holocausts. At one juncture, they wandered through a ghostly fleet of skeletal ships, stripped to the ribs, awaiting resurrection. Gigantic cannons, engines of war, battering rams, catapults, and siege machines. A cityscape of uprooted walls, huts, houses, transplanted tombs, and reconstructed temples. Great stone heads. Hying machines. Feathered serpents. Instruments of music or torture. In its breathtaking totality, the chamber's contents added up to nothing less than an exhaustive anthropology of the known and unknown worlds, all of it shrouded in a thick dust of contumely and neglect.

"Have you ever seen the like?" said Doyle in amazement.

"No. I've heard rumors of the existence of such a storeroom for many years," said Sparks, as they stopped again in a clearing, not a foot closer to finding an exit.

"Like civilization's graveyard," said Larry.

"The spoils of the expansion of British Empire," said

Doyle.

"Lord have mercy on the white man. Looks like we brung back every last stick we could carry and then some," said

Larry.

"That's exactly what we've done; plundered the world's countinghouses and looted its tombs, and what booty we don't display upstairs in pride of conquest we covet from view down here in shame," said Sparks.

"Just as every other dominant culture in history has done in its ascendancy," said Doyle.

"I daresay the world above's a poorer place for it," said Larry, sadness magnified by his intimate acquaintanceship with unlawful greed.

"Let it be no cause for worry," said Sparks. "Another conquering civilization will come along soon enough to relieve us of our burden."

"It looks as if no one's been down here in years," said Doyle, wiping a black thumbprint's worth of dust off the toe of a warlike Athena.

"Someone has: long enough to steal that statue of Tuamutef, at the very least," said Sparks, laying that mystery to rest. "If not a great deal more." "How's that, Jack?"

"Although the arrangement of these items seems willfully haphazard to the eye, there is still a loose, categorical method to it. And there were significant pieces missing from nearly every valuable collection we encountered. Here's an example, do you see?"

Sparks drew their attention to a quintet of Hellenic statues depicting a series of animated and sensuous nymphs. "Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, and I believe this sprightly lass is Terpsichore," said Sparks.

"The Nine Muses," said Doyle. "I had an uncle played the calliope," said Larry. "And only five of them left in attendance. You can clearly see here by these marks on the floor that the four missing ladies—help me, Doyle: Polyhymnia, Melpomene—"

"Thalia and Urania."

"Thank you—you can see by these marks that the other four previously resided here alongside their sisters."

"You think the others were stolen?"

"I do. I've noticed similar patterns of selective larceny throughout. As you've observed, Doyle, the curators of this circus are largely absentee. The members of the Brotherhood inserted that shaft into the tunnel in order to gain access to this room; they could siphon a steady stream of treasures out of this trove from now until doomsday and not so much as a teaspoon would be missed."

"But to what purpose?"

"One of two reasons: to keep for themselves or sell off. You could hardly begin to put a price on what's in here."

"Is that the Brotherhood's purpose then? Cornering the market on antiquities?" asked Doyle.

"To assemble an elite circle of movers and shakers like the heavyweights on that list to run a fencing operation, no matter how ambitious, strikes me as a tiny bit prosy, wouldn't you say, Larry?"

"Like the great chefs of Europe gettin' together to bake hot cross buns."

"Quite. I suspect the reasons behind these thefts are twofold: the acquisition of specific and sacred items they believe necessary as their bridge to the mystic plane—i.e., our friend Tuamutef—and the profitable illicit sale of those items they don't require to finance the rest of their efforts."

"But as you pointed out, they are all enormously wealthy," said Doyle.

"And I'll acquaint you with the first ironclad rule of the enormously wealthy: Never spend one's own money."

"Amen to that," said Larry, the memory if not the light of larceny shining in his eyes.

"Pardon me, Larry. That principle is undoubtedly a good deal less class-conscious than I just stated."

"No offense taken," said Larry. " 'Fink I'll have a peepers." He lit his candle off the torch and wandered off around the next cluster of boxes.

"We can put a stop to their wanton thievery, that much is certain," said Doyle.

"Sealing that tunnel will put an end to the robberies, though I fear the worst has already been done and the trail gone cold: Witness the ruined condition of that padlock on the iron doors."

Doyle nodded, conceding the point.

"Whether or not we can successfully bring charges to bear against the firm of Rathborne and Sons for these crimes is a good deal less certain. It may not in fact be in our best interest."

"How so, Jack?"

"Without a shred of physical evidence to support the accusation, an assault on the venerated, unsullied names of the Brotherhood through the plodding course of the courts will only vouchsafe their acquittal and drive them deeper to ground, while heaping untold ridicule upon ourselves. If we're to pursue them to the heart of their purpose, it's best we keep our efforts from public view until the moment we can strike decisively."

A low whistle came from Larry on the other side of the bend. "Have a muggins at this, then."

Sparks and Doyle traced the light of Larry's candle and joined him, climbing up onto a barrier of crates that seemed to be a shield for the sight that greeted them. Sparks held high the torch, and they looked down at a solid square block of identical mummies' coffins, at least twenty in number, set shoulder to shoulder like cots in a crowded flophouse. The lids had been removed and stashed in a heap to one side. Two of the boxes still held their occupants: rangy, blackened, and withered corpses sheathed in rotting bandages. The rest were

empty.

"Good Christ," said Doyle, as they moved forward to examine the lids.

"Weapons, defensive actions," said Sparks, studying the pictographs. "These were warriors' graves. Coffins of similar size and design, identical hieroglyphs: These bodies were the royal household guard, entombed en masse. When Pharaoh died, it was custom to kill and bury his garrison alongside, an escort to the Land of the Ancients."

'There's service above and beyond the call," said Larry.

They looked at each other.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" said Sparks with a strange grin.

"What should we do?" asked Doyle.

Before he could answer, the room was electrified with the expressive screech of rusty iron hinges from far across the chamber.

"For the moment," said Sparks, instantly on the alert, "I strongly suggest that we run."

Run they did, as far and as fast from the iron doors as their legs and limited light would carry them. The storeroom's fabulous inventory was reduced to an ill-defined blur. Moving along the wall, they searched for an exit and finally found one in the farthest corner—double oaken doors, exceptionally stout. Larry lit his candle and examined the locks.

"Dead bolts," said Larry, sizing up his opposition. "No access to 'em."

Throwing their collective weight against the doors did not cause so much as a quiver in the wood.

"Chains on the other side for good measure," said Larry. "Guess they don't want tourists wandering in unannounced."

"Blasted museum," said Doyle.

"Shall I have a skivvy for another way?" asked Larry.

"No time," said Sparks, casting a sharp eye around. "Larry, we need loose metal, rocks, steel, scrap iron, whatever you can find, a whole mass of it—"

"On it," said Larry, as he moved off.

"We passed some cannon a while ago, Doyle, can you remember where that was?"

"I remember seeing them. Back a ways, I think."

"Then look for them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do."

Heading back into the open room, they tried as best they could to retrace their steps through the motley collection. The passage looked frustratingly unfamiliar. Another cry of rusty hinges found its way across the vasty chamber, but as yet there was no other sign of their attackers.

"Jack, provided we find one, what do you propose to do with a cannon?"

"That depends on which of our needs arises with more urgency."

"Our needs?"

"Much as I hate the defacing of government property, we shall have to blast our way out through those doors or turn and defend ourselves. Whichever comes first."

Doyle kept his opinion about his preferred alternative to himself. Each new protest from the hinges pounded a spike of fear deeper into his mind.

Their search seemed to last an eternity but took no more than five minutes, by which time the hinges had ceased their soundings. Save for the echoes of the two men's footsteps, the room grew ominously silent. They did find cannon, masses of cannon, cannonades of cannon. The difficulty now was in choosing one to suit their purpose: Sparks quickly settled on a Turkish sixteen-pounder attached to a caisson. They lifted either side of the hitch and muled it behind them, negotiating through the storeroom as rapidly as their haphazard path and the gun's ungainly weight would allow.

"How do we know it works?" asked Doyle as they ran. "We don't."

Doyle would have given the shirt off his back for enough grease to silence the caisson's squeaky wheels, for behind them in the direction of the iron doors they heard boxes and crates toppling over, crashing; their pursuers were in the room, ignoring the aisles and taking the shortest route to their quarry. Sparks stopped and looked around. "Is this the way we came?" he said. "I was following you. I thought you knew." "Right. Grab a couple of those sabers while they're handy, will you, Doyle?" said Sparks, pointing to an overflowing cache of weapons nearby.

"Do you really think we'll need them?" "I don't know. Would you rather find yourself at a point where you regret not having them?"

Doyle took two of the long, curved blades, and they resumed hauling the cannon. Please God, let him know which way we're going, prayed Doyle, and not into the arms or claws of whatever it is that's behind us—if they are behind and not in front of us—please God, let them be far behind us and more hopelessly lost in this labyrinth than we are. There, that statue of Hercules slaying a lion—one of the Twelve Labors, he had to muck out a stables as well: What a time to think about that!—at any rate we definitely passed Hercules on our way to the cannons—

"We're going the right way!" announced Doyle.

Larry was waiting for them near the double doors beside a heap of collected debris: bricks, broken lances, fragments of metal.

" 'Fraid I had to vandalize a touch, pulling odd bits off this and that," Larry said, with a slightly stricken conscience.

"You're absolved," said Sparks. "Give us a hand."

They maneuvered the cannon into position: point-blank at :he oaken doors ten feet away.

"Doyle, find something to anchor the base," said Sparks, "or the recoil will neutralize the thrust. Larry, front-load the muzzle, pack it in tight, heaviest and sharpest items last, we'll only have one shot at this."

They fell to following orders. Sparks took one of the vials from his chemistry bench out of his vest, set it gently on the ground, pulled the shirt from his pants, and began tearing a strip off the hem. Doyle returned to the clearing moments later, dragging a rusty chain and anchor.

"Will this do?" he asked.

"Splendid, old boy."

They wrapped its chain securely around the cannon as Larry tamped the payload into the barrel with a Venetian barge pole.

"Ready here," said Larry.

"How do we set it off?" asked Doyle.

"Thought I'd use this nitroglycerin," said Sparks, as he uncorked the vial and lowered it gingerly into the cannon's breach.

"You've been carrying nitroglycerin around in your pocket this entire time?" asked Doyle, retroactively alarmed.

"Perfectly harmless; detonation requires ignition or a direct blow—"

"My God, Jack! What if you'd fallen in the tunnel?"

"Our worries would have been over by now, wouldn't they?" said Sparks, stuffing the strip of linen into the fuse hole.

Boxes crashed only a hundred yards behind them.

"Here they come," said Larry, unsheathing his knives.

"Stand back," said Sparks.

Larry and Doyle took cover to the rear. Sparks set the torch :o the fuse and joined them. They sank down behind some

crates, closed their eyes, covered their ears, and waited for the explosion as the fabric burned down into the hole. Nothing.

"Will it go?" asked Doyle.

"Hasn't yet, has it?" said Sparks.

More boxes fell, moving relentlessly closer.

"Better hurry, then," said Larry.

Sparks moved carefully forward to inspect the cannon. Doyle took a firmer grip on the scimitar, looking down at it for the first time; he felt as if he were caught in a dream holding a prop from the Pirates of Penzance. Sparks peered down into the fuse hold, then quickly sprinted back toward their hiding place.

"Still burning—" He dove for safety.

The cannon exploded magnificently in a hail of sparks and a great burst of white smoke. The men rose immediately and ran forward; the caisson had crumbled, and the little cannon pitched cockeyed to the floor, half-cracked, but it had bravely held the charge and effectively delivered its freight. The double doors hung off their hinges, splintered to matchsticks and not a moment too soon; they could hear that blighted, festering gurgle as the creatures on their tail closed in.

"Let's get the hell out of here," said Sparks.

They ran to the doors, kicked the vestigial wreckage out of their way, and climbed over the chains that had secured its other side, where a flight of stairs led up and away to freedom.

"Go on ahead," said Sparks, stopping on a landing at the foot of the stairs to tear another strip from his shirt.

"Whatever are you doing, Jack?"

"I don't particularly fancy this bunch chasing us down the streets of Bloomsbury, do you?"

Shadowy black shapes moved toward them through the dispersing clouds of smoke.

"Go on, I'll catch up to you," said Sparks, uncorking a second vial of explosive and pouring it out onto the floor.

"He says go, we should go, guv," said Larry, tugging on Doyle's sleeve.

The first shapes were nearly at the doors.

"My revolver, please, Jack," said Doyle, standing his ground.

Sparks looked at Doyle as if he'd gone insane, then pulled the gun from his belt and tossed it to him. Doyle calmly aimed and emptied all six chambers at the advancing figures, eliciting some memorably inhuman howls and knocking the leaders of the pack a few feet back from the opening, allowing Sparks just enough time to finish pouring the nitro and lay out the long shirt strip from the puddle back toward the stairs.

"Run!" shouted Sparks.

Larry yanked Doyle up the steps as Sparks lit the fabric with the torch and sprinted after them. As they made the turn at the landing, Doyle looked back and caught a glimpse of the lead creature as it lurched into view at the foot of the stairs: tall and impossibly wasted, gaunt, spidery limbs waving spasmodically, hair and teeth in a decayed face held together by rotted linen, pinprick red eyes lit with venomous intensity. That's what Doyle thought he saw in the split second before the entire basement disappeared with a disequilibrating boom: The explosion obliterated sight and sound. Walls crumbled, smoke shot everywhere, obscuring everything. The stairs beneath their feet undulated like piano keys.

