The List Of Seven

heads of the cemetery's gravestones peering out of the drifts. Following the turn of the rectory grounds, they moved through a stand of trees and were soon confronted by the craggy black outline of the ancient ruins looming on the crown of the hill above. As devoid of life as its sister building below, the old sepulcher emanated a visceral menace considerably more threatening than life's mere absence.

"Nasty-looking piece of business," said Doyle quietly.

"All the better to strike fear in the hearts of poor, ignorant parishioners with, my dear," answered Eileen in kind.

Sparks waved them forward, and they attacked the final leg of the ascent. The slope was steeper here, and it more than once required the collective efforts of the group to pull each other up and over the sharpest inclines. With the last of these banks surmounted, they found themselves on a flat plane level with the ruins. Their lamps bled a pallid light on the crumbling walls, which were black and harrowed with age. Its doors and windows had long since been ravaged by time, and in many areas even the roof had fallen victim, but the overall impression imparted by what remained of the abbey was one of tremendous sturdiness and power. A slow circum-ambulation of the structure revealed both its impressive scope and its builders' fantastic indulgence of detail. Every ledge, cornice, and lintel was adorned with nightmarish Gothic statuary, embodying every imaginable species of night-dweller: kobold, incubus, basilisk, and hydra, lich, ogre, hippogriff, gremlin, and gargoyle. This fearsome menagerie had suffered far fewer insults from the passing centuries than the walls they swarmed over, each now patiently collecting a mantle of snow that did nothing to diminish their dread presence. Placed here to ward off demons, not to welcome them, remembered Doyle from his history books. Or so one hoped. He couldn't keep from regularly glancing over his shoulder to see if any of the creatures' dead eyes were tracking them.

Sparks brought them back around the ruins to their starting roint, completing the loop of their footprints in the snow, railing away in either direction into darkness.

"Shall we have a look inside?" asked Sparks.

No answer came, but when Sparks walked through the pen doorway, no one lingered behind. Because of the regaining irregular ribs of roofing, snow had not gathered to the same depths inside. They removed their snowshoes, leaning them against a wall. Sparks led them into the next room, a grand, vaulted rectangular space with uniform rows of broken stone running across the floor. A raised deck at the far end of the nave identified the room's original function.

"This was the church," said Sparks.

Sparks moved forward toward the altar. Larry and Barry fanned out with their lanterns, and the room grew more evenly illuminated. Snow continued to fall through the open ceiling. The air felt as dense and ponderous as the glaze on a

frozen lake.

"There used to be witches used this place for sport," said

Larry.

"You mean nuns," corrected Barry.

"Nuns wot had lost their way is wot he said."

"Feller told us in some pub," said Barry to Doyle and Eileen—mostly Eileen.

"That's wot he said. Whole convents' worth, the lot of 'em, went chronic, over to the other side. Devil dodgers one day, consortin' with the Prince of Darkness the next. That's why people put the torch to the place."

"People from the village?" asked Doyle.

"That's right," said Larry. "Took matters in their own hands. Killed and tortured and otherwise beat the devil right out of them nuns, right here in this room, that's what we heard."

"Tommyrot," said Eileen.

"That's the jimjams," agreed Barry. "The fella was wonky

wit' gin."

"I'm not sayin' it's the virgin Gospel, I'm just sayin' it's

what he—"

"Bring the lanterns!" shouted Sparks.

Barry and Larry scurried to the front of the cathedral, bearing the light. Doyle and Eileen quickly followed. Sparks was standing over a closed and weather-beaten crate lying in the altar area on a loose pile of dirt.

"What's that then?" asked Larry.

"It's a coffin, idn't it?" said Barry.

Doyle thought of Stoker's account of the old sailor's story and the night cargo he saw brought ashore from the ship.

"The nails securing the lid have been removed," said Sparks, kneeling down with one of the lanterns.

"Didn't the old man say they brought two coffins up here?" said Doyle.

"Yes," said Sparks, looking at the wood.

"So what's inside the bloody thing?" said Eileen.

"Only one way to find that out, isn't there, Miss Temple?" said Sparks, and he reached for the lid.

As Sparks's hand made contact with the wood, a chilling howl went up from just outside the building: the cry of a wolf, almost certainly, but the timbre lower, more guttural than any Doyle had ever heard. They froze as the sound echoed away.

"That was very close," whispered Doyle.

"Extremely," said Sparks.

Another animal answered back an identical howl from the other side of the abbey. Then a third sounded, at a greater distance.

"Wolves?" asked Barry.

"Doesn't sound like springer spaniels, does it?" said Eileen.

"Turn very slowly around and face the room," said Sparks.

"No need to turn slowly, guv," said Larry, already facing that way and pointing to the center of the cathedral crossing.

A dizzying welter of blue sparks was spinning in a loose circle around a still point two feet above the floor. As it continued to gyrate, the circumference of the circle expanded, first horizontally, then vertically, until it equaled the span of the broken stone pews. The air crackled with a noxious energy. Doyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck elevate.

"What the bloody hell—" muttered Eileen.

The blue sparks faded as a shape emerging out of them defined itself: five translucent, cowled figures kneeling in prayer, knees resting a foot off the floor, as if supported by a spectral prayer rail. Issuing from exactly where it was impossible to determine, but the room was suddenly alive with a chorus of soft, whispery voices. The words were obscure, but the harsh, fervent tone of the invisible chorale penetrated sharply the ear of the listener, a heavy, distressing blow to the conscious ordering of the mind.

"Latin," said Sparks, listening carefully.

"Is it a ghost?" Doyle heard himself ask.

"More than one, guv," said Larry, crossing himself.

"See, there's your nuns," said Barry, who seemed not the slightest bit discomfited by the sight.

Upon longer examination, the figures did project as aspect more feminine than monkish, and the high, insinuating voices that swirled around them did nothing to alter that perception.

Eileen grabbed Larry's lantern, stepped fearlessly down off the altar, and started directly toward the apparitions.

"Miss Temple—" protested Doyle.

"All right, ladies, that'll be quite enough of this prattle," she said in a strong, projected voice. "Vespers are done for the evening, now run along; back to whatever hell-place you came from with you."

"Barry," said Sparks, a command. Barry immediately jumped down after her. Larry pulled his knives and moved to the right, while Sparks drew a bead with

the shotgun.

"Be gone, stupid spirits, fly away, disperse, or you'll make

us very angry—"

The ghostly voices suddenly stilled. Eileen stopped ten feet

away from the penitent wraiths.

"That's better," she said approvingly. "Now the rest of you girls just trot on off as well. Go on."

The ghostly figures lowered their hands. Barry slowly moved after Eileen, only a few strides behind her now.

"Miss Temple," said Sparks, loud and clear, "move away from the center of the room, please."

"We run into ghosts in the theater all the time—" she said.

"Please do as I say, now."

She turned back to Sparks to argue. "There's nothing to worry about, they're perfectly harmless—"

Moving as one, the ghostly figures threw back their hoods, revealing hideously deformed and hairless heads that looked half human and half predatory bird. They let loose a shrill, paralyzing shriek and rose up above Eileen to a height of ten feet or more, preparing to strike. At that moment, two huge wolves sprinted into the nave from either side of the apse, growling ferociously, making straight for Eileen. Barry dove forward and tackled her to the floor as the wolves leapt to attack. Sparks fired the shotgun, both barrels, knocking the lead

animal backward off its airborne course; it hit the ground with a hard thump and lay still, ruptured and bleeding. In the same instant, Larry let fly his knives; there was a loud yelp as the second animal came down on Barry, handles of the knives protruding from its neck and upper chest. The beast still had enough ebbing strength and instinct left to tear into Barry, the arm he'd raised to fend it off gripped in its ripping jaws. Barry reached around, pulled the knife from the wolf's side, and plunged it decisively into the back of its skull. The animal spasmed and fell back, dead before it landed.

"Stay down!" cried Sparks.

But Eileen jumped to her feet, grabbed a lantern, and hurled it at the phantom figures towering above her. The lamp exploded on contact; the images combusted, disintegrating into a shower of silvery sparks and red smoke.

"I hate nuns!" shouted Eileen.

Doyle heard a low, feral growl behind him and turned cautiously. A third wolf stood beside the crate, a few feet behind Sparks, his back completely exposed to the animal.

"Jack ..." said Doyle.

"My gun's not loaded," said Sparks quietly, without moving. "Is yours?"

"I'll have to reach for it."

"Do that, would you?"

Doyle undid his coat and slid his hand delicately inside. With fiercely intelligent eyes, the wolf looked slowly back and forth from Doyle to Sparks. This was by far the biggest of the three brutes: six hands high, at least ten stone. As it inched forward, Doyle pulled out the pistol, but instead of attacking, the king wolf took two running strides and in a high arc leapt out one of the open windows behind the altar. Doyle got off one errant shot and rushed to follow it. Looking down, he saw the drop from the window was at least twenty feet to the cushion of drifts below. He held out a lantern, but the animal had already disappeared from view.

Eileen and Larry attended to Barry, whose lower left arm had borne the brunt of the wolf's attack. Blood ran freely down his hand as she guided his arm gingerly out of the sleeve.

"Not too bad, is it, old boy?" asked Larry.

"Coat took the worst of it," said Barry, testing his fingers, the movement of which was not impaired.

"Ghosts, can you fancy that?" said Eileen, with the calm neutrality of a practiced nurse.

"Seen worse," said Barry stoically.

"I hate nuns," said Eileen. "I've always hated nuns."

"These woolly sheep-eaters were real enough, weren't they, though? No hocus-pocus here," said Larry, leaning over to kick one of the corpses and then retrieve his knives from its hide.

"All right then, Barry?" asked Sparks, reloading the shotgun with shells from his pocket.

"Ugly as ever, sir," said Barry, with a toothy smile for his ministering angel as she examined the puncture wounds on his forearm.

Doyle's heart rate was just coming under control again when he glanced back out the windows.

"Have a look at this, Jack," he said.

Sparks joined him. In the distance to the south was a line of bright orange lights, moving in formation toward their position.

"Torches," said Doyle.

"Coming for something. Us. Maybe that," said Sparks, gesturing back at the crate. "Keep an eye on them."

Doyle estimated they were still a good mile away. Sparks moved to the crate and knelt down to examine the dirt on which it rested, rubbing it between his Fingers, sniffing it. Sparks dislodged the lid. He made no sound, but when Doyle turned back, he saw a sick, stricken expression on Sparks's face.

"What is it, Jack?"

"Games," muttered Sparks darkly. "He's playing games."

Doyle moved to Sparks's side and looked into the crate. There was a corpse inside, little more than bones really, amid rotting burial clothes and matted clumps of scorched hair and flesh. A photograph in a gilded frame had been positioned between its skeletal hands in a travesty of covetous possession: a formal posed portrait of a man and woman, married and upper-class English by the form and style of them.

"What is this?" asked Doyle.

"My parents," said Sparks, nodding at the photograph. "Those are my parents."

"Good Christ."

"And this is my father's body."

The outrage that welled inside him rendered Doyle speechless. Any remaining doubts he harbored regarding the mon-strousness of Alexander and Jack's relative innocence were finally and irrevocably removed.

"Soulless monster," spat Doyle finally.