Pushed by the momentum of the blast, the three men threw themselves through the nearest, door. Their torch extinguished by the rush of air, they lay in darkness on the cool marble floor, stunned, ears ringing, trying to recapture their wind; it was as if they'd been struck massive blows to the head and solar plexus. Time passed. They stirred, tentatively at first, a low moan escaping from each, but with the tintinnabulary ringing in their ears, they were unable to hear themselves.

"All in one piece?" asked Sparks finally.

He had to ask twice more before the question registered. They blinked repeatedly and looked at each other like amnesiacs, testing their extremities, amazed to find them still in working order. Although nothing felt broken, Doyle couldn't find a part of his body that didn't feel pummeled. The monster came rushing back into the eye of his mind as if he were adjusting a refocusable lens. He realized he still gripped the purloined sword: His fingers felt as if they'd grown into the handle; he had to use his free hand to pry them off. The men slowly helped each other to their feet, and it was just as well they couldn't clearly hear the painful groans the effort cost them.

Doyle looked back warily at the double doors. 'Think that's done for them, then?"

"Bloody well better," said Larry, trying to coax a kink out of his back. "I couldn't fend off an evil baby armed with a rattle 'bout now."

"That was the last of the nitro, anyway," said Sparks.

"Is that what you were doing at your flat, Jack, cooking ni-troglycerin?"

Sparks nodded.

"I'm glad I'm not your neighbor."

"That last lot was a bit too vigorous on the volatile side, I'm afraid."

"If it put paid to those bleedin' rag-heads, you'll hear no complaint from me," said Larry.

They felt around in the darkness until they found their torch. With some small trouble facilitating the use of his fingers, Larry dug out a match and struck it on the floor. The torch flared and revealed their location; an empty marble antechamber, more reminiscent of the museum's public rooms than the strange place from which they'd come. Behind them hazy motes of smoke issued from under the still-swinging doors.

"Let's find a proper exit," said Sparks.

They turned and were about to take their tottering leave when the doors behind them swung open. They wheeled stiffly, steeling themselves for combat. But what crawled through the door to confront them was not an angry host of the undead, or even a single intact opponent; dragging the crushed head and half a torso of one of the creatures doggedly forward was a single, clutching, mutilated arm. A line of ashen sludge trailed behind the seeping wreckage. The face worked its loose and shattered jaw, as if trying to summon some thousand-year-old curse. The thing in its surviving form was more loathsome than formidable, but the eyes were still powered by the same malevolent fire. "Jesus," said Doyle, backing away. "Persistent bastards, ain't they?" said Larry. Sparks took Doyle's saber, strode forward, and with one decisive stroke beheaded the ruined monstrosity. The creature

froze; the light faded from its eyes, arm and torso collapsed as the head rolled harmlessly away. Larry ran forward and booted the head through the open door like a football.

"He scores!" shouted Larry. "Wickam over Leicester, one to zed in extra time! Wickam takes the Cup!"

Doyle knelt down to inspect the wreckage; what little had been left behind was already sifting into a quintessence of dust. Nothing about the decrepit leavings suggested any life force had animated those dry and dusty cells in the millennia since their original tenant had slipped its mortal coil.

"What do you see, Doyle?" asked Sparks, kneeling beside him.

"The remains are completely inert. Whatever energy or spirit that directed this thing is gone."

"What sort of energy?"

Doyle shook his head. "I'm sure I don't know. Something alive but not living. Puts me in mind of the gray hoods."

"Energy isolated from spirit. A form of will without mind."

"Black magic then, is it?" asked an oddly chipper Larry.

"Words we could put to it, I suppose," said Doyle. "For categorization, if not understanding."

"No disrespect, guv, but wot you want to understand an unholy creepin' terror like that lot for? Be glad we got the better of it and move on, that's how I look at it."

"We should move on in any case," said Sparks, rising. "The explosion should have awakened the soundest sleeping guard in the empire."

With Sparks leading the way, they left the antechamber by way of a corridor that held the greatest promise of an exit.

"Wouldn't want to be the watchman happens across this mess on my go-rounds," said Larry. "Put me right off my kip."

"I could do for that scotch about now, Larry," said Doyle.

"Pleasure, sir. Get ourselves home first. Never had to break out of a museum before," said Larry, begging the question of how many times he'd been required to break into one.

"I'm quite sure you're up to the task," said Doyle.

chapter fourteen LITTLE BOY BLUE

Larry was indeed up to the task. One judiciously bro-ken window later, they were back on the street and quickly across it to the safety of Sparks's apartment, where they administered themselves a full measure of vintage single-malt from a beaker on Sparks's bench and settled in for what little remained of the night. Doyle assessed their injuries and pronounced them relatively intact, if not a great deal the worse for wear, and fit to travel, which Sparks stated as their task for the following day. Without even the energy left to inquire as to where tomorrow might carry them, Doyle fell swiftly into a thick and leaden sleep.

The next evening's newspapers would be dominated by rip-snorting accounts of an audacious criminal attempt to grave-rob the British Museum's priceless Egyptian reserves. In their eagerness to gain access to the treasures, the looters had apparently blown themselves up along with their targeted plunder, a rare collection of Third Empire mummies. Just why the mummies themselves had been lifted by the thieves—and likewise destroyed in the explosion, one of the bodies having been quite incredibly hurtled up a flight of stairs and through a door by the blast—and not their priceless gold-leafed coffins, was the sort of minor journalistic inconsistency to a sensational headline-grabber that didn't seem to tax the tabloids' credulity in the slightest. Along with breathlessly overstated descriptions of the carnage inflicted on museum property, there were the predictable cries of outrage from members of Parliament and other oft-quoted pillars of culture, deploring the desecration of such a conspicuously public institution, with blame obliquely laid at the feet of a far-too-liberal immigration policy, followed by the usual stern nostrums for correcting the social faults that were so clearly at the root of such hooliganism: no respect for God, country, and Queen, et cetera, et cetera. The facts suffered their habitual neglect. No word of the connecting Roman viaduct or a statue of Tuamutef in evidence, nor a whisper regarding a vertical tunnel leading directly to the office of the president of the publishing firm of Rathborne and Sons, Limited.

But long before those papers even hit the streets, while the streets were still awash with police inspectors and hand-wringing Egyptologists and a host of rubbernecking civilians, before Doyle had roused himself from his deathlike slumber, John Sparks had been out the door since dawn and returned from his morning's work to rouse the others and set them on their way. Bidding the noble Zeus farewell, the three men slipped down the back staircase before noon, climbed aboard their hansom, and slipped through a gaping hole in the investigative net that had been so hastily thrown over the blocks circumferencing the British Museum.

Sparks's morning had been highly productive, he informed Doyle and Larry. Breakfast in the company of a former theatrical colleague—now a leading producer-manager of the London stage—had yielded the current whereabouts of the Manchester Players, the troupe advertised in the poster they'd found on the president's desk at Rathborne and Sons.

"On tour in the northeast of England; Scarborough tonight, finishing up a three-day stint," he said, "then north for an engagement in Whitby."

Whitby. York again. Wasn't that the parish where the Hon. Bishop Pillphrock, one of the names on the List, tended his flock? Doyle inquired.

Not only that, Sparks told them, but through an acquaintance at the mercantile exchange he had discovered Whitby was also the winter residence of Sir John Chandros, one of Pillphrock's prominent companions on the List of Seven. Doyle was beginning to take Sparks's admonition about the nonexistence of coincidence to heart.

For his final revelation, Sparks handed Doyle a slender, cloth-bound volume he had unearthed at Hatchard's Bookshop: My Life Among the Himalayan Masters by Professor Arminius Vamberg.

Vamberg. Yet another name from the List!

"Look at the publisher," said Sparks.

Doyle opened to the frontispiece: Rathborne and Sons, Limited. He quickly scanned the enclosed author's biography wherein Vamberg was described as a native Austrian who had collected an alphabet's worth of advanced degrees from the elite among Europe's ivory towers before a ferocious wanderlust carried him from the islands of the Caribbean to the Tibetan Highlands, with stopovers on the Dark Continent and the Australian outback.

"No picture of him," said Doyle.

"I'll wager he has a beard," said Sparks cryptically.

"A beard?"

"The man who obtained Bodger Nuggins's release from Newgate was described to you as having a beard."

"What makes you think that man was Vamberg?"

Sparks smiled. "Simply a hunch. One can't know everything with absolute certainty."

"Does the book give us any clues to the man?"

"Although the title would give the reader to believe he's about to embark on a highly personal journey of discovery, there's almost nothing to be gleaned from it regarding the author's personality. The tone is benign, academic, and investigatory. He makes no attempt to proselytize, persuade, or otherwise make insupportable claims for the powers of the spirit world."

"But he don't make a nickel from that piece a' dreadful," said Larry.

"How do you mean?" asked Doyle.

"No ghosts and goblins, no hairy mountain-dwelling fiend swoopin' down on its victim like a night wind? Hardly sell two copies in the open market; folks want a little blood with their gruel, don't they?"

"It seems Professor Arminius Vamberg is precisely what he presents himself to be," said Sparks. "A sober, serious scientist laboring in the academically unsanctioned field of the metaphysical."

"No wonder we've never heard of him," said Doyle.

"Study it at your leisure, Doctor. We've a long train ride ahead of us."

"To Whitby, I assume."

"But of course," said Sparks.

As they snaked through the crowded noontime streets, Doyle was jolted by the memory of his promise to Leboux, the promise he'd made—was it only yesterday? It felt like months ago—not to take leave of London again without leaving word. Sparks's putative ability to throw his weight around within the confines of government aside, Doyle's sense of obligation to his old friend was strong and binding. He asked Sparks if they might quickly stop by St. Bartholomew's Hospital on the way; he wished to secure some of the few personal effects he kept there and, since they were heading into the possibility of more and greater danger, replenish his stock of medical supplies as well. Returning Sparks's subtly questioning gaze with impassive stolidity, Doyle felt reasonably confident he hadn't betrayed his true intention. Sparks's response gave him no reason to believe otherwise.

"St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Larry," Sparks instructed.

"Might we afterward drive by the Royal Mews to look for that book Spivey Quince described?" asked Doyle.

"I had already planned on doing so," said Sparks. His look was closed and inaccessible again.

Maybe he's seen through my request, thought Doyle, growing flustered. Maybe he doesn't trust me. Such a hard man to decipher! Well, in truth, what business is it of his if I want to let Leboux know where I am? Am I to rely on John Sparks to inform my family and sort out my loose ends should anything happen to me? The police are good for something: dependable in their plodding, predictable sort of way, if nothing else.

The remainder of the trip passed in an uncomfortable silence. Reaching the hospital, Sparks joined Doyle as he left the carriage and entered along with him. Can't very well ask him not to come, thought Doyle, how would that look? He said nothing. Sparks sat on a bench outside the physician's quarters to wait while he requisitioned the supplies he needed and checked his locker. There were in fact precious few things of any use inside, but at this point, he realized with an odd mixture of regret and elation, they constituted the sum of his worldly possessions: a silver brush and comb set, a razor and shaving mug, and a crucifix his father had given him on the occasion of his confirmation. He put the brush, comb, and razor into his bag. He considered putting the crucifix round his neck but settled for dropping it in a vest pocket.

After receiving the additional medical supplies from the disbursement office, Doyle walked back to the door and peered out the porthole window. Sparks was no longer on the bench. Doyle quickly walked to the reception desk, grabbed a pen, and was about to hastily scribble a note to Leboux when the nurse on duty noticed him.

"Oh, Dr. Doyle, I've a message here for you," she said, moving to the pigeonholed wall behind her.

"A message?"

"Came this morning. Policeman delivered it." She handed him an envelope.

"Thank you," said Doyle. He opened it.

Arthur,

Mr. John Sparks is an escaped lunatic from the asylum at Bedlam. Violent and extremely dangerous. Contact me immediately.

Leboux

"Billet doux from some secret paramour?" said Sparks.

"What?" Doyle looked up, startled. Sparks was beside him, leaning on the desk.

"The letter, old boy—is it from a lover?"

"An old acquaintance wants me for a game of racquets," said Doyle, folding it and returning it to the nurse as casually as nature would allow. "Please let the gentleman know I shall be unavailable to play for the next week or so, but will be back in touch immediately at that time."

"Very good, Doctor," said the nurse, carrying the note safely out of harm's way.

"Shall we go, then?" Doyle said.

He picked up his bag and started out. Sparks fell into step beside him.

"Find everything you needed?" asked Sparks.

"Yes."

Good God. Good God. I can't run, thought Doyle, and I can't seem to hide anything from him, not even my thoughts. I've seen only too well what he's capable of; he's the last

man on earth I'd want opposing me—is it all lies, everything he's told me? Could any one man be as pernicious and cunning as that? Yes, if he's mad, who better? But wait, Doyle, what if it's not true? What if Leboux's got it wrong? After all you've been through together—he's saved your life how many times now?—shouldn't you give him at least the benefit of that small doubt?

"You all right, Doyle?" asked Sparks evenly.

"Hmm. Couldn't say there's not a lot on my mind, could I?"

"Certainly not."

"Guess I've as much right to my own brooding silences from time to time as anyone else."

"I shan't dispute you."