Sparks took a series of deep breaths and clenched his fists, closing and opening them rhythmically, trying to bring his tumultuous emotions under control. Moving back to the window, Doyle saw that the lights were moving closer, at least six torches, and moving against the snow beneath them he could make out dark shapes. A formidable number of them. A quarter-mile away and closing fast.

As Eileen finished dressing a strip of shirt cloth around Barry's wounds, Larry joined Doyle at the window.

"What should we do?" asked Doyle.

"The odds don't favor a fight here, guv. Not against those numbers. No cover or high ground. Too many doors. Too hard to defend."

"Tell him," said Doyle, gesturing toward Sparks.

"He knows," said Larry. "Give him a minute."

"A minute's all we've got."

Larry winked at him. "Minute's all we need."

Larry picked up the shotgun and gave a short whistle, Barry jumped to his feet, kissed Eileen on the cheek, and the brothers quickly moved out of the cathedral toward the trackers. Doyle could differentiate individuals in the group now; there were at the least two dozen in the pack. Eileen stepped back onto the altar. To prevent her from disturbing Sparks, Doyle gestured for her to join him at the window.

"Are we just going to stand here and wait for them?" asked Eileen.

"No," said Doyle, steadying his pistol on the window, taking aim on a lead torch-bearer. Before he could squeeze off a shot, he heard the rolling crack of the shotgun from off to the left; there were shouts, and two figures in the group went down. The man with the torch stopped to look in that direction; Doyle fired, the figure fell, and its torch was extinguished in the snow.

"Here! Over here, you rotters!"

More taunting shouts followed. Doyle saw Barry wave their lanterns, trying to draw the party away from the abbey.

"Come on then! Get a wiggle on, we 'aven't got all night!"

Six attackers ran after Barry; the rest continued toward the ruins. Doyle emptied his pistol at the advancing column, felling another of them. As he reloaded, he heard the shotgun boom again and saw one of the men headed for the brothers fall silently.

The rasp of the cover coming off the coffin pulled his attention back to the room. Sparks emptied the oil from his lantern into the crate, then set it aflame by crashing the lantern on top of it. The crate ignited like dry tinder. Sparks stepped back, intoned something Doyle couldn't hear, and watched the fire consume the box, committing his father to final rest.

"We really should go, Jack," said Doyle, waiting a decent interval as he reloaded his pistol.

Sparks turned away from the flames and picked up the lid to the crate by its handles. "This way," he said, heading toward the end of the nave they'd entered.

"What does he want with that?" asked Eileen, pointing at the lid.

"I'm sure I couldn't say," said Doyle, as they caught up to Sparks and ran into the antechamber where they'd stacked the snowshoes.

"We'll need those," snapped Sparks, pointing at the shoes.

As Eileen bent to retrieve them, three gray hoods came in through the front entrance. One raised a spiked cudgel to strike at Sparks. "Jack!"

Sparks whirled, lowered the lid, and drove it into the chests of the three hoods, his legs pistoning mightily, pushing them back and pinning them against the wall. Doyle stepped forward and methodically fired two shots in each of the hoods as they squirmed behind the wood. "Behind you!" shouted Eileen.

Two more hoods rushed in at them from the cathedral. Doyle spun around and pulled the trigger, but the pistol was empty. The three dispatched hoods slumped to the ground as

Sparks let go of the coffin lid and turned to face this new assault. Eileen swung a snowshoe up by the tail and cracked the trailing one hard across the face, knocking it off its feet. A blow from the onrushing hood's club clipped Sparks on the arm: he dipped, caught the hood's momentum with a shoulder, straightened up, and flipped the creature against the wall. Eileen whacked the downed hood a second time as it tried to find its footing; Doyle turned the pistol in his hand and whipped the handle across the back of the hood until it lay still. Sparks drove a boot down into the neck of the second attacker, and it snapped like a hollow branch.

Bright light and the rush of many footsteps entered the cathedral. Sparks picked up the lid and ran out the door.

"Hurry!" he said.

Doyle and Eileen gathered the snowshoes, and they scrambled after Sparks. He dropped the lid so it hung over the lip of the hill that sloped steeply away from the ruins and anchored it with his foot.

"You first, Doyle. Grab the handles and hold on," said Sparks.

The main band of pursuers burst out of the abbey behind them toward their position, a black-cloaked figure in the lead. Doyle pocketed his gun and jumped aboard. Sparks grabbed Eileen around the waist, pushed her down on the middle of the lid, and followed her onto it, using his weight to tip them over the edge. They slid forward and rapidly accelerated down the incline as the pack reached the lip: Two hoods hurled themselves after the makeshift sled, one raked a hand across Sparks's back, nearly dislodging him before they pulled away from the tumbling bodies. The sled gained speed as they plummeted down the embankment in the dark; every bump and hillock sent them flying into the air, only to be rocked heavily as they hit the snow again.

"Can you steer?" shouted Sparks.

"I don't think so!" answered Doyle. It was all he could do to hang on. The sheer cliffs falling to the sea somewhere on the right and their unknown proximity to them hurtled into his mind.

"Can you see?" asked Eileen.

"A little!"

The next thing he saw were two figures standing ahead of them waist-deep in the snow, frantically waving their arms. In the split second before the sled reached them, Doyle thought they might be Barry and Larry, but then he saw the hoods and the weapons in "their hands. Doyle leaned all his weight to his right, and the lid veered slightly in that direction, enough to crash into the hoods, bowl them like ninepins, and scatter them down the hill. The collision knocked the wind out of Doyle, changed their direction, and shaved an edge off their velocity. He gasped for breath, trying to figure out where they were when he felt a sensation of skidding, looked to his right, and just ahead saw the white expanse of the snow pack end abruptly in sheer blackness.

"The cliffs!" cried Sparks.

Doyle threw all his weight to the left. Sparks stuck out his right foot as a runner to push them away from the brink, and a moment later that foot was suspended out over thin air. They screamed as the sled rocketed along the edge of the cliff for twenty yards, scraping stone, whipping through saplings that had grown up over the lip, before Doyle's crude course correction inched them away from the precipice and back onto solid snow. He could see the shape of the new abbey ahead on their left, but Doyle had barely a moment to register relief, idly wondering what those gray shapes coming out of the snow straight in front of them were when he realized they were headed directly into the cemetery.

"Headstones!" Doyle shouted.

Doyle guided them through the first group of markers, then the next, but as they moved to the middle of the yard, the concentration of stones grew denser and the stones themselves larger and more grandiose. There was no way to brake, and a massive mausoleum dead ahead suddenly gave no opportunity to maneuver. Doyle yanked on the handles, turning them sideways; they went into a skid, hit a bump, flew skyward, and the coffin lid splintered beneath them. Doyle hit the snow, clutching the broken handles in his hands. Eileen and Sparks were thrown high into the air, landing out of Doyle's sight.

Doyle lay still a moment, trying to gather his wits. He was unable to loosen his grip on the handles—his knuckles locked and frozen around them—but he could move everything else,

having touched down in a drift without suffering any disabling injury.

"Jack?" he said tentatively. He first thought the sound that came back to him was sobbing. Was it Eileen? "Are you all right?"

He realized Eileen was laughing. She emerged from a nearby snowbank, covered head to toe in white, overcome with infectious laughter. Then he heard Sparks laughing, captivated by the same relieving impulse, before he appeared from behind the mausoleum that had precipitated their crash. The sight and sound of each other's laughter seemed to redouble their own. Jack bent over, hanging on to the edge of the monument. Eileen fell back into the snow and guffawed. The recent terror had been so completely overwhelming that for the moment there seemed no more sensible a response. Doyle felt the giggles come over him as well, and he gave into them.

"I thought we were dead," said Doyle.

"I thought we were dead four separate times," managed Eileen.

Doyle's entire body began to shake. They staggered toward a meeting point, put their arms across each other's shoulders, and let the healing laughter run its course. It was all they could do to breathe. As the laughter was cresting, Doyle revealed the handles stuck in his hands, which set off another round of hilarity.

"JONATHAN SPARKS!"

The words rolled down the slopes from the ruins high above. The voice was harshly sibilant, but at the same time lush and orotund; it could cut glass and never leave a splinter. No anger in its tone, only insinuating derision that bespoke no disappointment at their escape but rather suggested satisfaction, that this was its desired outcome.

"Is it him?" asked Doyle.

Sparks nodded, looking toward the hilltop.

"LISTEN!"

Silence thicker than a church bell.

Then a bloodcurdling scream twisted and built to a hideous crescendo before fading away into exhausted, piteous bleating.

"Oh God. The brothers," said Eileen.

Another scream, more tortured than before. Was it the same voice?

"Bastard!" Doyle raged, surging forward. "BASTARD!"

Sparks put a restraining hand on Doyle's shoulder. His jaw was tight, but his voice stayed measured and calm. "That's what he wants from us."

The scream cut off abruptly. The ensuing quiet was even more unsettling.

"We must go," said Sparks. "They may still come after us."

"You can't leave them—" protested Eileen.

"They're soldiers," said Sparks, gathering up his snow-shoes.

"He's killing them—"

"We don't know that it's them. Even if it is, what would you have us do? Throw our own lives away? Sentimental lunacy."

"Still, Jack, they're so loyal to you—" said Doyle, trying to soften the argument.

"They know the risks." Sparks wanted no more discussion. He walked away.

"You've got your brother's blood in you, Jack Sparks," said Eileen to Sparks's back.

Sparks stopped, tensed, but didn't turn, then continued on.

Eileen wiped the tears from her eyes.

"He's right, you know," said Doyle gently.

"So am I," she said, watching Sparks go.

They slipped into the snowshoes and trudged out of the graveyard after him. The trip back to the inn was passed in silence.

A note had been pinned to Stoker's door. Sparks tore it down and briefly scanned it.

"Stoker's hired a carriage and started back to London," he said to the others. "He says he has his family to consider."

"Can't blame him for that," said Doyle.

"He's bequeathed us the use of his room." Sparks pocketed the note and opened the door. Eileen entered. Doyle looked at his watch: half past two in the morning.

"Excuse us a moment, Miss Temple," said Sparks, detain-

ing Doyle in the hallway and closing the door. "Stay with her. If I'm not back by dawn, try and make your way to London."

"Where are you—"

"They've probably done their worst for tonight, but keep your pistol loaded and at hand," said Sparks, walking away down the corridor.

"Jack, what are you going to do?"

Sparks gave a wave without looking back as he moved quickly downstairs. Doyle looked at the door and cracked it open. Eileen lay on top of the bedclothes, her back to him. He was about to close the door....

"Don't go," she said without moving.

"You should rest."

"Not much chance of that."

"Rest is what you need—"

"Stop being a doctor, for heaven's sake." She turned to face him. "I don't particularly wish to spend my last night on earth alone, do you?"

"What makes you think this is—"

"Come in here and close the door, would you? How plain do I have to make myself?"

Doyle acquiesced but remained across the room, standing rigidly near the door. She gave him a wry look, shook her head slightly, sat up on the bed, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the vanity. Her hair was tangled in disarray, fair complexion burned by the wind.

"Frightful," she said.

"Not so bad as all that," offered Doyle, instantly regretting it.

Another sardonic look from her consolidated his remorse. She moved to a chair by the mirror and dispassionately surveyed herself.

"I suppose a hairbrush is too providential to hope for," she said.