"I mean, I'm the one who's had his life fairly well taken apart—"

A cry from the door of the ward they were passing interrupted, an extended scream, high-pitched and agonized. A child's voice. Doyle turned and looked inside.

The beds had been pushed to one side, and a mechanical carousel, children in hospital smocks seated on its six wooden horses, filled one side of the spacious L-shaped room. Three stocky tumblers in red Russian blouses were coming down off one another's shoulders. A shambling red-nosed clown had just left off playing a hurdy-gurdy organ and was crowding in behind a quartet of nurses attempting to calm the child whose ululating outburst had stilled the room: a small boy, dressed in a bright satin Harlequin outfit of many vibrant colors, predominantly violets and blues. About ten years old. His head was as pale and bald as a hen's egg; the skin edging the back of his neck was warped and strangely puckered.

Spivey's vision! Men in red, horses, a boy in bright blue—a bone-chilling wallop jumped Doyle's spine, his skin tingled with goose bumps. Sparks brushed past him into the room, then Doyle quickly advanced around him to close in on the child.

"Blaglawd!" Doyle thought he heard the boy wail. The child's eyes had rolled back into his head. His arms thrashed about as his entire body jerked in fitful spasms.

"What's happened?" asked Doyle of the senior nurse.

"We're having a show for the children—" she said sturdily, trying along with the others to grab hold of the boy's flailing limbs. "He came with them; he's one of the performers."

The white-faced clown pushed forward. "What's wrong wid 'im?" asked the clown, with more irritation than concern.

"Blaglawd! Blag lawd!" shouted the child.

"What's a matt'r wid 'im then?" asked the man in a fiat Midlands accent. Doyle could smell rum and peppermint on his breath.

"Stand clear, please," the nurse instructed him.

As the nurses struggled to hold the boy steady, Doyle checked his pulse and looked into his eyes; his heart was racing, his pupils widely dilated. A thin, clear froth bubbled freely from the corners of his mouth.

"Black Lord! Black Lord!" His words were becoming clearer.

"Wot's 'e talkin' 'bout then?" the clown crowded in again to ask.

"What's the boy's name?" Doyle asked of the man.

"Joey—"

"Is he your son?"

" 'E's my apprentice," the clown replied defensively. "I'm Big Roger; 'e's Litt'l Roger."

Beneath the clown white, the man's face was oily and cra-tered with vivid pocks. Viewed closely, the wide red artificial smile painted over his mouth only accentuated a tight-lipped sneer that was clearly his customary mien.

"Has he ever gone off like this before?" asked Doyle.

"No, never—ow!" the man cried painfully.

Sparks had clamped a pincer grip on the back of the clown's neck.

"You'd best answer the doctor truthfully," said Sparks.

"Once! Once 'bout six weeks ago. We was down Battersea, outside the train station durin' a matinee: Right in the mid'le, 'e goes like this 'ere—"

"Black Lord! Black Lord!" the little boy cried.

"Hold him steady," Doyle said to the nurses.

With a culminating yell, the boy pulled his hands free from the nurses and clawed wildly at his head; his fingers dug into the skin and ripped it clear away from the bone. The other children who'd been gathered in a fearful knot around them

screamed and ran about, hysteria spreading like a transmitta-ble airborne germ.

"Stop him!"

There was hair beneath the boy's faltering skin, a full head of sandy hair. The boy was wearing a bald pate, Doyle realized as the shock wore off, a guise identical to his elder partner's. As the uncomprehending nurses fell back in horror, Sparks stepped forward, took firm hold on the boy, and earned him away from the crowd and behind a stand of bedside screens.

"Quickly, Doyle," said Sparks, sitting the boy on a bed.

Doyle kneeled down and moved closer to the child. "Joey, listen to me, listen to my voice: Can you hear me?"

The boy's face remained blank and inexpressive, but he spoke not another word; Doyle's voice seemed to penetrate the thick haze surrounding him. He allowed Doyle to take his hands without resistance.

"Can you hear me, Joey?"

Sparks pulled the screens around the bed to shield them and stood guard behind Doyle and the boy, but in the caterwauling din that had resulted, the source of its instigation had almost been forgotten.

"Joey, you can hear me, can't you?" said Doyle.

Joey's eyes flickered shallowly behind their half-closed lids, only the whites visible. The boy slowly nodded.

'Tell me what you see, Joey."

The boy licked his cracked, parched lips; blood seeped :rom serrated, self-inflicted wounds. "Black Lord ..."

"Yes, Joey. Tell me."

His small, round face assumed a quiet dignity. The boy's voice was high and bell-like, but it now possessed a melliflu-ous maturity that belied its innocent frame. "Black Lord ... books for passage. Passage to this side."

Passage. Spivey Quince in his trance said something about passage.

"To which side, Joey?"

"Physical."

"Where is he now?"

Joey paused, his eyes darting around, seeing. Then he slowly shook his head. "Not here."

"Passage how, Joey?"

"Rebirth."

"Rebirth into physical life," said Doyle.

Joey nodded weakly. Doyle caught Sparks's eye, glancing back at them over his shoulder; he was listening.

"They try to help It," said Joey.

"Who does?"

"The Seven."

The Seven. Good Christ. "Who are the Seven?"

"They serve ... have served It before."

"What do they want?"

"To prepare the way. They are on this side."

"Who are they, Joey? Who are the Seven?"

There was a pause before Joey shook Ms head again.

"What does It want?"

"It seeks the throne. It will be King ... King a thousand years."

Quince went on about crowns or thrones as well, when he took hold of the medium's picture.

"What is It, Joey? What is this thing?" asked Doyle, trying to will more energy into the boy, feeling him going limp in his arms.

Joey's face grew paler. He seemed to reach down to a deeper level of responsiveness. Froth foamed from his lips, a bright salmon shade of pink. His chest heaved with effort; his voice lowered considerably.

"It has many names. It has always been. It waits outside. Souls nourish It ... It feeds on their destruction. But It will not ever be satisfied ... not even the Great War will satisfy Its ..."

The boy inhaled, and his eyes opened, clear and conscious. He looked up at Doyle, fully wake for the first time, with a pitiable awareness of his own frailty.

"Joey?"

Joey shook his head with a beatific air of acceptance; then, looking past Doyle, he feebly raised a hand and pointed directly at Sparks.

"He is an arhanta," said Joey.

Sparks was watching the boy raptly, a dark edge of dread shading his lowered eyes. There was a sharp barking sound, and Doyle turned back to Joey. He'd heard an explosive cough as the boy's insides fatally hemorrhaged; a flood of hot

pink fluid was cascading down from his chin and onto the satin blouse. The boy's weight increased suddenly, settling and collapsing down into Doyle's hands; he could feel that life had entirely fled from Joey's small body. Doyle gently lowered him to rest on the bed.

"Is he dead?" asked Sparks.

Doyle nodded.

"We must go. Quickly," said Sparks. "There'll be too many questions."

Sparks took Doyle by the arm, his fingers digging deep, directing him back into and through the chaotic scene around them toward the door. Nurses, doctors, and guards were still trying to mollify the children. Two bobbies appeared at the door through which Doyle and Sparks had entered. Doyle felt the grip on his arm tighten as Sparks steered Doyle away, and they headed for a door at the far end of the ward. Behind them, the acrobats were moving toward the screens where Joey's body was lying. Sparks and Doyle were about to clear the edge of the crowd when Big Roger the clown stepped directly into their path.

"Wot's 'appened wit' me boy, then, Mister? Got a right to know, 'aven't I? It's me wot paid for 'im, quite the investment that boy is—" A cry of alarm sounded from behind the screen.

"He's dead! Joey's dead!"

Big Roger grabbed hold of Doyle. " 'Ere, what'd you do with *im, then?"

The bobbies moved through the crowd toward the acrobats, who had emerged and were looking around the ward.

"You killed 'im!" The clown's face twisted with sclerotic rage. "Wot about my readies! You killed my—"

Sparks reached out, and Big Roger was on the ground making muted, strangulated sounds while clutching at his neck, the blow struck with such blinding speed Doyle could not remember seeing it applied.

"Keep walking; don't run," said Sparks.

Doyle pulled up short and shook off Sparks's grip; they looked hard at each other. Doyle's ambivalence shot through his studied mask of passivity, and Sparks did not misinterpret it.

"There! Over there!"

The acrobats had spotted them and were pointing frantically through the crowd. The bobbies headed in their direction.

"Doyle, this is no time—"

"I don't know."

"I can't allow you to stay here—"

"You're telling me I have no choice?"

"It's a longer conversation—"

"We need to have it."

"Not now. For God's sake, man."

Doyle wavered but would not be moved. The bobbies closed in.

"The boy, what he called me: Do you know what an arhanta is?" asked Sparks.

Doyle shook his head.

"It means savior."

The bobbies were only a few yards away.

"Here, then, stand clear, you two!" said one of them.

Doyle shoved a bed in their direction, breaking their stride, and then he broke for the door. Sparks flew after him, and they burst through the door into a hospital corridor. An alarm sounded, and the pursuit behind them intensified.

"Which way?" asked Sparks.

Doyle pointed to their left, and they ran, dodging a host of startled patients and doctors and medical paraphernalia. Using his intimate knowledge of the hospital, changing directions frequently—in and out of wards, up and down stairs—and finally through a ground-floor window, Doyle led them to the entrance where Larry waited. A half-dozen bobbies were just arriving via Black Maria; Sparks blew a silver whistle that he'd pulled from his pocket and authoritatively waved them toward the doors.

"Inside, hurry! They're getting away!" shouted Sparks.

The bobbies hustled toward the entrance and collided with the officers and guards who were just running out of the building. A smaller coach pulled in behind the Black Maria; Doyle saw Inspector Leboux step out onto the running board as it slowed.

"Doyle!" Leboux cried. There was a pistol in his hand.

In a rush and clatter of hooves, Larry brought their carriage racing through the half-moon drive directly between them

and Leboux, showering the air with gravel. Sparks grabbed Doyle and leapt up onto the moving cab. Through the windows, Doyle could see Leboux aiming his pistol at them, trying to clear a shot. Sparks and Doyle hung on to the rails as Larry steered into the turn; momentum edged them up onto the two outside wheels, a fraction of an inch from toppling over, before the cab crashed back down onto all fours. Doyle and Sparks bounced hard but clung to the frame, arms looped around the bar of the open window.

"Don't stop!" Sparks yelled.

Larry cracked the whip and made straight for the hospital gates ahead. Behind them in the drive, Leboux's carriage and the Black Maria started after them. Hand-cranked siren wailing, a hospital cab was coming directly at them through the gates at a steady clip. There was barely room for two carriages to negotiate the opening when both were at a slow walk; a head-on collision seemed certain.

"Hang on!"

Sparks and Doyle flattened themselves against the outside of the cab as the two vehicles passed within inches. The wheels sparked as they engaged, but the hubs failed to lock. Doyle felt the side of the ambulance brush his shoulder as they rushed clear through the gate. But in the immediate aftermath of their near collision the ambulance driver was not so fortunate; trying to brake as he confronted the following police sent him into a disastrous skid; horses reared and the ambulance went over, blocking the drive and any immediate access to the gate. Leboux's cab stopped short of the wreck; bobbies poured from the Black Maria and rushed to the fallen horses, but it would be too late to effectively follow Larry. He drove Sparks and Doyle, still holding fast to the outer rails of the cab, around a corner out of sight of the hospital gates and into the covering flow of London traffic.

chapter fifteen THEATRICAL TYPES

JL o Doyle's surprise, they made for the north, a straight course out of London; it had been his assumption they would return to Battersea to reclaim the engine that had provided their deliverance from Topping. Larry maintained a pace rapid enough to outdistance any pursuit without calling any undue attention to them—it wouldn't be long before the telegraph wires were singing with news of their escape.

Doyle sat uneasily across from Sparks as they drove, Sparks staring moodily out the window, glancing only occasionally at Doyle, and then never meeting his eyes.

Whom do I believe? Doyle was forced to ask himself with such urgency that the logical vivisection of its separate issues proved impossible. There was only the question itself filling his mind, repeating like a church bell.

A lunatic from Bedlam. Was it possible? He was forced to admit that it was so. A man tormented by imagined persecutors. Living in a shadowy world of secret connections to high places—no less than the Queen, for God's sake—constructed by a diseased mind while trapped in the confines of a madman's cell. But Sparks had always seemed so lucid, so supremely rational. Although even lunatics were capable of sustained lucidity, or its flawless simulacrum, as Doyle knew full well; perhaps Sparks's sapient belief in the incredible tales he told was the most damning indictment of his madness. Could Jack actually be all the things he claimed he was? There were the supporting testimonies of Larry and Barry to take into account, but they were recruited criminals, quick to follow and easily influenced, perhaps even knowing accomplices in the charade. A charade to what end? What possible purpose? None occurred to him. If Sparks were truly mad, there might very well be no discernible reason to his actions; the man could be acting without a script, tailoring his stories as he went to suit the cut of the moment's fancy.

A darker question suddenly loomed behind these worrisome speculations; what if there was no Alexander Sparks? Was it possible this man was himself the criminal mastermind he had described his brother to be? He certainly possessed all the same attributed talents—and what other individual had he ever heard described who came closer to fitting the known profile of Alexander Sparks? What if this brooding puzzle of a man seated across from him embodied both brothers at once, fragmented selves residing in the troubled crucible of a single imagination, each believing the other as separate and autonomous, one stalking and killing at will, the other haunted by a memory of foul deeds committed in the eclipse of an obscuring derangement? Did that mean Jack was also the defiler and murderer of his parents? Painful to consider, but couldn't it have been the very commission of those vile acts that had somehow split his mind, shifting responsibility for the unthinkable to a phantom figure that he constantly pursued or felt constantly pursued by?

The cooler side of Doyle's mind rallied in protest; how then to explain the figure in black he'd encountered twice now, the man Jack had identified as his brother? There were the gray hoods and the seance, the destruction of his flat and the madness of Topping, all consistent with Sparks's story, however strange it sounded, all of it his own direct experience. The murders of Petrovitch and Bodger Nuggins, the visions of Spivey Quince and the doomed boy in blue, and the evidence he had seen all too clearly with his own eyes—and felt on his skin; he could still see the vivid welts on his wrist where the ghoul had grabbed him—in the basement of the British Museum. Even if John Sparks was as mad as a March hare, he was only one figure in a crowded, cockeyed landscape that had long since lost the shape and flavor of the everyday world.

Doyle parted the curtain, looked out the window, and tried to purchase a sense of there they were; there was Coram's Fields to the left, that put them on Grey's Inn Road, yes, the carriage was heading due north out of London, toward Islington.

Should he share these wayward thoughts with Sparks? Or was there a more skulduggerous way to test the fidelity of his character? After all, wasn't it just as likely that Leboux's information was at fault? If only he'd had a chance to speak with him, hear firsthand the source of this news about Sparks and more details. That opportunity might now be lost for good; after Doyle had fled from the hospital in full view of his friend, Leboux's patience had surely reached its end. He was a fugitive from justice, plain and simple, and his choices had narrowed considerably: He could either attempt an escape from Sparks to throw himself on the uncertain mercies of the police—risking the untold consequences of Sparks's formidable wrath—or cast his lot with the man and his band of outsiders to whatever uncertain end lay in store.

"Anything in Blavatsky about the Seven or a Black Lord?" asked Sparks.

"What's that?" said a startled Doyle.

"I'm not as conversant as you are with her work: Is there any mention in her writings about the Seven or the Black Lord?" Still deep in thought, Sparks didn't so much as glance at him.

Doyle rummaged through his scattered recollections of Blavatsky. It seemed a hundred years since he had spent that last quiet evening in his rooms, leisurely pondering her text.

"I recall something about an entity—the Dweller on the Threshold," said Doyle, wishing he had the book in front of him. "It could nearly answer to the same description."

"What was the Dweller on the Threshold?"

"A being ... an entity of high spiritual origin that, as part of its pilgrim's progress, consciously chose to come down into the world—"

"To live in human form, you mean."

"Yes, as all souls do, according to Blavatsky: a way of learning, matriculation."

"Why was this being different?"

"In its disembodied state, this one supposedly held a place of favor at the right hand of whatever word you wish to use for God. And when it entered the physical world, it fell—I'm trying to remember her wording; this wasn't it precisely—it succumbed to the temptations of material life."

'The ways of the flesh," said Sparks.

"Devoting itself to the accumulation of earthly power and the satisfaction of earthy appetites, turning its back on its exalted spiritual heritage. In this way was conscious evil born into the world."

"The Christians call it Lucifer."

"The boy in blue said it is known by many names."

"The myth of the fallen angel exists in every discovered culture. How did it come to be described as the Dweller on the Threshold?"

"At the end of each term of physical life—it has had more than a few apparently—Blavatsky claims this being, upon leaving the earthly plane, retires to a limbo at the door between worlds, collecting around it the lost, corrupted souls of persons who fell to its influence while alive and followed it blindly to their deaths—"

"Are they the Seven?"

"I don't recall a specific number, but they were spoken of collectively."

"So these twisted devotees are the first to return from this purgatorium to physical life," said Sparks, his mind leaping ahead, "where their purpose is to prepare the way—the 'passage'—for their Black Lord who 'dwells on the threshold' between the physical and mystic worlds, awaiting return to the earth."

Doyle nodded. "That does her account of it some small justice. I don't remember her alluding to the being and its acolytes as the Black Lord and Seven; they were simply referred together under the rubric of the Dark Brotherhood."

Sparks fell back into pensive silence. They were by now clattering through the farthest outskirts of London, onto dirt roads through pastoral land. Were they going to venture all the way to Whitby by horse and carriage? A rough two or three days' ride at the least.

"Many of the mediums you spoke with were having disturbing visions," said Sparks.

"Vague sorts. Impressions, feelings. Fleeting and ephemeral, at best."

"No specifics?"

"Only from Spivey Quince and of course the boy he foretold our seeing at the hospital."

"This boy was a genuine medium, in your estimation?"

"I'd say he was an extreme sensitive. Dangerous to speculate without knowing his underlying physical condition, but it seemed to me the impact of the vision that assailed him contributed in no small way to his death."

"As if the vision itself had turned and attacked."

"And the very weight of it had crushed him," said Doyle reluctantly.

"What does this suggest to you? That many experiencing these similar visions?"

Doyle thought for a moment. "Something stirring in the plane from which they draw their information. A powerful disturbance, like a storm at sea before it draws within sight of land."

'The equivalent of psychic barometers registering an otherwise invisible change in pressure."

Doyle shifted in his seat. "I admit I'm uncomfortable with the idea."

"In the East, dogs and cats grow restless before an earthquake strikes. We send canaries into mine shafts to detect the presence of deadly gas. Is it so hard to imagine human beings are capable of similarly subtle perceptions?"

"No," said Doyle patiently. "But it doesn't make me any more comfortable."

"The activation of an entity as formidable as the one described as this Dweller on the Threshold would generate quite a thunderhead on whatever plane it resided."

"If such a thing were true—"

"If the return of this being is indeed what the members of the Brotherhood—the Seven—are after, how would these black magicians prepare the Dweller's 'passage' for rebirth?"

"I'm sure I don't know—"

"The spilling of blood? Ritualized murders?"

"Perhaps," said Doyle, growing weary of the interrogation. "I'm not familiar with these things."

"But It would have to be born as a child first, wouldn't It?"

"Maybe they're shopping around for a nice couple in Cheswick to adopt the little nipper."

Sparks ignored the jibe. "A child with blond hair, seen in a vision? Taken from his father against his will, his mother an unwitting conspirator?"

"I'm sorry, Jack, but it's all a bit too much for me. I mean,

Blavatsky gets away with this sort of thing, but the reader naturally assumes, or at least I did, that it's all metaphoric or at the very least archaic mythology—"

"Isn't that what you wrote about in your book? The ill use of-a child?"

Doyle felt himself go pale; he'd almost forgotten his damned book.

"Is it, Doyle?"

"In part."

"And you wonder why they've come after you with such aggressiveness. What further confirmation do you require?"

The question hung in the air between them.

"Doyle ... let me ask you," said Sparks, softening his tone. "Knowing what you do about its history, what do you suppose this Dweller would be on about once it got its feet back on terra firma?"

"Nothing too out of the ordinary, I imagine," said Doyle, refusing to commit himself emotionally to the answer he knew was correct. "World dominion, total enslavement of the human race, that sort of thing."

"With a good deal more sophisticated weaponry available to the bugger this time around. Our capacity for mass butchery has increased a hundredfold."

"I would have to agree with you," said Doyle, recalling the presence on the list of Drummond and his burgeoning munitions empire.

Satisfied with the impact he'd made, Sparks sat back in his seat. "Then we'd best put a stop to this business straightaway, hadn't we?"

"Hmm. Quite."

But first I need to know you're not one of them, thought Doyle. I need to ask you why I should believe you're who you say you are, and I can't, I can't just now, either ask or believe, because if you are mad, you may not know or recognize the difference, and by asking I endanger my own life.

"What is an arhanta?" asked Doyle.

"You've never encountered the term?"

Doyle shook his head.

"Arhantas are Adepts in the Tibetan Mystery schools. Possessing spiritual powers of the highest order, an elite warrior

class. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about them is the degree of sacrifice they are required to make."

"What sort of sacrifice?"

"An arhanta spends the body of his life developing certain arcane—you might call them psychic—abilities. At the height of his strength, after years of hard, thankless study, the arhanta is asked to entirely forsake the use and exercise of those powers and to undertake a life of silent, anonymous contemplation, far removed from the centers of worldly life. It is said there are twelve arhantas alive in physical life at any given time, and it is their radiant presence and selfless service alone that prevents mankind from self-destruction."

"They're not supposed to use these alleged powers to fight evil?"

"The teachings say that has never happened. It would be a violation of their sacred trust, with far more grievous consequences."

Doyle chewed on that thought with no little difficulty. "Why would the boy call you one, then? On the face of it, you don't readily answer to the description."

"I have no idea," said Sparks. He seemed as genuinely conflicted and confused as Doyle.

They wrestled with these thorny contradictions awhile. Doyle was jostled out of his brown study by the carriage running over a rough patch as Larry led them off the road onto a cart path leading through a dense copse of woods. Emerging into a clearing on the far side, they were greeted by the heartwarming sight of the Sterling 4-2-2 they'd left in Batter-sea, waiting on north-running tracks. Smoke belched from its stack, the furnace stoked and ready to roll. Behind it trailed a full coal hopper and, even more encouragingly, a passenger car. Emerging from the cab with a welcome wave was none other than Brother Barry, late of Pentonville Prison. There was nothing of the sentimental reunion about this meeting, however; it was grim, fast business, and hardly a word was spoken. Effects were transferred to the train, horses set loose to run, and the carriage carefully concealed in the woods. Sparks and Doyle boarded the passenger car, and the brothers took to the engine. Within moments they were underway. The sun slid low on the horizon; they would make most of their northern run at night.

Although customized, the passenger car was Spartanly appointed: four double seats facing each other, removable tables between them. Two bunked sleeping berths in a rear compartment. Planked wooden floors, oil lamps set in otherwise bare walls. A simple galley with a loaded icebox, stocked with provisions for the journey.

Sparks assembled one of the tables and sat down to pore over a packet of maps. Doyle took a seat across the car from him and utilized the silence to arrange his medical inventory and clean and reload his revolver. He obeyed an instinct to keep his pistol close at hand.

After an hour had passed, Barry joined them and laid out a peasant's supper of bread, apples, cheese, salted cabbage, and red wine. Sparks ate alone at the table, making notations and working with his maps. Doyle sat with Barry in the galley.

"How did you get out?" asked Doyle.

"Coppers let me go. 'Alf an hour after you went off."

"Why would they do that?"

"Tried to follow me, didn't they? Hoped I'd lead 'em straight to you."

"And you eluded them."

"Only in a trice."

Doyle nodded and took a bite of apple, trying not to appear overanxious. "How did you know to meet us where you did?"

"Telegram. Waitin' for me at the train yard," said Barry, with a nod toward Sparks, indicating the telegram's sender.

That followed logically; Sparks must have sent the wire when he was out this morning, Doyle thought. He finished his wine and poured another cup. The hum and rattle of the tracks and the wine's warming properties applied an agreeably stabilizing remedy to his apprehensions.

"Barry, have you ever seen Alexander Sparks?" asked Doyle, keeping his voice low but not unduly confidential.

Barry cocked an eyebrow, glancing at him sideways. "Odd question."

"Why is it odd?"

"That's the maestro's middle name, idn't it?" said Barry, nodding toward Sparks. "Jonathan Alexander Sparks. That's my understanding."

Confident their voices wouldn't carry over the racket of the train, Doyle casually turned his back to Sparks, placing himself directly between him and Barry. Doyle felt a trickle of cold sweat slide down his back.

"You mean to say," said Doyle, "that you've never heard Jack mention a brother by the name of Alexander?"

"Don't mean much if he 'adn't. Doesn't gab about hisself. Don't gab much to me in any case." Barry bit into a plug of chewing tobacco. "Larry's the talker. He could jaw the shine off a mirror and sell you the frame. Beggin' your pardon. I just remembered Larry's expectin' his supper."

Barry tipped his cap, wrapped the remainders of the meal in a bundle for Larry, and went back to the engine. Doyle stood alone in the galley, staring across the car at Sparks. His worst fears ran riot through his mind, trampling the shards of security to which he had been struggling to cling. When Sparks glanced up at him, Doyle responded with a false, overquick smile and raised his glass in anemic bonhomie, feeling every bit as exposed and remorseful as a redhanded pickpocket. Sparks turned back to his work without any notable reaction.

Doyle was stricken; what was he to do now? Hadn't his treacherous thoughts been writ as plain on his face as a sandwich-board advert? Every step he took seemed to be precisely the wrong one, ferrying him deeper into still and murky waters. He made a small, efficient dumb show of yawning and picking up his bag.

"Think I'll turn in," said Doyle.

"Fine," answered Sparks.

"Long day. Long, long day."

Sparks did not respond. Doyle's feet felt rooted to the floor.

"Berths in the back then," he said with a smile, pointing congenially toward the rear of the car. Why was he making these ridiculous and obvious statements?

"Right," said Sparks, without looking up.

"Rhythm of the train. Comforting. Ought to help us sleep, that. Rocking motion. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack." Doyle could scarcely believe the words were leaving his mouth; he was chattering like some demented nanny.

Sparks took a lingering look at him. "Are you feeling all right, old boy?"

Doyle's antic smile lit up like a fun house. "Me? Tip-top. Never better!"