"As a matter of fact, it's one of the few possessions I have remaining to me," said Doyle. From his bag, which he'd left at the foot of the armoire, he produced his brush-and-comb set.

"You really should smile, Doctor," she said, her eyes brightening. " 'Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.' "

"I don't mean to be unkind ... Ophelia," he added, recognizing the passage.

Eileen took off the mannish jacket, unpinned her hair, and let the soft black mass of it cascade down the back of her blouse. She shook it out and ran the brush down its lustrous length in long, sensuous strokes: an effect, to Doyle's eyes, of breathtaking intimacy, a balm to his battered spirits. It was the first time since they'd heard the screams on the hill that the brothers had been out of his thoughts for even a moment. "Did you ever see me onstage, Doctor?" she asked. "I never had the pleasure," said Doyle. "My name is Arthur."

She gave the slightest nod, acknowledging the new increment of familiarity. "There were good reasons why our guardians of decency wouldn't allow women to perform in public for so many hundreds of years." "What reasons would those be?" "Some would tell you it's dangerous to see a woman on

the stage."

"Dangerous in what way?"

She shrugged slightly. "Perhaps it's too easy to believe the actress is exactly who she appears to be playing on any particular night."

"But that is the desired effect, after all. To persuade us of

the character's veracity."

"It should be, yes."

"Then how does that represent a danger? And for whom?"

"For someone who encounters the woman off the stage and finds it difficult to distinguish the actress from the role she was playing." She looked at him in the mirror, out from under the wave of a curl. "Didn't your mother ever warn you about actresses, Arthur?"

"She must have felt there were more obvious dangers lurking about." Doyle held her eyes steadily. "I have seen you onstage, haven't I?"

"Yes, you have. After a fashion."

A long pause followed. "Miss Temple—"

"Eileen."

"Eileen," said Doyle. "Are you attempting to seduce me?"

"Am I?" She stopped brushing. Her forehead crinkled. She

seemed as unsure of the answer as was he. "Is that your impression, really?"

"Yes. I would have to say that it is." Doyle felt surprisingly and utterly calm.

A poised thought flew over the plane of her face like the shadow of a flock of doves. She carefully laid the brush down on the table and turned to face him. "What if I were?"

"Well," said Doyle, "I would have to say that if this does prove to be the last evening of our lives, and I, for whatever reason, remained resistant to your charms, it would surely be the most senseless regret that would soon enough accompany me to the grave."

They looked at each other without pretense.

"Then perhaps you should lock the door, Arthur," she said simply, all aspect of performance gone from her voice.

He did exactly as she requested.

chapter seventeen MOTHERS OWN

DOYLE LEFT THE BEDROOM BEFORE FIRST LIGHT. ElLEEN WAS

sleeping restfully. He gently lifted her arm from where it lay lightly across his shoulder and kissed the sweet nape of her neck before rising. She made a small murmuring as he dressed, but it must have been a response to a dream. She did not stir again.

He was astonished by the absence within him of shame. That conditioned Catholic response to pleasure of any variety—let alone carnal—had never quite been rooted out. Perhaps this time would prove the exception; it had been what she wanted, he told himself, and lest he forget, what he had wanted as well. He had often seen surgeons similarly moved when among the dead and dying by the need to reaffirm the life coursing inside them. What did this mean with regard to his continued relations with her? He hadn't a clue. Having satisfied the physical insistence of the moment, with almost equal urgency he required some small distance to assess the repercussions to his emotions.

Doyle quietly locked the door and pocketed the key. He looked at his watch: nearly five. He would allow Sparks until nine at the very least to return, well past dawn, perhaps longer, directly countermanding his orders. He walked downstairs to see if a cup of tea could be found.

No one was in the kitchen, and he heard nobody moving below. The inn carried the expectant repose that settled the air just before dawn. Timbers groaned expressively. Looking out a window, he noticed that the clouds had lifted; when it came, the morning would be bright, clear, and cold.

She had been sweet and yielding and, yes, experienced, undoubtedly more so than he was, a powerfully tempting avenue for bad feeling from which he turned resolutely away. What had moved him most, what moved him now, was how real in that hour she had seemed, how tangible, reachable: how close. No artifice or barrier between him and a direct experience of who she was. She had wept at one point, silently, wiping away the tears but asking him with her touch and movement not to stop or pay attention. He had complied. What was he feeling now? That knowledge danced away, just out of his grasp. Why did his emotions always lag so infuri-atingly far behind his ability to reason?

Doyle felt slightly light-headed. He opened the door and stepped into the walled courtyard behind the public room. Snow covered the bricks that surrounded a gnarled, bare oak. The cold nipped through his shirt, but it felt clean and bracing. He breathed in the air deeply, greedily, trying to fill his lungs beyond their capacity.

"Fresh air is such a tonic," said a voice behind him. A voice he had heard quite recently.

Alexander Sparks stood in the shelter of the oak. Wrapped in his black cloak, motionless, hands out of sight, only his face visible in the wan light spilling from the windows. Long and narrow, facial structure similar to his brother's—the resemblance ended in the flesh. He looked nothing like the man Doyle had met outside 13 Cheshire, and yet he knew immediately they were one and the same. Skin lay taut over the bone, shiny and white as parchment, as if a relentless internal heat had seared away all excess, all comfort, everything but necessity. His eyes were pale and evenly set under dark slices of brow, with long black lashes of surprising delicacy. Lank brown hair hung straight to his shoulders, swept back off a high, smooth forehead that receded into the folds of the cloak. Only his mouth belied the geometric austerity of the arrangement; the lips were full, rosebud, red, and moist. As he spoke, a serpentine tongue flicked out from behind the small, neat lines of his teeth, the only visible concession to insatiable appetites that lit the man's interior as starkly as a candle in a jack-o'-lantern. His presence in the courtyard felt magnetic and riveting but somehow weightless; he didn't seem to occupy space so much as hover inside it. Doyle was reminded how much power was generated by absolute stillness.

"Do you favor this time of the night, Doctor?" Alexander's voice was conveyed by a deceptive frequency that split itself into twin modulations; a second tone attached to the surface of his round, rich baritone, riding under the belly of the words, a buzzing or ringing below the conscious threshold that unpleasantly slithered in the ear of the listener like a thief.

"Not especially."

Doyle lowered his hands and gently touched his pockets. "I believe you've left your gun in the room. With Miss Temple," said Alexander. He smiled in a way that might usually be described as kind.

Doyle flexed his hands. The adrenaline kicking into his bloodstream rapidly elevated his heart rate. He felt under a microscope and tried to suppress his alarm to undetectable levels. Wary the man might possess untold mesmeric abilities, he blinked often and avoided his gaze for any extended time. "I must confess that meeting you in this way is quite strange, Dr. Doyle. I do feel as if I know you already," said Alexander, with no small modicum of charm. "Do you share that impression?"

"We have met before."

"However unknowingly." Alexander nodded slightly, the first movement he had made.

Doyle glanced casually around the yard. His only avenue of escape lay through the open door behind him, but that would expose his back for the time it would take to climb the

stairs.

"What do you want?" asked Doyle.

"I felt it time for us to effect a more formal introduction. I fear, Doctor, that my young brother, John, may have imparted to you some severe and perfidious misperceptions regarding myself."

I don't want to hear this, thought Doyle instinctively, I mustn't listen. He did not respond with either word or gesture.

"I thought there would be decided value in our making an effort to know one another as, perhaps, a belated corrective to the more delusional of John's spurious inventions."

"Do I have a choice?"

"One always has a choice, Doctor," he said, smiling incandescently. The effect reminded Doyle of acid dripping slowly onto dark, polished wood.

Doyle paused as long as he felt able. "I should like to get my coat. I'm very cold."

"Of course."

Doyle waited. Alexander made no move.

"Now?" asked Doyle.

"We shan't get far if you freeze to death."

"It's in my room."

"How perfectly reasonable."

"So I'll go get it then."

"I will wait for you," said Alexander.

Doyle nodded and edged back into the building. Alexander watched without moving. Doyle turned, then walked through the public rooms and back up the stairs.

What is he about? wondered Doyle. How supremely confident, or heedlessly arrogant, the man was. Relentlessly pursuing me for days on end, then allowing me to walk away when I'm dead-bang within striking distance. He knew perfectly well that whatever sensibility the man evinced was nothing but a skillful and treacherous simulation. But what was his purpose?

Doyle silently slid in the key and opened the door. The curtains and windows were locked as before. Nothing appeared to have been touched. But Eileen was gone.

So that was it then; he kept me there long enough for them to take her. Doyle went for his coat. The pistol was not in the pocket where he'd left it, nor in any of the others. His bag was still on the floor. He opened it, rifling through the medical supplies for a handful of medicinal vials and two syringes. He inserted the needles into the tubes, filled both syringes with the liquid, ripped a small tear in the fabric of his coat alongside the inner breast pocket, and deposited the extra vials inside. The syringes he slipped one apiece into the sides of his boots.

Wary he had aroused suspicion by taking too long, Doyle hurried down the stairs. Alexander waited near the open front door, as composed and motionless as before.

"Where is she?" asked Doyle.

Alexander nodded to the outside.

"If you've harmed her—"

"Please. No threats." He sounded amused; a smile nearly congealed on his wet mouth. "She's quite safe." "Let me see her." "By all means."

Alexander raised a long, thin hand, gesturing out the door. A large black coach and four stood in the drive, if not the same menacing carriage Doyle had seen before, then an extremely reasonable facsimile. The horses snorted gutturally, stamping their feet. Doyle walked to the carriage. The driver. bundled on his perch, never turned to him. Curtains obscured the windows. "She's inside."

Doyle started. Alexander stood directly behind him: he had not seen or heard the man move from inside the inn. Doyle opened the door and stepped into the coach. Feeble light spilled in from lanterns mounted on the chassis. Eileen lay on the rear-facing seat against the wall, unconscious, wearing her borrowed hat and clothes. Doyle checked her pulse and breathing; both were steady but faint. He detected the scent of a disabling chemical around her mouth and nose: ether, perhaps, or some more potent compound.

The coach door closed. Doyle turned to find Alexander sitting across from them. With a loud thunk, the handles moved down, locking mechanically. The carriage lurched forward. Doyle held Eileen in his arms. Alexander smiled compassionately.

"If you aren't offended by the compliment, Doctor, you do make a most attractive couple," he said pleasantly.

Loathsome as the thought was that this man had knowledge of their recent intimacy, Doyle held his tongue. He cradled Eileen closer to him and felt the tender warmth of her neck against his hand. "Where are we going?" Alexander did not answer. "Ravenscar?"

Alexander displayed that raw bone of a smile. His face appeared skeletal in the dusky light, all trace of personality pared away, stripped to its naked essence.

"There's something you must know about my brother, Doctor. Our parents perished tragically in a fire when Jonathan was little more than a boy. Such a precocious and happy child, as you can imagine, he suffered dreadfully. I had already reached the age of emancipation, but Jonathan was made a ward of the court and regrettably placed in the care of a family friend, a physician of radically progressive ideas but indiscriminate methodology. After months with no noticeable improvement, this doctor undertook to treat Jonathan's hysterical disposition with a series of narcotic injections. These treatments initially succeeded in suppressing his disease; it was not too long before his spirits appeared to rise to, if not exceed, the levels he had enjoyed before the difficulties.