Sparks winced slightly. "Better leave off the wine then."

"Right. Off to dreamland!" Doyle couldn't stop grinning to save his life.

Sparks nodded and went back to his studies. Doyle finally convinced his legs to move and walked back to the berths. "Off to dreamland"? What had gotten into him?

Doyle stood before the banks debating which would be the safer to accommodate his doubts and fears for the night. This took some time. When Sparks glanced back at him again, Doyle smiled and waved, then climbed into the lower bunk and pulled the curtains shut, sequestering himself in the cubicle.

Staring at the bunk above, Doyle clutched his bag to his chest and held the revolver tightly in his hand. Scenarios of doom hovered in his mind like enraged hummingbirds. If he comes after me, thought Doyle, I won't go down without a fight. Maybe I should just fire a few preemptive bullets into the upper bunk while he's asleep, give the emergency-stop cord a rip, and slip away into the wilderness.

Doyle peered discreetly out the crack in the curtains; he could see Sparks's back, hunched over his work, reading, writing, looking through a magnifying glass. Even his posture suggested a hitherto unnoticed mania: cramped, nervy, and obsessive. How readily apparent the man's madness seemed to him; how could it have escaped his attention until now? Distractions, yes, there had been no shortage of them, not to mention that the man's unquestioned genius put up such an impenetrable screen it was nearly impossible to detect where invention ceased and true character began. But still Doyle chided himself; for all his observational acuity the signs of Sparks's instability had been there all along: the moody silences, the disguises, the veiled grandiosity—arhanta indeed!—his fixation with secrecy and global conspiracies, the folderol that passed for his criminal filing system—maybe those cards held nothing but random scribblings; lunatics typically create entire worlds animated by nothing but private, delusional significance. And there was no lingering question about the man's talent and capacity for violence. He would be spending the night in a space no larger than a good-sized steamer trunk with one of the most dangerous men alive.

Time passed in this fashion. Sleep was out of the question; rest itself was tenuous. Doyle hardly dared utter a sound or move a muscle; Better let Sparks think I'm asleep, passive and unsuspecting. His body was plagued by a painful oversensitivity: his mouth grew dry and cottony; his legs felt like stilts. Every blink of his eyes produced a clap as loud as castanets.

He heard stirring in the car. He longed to know what time it was, but reaching for his watch seemed far too complicated a procedure to initiate. Slowly shifting his weight, Doyle reached over and parted the curtains; Sparks was no longer at the table. He was out of sight altogether, but only half the car was visible from Doyle's limited vantage. There was a sound at the door to the engine, also out of view; the latch being thrown, the door was now locked. Sparks moved back into Doyle's range of vision, then out again. A repeated click of metal on metal. Closing the curtains on the car windows; those were the rings as they slid along the rods. Then Sparks moved from one wall fixture to the next, rolling down the wicks on the oil lamps; the room darkened. Door locked, curtains closed, lights down low. Either he's turning in, thought Doyle—but why would he lock the door against Barry and Larry? And on a moving train!—or he's setting the stage to make his fatal attack.

Doyle brought the revolver to the edge of the curtain and braced himself, but Sparks made no move to the rear; he was still walking around the cabin. Pacing restlessly. He clasped and unclasped his hands several times, ran his fingers through his hair, stopped and stood with a hand pressed hard to his forehead, then resumed pacing again. He's trying to decide whether to kill me or not, Doyle couldn't help thinking. Then, with one sweep of his arm, Sparks cleared the maps off the table, took a small leather case from the inner pocket of his jacket, set it down on the table, and opened it. Doyle saw a glint of light on metal; he strained to make out the case's contents, but Sparks still moved between him and the table, and the light in the room was too dim for details.

Sparks wheeled and looked suddenly back at the sleeping

berths; Doyle resisted the impulse to snatch shut the curtains the fraction they were open. I'm in total darkness, Doyle said to himself, he can't possibly see me. Doyle didn't move, his hand frozen in air, lightly touching the curtains. Sparks looked long and hard and then turned back, apparently satisfied he wasn't observed. Sparks's hands moved to the objects on the table, Doyle heard the clink of metal on glass. What did he have in that packet?

Sparks took off his coat and began a complicated sequence of actions completely screened from Doyle's view. When Sparks turned back, in profile now, vividly outlined by the lamp on the wall behind him, Doyle saw a syringe in his hand. Sparks tested the plunger; the needle emitted a fine spray into the air.

Good God, thought Doyle, he means to kill me by way of lethal injection. Doyle's finger tightened on the trigger, ready to gun down Sparks where he stood. But Sparks did not turn toward the berths. He set down the syringe, unbuttoned the left sleeve of bis shirt, and rolled it over his elbow. He fixed a length of slender twine around his bicep and pulled it taut with his teeth. Flexing and releasing his left arm, he tapped at a vein in the hollow of his forearm, swabbed the area with antiseptic, picked up the syringe from the table, and without hesitation squidged it into his arm. He paused, inhaled evenly once, twice, then pushed smoothly forward on the plunger, emptying its contents into his bloodstream. He extracted the empty needle, set it down, and released the rope from his arm. Sparks staggered slightly as the needle's message was swiftly delivered. He moaned once, softly, a lurid sound, full of hideous appetite gnawing on satisfaction. His body shook with illicit excitement as he surrendered to the seductive intruder.

A morphine derivative? thought Doyle, judging from the drug's visible effects. Maybe cocaine? He gladly embraced his analyzing as a welcome refuge from the horror of what he was watching.

Sparks closed his eyes and weaved unsteadily, the intoxication swimming toward its heady peak. The moment of his rapture seemed hideously extended. When it passed, Sparks meticulously gathered up the contents of the packet and relaced them. Doyle saw three small vials of liquid set alongside the needle before the case disappeared into Sparks's coat. The cleanup completed, Sparks slumped down into a chair and moaned again, involuntarily. This time the pure expression of sensual ecstasy was tempered by a tone of invidious guilt and abject self-disgust.

Despite his recent suspicions, Doyle was nearly overcome by a Hippocratic impulse to compassionately rush to his aid, but common sense froze him in his tracks. A secret enslavement to narcotics hardly decreased the chance that Sparks was out of his mind; it made the possibility that much more likely. There was no denying Sparks's shame in the behavior; the man kept it from his closest confederates. As great a hazard as he might pose to anyone else, it was clear Jack Sparks provided just as real a danger to himself.

Sparks rose to his feet again and moved from sight. More sounds. Clasps being thrown. A pizzicato plucking of strings. Sparks stepped back into view, holding a violin to his neck. He tested the bow across the bridge, turning the pegs, checking for tune. Then he leaned against the back of a chair and began to play. A black dissonant thrumming issued from the instrument, but there was a cold and brutal sense to it, not melody precisely, it bore no evidence of song, this order of notes could never have been set to paper; it seemed rather the direct expression of a terrible wound, sharp, torn and ragged, flushed with pain. Doyle knew this was the sound of Sparks's secret heart, and the burden it placed on the listener's mind was nearly as harsh as the one it sprang from and so eloquently described. Before long it reached an unresolvable impasse. There was no crescendo, no climax; it simply had to stop. Sparks lowered his head, slumped down onto the arm of the chair, and his arms hung limply at his sides. Doyle's breath sfiuddered in his chest; a sob wanted to escape.

Sparks slowly raised the violin again and began to play a second piece. This one possessed both coherent rhythm and harmony: a low, sweet threnody, laced with grief, a trickle from a dammed-up sea of unshed tears. It sent into the air a vibration of almost unbearable emotional resonance. Doyle could not see Sparks's face in the shadows, only the graceful belly of the instrument and the shape of the man's arm drawing the bow. He was grateful for the relative discretion of the sight. He knew that, however they had met their end and at

whosoever's hand, he was listening to Sparks mourn for his dead.

The piece ended. Sparks did not move for many minutes; then, with considerable effort, he roused himself from the somnolent embrace of the narcotic, returned the instrument to its case, and walked slowly toward the back. His step was faltering and uncertain; thrown off balance by the movement of the car, he was more than once forced to support himself against the walls. He stopped in front of the berths. Doyle drew back from the curtain, but through the gap he could see Sparks's thighs swaying. Sparks lifted a foot onto Doyle's berth and hoisted himself, hesitating halfway up, trying to re-center his balance; Doyle could see the buckles shining dully on his boots. With a guttural grunt, Sparks pulled himself the remainder of the way and landed heavily on the thin ticking of the upper bunk. His body shifted once and did not move again. He was lying on his back. Doyle listened to the rhythm of Sparks's breathing as it flattened, growing shallow and strained.

Doyle lifted the pistol, his heart beating wildly. I could fire now, he thought. Put the gun to the mattress, empty the chambers, and kill him. He placed the barrel gently against the bed above and cocked the hammer. He worried about the sound, but there was no audible change in the respiration above; Sparks was, in every sense of the phrase, lost to the world. Doyle lost track of how long he lay there, pistol in hand, on the thin edge of that fateful decision. Something in him prevented his pulling the trigger. He couldn't name the reason. He knew it had to do with the music he'd heard, but he fell into sleep while trying to discover why.

The gun was still in Doyle's hand when he woke, but the hammer had been eased to rest. Dirty gray light seeped through the curtains on the outer window. He reached over to part them and looked outside.

The train was still clipping along at a considerable pace. They had driven into the leading edge of a storm during the night. The sky was deeply overcast. A fresh mantle of snow frosted the flat, featureless land; more of the stuff gently fell in puffy clusters the size of dandelions.

Doyle rubbed the film from his eyes. He was hungry, sore, drained by the emotional exertions of the long night before. He looked at his watch: seven-thirty. He could smell shag tobacco and strong, brewing black tea, but it took the unexpected sound of laughter to rouse him from his bunk to the front of the car.

"Gin!" he heard Larry say.

"Blast you for a sod!" said Sparks.

More laughter. Larry and Sparks were playing cards at the table, a tea service laid out beside them. Sparks was smoking a long-stemmed pipe.

"How-do-you-do and look at this fine news," said Larry, picking over the cards as Sparks laid down his hand. "These stray members of the royal family you've clutched to your bosom will cost you a queen's ransom."

"Don't torment me, you devil—ah, Doyle!" said Sparks cheerfully. "We were just debating about whether to wake you; got a fresh pot here, care for a cuppa souchong?"

"Please," said Doyle, requiring no further invitation to join them and help himself immediately to the offered plate of biscuits and hard-boiled eggs.

Sparks poured the tea as Larry totaled up his cards and added the resulting figure to a long, snaking column on a well-traveled pad of paper.

"That's the game then, guv. More's the pity," said Larry. "My stars and stripes, you're in a pretty fix now, I can tell you, break out the violins."

"What's our running total then?"

"Roundin' off the figure—and I can gladly do you that small favor, can't I?—you look to owe me ... five thousand, six thousand forty quid."

Doyle nearly choked on his tea. "Lord ..."

"We've been at the same game for five years," explained Sparks. "The man's simply unbeatable."

"Tide's bound to turn your way eventual, guv," said Larry, reshuffling the cards with alarming adroitness. "Every dog has his day."

"That's what he'd like me to believe."

"Wot else is it but 'ope of eventual good fortune wot keeps bringing you back to the table? Man's gotta have 'ope to live."

"I'm convinced he cheats, Doyle," said Sparks. "I just haven't discovered his methods."

"I keep tellin' him there's no substitute for the favor of old Dame Luck," said Larry, with a theatrical wink at Doyle.

"They haven't found an adequate one for money yet, either," said Sparks good-naturedly, rising from the table.

"A man's got a right to lay somethin' aside for his idle retirin' years, don't he? He wants a bit of leisure and layin' about when the stems and pies give out, as we all knows they must in the end." Larry offered the deck for Doyle to cut and smiled cheesily. "Care for a game, guv?"

"Doyle, I'll not say a word regarding the decision you're about to make other than this: It's a good deal easier to resist the first step on the road to ruin than any of the thousand that inevitably follow."

"I'll decline, thanks all the same, Larry," said Doyle.

"Cheers, Doc," said Larry happily, fanning out a handful of aces before pocketing the cards. "It's plain to see you learned something in that fancy college besides where to find a man's ticker."

"I'm a firm believer that if one must entertain a vice, better not to take on more than one at a time," said Doyle, with a casual look at Sparks.

"And what might your one solitary vice be, Doyle?" asked Sparks jauntily, leaning against the galley, arms folded, puffing on his pipe.

"Belief in a man's innate goodness."

"Ho-ho!" said Larry. "That's not a vice so much as a guaranteed noose round yer neck."

"Naivete, then," said Sparks.

"So might a more cynical mind call it," said Doyle evenly.

"And you might call it ..."

"Faith."

Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Doyle saw a tightening around the corners of Sparks's eyes. Had he shamed some vulnerable place in him, or was it simply a reflex of remorse? Whatever the case, Sparks retreated from the openness of their exchange, the jocularity of the mood he'd built with Larry forfeiting its bright sheen.

"Long may it serve you well," said Sparks.

" 'In God We Trust,' " said Larry. "That's what they stamp on the money in America. There's the proper place for faith, you ask me."

Sparks started for the door to the engine, "I've squandered enough of my dwindling fortune in your direction for one sitting, Larry; time to earn your keep and shovel some coal—"

"Right with you, sir."

"You're more than welcome to join us, Doyle."

"A bit of exercise in the fresh air would do me well," said Doyle.

Doyle followed them out the door, traversed the agitated coupling, and climbed onto the tender. Sparks gave a wave to Barry, hand on the throttle, bundled up ahead of them in the engine cab. Each man grabbed a shovel and went to work pouring fuel into the scuttle. The cold and whipping wind sent up motes of coal that bit into their skin; driven snow-flakes exploded on contact with their clothes, crystals melting in the wooden threads, dissolving into the black of the scattering dust.

"Where are we?" shouted Doyle.

"An hour from York," Sparks yelled back. "Three hours to Whitby, if the weather holds."

The cold inspired them to great exertions, the quicker to remove themselves from its glare. Soon the fire in the engine burned hotter than a sinner's conscience.

Whitby began as a sixth-century fishing village, grown over the years to a minor port, a seaside resort in the short summer of Northumbria, but in the depths of winter a forbidding destination to any but those required to seek it out by either trade or custom. The river Esk had carved a deep rift between two summits as it made its way to the sea where it formed a natural, deep harbor, and in that narrow valley the village first found life. Over the years, the community sprawled to incorporate both hillsides. Some combination of mood and the harsh landscape had down the centuries created a fertile haven for stern religious feeling, ofttimes fervor. The crumbling Celtic abbey of St. Hilda dominated the high headland south of the village proper, as it had on that site since before England had known kings. The ruins of the ancient abbey cast a long shadow over its less austere successor, Goresthorpe Abbey, which shared the southern hill, halfway

between its forerunner and the town. Its spire was the first landmark Doyle noticed as the train pulled into the station. The hour was not quite noon, but few people were about; those that were moved in halting submission to the bitter cold of the deepening storm and lowering sky. The town seemed mired in a gray and fog-bound hibernation. Barry saw to the disposition of the train, while Larry took charge of their bags, settling them at a nearby inn recommended by the station-master. Sparks immediately recruited Doyle for a visit to Bishop Pillphrock's abbey.

No carriages were available at the station, every shop and service battening down in anticipation of the storm's worsening, so they crossed the bridge and walked a mile to the southern slope. A dense sea fog rolled in from the harbor and together with the falling snow reduced visibility to zero. Bent against the wind, they ascended the steep and winding stairway up the hill, mufflers protecting their faces from the growing gale, which howled more fiercely the farther up they climbed.

Arriving at Goresthorpe Abbey, the more contemporary parish church, they found snow accumulating in blowing drifts and the doors to both church and rectory secured tight. No lights burned in the windows; no signs of life inside. Sparks raised the thick iron ring on the rectory's massive wooden door and slammed it three times against its plate, the sound quickly smothered by the rising blanket of snow. Sparks knocked again. Doyle, his mind benumbed by the cold, tried in vain to remember which day of the week this was: a day of rest for the clergy? Where else would they be?

'There's no one here," said a deep and resonant voice behind them.

They turned; a giant of a man stood before them, six-and-a-half feet tall if he was an inch, cloaked against the cold as they were, but he wore no hat; a leonine shock of red hair crowned his massive head, and his face was framed by a thick red beard encrusted with icicles.

"We're looking for the Bishop Pillphrock," said Sparks.

"You won't find him here, friends. The diocese is deserted," the stranger said, advancing. The musical lilt of Erin ianced in his voice. His face was broad and welcoming; his great size suggested power but no menace. "They've all gone, at least three days now."

"Would they be at the other abbey then?" asked Doyle.

"You mean in the ruins?" said the man, turning in the direction of the ancient abbey and pointing with a silver-tipped walking stick of black zebra wood. 'There's been no shelter within those walls for near to five hundred years."

"This is Bishop Pillphrock's diocese?" asked Sparks.

"That is my understanding. I don't know the man. I'm a stranger to Whitby myself, a condition I assume you share, or do I assume too much?"

"Not at all. But I must say you look familiar to me, sir," said Sparks. "Do we know one another?"

"Are you gentlemen up from London?"

"We are."

"Have you a passing familiarity with the theatrical scene there?"

"More than passing," said Sparks.

"Perhaps that explains it," said the man, extending his hand. "Abraham Stoker, manager to Henry Irving and his theatrical production company. Bram to my friends."

Henry Irving! My God, thought Doyle; how many times had he stood for hours to watch the legendary Irving on the stage? Lear, Othello, Benedick to Ellen Terry's Beatrice, the greatest actor of his generation and perhaps the age. Such was the magnitude of his fame that Doyle felt dumbstruck by proximity to someone even remotely connected to the man.

"Of course that's it then," said Sparks companionably. "I have seen you on many occasions, first nights and the like."

Sparks and Doyle completed their side of the introductions.

"And may I ask what brings you gentlemen to this hibernal corner of the earth on the deadest night of winter?" Some note of cautious reserve in Stoker's voice rendered the query as a good deal more than idle curiosity.

Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. "We might do well to ask you the selfsame question," said Sparks evenly.

There followed a short silence in which each sized up the other, during which whatever Stoker sought in Sparks he apparently found.

"I know a pub," he said, "where we might sit by the fire and more congenially satisfy each other's interest."

Half an hour's trudge through the thickening tempest brought them to the Rose and Thistle, a post-and-beam establishment in the center of town overlooking the banks of the Esk. The snow now fell so rapidly it formed connective bowers between rocks in the channel below. Hot mugs of coffee laced with Irish whiskey warmed their hands as the three men shook off the cold in the embers of the dying afternoon. Idle chat about the couplings and customs of various well-known or otherwise notorious theatrical types—and what outrageously melodramatic personal lives they all seemed to lead, thought Doyle—had occupied their journey and the early minutes after their arrival at the public house. In the void of the first conversational lapse, with a marked change in tone toward the hushed, anxious, and mesmeric, Stoker, unsolicited, began his tale.

"As you well know, Mr. Sparks, the world of the theater is a terrifically small community—a stone doesn't enter that pond without the far end receiving immediate word of the ripples—and whereas most of the talk-of-the-town is as perishable as a bucket of prawns in the noonday sun—as there's always some sensational, up-to-the-minute chat coming along as grist for the rumor mills—it takes a good deal more than the usual fare to capture one's interest for the turn of a single evening, let alone shock one into a state of more or less sustained agitation. Theatrical types love their gossip, and it usually goes down easier with a generous dusting of salt."

Stoker had not spent his years around the stage in vain, his delivery practiced to wring maximum dramatic effect from every pause or inflection, but the result was so spontaneous and virtually laden with import to come that the listener was effortlessly persuaded to deliver himself into this storyteller's crafty hands. Doyle found himself aching to provoke the man forward with questions, but he took his cue from Sparks, held his peace, and sat forward on the edge of his chair in restive anticipation.

"A strange story began making the rounds of my little vorld about a month ago and reached my ears one night in the green room of the Lyceum Theatre not long after. Even allowing for the distortions and inevitable embellishments common to any well-traveled trifle, there was at its center such a persistent, original kernel of collusion and intrigue that it took absolute command of my attentions."

"What was it?" blurted Doyle.

Without looking at him, Sparks made a light gesture toward Doyle, trying to gently dampen his eagerness.

"The word came down to me," resumed Stoker, "that a certain high-placed gentleman—he was not mentioned by name—through a series of obscure intermediaries, had retained certain members of a provincial theatrical company— actors, professionals, likewise unknown—to enact a newly scripted performance in a private London house. Not a play or a piece ever intended for the stage, mind you—an original creation. One time only, never to be repeated. Performed for an audience of one. No contractual arrangement, other than certain verbal agreements, were entered into. We might ask what motivated these actors to accept such an unorthodox assignment? A disproportionately large sum of money for this performance was guaranteed; half apparently disbursed to them ahead of time. The other half would be receivable upon completion.

"What was the purpose of this mysterious performance? It was never stated to them, but the implication echoed that, which I'm sure you will recall, of Hamlet's second-act importunity to the Player King: as in the Bard, this reenactment of a cold-blooded murder was intended to achieve some provocation in the sole member of its audience."

"Murder," said Doyle. He felt a squeamish tightening in his throat. A sidelong glance to Sparks saw him return a look of equal intensity.

"Who that person might have been or what his or her desired reaction was to be was never remarked upon. Even at that, the story was up to snuff as a bona fide nine-day wonder, but this dog has a tail that grew stranger still. During the performance, new and unanticipated characters made an impromptu entrance onto the scene, carrying these itinerant players far beyond the scope of what they had so carefully rehearsed. Something went terribly awry." Stoker leaned in closer to them, lowering his voice to a hush. "Actual blood was shed."

By some superhuman effort, Doyle did not say a word, al-

though he was not at all certain he could keep his heart from leaping out of his throat.

"The players scattered," Stoker went on. "One of their number had fallen at the scene and was never recovered. Presumed dead." Stoker paused, looking back and forth between them.

Don't let it be her, thought Doyle. Dear God, if she's alive, my own life before hers.

"Needless to say, the survivors feared for their lives, not without reason. They sought protection in the shelter of the only safe haven they knew and rejoined their original company."

"The Manchester Players," said Sparks.

Stoker did not so much as bat an eye. "Yes. The unfortunate Manchester Players."

Stoker removed and unfolded a flier from his coat, trumpeting the Manchester Players' production of The Revenger's Tragedy, the same design as the one they had discovered on the desk in Rathborne and Sons. The dates advertised an engagement the previous week in the nearby city of Scarborough. A small strip pasted diagonally across the poster read: CANCELED.

"Upon hearing this, I tracked the rumor to its source: A stage manager once in my employ heard it from an actor who had in turn left the Manchester troupe on family business while they were playing London last fall. Intrigued, I made some inquiries and learned their itinerary from a booking agent. This was December twenty-eighth; that same day the Manchester Players reached Nottingham, where they had a two-day engagement. That same afternoon they were rejoined by two of the actors who had participated in the ruse—"

"How many were in it altogether?" Damn the man's vanity and his orderly unfolding of information; Doyle felt fully justified in asking.

"Four," said Stoker. "Two men, two women."

"Which of these had fallen at the scene?"

"Doyle—" said Sparks.

"I must know: which one?"

"One of the men," said Stoker. He paused now, not petulantly, but in a way that demanded respect to both the gravity of the tale and faith in his expertise as its teller.

"Please, continue," said Doyle, his heart beating ever faster.

"On that night of December twenty-eighth, at their hotel in Nottingham, these same two members of the troupe disappeared. Although they had stated to their confreres that they feared for their lives—and indeed took all commonsensical precautions to ensure their safety; windows and door secured, lights left burning—when the morning arrived, these two were gone from their beds, without a trace, luggage left behind, without any visible signs of struggle. Considering the extremity of their state of mind, it seemed to others in the company not altogether perplexing that the two had decided during the night to take flight. At least that is what was presumed until the discovery was made during the troupe's evening performance." Stoker took a long draught from his drink; he seemed to require it. "Are you familiar with The Revenger's Tragedy, Mr. Sparks?"

"I am," said Sparks.

"A broad meller and a bloody bit of Grand Guignol," said Stoker. "Not exactly an edifying spectacle; plays to the cheap seats, as we say in my business. There's a steady stream of gratuitous savagery throughout, but its denouement delivers a particularly vivid session with the guillotine, featuring a stage effect that can only be described as a severing bit of ultra-realism. That night, as the property master went about his backstage task of placing props in all the proper places, he checked the hooded basket that rests below the blade. Inside that basket were the wooden heads used to simulate the remains of the recently dispatched. Later that evening, during the performance's climactic scene, when the lid was lifted to display the contents of the basket ... inside were the heads of these two missing actors."

"Good Lord. Good Lord," said Doyle. Chief among the commingling of feelings Doyle felt pulsing through him with a dizzying sensation of relief: Jack Sparks had been with him throughout the night of December 28—on the road, and onboard ship, between Cambridge and Topping. If these murders were the work of Alexander Sparks, and they bore the gruesome and unmistakably original stamp of his foul hand, then clearly his fears that the two brothers were one and the same man were groundless.

"The actor who made the discovery fainted onstage. The performance was, of course, suspended, and all the Manchester Players' following engagements were summarily canceled by wire that same night. The next morning I first learned of the killings and traveled immediately to Nottingham, arriving late on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth. But it seems that before any of the chores regarding the disposition of their business could be conducted—return of received receipts, packing and shipping of costumes, scenery, and the like—the rest of this traveling company of players had gone missing, simply vanished, just as the first two had disappeared—hotel bill unpaid, bags and personal effects left in their rooms. The local constabulary were only too happy to attribute their sudden departure to the still lingering perception of actors as opportunistic gypsies fleeing from creditors, and perhaps from their culpable involvement in as unsavory a pair of murders as that quiet Midlands community would ever hope to see."

"How many in the troupe altogether?" asked Sparks.

"Eighteen."

Sparks shook his head slowly. "I fear we will not see them again."

Stoker looked at him for a long moment before responding, "I share your concern, Mr. Sparks."

"This murdered couple, they were a man and a woman?" asked Doyle.

"Man and wife. And the woman six months pregnant," said Stoker, his repugnance at the atrocity surfacing for the first time from under the polish of his delivery.

The couple he'd seen at the seance, thought Doyle, the young couple seated beside him, the working-class man and his pregnant wife. So that meant the medium and the dark-skinned man were the genuine article, not for hire, they'd been on the inside of the job. Which meant the man killed at the scene was the actor hired to play the part of George B. Rathborne.