"Most unfortunately, the doctor declined to suspend the treatments; he continued these injections for many months. Consequently, he delivered to young Jonathan a lifelong craving for this drug from which he has not to this day been able to acquit himself. This has led him, often in times of emotional complexity, to periodic bouts of overindulgence, and these in turn to episodes of acute dementia that have required his being confined to hospitals specializing in the treatment of the mentally disturbed."

"Such as Bedlam," said Doyle.

"Sadly, yes," said Alexander, with a world-weary shake of the head. "I have attempted as best I could to care for my brother throughout his terrible ordeal. But as so often happens when one raises the hand of loving consolation to someone in this pitiably reduced state, so commanding is the drug's attraction that one tangled in its web comes to perceive the giver of aid as an enemy sworn to sever them from that substance which they believe provides them with their only succor. As a doctor, you would be well acquainted with this phenomenon."

Doyle had with his own eyes all too recently seen Sparks feeding that hunger, and he did know what pernicious effects these addictions wrought in the mind. Alexander recounted the story with such lubricious sincerity that Doyle was momentarily at a loss how much to credit. Nothing the man raised necessarily put paid to what Jack had said about him, and Doyle had not yet confronted him with any of Jack's accusations. It was nearly impossible not to consider, if only for a moment, Alexander's offered alternative as a disturbingly plausible scenario. On the other hand, if he owned only a fraction of the power Jack had attributed to him, this sort of routine dissembling would be as effortless to him as multiplication tables for a mathematical prodigy. If he's lying, thought Doyle, what is his purpose?

"Why was your brother confined to Bedlam?" asked Doyle

neutrally.

"Assault on a police officer. He was attempting a forced entry to Buckingham Palace. One of John's more persistent delusions involves an imagined relationship to Queen Victoria."

"What sort of relationship?"

"He often claims to be working under the direct and secret orders of Her Majesty, investigating an assortment of conspiracies involving threats to the continuity of accession to the throne, most of which he is convinced I am responsible for. Consequently, he follows after me wherever I go, trying to interfere with my day-to-day affairs. This has been going on for years. More often than not, it plays out harmlessly. On this occasion, that was regrettably not the case." "Why would he do these things?"

"As you know, with any mental aberration it is difficult to say with certainty. An acquaintance of mine, an alienist in Vienna whom I have consulted on the matter, speculates that Jonathan is driven by a compulsion to relive the devastating loss of our parents—wherein the Queen becomes a surrogate for his mother, you see—and that by 'saving' the Queen's life from imagined danger, he will somehow resurrect her."

"I see."

"What has he said to you about this matter, Doctor?" Alexander asked blandly.

He wants to know what I know, realized Doyle. That's what this charade is about. He wants to know how far the damage has spread.

"Jonathan was very close to your mother, wasn't he?"

asked Doyle.

"A very deep attachment, yes," said Alexander.

Doyle was careful to betray nothing with his eyes. "And were you close to her as well?"

Alexander smiled, showing the milky-white line of his perfect teeth. "Every boy is close to his mother."

The carriage slowed as it started up a long and gradual grade. Eileen shifted slightly in Doyle's arms.

"And your father, Mr. Sparks?"

"What of him?" Alexander was still smiling.

"What was your relationship to him?"

"I believe it is John's relationships we are scrutinizing here." The smile remained, but Doyle detected an almost imperceptible strain to keep it in place.

"I don't disagree," said Doyle, subtly maintaining the offensive. "And as familiar as you seem to be with the rudiments of psychology, you must know that one of its principal areas of investigation is relationships within the family." Alexander did not visibly react. "For instance, how would you characterize Jonathan's relationship to you?"

Alexander's smile seemed frozen in place now. "We were ... remote. I spent the better part of his childhood away at school."

"Did he have any contact with you during that time? Any visits? Correspondence?"

Alexander shifted ever so slightly in his seat.

"Nothing out of the ordinary."

"So you did write to him?"

"On occasion."

"And of course you saw him whenever you returned home."

Alexander hesitated. "Of course."

He's uncomfortable speaking about any of it, realized Doyle, but he doesn't want to evidence alarm that might raise my suspicion. He doesn't know what I know. The thought hit Doyle hard: He's underestimated me.

"Were there any difficulties in your relationship with Jonathan?"

"Difficulties of what sort?"

"Rivalries."

Alexander smiled. "Goodness no."

"Young boys ofttimes band together against figures of au-thority; were there any incidents of that sort your parents night have objected to?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm attempting to determine if Jonathan had formed any .nresolved hostilities to your parents," said Doyle, manufacturing as fast as he could speak. "In other words, are there any reasons to suspect that this fatal fire might have been something more than an accident?"

The suggestion seemed to pacify his resistance. "How interesting. To be honest with you, Doctor, I have often wondered the very same thing."

"Hmm. Yes. Can you recall if Jonathan had any totems or small items of particular importance to him?" said Doyle, now consciously adopting the inflated airs and labored deductions of a pompous academician. "These commonplace objects—sometimes called fetishes—often provide clues to the underlying causes of derangement—" "What sort of items?"

"They could be almost anything: rocks, baubles, trinkets, or necklaces. Even locks of hair."

A flash of uncertainty passed behind Alexander's eyes. Had he seen through the bluff? Doyle waited him out, innocently, the concerned physician, offering only a fussily furrowed brow of cooperative exploration.

"I can recall no such items," said Alexander. He parted the curtains to glance outside.

Doyle nodded contemplatively. "Did he ever exhibit any tendencies of violence toward other, particularly younger,

children?"

"No," said Alexander, turning back to him, a tinge of annoyance creeping into his voice.

"Any violence toward women in general, particularly as he grew into adolescence?"

"None that I am aware of."

"When do you feel Jonathan's hostility became directed at

you?"

"I've said nothing about any hostility toward me."

"I see; you deny that there was any—"

"I didn't say—"

"So there was hostility between you—"

"He was a very disturbed child—"

"Perhaps he was jealous of your relationship with your

mother—"

"Perhaps so—"

"Perhaps he coveted his mother's affections solely for

himself—"

"Oh, yes, I know that he did—"

"And perhaps he was jealous of your father's relations with her as well—"

"Of course he was—" Alexander's voice whelmed with conviction.

"So much so that he felt compelled to eliminate all his rivals for her attention—"

"That's right—"

"And there was finally only one way to accomplish that, wasn't there?"

"Yes—"

"That's why you set the fire—"

"Yes!"

Doyle stopped. Alexander caught himself almost before the word had left his mouth. A reptilian coldness instantly sculpted his face into a mask of brutal contempt.

"So you do believe that Jonathan killed your parents," said Doyle, boldly attempting to maintain the guilelessness of his inquisition.

"Yes," said Alexander flatly. His upper lip curled in an involuntary sneer, his nostrils flared, and the lids of his eyes drooped ominously low. He appeared bestial. This is what he looks like, thought Doyle; this is his real face.

"I see," said Doyle, nodding again. "This is all so very interesting, Mr. Sparks. I shall be sure to give your analysis the most serious consideration."

"Will you now?" Alexander's voice was harsh and raspy, that ominous underlying tone moving closer to the surface.

"Indeed," said Doyle, swallowing his fear. "If what you say is true, and I have little reason to doubt that it is, your brother may be more than a danger to just himself. In all honesty, I must tell you I believe he almost certainly poses just as great a danger to you."

Doyle gave a self-satisfied smile, leaned back in the seat, and pretended to ponder the intangibles. Please God let him think me a harmless pedant, thought Doyle. He dared not look at Alexander again, but he could feel the heat of the man's eyes boring in on him. Had he gone too far? Too early to determine. The man had not leapt for his throat, although Doyle had given him adequate provocation. The fact remained that Alexander had for the moment been outwitted; if anything was more likely to prod him into a murderous rage, it would be difficult to name. And if his thickheaded performance had held up under scrutiny, Doyle had not even given the man the satisfaction of knowing he'd been consciously outwitted, in which case Alexander's wrath would more likely be directed inward, toward himself. Pride. That was Lucifer's failing, too. Every man has a weakness, simply human nature, but even if he had succeeded in stumbling onto that of Alexander Sparks, Doyle now had no doubt he was in the company of a man every bit as dangerous as Jack had described. He and Eileen were still alive only because of their enemy's uncertainty in how much Jack had told them and whomever else they might have told in turn.

Granted, there were untold questions to be answered on the subject of Jack Sparks, but at the least Alexander's inadvertent confession to the deaths of their parents exonerated Jack in those unnatural crimes once and for all. The anguished music he had heard Jack making was born of sorrow, not guilt. And if Alexander was responsible, as Jack had asserted, the rest of his account became that much easier to credit.

Doyle parted the curtains. The road they traversed ran high on a bluff, paralleling the treeless, windswept shore. The eastern sky lightened over the distant sea. Dawn was only minutes away.

Eileen moved again; her respiration deepened. The drug was wearing off. Was there any way to remove her from harm? Doyle was forced to admit that whatever could be done now he would in all likelihood have to do alone: The brothers' fate was in grave doubt; for all he knew, Jack may have been lost as well. But mourning was an unaffordable indulgence. The weight of responsibility for the life in his arms provided a surge of stamina and resolution. Doyle glanced at Alexander and felt the pressure of the syringes in his boot. Not yet, he thought. Not with Eileen so close.

The carriage slowed to a walk as the wheels encountered paved stone. Moments later they clattered through a horseshoed arch, flanked by twin granite statues of immense birds of prey.

"Ravenscar," said Alexander. His face had once again assumed its mask of polite formality.

Doyle nodded. He heard the gates shut behind them as the carriage came to a stop. The change in motion brought Eileen out of her languor. She saw Doyle's face, found herself in his arms, made a small sound of contentment, and moved closer to him. He held her tight and stroked her hair. At the sound of the door, Doyle looked up and saw that Alexander Sparks was gone.

A liveried servant opened the door on their side of the carriage, and in it appeared a broad, ruddy, smiling face adorned with two conical tufts of fleecy white hair floating on either side of a shiny pate. Thick spectacles magnified the man's hazy blue eyes to the size of robin's eggs.

"Is it Dr. Doyle then?"

"Yes?"

"A-hoot, you've come to Ravenscar, and a pleasure it is to welcome you to us," said the man, in an agreeably reedy Scots Highland brogue.

Reacting to the intrusion of another voice, Eileen tried to rouse herself. Doyle leaned forward and shook the man's energetically offered hand.

"Bishop Pillphrock," surmised Doyle, spying the man's collar and frock.

"A-hoot, the very same, Doctor, and how-do."

"Miss Eileen Temple," said Doyle, holding her shoulders, balancing her upright.

"Well, yes. and am I most pleased to meet you, Miss Temple," said the Bishop with an expansive show of bad teeth, covering her hand with both of his dainty little mitts.

Eileen experienced no little difficulty focusing her eyes, but as social instincts engaged, she carried the moment.

"Enchantee," she said, with a heart-stopping smile.

"Charmed, I'm sure! A-hoot, please, come in, come in," said the Bishop, backing away from the door and gesturing graciously. "We've hot baths awaiting to repair the effects of the journey, warm beds for rest if you desire, hearty breakfasts to fortify your spirits. This way."