"Excuse me, Mr. Stoker," said Doyle urgently. "Is there a stage effect, a way of realistically simulating the cutting of someone's throat, with a knife or razor?"

"Not difficult at all," said Stoker. "The blade would have a hollow edge, and on it a slit to an interior cavity filled with fluid, triggered by a button which the holder would push as he drew it across the skin."

"The fluid would be ..."

"Stage blood. A mix of dye and glycerin. Sometimes animal's blood."

Pig's blood on the floorboards of 13 Chesire Street.

She's alive. She's alive, I know it, thought Doyle.

"There were four actors involved; you've accounted for three, what happened to the fourth, the second woman?"

Stoker nodded. "I knew this poor company had not left Nottingham of their own volition, if in fact they ever got out alive. Thus confronted with the most confounding mystery I have ever in my life encountered and in light of the profound disinterest of the police, I understood to pursue what I would learn of their fate myself. I am a writer of fiction, you see, or so I aspire to be. My family obligations necessitate my work in theater management, but writing is the means whereby I derive my greatest personal satisfaction."

Doyle nodded, irritated at the intrusion of the man's self-interest but sympathetically aware of how his own good nature was often at odds with the impulse to mine the rough ore of his experience for gold.

"My first action was to obtain a roster of company names from the hotel in Nottingham, then track the schedule of the Manchester Players to the next few cities on their tour, on the chance they had made some plan to regroup down the road and one of them or more might surface there. That took me to Huddlesfield, then York on New Year's Eve, on to Scarborough, and finally here, to Whitby, two days ago. I checked with the theaters in each city, and the hotels they had reserved to lay over. I watched stations and piers for arrivals and departures, visited restaurants and pubs touring actors were known to frequent. I questioned tailors and cobblers; actors are in constant need of repairs to shoes and costumes while on the road. For all that, I had not had, in any of these cities, a single encouraging response. I was indeed on the verge of returning to London when yesterday afternoon I happened upon a laundress in Whitby who had the day before taken in a woman's black satin dress damaged with a peculiarly persistent red stain—"

Sparks stood bolt upright. Doyle looked at him; he was

wearing the most curious expression he had ever seen on the man's face. Doyle turned to see what could have wrought such an effect in him.

She was standing in the doorway. She was looking for Stoker, and her face wore the small concentrated satisfaction of having found him, when her eyes traveled to his companions. The impact of seeing, and a moment later recognizing, Doyle appeared to weaken her; splotches of color rushed to her cheeks, and she put out a hand to the wall for support. Doyle immediately rose to his feet and moved to her, but he had no sense, or later, memory, of movement. There was only her face, the pale, delicate oval that had so haunted his thoughts and dreams, the soft black curls that framed her forehead before cascading gently to her shoulders. The noble eyes and full rose-pink lips. The elegant, swanlike gracefulness of her white neck. Unmarked, unscarred.

As he reached her, Doyle held out his hands, and she unhesitatingly took both in greeting, stepping forward to him even as she seemed to retreat, full of surrender and fear and apology uncertain of its reception. Realizing the forgiving welcome of his look, she let her weight list gently back against the door; it was the slightest, but to Doyle the most stunning, yielding to the turbulence of her feelings. She looked at him and looked away repeatedly, unable to hold the fullness of his gaze for any length of time. Emotions played across her face with the clarity and speed of minnows in a shallow stream. She seemed temperamentally incapable of any intentional deception; her beauty provided only the most quicksilver transparency to her innermost looking glass. Feeling the warm, moist touch of her hands, Doyle realized with a jolt that they had never spoken a single word to one another. Tears came freely to his eyes. He searched through his mind, quite sure he hadn't the remotest idea of how to begin.

"Are you all right?" he finally asked.

She nodded, repeatedly, trying to find her voice. There were tears glistening in her eyes as well.

"I had no hope that you could have been alive," he said, letting go of her hands, trying to keep his emotions in check.

"I had none," she said finally, her voice a dusky contralto, "but that which you, sir, by your courage and kindness had given me."

"But you are alive," said Doyle. "Here. That's what matters."

She looked up at him and held his look and nodded again. Her eyes were large, bracketed by dark, shapely brows, slanted appealingly downward at the outer corners, their color a startling sea green.

"You don't know how often I've thought of your face," she said, reaching out a tentative hand to touch him, withdrawing before making contact.

"What is your name?"

"Eileen."

"We must straightaway remove ourselves from common view," Sparks's voice intruded sharply. He was suddenly standing beside Doyle. "We'll use Stoker's room. This way, please, Madam."

Sparks gestured to where Stoker was waiting by the stairs. Doyle was disturbed at the curtness with which he had addressed her and gave him a cold look, which Sparks refused to meet. Doyle followed Eileen across the room, where she accepted Stoker's offered arm before climbing the staircase. Sparks trailed them to the second floor. No one spoke until all had entered Stoker's slanted, low-ceilinged room, and the door was secured behind them.

"Please be seated, Madam," said Sparks, grabbing the back of a chair and slamming it down unceremoniously in the center of the room.

Eileen gave a pained and vulnerable glance back to Doyle even as she moved to the chair and settled herself.

"Here now, Jack, must you take that tone—" started Doyle.

"Be quiet!" commanded Sparks. Doyle was too dismayed to reply; he'd never before heard Sparks display such an imperious manner. "Or need I remind you, Doyle, that this woman, while in the employ of our enemies and through the effectiveness of her false office, made one of the principal contributions to your entrapment, betrayal, and near murder!"

"Most unwittingly, I assure—" protested Eileen. "Thank you, Madam; when your self-defense is required, it will be most swiftly called upon," replied Sparks corrosively. "Jack, see here—"

"Doyle, if you would be kind enough to contain your ill-informed, moonstruck affections long enough to allow me

some small opportunity to arrive at the truth with this adventuress, it would be very much appreciated."

Stung by his unalloyed scorn, Eileen began to weep quietly and helplessly, looking up at Doyle for assistance. Contrary to ameliorating his anger, her flood of feeling only served to stiffen Sparks's bellicosity.

"Tears, Madam, in this instance, are wasted. I assure you that as persuasive as you may have found them in the past— and as effortlessly as you can simulate them according to your well-practiced craft—you will find them here as bootless as rain to a river; I will not be moved. Treachery of this high order, whatever form it takes, however unwitting, deserves no presumption of innocence. I will have the truth from you, Madam, make no mistake, and any further attempt to manipulate the gentle nature of my companion to your advantage will avail you not at all!"

In the interests of discretion, Sparks had hardly raised his voice above the conversational, but the silence that lay in the room when he finished speaking rang out with the vehemence of his rancor. Stoker had backed up against the door, stunned and speechless. Doyle found it difficult to move, shamed both by his friend's explosive outburst and the nettle of unattractive truth that he knew nested in his harsh judgment. He was perhaps even more disturbed to see Eileen stop weeping almost instantly; she sat upright in her chair as stiff as a celluloid collar, entirely and eerily composed. Her eyes coolly regarded her interrogator without fright or anger, clear and steady and with enormous self-possession.

"What is your name, Madam?" asked Sparks less aggressively, apparently appeased by the greater authenticity of her current state.

"Eileen Temple." Her voice wavered not at all; there was pride in it, and a hint of no longer undeclared defiance.

"Mr. Stoker," said Sparks, without looking at him, "I take it that, upon your discovery at the local laundress's, you traced Miss Temple back to this address, whereupon you sought her out last night."

"Correct," said Stoker.

"Miss Temple, you have been an actress in the employ of the erstwhile Manchester Players for how long a period of time?"

"Two years."

"Last October, while playing an engagement in London, were you approached by someone in your company regarding the appearance you were eventually to make on Boxing Day at Thirteen Cheshire Street?"

"Sammy Fulgrave. He and his wife, Emma, were understudies with our company. She was with child; they were in fairly desperate need of money."

"So they introduced you to the man who had offered them this situation—a small, swarthy man, with a foreign accent— whereupon he extended the same offer to you."

The Dark man at the seance, thought Doyle. The one he'd shot in the leg.

"That he did," said Eileen.

"What were the terms of that offer?"

"We were to receive one hundred pounds, fifty of which he paid to us immediately. His accent was Austrian, by the way."

"He then recruited the fourth and last actor with your assistance?"

"Dennis Cullen. He was to play my brother—"

"And was no doubt in equally exigent financial distress," said Sparks, unable to keep the edge of scorn from his voice. "What did this man require of you for his hundred pounds?"

"Our participation in a private performance for a wealthy friend of his who was interested in spiritualism. He said it was the intention of a well-meaning group of this man's friends to play a sort of joke on him."

"What sort of joke?"

"He told us that this man, their good friend, was a resolute disbeliever in the spirit world. He said they planned to invite the man to a seance, which he would be given every reason to believe was genuine, and then give him a proper fright, using all manner of elaborate stage effects. This was to take place in a private home, and in order to pull off the effect, they had decided that professional actors, people the man didn't know and whose behavior would appear credible, were required to play the parts."

"Nothing about this offer aroused your suspicions?"

"We discussed it among ourselves. To be honest, it sounded like fairly harmless fun. Nothing about the man's at-

titude suggested otherwise, and we, all of us, frankly needed the money."

She looked at Doyle and then away, somewhat ashamed, Doyle thought.

"What did he subsequently ask you to do?"

"Nothing for the moment. We were to return to London the day before Christmas for another meeting to organize the performance. At that time, the man took us to Chesire Street and showed us the room where the seance would be staged. He gave each of us our character's name, told us what sort of person they were supposed to be, and asked us to supply our own appropriate costumes. That's when we learned that Dennis and I were to play brother and sister."

"Had you ever before heard the name Lady Caroline Nicholson?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen this woman before?" Sparks asked, showing to her the photograph of the woman taken outside Rathborne and Sons.

"I have not," she said, after a moment's study. "Is this Lady Nicholson?"

"I believe it is," said Sparks. "You're younger than she. You wore makeup that night to make you appear older."

She nodded.

"I believe that you were singled out by someone who saw your London performance in October and sought you for this job because of your resemblance to Lady Nicholson. The others were relatively immaterial; you were the key to their plan."

"But why go to all this trouble?" asked Stoker.

"To protect against the eventuality that our friend Dr. Doyle had ever seen the real woman. I assure you the man responsible is capable of far more absolute thoroughness than this."

"But what in God's name was their intention?" pressed Stoker with evident frustration.

"Dr. Doyle's murder," he said.

Stoker leaned back. Eileen turned to look at Doyle again; he saw outrage register there, on his behalf. He was beginning to gain a measure of the woman's substantial fortitude.

"Did the man introduce you to the medium before the night of the seance?" asked Sparks.

"No. I suppose we all assumed it would be just another actor. He did say he would be playing a part as well. He was wearing makeup that night—you described him as swarthy; actually the man himself was quite pale."

"Our friend Professor Vamberg again, Doyle," said Sparks in an aside.

"Really?" said Doyle eagerly, almost pathetically grateful to hear a comradely word from Sparks. "You can't say we didn't get our licks in."

"No: When next we see him, the Professor should be walking with a pronounced limp."

Doyle felt a visceral, decidedly uncharitable surge of satisfaction as he recalled the gun going off in his hand and the man's wounded bellows.

"What did this man tell you to do on the night of the seance?"

"He wanted us to arrive in character, in case his friend happened to see any of us on the street. We met him a few blocks away; Dennis and I were picked up by carriage and delivered to the house by another man, who played the part of Tim, our driver."

"What was his name?"

"We didn't know him; he didn't speak to us. But just after we boarded the carriage, and the Professor, as you refer to him, was leaving for the seance, I overheard him call the driver Alexander."

Good Lord, that was him, thought Doyle, the driver he had spoken to outside 13 Cheshire, that was Alexander Sparks; he'd been as close to the man then as he was now to his brother. A shiver ratcheted through him. The man's immersion in his role had been consummate, undetectable.

"Miss Temple, the things we saw in the seance," Doyle asked, "did they demonstrate any of those tricks to you beforehand?"

Eileen nodded. "They had one of those devices—what do you call them?—a magic lantern, hidden behind the curtains. It projected an image into the air—"

"The picture of the little boy," said Doyle.

"With all the smoke, it appeared to be moving, and it was

difficult to tell where it came from—and there were wires suspended from the ceiling, holding the trumpets and the head of that hideous beast-—"

"You saw that before the seance?"

"No, but of course I just assumed," she said, looking for reassurance.

Unsure that he could provide any, Doyle only nodded.

"What specific directions were given to you regarding how to behave toward Dr. Doyle? Did they give you his name?" asked Sparks.

"No. I was told he was a doctor that my character had sent for, requesting help; my son had been kidnapped, I had turned reluctantly to this medium for guidance, but unsure about her intentions had written to the doctor asking him to meet us there." She looked at Doyle again. "But when he arrived, I don't know why, but I sensed immediately that something was terribly wrong, that the stories I'd been told were untrue—I could see it in your face. The others kept playing along—I don't know that they even noticed. I wanted to say something to you, to give you some sign, but once the thing began, it became so completely overwhelming ..."

"Did you believe what you were seeing was real?" asked Doyle.

"I had no way to judge: that is, I know what we're capable of onstage, but ..." She shuddered involuntarily and crossed her arms around herself. "There was something so vile in the touch of that woman's hand. Something ... unclean. And when that creature appeared in the mirror and began to speak in that dreadful voice ... I felt as if I were losing my mind."