Doyle helped Eileen from the carriage. She leaned heavily against him, unsteady on her feet. Doyle assessed their position: a circular cobblestoned courtyard surrounded by high, thick walls. Early dawn washed everything in a dense gloom of iron gray. The gate through which they had passed was hewn from marbleized black wood, banded with steel. Two rows of formally attired servants, many holding lanterns, formed a gauntlet to the entrance of the house before them, more properly a medieval fortress: wings, flying buttresses, massive round towers topped with banners disappearing in the haze. In the scrimy light, Doyle could see cannon lining the battlements.

"A warm welcome. A very warm welcome indeed. Right this way with you, Doctor, Miss Temple," said the Bishop with a beatific smile. He started ahead of them, short and swag-bellied, with a splayfooted bounce characteristic of a much younger man. Doyle supported Eileen with one hand in hers, the other around her waist, as they followed.

As they passed between them, Doyle studied the footmen on either side. All men of impressive size and solidity. Faces cold and hard, impassive. Faces that might have been concealed behind hoods while hunting them down through the snow only hours before.

"Where are we, Arthur?" whispered Eileen.

"A very bad place," said Doyle.

"What are we doing here?"

"That's not altogether clear."

"Well then ... if I can't say that I'm happy to be here, I am so very glad that you're with me."

He held her closer. A few men peeled off to follow them through the vast double doors to which the Bishop led them. The interior expounded on the grand themes established by the castle's facade. A welter of heraldic oriflammes enlivened the walls and ceiling. This expansive central hall was crowded with suits of armor, posed in warlike postures. A long, narrow table of burnished wood consumed the length of the room's middle. At its far end a fireplace as wide and as deep as Doyle's old bedroom burned a load of timber the size of a whaling boat.

"I'm afraid it's a wee trice early for our guests to be up and about," said the Bishop, leading them to an epic stone staircase, "but I can assure you they are most anxious to make your acquaintance."

"The gentleman we shared the carriage with . . ." said Doyle.

"Yes," said the Bishop brightly.

"Mr. Graves? Mr. Maximilian Graves?"

"Yes?" The Bishop smiled helpfully as they started up the stairs.

"Your colleague. On the board of Rathborne and Sons."

"Yes, yes. Rathborne and Sons, yes."

"So that was the gentleman?"

"Who did he say he was?"

"He didn't."

"Ah. Yes," said the Bishop with another grin.

Doyle couldn't tell if the man was being deliberately obscure or was simply an idiot.

"No, I'm attempting to determine," persisted Doyle, "if that was in fact Mr. Maximilian Graves."

"Oh, I wouldn't wish to speak for Mr. Graves."

"So that was Mr. Graves."

"Is that what he told you?"

Eileen and Doyle looked at each other, wide-eyed; the Bishop's moronic cheerfulness was cutting through even her foggy state.

"He said his name was Alexander Sparks."

"Well then," said the Bishop, "he would be in a position to know, wouldn't he? A-hoot, and here we are."

A brawy servant standing outside a door in the hall opened it as they approached, and the Bishop extravagantly waved them inside. The room's furnishings and appointments were opulent, vivid contrast to the Spartan militarism throughout what they'd seen of the rest of the house. Plush Persian carpets lay underfoot. Gossamer canopies draped twin beds. Chairs and plump divans exuded overstuffed pulchritude. Tapestries covered the walls but couldn't conceal their curves, suggesting the room sat snugly in one of Ravenscar's many towers. A single narrow window faced northwest, the sky growing light with the dawn.

"The bath is through here," said the Bishop. He opened an adjoining door to reveal a black-and-white-tiled chamber, where servants poured buckets of steaming hot water into an elevated brass tub.

"Please don't hesitate to rest and refresh yourselves before joining us. Our guests here are all royalty to us. And if you require anything else, anything at all," said the Bishop, taking hold of a velvet rope suspended from the ceiling, "one ring will quickly bring someone running."

Doyle and Eileen thanked him, and the Bishop backed out of the room on a steady stream of gracious inanities. The door closed solidly. Doyle held a finger to his lips, moved to the door, and tried the handle. Locked. He opened the clasp to peer through the door's peephole and was greeted by the stony eyes of the servants stationed outside. Doyle shut the trap and moved to the window as Eileen plopped down on one of the chaises and tried to pull off her boots.

"I wholeheartedly approve of the bath," she said, still reeling a little.

The window looked directly down on the courtyard. Traffic in and out of the heavy gates through which they'd entered ran regular and heavy, covered wagons primarily, but a fair number of men on foot—patrols armed with rifles, as were the numerous sentinels parading the ramparts.

"If they mean to kill us," said Eileen, fumbling woozily with the buttons of her skirt, "they must want clean, well-rested corpses."

Doyle looked farther left as the first morning sunlight flooded the flat plain that lay to the west—the leading edge of the North Yorkshire moors, if Doyle had his geography in order. Somewhere therein sat the property General Marcus McCauley Drummond extorted from Lord Nicholson. Not much innate value aside from the peat bogs. Perhaps its worth had to do with its proximity to Ravenscar, reasoned Doyle. As the mist lifted, in the distance he could dimly make out shapes jutting from the fresh snow on the moors: low, man-made structures, perhaps storage sheds for the peat.

"I'm going first, Arthur, if you have no objection," said Eileen, peeling off the shirt, trousers falling around her ankles as she hobbled to the bath.

"Yes. Fine," said Doyle, almost but not quite engrossed enough to be distracted by her flesh before she disappeared. Moments later, he heard a healthy splash, followed in short order by an exclamation, a giggle, and then a contented sigh.

Resuming his survey, Doyle saw that the sprawl of Ravenscar proper filled the southern reaches of what was visible from the window. Outside the walls in that direction stood a high, rambling structure, serviced by a rail spur running to the west. Figures moved in and out of its cavernous doors. Boxcars waited in the switching yard. Black smoke

poured from two towering stacks that rose from the building's core. Beneath the chimneys, an ornate and sentimentally rendered scene of a mother standing in a kitchen, handing a biscuit to a little boy, covered a large expanse of wall. Lettering above it inscribed: mother's own.

"Arthur?" He could hear the slip and burble of languidly moving water.

"Yes, Eileen."

"Could you come in here a moment, please?"

"Yes, Eileen."

Doyle removed his coat, took the vials of medicine concealed in the lining and the syringes from his boots, and stuffed them beneath the cushions of a davenport. Then he moved to the bath.

Arms folded across her breasts, eyes closed, Eileen lay back against the angled wall of the tub, which simulated the form of a brass dragon down to its four taloned claws. Her skin looked like alabaster. There was a fine glisten of moisture on her lip. Her hair was loosely piled on top of her head, but a few delicious strands dangled delicately down to the waterline. Doyle was instantly thrown into a reverie: the enduring fascination of a woman's hair. How did they know just exactly what to do with it in every conceivable situation? How did they move it around their heads in such graceful, effortless defiance of gravity?

"I'm in a kind of heaven," she said dreamily.

"Are you?"

"I assume I was given a drug of some kind."

"Yes, dear."

"It's difficult for me to think very clearly." She was taking great care to enunciate clearly. "My physical responses to things seem to be a bit ... overwhelming."

"Which we can attribute to the drug as well I think."

"So this feeling is going to go away soon."

"Yes."

"Hmm. Pity. I'm sorry, I'm not being very much help to you."

"You're safe. That's all that matters."

She rested an inviting hand on the edge of the tub. He took it, watching the water run off their entwined fingers.

"Mr. Jack Sparks did not come back?" she asked.

"No."

"That's very troubling."

"Yes."

"We're in quite a serious muggins, you and I."

"Yes, dear, I'm afraid we are."

"Then after I've had a few more minutes to soak," she said softly, "I would like you to take me to bed. Would that be all right with you, Arthur?"

"Yes, dear. Yes, it would."

She smiled and held his hand. He sat on the edge of the tub and waited.

Familiarity breeds a few feelings other than contempt, thought Doyle as he lay on the enveloping feather bed and by measured steps gave in to the round, full weight of his fatigue. Passion, for one. Whether as a result of the drug in her system or need inspired by the precariousness of their position, the urgency and abandon with which she had submitted herself to him fell significantly further outside his limited experience than their lovemaking of the night before. She lay curled in his arms now, smooth and soft, sound asleep, her jet hair an exotic stain fanning the milky linen. To his surprise, he had no difficulty reconciling these more tender feelings with the urgent, animalistic coupling they had shared only minutes before. No single act in his life had ever seemed more genuine. As he fell asleep, he remembered thinking he had never been as grateful to his mother for anything more than her failure to warn him against actresses.

Doyle woke with a start, his dreams fleeing like burglars. The light in the room was low, a shade of burnt orange, filtering at a sharp, perpendicular angle through the window. Someone's been in here while we slept, his instincts informed him. He sat up. His clothes gone from the floor where he had hastily discarded them, nowhere to be seen. Laid out on the opposite bed were a set of gentleman's evening wear and a woman's black velvet dress. Eileen lay asleep beside him. A sharp pang in his gut told him he was gnawingly, ravenously hungry.

Doyle found his watch lying neatly on the pocket of the dinner jacket and snapped it open: four o'clock. The day was almost gone! He pulled on the trousers, a perfect fit, and

slipped the braces over his shoulders as he padded to the window. The sun was fast approaching the western horizon. Ac-tivity in the courtyard continued, armed patrols on the walls still in force. Work had apparently ceased at the adjacent fac-tory, the stacks quiescent. But a thin line of smoke issued from one of the smaller buildings farther out on the moors. Feeling under the cushions of the sofa, Doyle determined the vials and syringes were in place where he'd stashed them, then he moved into the bath to attend to the body's necessities. A pitcher of hot water, a shaving mug, and razor sat beside a ceramic basin before the mirror, along with a shaker of astringent bay rum.

Freshly abluted, five minutes later Doyle reentered the bedroom. Eileen slumped on the edge of the bed, a sheet draped around her, the heel of a hand pressed to her forehead.

"Did you kick me in the head or just beat me with a truncheon?"

"You'll feel better once you're up and moving. They've left clothes for us, formal wear: Apparently, we're dressing for dinner."

"Food." The idea struck her as revelatory and seemed to ameliorate her discomfort. She looked up at him, to share the incredible thought. "Food."

"Not without its appeal," said Doyle, kissing her before moving to the other bed.

"I don't think I've eaten in months." "Take your time. I'm going to have a look about," said Doyle, as he quickly donned the rest of the clothes.

"I have vague memories of food," said Eileen, as she traipsed to the bath, trailing the sheet, "but I can't seem to recall ever having tasted any before."

Doyle knotted the bow tie, checked it in the mirror, plumped the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and moved to the door. The handle was unlocked.

Sedate chamber music wafted from somewhere in the house below. Two men rose from chairs in the hallway as Doyle exited the bedroom. Both appeared in their early fifties and were similarly attired in evening wear. Each held a drink; the shorter of the two, a dapper, fastidious man with thinning hair and a trim black beard, smoked a blunt cigar. The taller one bore the broad shoulders and upright carriage of a mili-

tary man, his white hair trimmed to a rough bristle, a full, white walrus mustache cutting across the length of his square, uncompromising face. He hung back a step as the shorter man moved immediately to Doyle with an extended hand.