"So did I," said Doyle.

"And then came the attack," said Sparks.

"An attack was to be part of the entertainment; we had rehearsed it. We would fall at the hands of these intruders, you would have your reaction, then everyone would bounce to their feet, and have a good laugh at your expense. But when those men came into the room ... they weren't the ones we'd seen before. I heard the blow that struck Dennis down, I saw the look in his eyes as he fell and ..."

Her voice caught. She put a hand to her forehead, lowered her gaze, and with an immense show of will righted the keel of her emotions.

"... and I knew that he was dead and that they meant to kill you, Dr. Doyle; that had been their intention all along. In that moment, I found voice in my mind to pray; if they would take my life for the part that I had played in this, my life for yours. Then I felt the knife at my throat and the blood running down, and I had no reason to believe it wasn't mine, that they hadn't murdered me as well. I fell, I suppose I fainted, the next moments are unclear...."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath; it hitched raggedly as she exhaled, fighting off tears again. She had told them the truth, thought Doyle; the greatest genius of the stage the world over could not have dissembled so effectively.

"I came around as Sammy and his wife were carrying me from the house—they hadn't been hurt, but we heard screams and moans behind us. Gunshots. Chaos. Such a terrible shock to realize I was still alive and everything I remembered had actually happened, that Dennis had been killed."

"The driver of the carriage, did you see him outside?"

asked Sparks.

She shook her head. "The carriage was gone. We ran. We began to encounter people in the streets. Emma was screaming, Sammy tried desperately to quiet her, but she wouldn't be stilled, he couldn't comfort her; he insisted it would be safer for me if we parted, so we went our separate ways. He gave me his handkerchief to wipe the blood off my throat. I didn't see them again. Mr. Stoker told me what happened to them.... I tried to make myself presentable. I didn't dare return to the small hotel where we'd been staying. I walked until morning, then took a room somewhere in Chelsea. I had the money we'd been given with me. I considered going to the police, but my part in it seemed impossible to explain, too deserving of blame; what could I have told them?"

Doyle shook his head, trying to grant her absolution. She took no solace from it, shaking her head self-reproachingly and looking away.

"All I could think of was getting back to the company. Get back and tell them what had happened, because I thought they would know what to do. I tried to remember where they were playing—I knew it was in the north, but I was so confused—then I remembered Whitby. I remembered Whitby because we'd played here once before, in the height of sum-

mer, and the sea and the sailing ships in the harbor had been so very beautiful, and I wanted to sit on a bench by the seawall and look out at the ships as I had that summer and not move and to think for the longest time, and maybe then I would begin to forget what had happened, maybe I could heal what had been done to my mind...."

Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she made no move to brush them away. Her voice remained even and strong. "The next day I took the train here. I had no other clothes to wear, but my cloak was full enough to cover the bloodstains on my dress. I spoke to no one. I completed the journey undisturbed, although I'm sure many remarks were made about the strange woman in the fancy evening dress, traveling without luggage or companion. I took a room here, like some haunted, heartbroken lover. I bought these poor clothes and sent my dress out to be cleaned. The blood had spoiled the satin, but I couldn't bear to part with it; it was my best dress, the only time I'd worn it before was New Year's Eve a year ago—I was so absurdly happy the night I wore that dress, I thought my life was just beginning and ..." She paused again, before pulling back and saying, simply: "... and so I took a room here and slept and waited for the company to arrive."

She looked back at Stoker, indicating the next chapter of the story was his arrival, which brought the tale to its current pass. Even Sparks's rectitude seemed mollified by the plain harshness of her ordeal. Doyle offered her his handkerchief, which she accepted without a word.

Stoker was the first to gently advance the conversation. "Miss Temple, you should tell them what happened here the night before I found you."

She nodded and lowered the handkerchief. "I was awakened in the middle of the night. Gently. I don't know why, I didn't move, I just opened my eyes. I wasn't sure, I'm not sure now, if I wasn't dreaming. A shape was standing in the shadows in the corner of my room. I looked at it for the longest time before I could be sure what I was seeing. A man. He didn't move. He looked ... unnatural."

"Describe him for me," said Sparks.

"A pale face. Long. All in black. His eyes—it's hard to describe—his eyes burned. They absorbed light. They never blinked. I was so terrified I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. I felt as if I were being watched by ... something less than human. There was a hunger. Like an insect."

"He never touched you."

She shook her head. "I lay there for the longest time. I had no sense of time. I felt paralyzed. I would close my eyes and reopen them, and still he was there. With the first morning light coming in, I opened my eyes again, and he was gone. I got up from my bed. The door and windows to my room were locked, as they had been when I went to sleep. I hadn't truly been afraid until that moment... even though he never touched me, he never moved, I felt so ... violated."

"Miss Temple spent last night in this room," said Stoker. "I sat up all night in that chair with this in my hand ..." He picked up a double-barreled shotgun from behind the dresser. "No one came into this room."

Doyle looked at Sparks with alarm. "We shan't leave you alone again. Not for a moment."

Sparks didn't answer. He sat down on the bed and looked out the window. His shoulders slumped slightly.

"Am I mistaken in believing that the man in Miss Temple's room is the same man responsible for the crimes we've been discussing?" asked Stoker.

"No. You are not mistaken," said Sparks softly.

"What manner of man is it who can move through the night this way, move through doors and windows into rooms without a sound, who can strike down people in their sleep, carry them off, and never be seen?" Stoker moved closer to Sparks as he spoke, never raising his voice. "What manner of human being is this? Do you know?"

Sparks nodded. "I will tell you, Mr. Stoker. But first you must tell me what you were doing when you found us at Goresthorpe Abbey."

Towering over Sparks, Stoker folded his arms and thoughtfully stroked his generous whiskers.

"Fair enough," he said. Stoker leaned against the window-sill, and took a pipe and pouch from his pocket, busying himself with the small, precise rituals of smoking as he began to speak. "I spoke with a great many people in Whitby when I first arrived. Few had anything of substance to tell me. Then I met a man in a pub down by the bay. A whaler, a grizzled

old dog, seventy if he's a day. Been round the world a dozen times. Now he sits and watches the harbor and drinks his stout from noon to closing, alone. The publican and his regulars regard the man as a sot and a harmless nutter. The sailor called me over to him soon after I came into that place. He was most agitated and very eager to tell me something he was sure no one else would credit—or rather something he had tried to tell repeatedly that no one else believed.

"He never slept much, he told me, some combination of alcohol and age, and so he spent many long nights walking by the shore and up the hill, toward the abbey, where his wife was laid to rest ten years since. She speaks to him sometimes, he said, he hears her voice on those late nights, whispering out of the wind in the trees above the graveyard. One night about three weeks ago as he made his way through the headstones, she called to him. He said her voice was stronger than he'd ever heard it.

" 'Look to the sea,' she said. 'Look to the harbor.' The graveyard runs along a ledge directly above the harbor. It was a blustery night, and the tide was high. He looked down and saw a ship running in with the waves, running fast in to shore, too fast, sails flapping, lines loose; it was looking to go directly aground. The old sailor picked his way as quickly as he could down to the beach where the ship was headed; if they hit the rocks there, it could mean disaster; he'd have to sound the alarm.

"When he got to Tate Hill Pier, a small cove out of sight from the seawall, he saw the ship had dropped anchor fifty yards offshore. She was a trim schooner, showing a lot of hull, lying light in the water. A skiff was coming from it toward the beach; he saw with surprise there were people waiting onshore with lanterns, waving them in. He moved closer to them but stayed hidden, deciding not to reveal himself. He saw the bishop among their number."

"Bishop Pillphrock?" asked Sparks.

Stoker nodded. "The others he didn't recognize. The small boat made land, two men on board, one all in black. Their cargo was two crates, the size and shape of coffins, which were quickly unloaded. The man swore he saw a large black dog jump off the boat as well. The schooner did not wait for the return of the small boat; she had already pulled anchor, tacking against the wind for the open sea. The group onshore shouldered the crates, which did not appear to be heavy, and headed up the hill toward the abbey. They passed not ten feet from the old sailor's hiding place. He heard the Bishop say something about 'the arrival of our Lord'—he thought it was the Bishop who'd said this—and the man in black shouted at him in a harsh voice to be still. The sailor followed them and said he watched them carry the crates, not to Goresthorpe, but to the ruins of the ancient abbey farther up the bill. And he swears he watched that black dog run into the cemetery and disappear into thin air. Since then, he'd seen strange lights burning late at night in the ruins. What disturbed him most was that since that night his wife's voice had not spoken to

him again."

"We must speak to this man," said Sparks.

"They found him the next morning in the graveyard. His throat had been ripped apart, as if he'd been attacked by an animal. The caretaker said that during the night he'd heard the baying of a wolf."

Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Eileen wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders and stared at the floor. She was shaking. The walls seemed suddenly both too small to contain what they were feeling and far too insubstantial to hold at bay the forces arrayed against them.

"What's that?" asked Sparks, pointing to a package on top of the dresser.

"That was my breakfast this morning," said Stoker. "A local product, apparently."

Sparks picked up the package of Mother's Own Biscuits. "We'll tell you the rest of our side of the story now," said

Sparks. And so they did.

chapter sixteen DEVIL DODGERS

Sparks and Doyle spared no details from Stoker and Eileen, save Sparks his alleged government connection and Doyle his lingering reservations about Sparks himself—that note from Leboux still lay across his thoughts like an iron pike—and it was dark and evening before the telling was done. Snow continued to fall throughout the afternoon. Streets were already muffled with a fresh foot of it, and the storm showed no signs of abating. They sent down to the kitchen for a light supper of soup, cold mutton, and corn bread, which they shared in Stoker's room and from which they all took no small, restorative comfort. Eileen said little during the meal, never meeting Doyle's eye, withdrawing inside herself to some fortified place of sanctuary. Feeling a greater strength in numbers was called for, Sparks excused himself from their company to collect Barry and Larry from the inn near the station where they had registered earlier that long day. Eileen lay down on the bed to rest. Stoker took the occasion to draw Doyle out into the corridor for a private word, leaving the door slightly ajar so as to keep an eye on the room and more specifically the windows.

"As one gentleman to another," began Stoker quietly, "it is my fervent hope that the situation here does not appear to be an indelicate one."

"How so?" asked Doyle.

"I am a most happily married man, Dr. Doyle. My wife and I have a young child. Miss Temple, as you cannot have failed to notice, spent last night in my room."

"You were standing guard over her life—"

"Even so. Miss Temple is an actress and, you cannot have failed to notice, an extremely attractive woman. If any word of this were to find its way to London ..." Stoker shrugged in a way common to the private rooms of the most exclusive gentlemen's clubs.

"Given the circumstances, such a thing would be unthinkable," said Doyle with unexpressed amazement. Was there no end to their society's fanatic preoccupation with propriety?

"I shall depend on your discretion then," said Stoker, greatly relieved, offering his hand. "I'm going to fetch a brandy, may I bring you one?"

'Thank you, no," said Doyle. He wanted nothing to cloud his mind during the coming night.

"Miss Temple asked for one as a soporific before retiring last night. Perhaps I shall bring her one as well."

With a slight bow, Stoker took his leave. Doyle reentered the room. Eileen was sitting up awake on the bed, deftly rolling a cigarette from a pouch of shag tobacco. Doyle's eyes widened.

"Do you have a match?" she asked. "Yes, I believe I do. Just a moment. Here we go," Doyle fumbled through his pockets, produced a match, and lit the cigarette for her. To steady the trembling—the result of nothing more complicated than being alone in the room with her—as he held the match near, she gripped his hand.

"Do you really think they'd attack us here with all these people about?" she asked, with a casualness and familiarity he'd not heard in her voice before.

"Oh, it is possible, yes, I would have to say, that it is, quite." Why did English suddenly seem something a great deal less than his native tongue?

"You ought to sit down. You look terribly tired." She crossed her legs and blew smoke into the air.

"Do I? Thank you, I am. I shall," said Doyle formally, and he looked busily around for a place to sit. He finally picked up the straight-backed chair from across the room, set it facing the windows, picked up the shotgun, sat down, and tried to appear purposeful.

"You look like you know how to shoot," she said after watching him for a moment, with the slightest trace of a smile. "I sincerely hope I won't have occasion to demonstrate

while you are in such, uh, proximity." He felt himself blushing. Blushing!

"And I have no doubt that if the occasion were to arise, I would be most suitably impressed."

Doyle nodded and smiled like a mechanical bird. It was hard to look at her. Was she toying with me? he asked himself. Is it because I'm behaving like such a filbert?

"Do you treat many women, Dr. Doyle?" she asked, that Gioconda smile surfacing again.

"What's that?"

"In your practice. Do you have many female patients?"

"Oh my, yes. That is, I have my share. I'd say a good half, at any rate. Half of the whole, that is." Half of eight, at its height, truth be told: all lost to him now. And not a one of them under the age of fifty with a swan's neck and skin like the petals of a rose and ...

"Are you not married?" she asked.

"No. Are you?"

She laughed a little. It reminded him of tinkling crystal goblets at an impossibly glamorous dinner. "No, I'm not married."

Doyle nodded intently, looked down at the shotgun in his hands, and with great concentration rubbed an imaginary smudge off the barrel.

"I've never given you proper thanks," she said more soberly.

"None necessary," he said with a casually dismissing wave.