"We were just discussing something—perhaps you can settle the question for us, Doctor," said the shorter man gregariously, in a flat, nearly American accent, beaming a gap-toothed smile. "My friend Drummond here insists that if the proper circulatory equipment were to be made available, a man's head could indefinitely be kept alive and functioning after separation from the body."

"Depends entirely upon which latitude the separation were to be effected," said Drummond, his upper-class voice as stiff with reserve as his spine. His eyes, drawn slightly too far apart for symmetry in the broad box of his face, stared perpetually down his nose.

"Whereas I continue to maintain that the body provides far too many essential elements that the brain requires in order to carry on," said the shorter man, as casually as if they were discussing the delivery of mail. "And leaving the issue of maintenance aside, it's my decided opinion that the trauma of cleaving head from torso to begin with proves far too injurious for any portion of the brain to survive."

"I will go one step further, John," said the General. "I submit that if the cut were made at a sufficiently low intersection, it would be possible for the head to retain the power of speech."

"You see, we disagree there as well: Where would the wind come from, Marcus?" argued Sir John Chandros, the owner of Ravenscar. "Even with the neck in all its unfettered glory, there's no bellows to move the air through the vocal cords. Come on, man! What expertise can you offer us, Doctor? From a purely medical perspective?"

"I'm afraid I've never given the matter much thought," said Doyle.

"But it is a most provocative subject, don't you agree?" asked Chandros, who apparently felt no further introductions necessary.

"A heady matter indeed," said Doyle.

Chandros laughed genuinely. "Yes. Heady. Very good. Heady: Do you like that, Marcus?"

Drummond snorted, Doyle assumed disapprovingly.

"Marcus has been in violent need of a good, solid belly laugh for the last thirty years," said Chandros. "And he needs it still."

Drummond snorted again, seeming to confirm the opinion.

"For an accredited cynic and somewhat notorious man of the world, my friend the General manages to retain a remarkable naivete." Chandros took Doyle's arm in his before he could respond and directed him down the corridor. "However, Doctor, apropos our prior discussion, regardless of its particular unlikelihood, I strongly believe that as a race of people we are on the verge of such a vast sea change of scientific discovery that it will transform forever life as we have known it."

Another snort from Drummond: There were apparently shadings and nuances to the man's use of the exclamation that would require months to interpret.

"Drummond will warn you that I am an inveterate disciple of the future. Guilty as charged. I happen to believe that if man is in need of hope, he need look no further for it than tomorrow. Yes, I've been to America, spent many years there: New York, Boston, Chicago, there's a city for you, powerful, tough, raw as the wind. Done a lot of business with them— they understand business, the Americans, second nature to them—and perhaps they've infected me with their optimism, but I still say if a man with the right idea meets a man with the right money, together they can change the world. Change it, hell: transform it. God gave man dominion over the earth; it's high time we took the bit between our teeth and pulled the plow with which the Lord provided us. Tried politics. Not for me. Too damn dependent on consensus to get anything done. Committees didn't build the Great Pyramids; Pharaoh did. My point is: The business of living is a business. Let me give you an example."

As they passed a banister looking down on the entrance hall, Doyle saw the long table was set for dinner. Well-attired guests mingled before the fire. With the baleful shadow of General Drummond trailing them, Chandros took Doyle past the overlook and through a door, out onto a high balcony. A vast panorama to the west, where the sun balanced perfectly on the lip of the horizon.

"What's man's greatest obstacle in life?" asked Chandros, puffing away on his cigar. "Himself. That's the rub. His own damn animal nature. Perpetually at war with the higher power inside. Can't surrender. There's a genius living cheek by jowl in the same bag of bones with this lower man, and let me tell you, sir, that lower man is nothing but a troglodyte, a half-wit chucklehead without the common sense to live. Worse still, this dumb clot thinks he's the long-lost son of a god; it's only a matter of time before the world puts him back on the throne where he belongs. In the meantime, he works like a dull ox and he drinks and he gambles and he whores and he pisses his life away and he dies crying out for this god that deserted him to save his pathetic, penny-ante soul. Let me ask you this: What everloving deity in its right mind would waste a moment's precious thought on a worthless wretch like that?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Doyle, recoiling at the man's frigid assurance.

"I will tell you: no deity worth a tinker's dam." He folded his arms, leaned against the wall, and looked out over the land. "Now the Christians have had a good run. No question about it. One dead Jew with some neat tricks up his sleeve, promoted like hair tonic by a few fanatical followers, and one converted emperor later they've got themselves a Holy Empire to shame any in history. Going on two thousand years. How did they manage it? The secret of their success was simplicity: Concentrate your power. Wrap it in mystery. Hide it inside the biggest building in town. Lay down a few commandments to keep the peasants in line, get a regulatory grip on birth, death, and marriage, throw in the fear of damnation, some smoke, a little music—there's your first commandment: Put on a good show—and customers will come crawling on their knees for the stale crumbs of that Feast of Saints. Now that ... that was a business."

Drummond snorted again. Doyle wasn't certain if it was meant as affirmation or rebuttal.

Chandros puffed and chomped his cigar. His dazzling blue eyes sparkled with inspirational zeal. "So: How do you change man from a dim-witted, randy farm animal to a domesticated, productive tool ready to roll up his sleeves and pitch in for the greater good? There's the puzzle anybody that aspires to rule has to crack, be it religion, government, busi-

ness, what have you. And here was the plain genius of the Christians' solution: Convince your constituents of one big lie. We hold the key to the gates of heaven. You want to make the trip, brother, you'll have to do it through our aus-pices. Sure, advertising how dodgy the Other Place is helped

close the deal: Fear puts those poor ignorant sods down on t.heir knees lighting candles like there's no tomorrow. And let's be straight, Old Nick's always been their real matinee idol—the man you love to hate, he'll scare you so bad you piss in your union suit, but you still can't take your eyes off him. He's the one puts the ladies in a lather, not that simpering, doe-eyed Messiah. Throw the Devil in to spice up the soup, and you've got yourself a flawless formula for religion hegemony. Worked like a Swiss watch. Nothing came close.

"But the march of progress—and you know it moves independently of our measly concerns; there's mystery for you— the march of progress demands that those in power change right along with the times. We're at the big table now, boys, playing with a whole new deck of cards: heavy industry, mass production, international economies, weaponry like you never dreamed of. Pious homilies and weak cheese pulpit-pleading to the customer's spiritual virtue just don't cut the mustard anymore. The Christians, as they are fond of saying in Kentucky, are just about shit out of luck. Excuse my French."

As the sun sank below the horizon, its dying rays lit Chandros and the sandstone wall behind him with a fiery orange luster.

'"Look down there, Doctor," said Chandros, pointing toward an enclosure near the outer walls. "What do you see?"

A number of men in identical gray-striped pants and jackets of rough, nubbed material were filing into the compound through a gate leading toward the biscuit factory. The hair on their heads was cropped close to the skull. Armed guards supervised their movement, barking instructions, as the men fell into formation, their voices responding with cadenced chants that faintly reached the balcony.

"Workers. Factory workers," said Doyle.

Chandros shook his head, leaned in, and tapped Doyle on the chest for emphasis. "The answer," he said. 'The men you are looking at were until recently the lowest, most degraded form of human filth imaginable. Convicts: mean, vicious, blockheaded incorrigibles. Recruited for those very qualities, the worst of the lot from the lowest prisons and penal colonies of the nation and the world. Brought here—and believe me the prisons are only too glad to be rid of them—-to take part in a program that will prove our deliverance from blind enslavement to man's essential nature. Look at them."

The group's movements in the yard were well drilled, disciplined but unenthusiastic, if not sluggish, although none seemed to be performing under any sort of duress.

"Not so long ago those men could barely share common living space with other human beings for an hour without committing senseless acts of violence. The problem of crime. The problem of intolerance. The problem of brutality. Do you see? They all spring from the same fountainhead. Here and now, for the first time, they are completely rehabilitated, well provided for, and willing to give an honest day's work."

And so Bodger Nuggins was released from Newgate, thought Doyle. The intention seemed admirable enough—not all that different in conception, if not in scale, from what Jack Sparks tried to accomplish with men in the London underworld. But what was their method?

"How?" asked Doyle. "How is it done?"

"Direct intervention," said Chandros.

"What does that mean?"

"One of our colleagues has been studying this problem for many years. He has come to the conclusion that the fundamental aspects of personality begin in the brain. The brain is a physical organ, like the lungs or the liver, and it can be refashioned in ways we are only beginning to understand. You're a doctor. We believe that this low level of humanity— should we call it that? Why not?—is nothing more than a medical problem, a disease, like cholera or meningitis. It is a purely physical defect, and should be treated accordingly."

"Treated in what way?"

"I'm not familiar with the precise medical terms; the Professor will be happy to give you the particulars—"

"Treated surgically?"

"I am interested in results, Doctor. You see before you the more than encouraging results we have begun to realize with

this program, and not just with those factory workers: The entire household staff at Ravenscar is comprised of our suc-cessful efforts—our graduates, if you will. Let me assure you of this: Give a man a second chance at life, and he will be as grateful as a hound at your feet."

A second chance at life. Doyle felt his head spinning. The fray hoods. The ghouls at the museum. Automatons deprived of a will of their own. Doyle nodded agreeably to Chandros, turned away, and gripped the rail, trying not to betray his profound revulsion.

That's what they wanted the land for, Doyle realized— isolation to do this ungodly work. Bodger Nuggins caught wind of what lay in store and escaped, and they tracked him down and killed him. Something told Doyle he might have been one of the lucky ones. Whatever horrors had been committed on those sorry men below, the real monsters were here beside him on the balcony.

The last of the sunlight faded swiftly. The convicts in the enclosure were being marched off to another part of the compound. Doyle looked down at the central courtyard, his eye caught by a single wagon pulling in to what looked like a service entrance. As the driver dismounted and two servants moved forward to unload the delivery, a body clinging to the undercarriage rolled out from beneath the wagon and slipped into the shadows. None of the sentries or servants noticed the intruder made his move. Doyle couldn't make out the face from this distance, but something unmistakably familiar registered about the way the figure moved.

Jack.

A deep bell rang somewhere inside the house.

"Ah. Dinner will be served shortly," said Chandros. "Why don't you see if that charming companion of yours is ready to join us, Doctor?"

"Yes. Good," said Doyle.

"We'll see you at table then."

Doyle nodded. He heard the door open behind him; Chandros and Drummond moved inside. Doyle scanned the courtyard for another glimpse of the intruder but saw no trace of him. He waited a few moments, then followed the others inside. Doyle stepped quickly to his room, where the formidable servant was once again stationed at the door. As he entered, Doyle caught the blank, reflectionless plane of the man's eyes. They were as cold and lifeless as those of a fish on a platter. The door closed silently behind him.

chapter eighteen DINNER IS SERVED

SEATED BEFORE A VANITY, ElLEEN USED THE MIRROR TO APPLY

the lightest blush to her lips. She wore her hair in an elaborate chignon. A choker studded with what appeared to be diamonds encircled her neck. The form-hugging, off-the-shoulder black velvet dress their hosts had provided elevated her innate glamour to a classical level.

"Fitting they give me a dress in the bargain," she said, "seeing as how they ruined mine. Fasten me in the back, would you, Arthur?"

Doyle bent to attend to the disjointed hook and eye. She wore a subtle, entrancing perfume. He kissed her shoulder once, softly.

"They left makeup and jewelry as well." She touched the diamond earrings she was wearing. "These are not paste. What on earth are they up to?"

"Why don't we go find out?" said Doyle, moving to the davenport and, out of her sight, retrieving the syringes. He slipped them into his breast pocket, making certain they didn't create a giveaway bulge in the line.

"Who else is going to be there?"

"More than they bargained for," said Doyle, lowering his voice. "Jack's somewhere inside."

She looked at him. "Good. We won't give up without a fight."

"I'll try and keep you as far from harm's way—"

"Arthur, the bastards killed eighteen of my friends—"

"I won't let them hurt you—"

"Among them my fiance. He was sitting beside me at the seance that night, playing my brother."

Doyle collected himself. "Dennis."

"Yes. Dennis."

"I had no idea. I'm so terribly sorry."

Eileen nodded and turned away. Moments later she picked up a small black purse and presented herself. "Do I look all right? Lie if you must."

"Stunning. God's truth."

She smiled brightly, illuminating the room. He offered his arm, she took it, and they exited to the hall. The sen-ant stood aside as they made for the stairs. Music from below was accompanied by the buzz of conversation.

"I've a four-inch hat pin in my hair." she whispered. 'Tell me when, and I won't hesitate to use it."

"Don't be shy about applying it where it does the most

damage."

"Have I ever struck you as shy, Arthur?"

"No, dear," he said.

Eileen wrapped her arm securely around Doyle's, and they started down the grand staircase. The sight below was rare and sumptuous; lit by enormous candelabras, the table was set with fine silver and crystal. A string quartet played in the corner. Eight chairs occupied, guests dressed as if for a royal occasion. Sir John Chandros sat at the head of the table, the seat of honor empty to his right. As he spied Doyle and Eileen descending, conversation died, and attention shifted toward the stairs.

"Smile, darling," whispered Doyle. " 'Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred....' " murmured Eileen under her breath. "Oh, my Lord ..." "What is it?"

"Look what the cat dragged in," she said, smiling and nodding toward the end of the table opposite to Chandros.

At the prompting of the silver-haired gent to his right, a man in his early twenties rose to greet them; of medium height, portly and pale, pinched features distorted by a dissolute bloat. A wispy mustache laden with wax and a goatish goatee intended a rakish flair that failed to convince, suggesting instead overreaching immaturity. Bedecked with ribbons, medals, and a sash, a constellation of new stains blotted his immaculately starched white dickey. As Doyle and Eileen reached the bottom of the stairs, Bishop Pillphrock, in High

Anglican surplice, steered them straight toward the young man, who waited as patiently as a well-trained ape.

"May I present His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor Edward, the Duke of Clarence," said the Bishop, with extreme unction. "Dr. -Arthur Conan Doyle."

"How7 do you do?" said the Duke blankly. Nothing registered in his eyes, set near together with the oafish glaze of a guinea pig.

"Your Highness," said Doyle.

"Miss Eileen Temple," said the Bishop.

"How do you do?" He displayed no spark of recognition. The man must be ill, thought Doyle; Eileen was not easily forgotten, even at a glance, and the Duke had once spent an entire evening in vigorous pursuit of her.

"Your Highness," said Eileen.

"The weather today has been unseasonably mild," said the Duke, with the spontaneous animation of a windup toy.

"An unusually clear day for this time of year," said Doyle, inundated by the sour wine saturating the Prince's breath.

"We are all truly blessed by such a day as this," added the Bishop, flashing an oily grin. "One can only attribute our great good fortune to the company of His Highness."

'The company of His Highness produces numerous fortunes," said Eileen graciously. "I know that at least one of his gifts, passed from father to son, has been repeatedly bestowed to women throughout England."

The Bishop appeared thunderstruck by Eileen's comment—a none-too-veiled reference to the unmarried Duke's renowned promiscuity and rumored venereal heritage. Prince Eddy wrinkled his brow slightly; confusion seemed almost too complicated a mental state for him to reach.

The eldest son of the eldest son of the Queen herself, second in line to the throne, thought Doyle; if there was ever a more convincing argument against the continued intermarriage of royal European bloodlines—

The throne.

The words of Spivey Quince and the boy in blue came rushing back—

The throne. Opening the passage.

We've been trying to interpret the warnings metaphorically. ...

"It seeks the throne. It will be King."

"His Highness has been so generous with the distribution of his bounty, it must be difficult to remember exactly where he's deposited it," added Eileen, smiling pleasantly, vivid spots of color highlighting her cheeks.

Bishop Pillphrock had gone as pale as a ghost, mouth yawning open, momentarily devoid of his abundant social lubricant. The Prince blinked many times and worked his lips silently. He looked like a broken toy.

"On hot afternoons," said the Prince timidly, "I'm very fond of strawberry ice cream."

The oddness of the non sequitur stilled even Eileen. A solitary tear escaped the Prince's bleary light eyes and ran into his splotchy whiskers.

"All I want," said the Prince in a wee voice that must have been familiar in the royal nursery, "is some peace and quiet and a little fun."

The silver-haired man to the Prince's right asserted himself, taking the Prince by the arm. "And so you shall have it. Your Highness has been sorely tried by his day's demanding schedule," said the man, easing the Duke back into his chair, "and is in need of nourishment to replenish his spirits."

"More wine," said the Prince, eyes downcast, sullenly sinking into himself.

"More wine!" barked the Bishop. "Thank you, Sir Nigel. His Highness's welfare is of course foremost in all our minds."

"So I would've thought," said Sir Nigel Gull, the silver-haired man, erstwhile physician to the prince. As he took his seat, Gull shot a withering glare at Eileen, A woman-hater, concluded Doyle instantly, remembering that the prolific rumors of the Prince's debauchery were not exclusively limited to the fairer sex.

"Please, be seated, won't you?" said the Bishop, regaining his form. "Miss Temple, if you would be so kind; our host has requested you for his right hand."

The Bishop held out her chair as Eileen sat to the right of Chandros, directly across from Alexander Sparks. The upright hulk of General Marcus McCauley Drummond stood on Sparks's left.

"And here for you, please, Dr. Doyle." Pillphrock indicated

a chair two spots to Eileen's right. "Welcome, all, welcome, welcome."

Pillphrock rang the serving bell and settled his girth be-tween Eileen and Doyle, who took his seat directly across from the only other female at the table, a darkly handsome woman whom he recognized as Lady Caroline Nicholson. Black hair bonneted a strong face, her features hawkish and unforgiving, more sensual than the photo had been able to convey. Her black eyes glittered with a predatory heat. She smiled cryptically.

The man to Doyle's immediate right had difficulty retaking his seat, wincing in pain. His right leg extended out as stiff as a board, the bulge of a poultice ballooning the pants leg around his knee. Slight, clean-shaven, pale, and pockmarked. Even with the spectacles he wore and the absence of makeup, Doyle recognized him as the Dark Man from the seance, the man he had shot in that leg. Professor Arminius Vamberg.

So they were accounted for, all seven, and the grandson of Queen Victoria in the bargain. Doyle looked up and met the willful, steady eyes of Alexander Sparks. The implied complicity of his smile was unnerving, as if he could gaze unimpeded into the private mind of anyone he scrutinized. Seeing no purpose in openly challenging him, Doyle looked away.

Sharing the same dull eyes and attentively vacant expression, a squadron of servants carried in a soup course, which, a ravenous Doyle was disappointed to see, proved to be a thin consomme.

"I made the discovery during my years in the Caribbean," offered Professor Vamberg unsolicited, in the harshly accented rasp that vividly recalled the night at 13 Cheshire.

"What's that?" asked Doyle.

"Have you spent any length of time in primitive cultures, Doctor?"

"Not if you exclude the French," said Doyle, trying to check his hunger from prompting him to pick up his bowl and drink.

The Professor smiled politely. 'The signal difference, I find, is that, lacking the polished veneer of what we Europeans arrogantly pronounce 'civilized,' less developed societies maintain a direct relationship to the natural world. As a consequence, they enjoy a more straightforward experience of that part of nature which remains unseen to us: the spirit world, specifically the world of the devas, or elementals, who inform and inhabit the physical world which we presumptively assume to be the limit of existence. Our colleagues in the medical profession dismiss these people as foolish, primitive, superstitious, at the mercy of irrational fancies and terrors. Contrarily, after years of examination, I'm inclined to consider them wise and knowing, attuned with the world they live in to a degree undreamt of by ourselves."

Doyle nodded attentively, glancing at Chandros, deep in a one-sided conversation with Eileen, who seemed as equally preoccupied as Doyle with her soup.

"I myself was quite unconvinced of their existence for the longest time," said the Bishop, between noisy slurps. "As you can well imagine—public school, Church of England, already a vicar—"

"Unaware of whose existence?" asked Doyle.

"Why, the elementals, of course," beamed the Bishop. He had managed to splatter droplets of broth all over his spectacles. "Until I met Professor Vamberg—then the scales fell from my eyes like autumn leaves!"

"They are known by different names in different cultures," said Vamberg, clearly irritated by the Bishop's cheery intrusion. "You are of Irish descent, are you not, Doctor?"

Doyle nodded. His soup was gone; he was tempted to ask Vamberg, who hadn't so much as wet his spoon, if he wouldn't mind giving his over.

"In Ireland you know them as leprechauns: the little people. Here, in Britain, they're called brownies or elves, with many regional variations: 'knockers' in Cornwall, the pixies of Scotland, the trows of Shetland and Orcadia. The Germans, of course, know them as kobolds or goblins—"

"I'm familiar with the mythology," said Doyle, annoyed by the man's condescending pedantry.

"Ah, but you see, it is a great deal more than mere mythology, Doctor," said Vamberg, waving his spoon for emphasis.

In came the next course; thank God, thought Doyle. It's not enough to perish by way of starvation, they have to bore me to death simultaneously.

"Roast partridge on a bed of cabbage," announced the Bishop.

Partridge? There must be some mistake, thought Doyle. This was a single wing, and it was easily the size of a turkey's. And that cabbage leaf covered the entire plate. They were in the north of England: Where did one find produce like this in the depths of winter? Gift horses, decided Doyle, tasting the first cut of the wing; the meat was succulent and tender and, he had to admit, on first bite as flavorful as anything he'd ever eaten.

"These figures of legend, so familiar to us from folktales and children's stories, are in actuality the unseen architects and builders of the natural world," continued Vamberg, as disinterested in the partridge as he had been in the soup. "Wood nymphs, water naiads, sprites of the air—there is a reason why these traditions persist in every culture, even in one as ostensibly advanced as our own—"

"What reason would that be?" said Doyle, unable to resist picking up the wing with his hands and tearing into it.

"Because they are real," said Vamberg. "I've seen them. Spoken to them. Danced with them."

Not recently you haven't, thought Doyle. "Really."

"Shy creatures, extremely reticent, but once contact is made—and I was able to do so initially with the help of Caribbean tribal priests—one quickly learns how extremely eager they are to cooperate with us."

"How terribly interesting," said Doyle, finishing off his partridge.

"Isn't it just?" piped in the Bishop, trickles of grease shining like tinsel around his mouth and chin.

"Cooperate how, exactly?" asked Doyle.

"Why in doing what they do best," said Vamberg. "Growing things."

"Growing things."

Vamberg picked the immense cabbage leaf off his plate. "What if I were to tell you the cabbage seed that produced this leaf was planted in dry sand three weeks ago, deprived of all water or nutrients, and harvested this very morning?"

"I would say, Professor Vamberg, that you've spent too much time dancing around toadstools," said Doyle.

Vamberg smiled dryly and lifted the wing from his plate. "And if I were to tell you that when it was freshly dressed this afternoon, this bird was only two weeks old?"

Servants were clearing and laying in the next course, two of them rolling in a silver-hooded steam table.

"So these elementals, as you call them, presumably have nothing better to do than help you raise partridges the size of eagles?" asked Doyle.

"Trout with lemon!" said the Bishop.

The hood of the table was rolled back, revealing a single, intact fish on a garnish of lemon and parsley. Its coloring and markings identified it as brown trout, but the thing was the size of a sturgeon. The servants carved and served. Doyle caught Eileen's eyes, hers filled more with wonder than the profound unease stirring inside him.

Vamberg smiled like Carroll's Cheshire cat. "Oh ye of little faith."

A plate of the trout landed in front of Doyle. As savory as it looked and smelled, he was rapidly losing his appetite; the idea of this mysteriously denatured meat made him queasy. Glancing around the table, he noticed Alexander Sparks also refrained from eating, instead staring intently across at Eileen. At the other end, a napkin tucked in his collar like a child's bib, His Highness the Duke of Clarence aggressively sucked up his fish in greedy, gluttonous mouthfuls, sloshing it down with sloppy gouts of wine, all the while making noisy drones of infantile contentment, completely oblivious to the company and his surroundings.

"Delicious!" pronounced the Bishop. A beautiful fair-haired altar boy stood at his side. The Bishop whispered in his ear and ran his stubby fingers possessively through the boy's locks.

"Another benefit unlooked for came from that encounter— this was on the island of Haiti, by the way—when the priests introduced me to an elixir of various herbs, roots, and organic extracts they said the elementals had revealed to them," said Vamberg. "The priests of Haiti have been using this compound judiciously for centuries: They discovered that when administered in the right amount, in conjunction with certain medical practices, this compound virtually strips a man or woman-—any man or woman—of their conscious will."

"I'm sorry?" asked Doyle.

'Their will is no longer their own. It renders them docile, pliant, completely under the command of the priests, who

men employ these people however they see fit, as field or household help. Even the most intractable subjects become obedient. Trustworthy. Well behaved."

Slaves. Mute and unreasoning as marionettes, servers were laying in a meat course: Doyle tried not to think what manner of hideously altered beast might have yielded these ripe morsels of flesh.

"That's how Haiti solved the servant problem," chimed in the Bishop with a broad wink. "How nice to speak freely in front of the help."

Vamberg sent the Bishop another venomous look before continuing. "The priests are a closed fraternity; this knowledge is guarded with their lives. I was one of few outsiders— the only European—who has ever been given access to this treasure. I've even improved the effect with a simple, surgical procedure, used in conjunction with the compound."

No wonder Bodger Nuggins ran, thought Doyle. Better dead facedown in the Thames than an ambulatory corpse like Lansdown Dilks, stored away in some root cellar like a sack of nightsoil—

"Marvelous!" said the Bishop.

"It was years later, during my travels in the high country of Tibet, that I met a man with the vision to see how this procedure might one day be utilized in a broader, more socially useful fashion." Vamberg gave a nod to Alexander Sparks.

So that's how it began, with Sparks and Vamberg. The meeting of two dark minds, a seed brought back to English ground to reach its full flower of corruption—

A crash of crockery startled him. A servant on the far side of the table had dropped a plate. The man bent down, his movements addled and sluggish, and attempted to scrape up the fragments of china and the scattered food around it with his hands.

"Clumsy fool," muttered General Drummond.

A jolt ran through Doyle; the back of the man's neck had been recently and roughly shaved, and a vivid, suppurating triangular scar ran across its length. Crude blue thread stitched the flaps of the wound loosely together. Another servant went to the damaged man, straightening the poor wretch to his feet.

Doyle's heart sank.

It was Barry.

His eyes were dead, light and life entirely gone from them.

"Here, here," said Alexander. "What's your name, clumsy boy?"

Barry shuffled slowly around and stared at him uncompre-hendingly, a thin line of drool forming in the corner of his mouth.

Alexander sprang to his feet and cuffed Barry harshly across the ear. He accepted the blow as passively as an exhausted pack animal. Doyle gripped the arms of his chair to keep from leaping up at Sparks.

"Speak when you're spoken to, boy."

Some dim whisper of cognition surfaced in the well of his broken mind. Barry nodded. The weak noise that emerged from his mouth could hardly be understood for a word.

"Since you've demonstrated you're no use doing your job, perhaps you can entertain us, you stupid cow," said Alexander. "Dance for us now, give us a jig, come on then."

Alexander clapped his hands, encouraging the others at the table to join in, establishing a steady rhythm. The quartet at Alexander's prompting began to fiddle an Irish jig. Alexander slapped Barry again, spinning him around, then prodded him with the end of a cane.

"Dance, boy. Do as you're told."

Doyle could see the music seeping through to what was left of Barry. He tried to shuffle his feet, but the result was pathetic, the slightest movement costly and excruciatingly painful. His arms swung limply at his sides. A spreading stain appeared in the crotch of his pants.

The company of seven and their royal guest found the exhibition endlessly entertaining. Prince Eddy seemed on the verge of jumping to his feet and joining in. The Bishop laughed so hard he held his sides and doubled over in his chair, face red with exertion.

Doyle looked to his left. Eileen was pale, fighting her emotions; there were tears in her eyes. He gestured to her: Show them nothing.

Unable to sustain the effort, Barry slumped to his knees against a chair, gasping for breath, a dry rattle in his chest. A thin line of milky red fluid ran from his wound and around his neck. Alexander threw his head back and laughed, then

waved dismissively. The music stopped. Two servants lifted Barry by the arms and guided him gently but firmly out of the room, as one would a doddering, incontinent pensioner.

"Delightful!" said the Bishop.

They put him here so we'd see, thought Doyle furiously. We'd see how they've decimated his mind and robbed him of his soul. This wasn't only Vamberg's drug at work; they had cut Barry, cut crudely into the back of his head and obliterated something essential to his humanity.

Doyle wanted to kill them for it.

Across the table, Alexander grinned viciously as he reclaimed his seat, looking slowly back and forth at Doyle and Eileen, showing his teeth. It was the most naked expression of feeling Doyle had seen the man display.

He likes to see fear, realized Doyle. He feeds off it.

"You were saying, Professor," said Alexander.

"Yes. Having made this providential association, my new friend and I continued our peregrinations around the world, but with renewed purpose," Vamberg went on, leaning close enough to Doyle that the first words gave him a start.

"Purpose."

"We pursued the acquaintance of elemental forces in other countries, other continents. To our amazement, we discovered they were more than willing to disclose their secrets to us— and among them, Doctor, are wonders to behold: life itself!—in trade for a service which only we, in turn, could provide for them."

Doyle nodded, not willing to speak, unable to trust he could keep from betraying his growing terror. Desecrating Barry in this grisly way, it was likely they had done the same to his brother. The inference that the same fate awaited himself and Eileen was unmistakable.

"These elementals of the earth had once been united under the governance of a unifying spirit," continued Vamberg. "A powerful entity, worshiped by primitive people of the world in a variety of guises throughout history. A being tragically, savagely misunderstood by our religiously intolerant Western forebears—I won't mention any names—"

The Bishop chortled agreeably.

"—who have systemically engaged in brutal, senseless persecution of this entity and its legions of worshipers. The ascendancy of Western man, with his paltry, self-centered concerns and small-minded monotheistic obsessions, finally succeeded in driving this being out of the physical plane altogether, into a twilight, purgatorial existence."

"The Devil," said Doyle.

"The Christian conception of him, yes. Here was their proposal: In exchange for the continued bestowal of their beneficent genius, the elementals asked our cooperation in returning this great spirit into the world, there to assume its rightful seat among them. This was the service they required of us—it seems only humans could provide such a service. And so, with the help of our assembled colleagues, for the greater glory of man and nature, this we have agreed to do."

The rest of the table grew quiet, watching Doyle carefully for his reaction. Insane, he thought. All of them. Beyond the pale.

"You're speaking of the Dweller on the Threshold," he said.

"Oh, he has many, many names," said the Bishop cheerfully.

Reaching in to grab the decanter of wine, Prince Eddy succeeded in knocking it over, flooding the tablecloth with a shocking stream of black-red claret. The Prince giggled girlishly. A dark look passed between Alexander and Dr. Gull, who responded by rising to his feet.

"His Highness extends his regrets," said Gull roundly, "but it has been a most exhausting day. He will take the remainder of his meal in chambers before retiring."

Prince Eddy gestured and grumbled an objection. Gull whispered in his ear and pulled the thoroughly sodden man to his feet. Balking petulantly at Gull's instructions, the Prince yanked his arm away; his elbow hit his chair, and it crashed to the floor. Gull's face turned beet red.

"Good evening, Your Highness," said Alexander Sparks, His voice cut through the silence like a scalpel. "Rest well."

The Prince's expression turned meek and docile. He nodded meekly to Alexander. Dr. Gull took the Duke firmly by the arm and led him toward the stairs. Gull whispered to him again, the Prince stopped, assembled his tatterdemalion dignity, and addressed the table.

"Thank you all ... and good night," he said.

Similar felicitations were returned. Gull steered the Prince in a wide arc to the stairs. The Prince stumbled once, Gull righted him, and they began to climb, cautiously, one stair at a time. Prince Eddy looked as forlorn and toothless as a decrepit bear in a street circus.

As Doyle watched him go, something heavy dropped onto the table in front of him. His manuscript.

"Perhaps you can imagine my surprise, Dr. Doyle, when your ... manuscript first crossed the transom of Rathborne and Sons." Lady Nicholson spoke now, her voice low and throaty, ripe with voluptuously suggestive pauses.

Perhaps I can, thought Doyle.

"When Professor Vamberg and Mr. Graves—that is, Mr. Sparks—introduced themselves to us—"

"Some eleven years ago now," said the Bishop.

The fussy cleric's elaborations appeared to go over no better with Lady Nicholson than they had with Vamberg.

"Thank you, Your Worship. Sir John, General Drummond, and myself had shared and studied occultic knowledge for many years: We are of like mind. From the moment the Professor and Mr. Sparks came to England, made themselves known to us, and we dedicated ourselves to our ... joint interests ... absolute secrecy has been our foremost consideration. So, yes, imagine our surprise when that ... document . . . arrived on my desk. Written by a young, unknown, and unpublished physician—forgive me, a nobody—who, it seemed by the evidence available on the page, had been eavesdropping ... over our shoulders for these many years."

But it was an accident, he wanted to tell them. I lifted half of that folderol straight out of Blavatsky, and the rest was blind, stupid luck. Doyle knew that was not what they wished to hear, and it would avail him not to offer it up.

"So we are ..." Lady Nicholson purred, "and have been, for some time, most anxious to receive an ... explanation for ... this." She gestured languidly toward the book.

Doyle nodded slowly. He felt their eyes crawling over him like insects. "I do understand, Lady Nicholson. To begin, may I just say how greatly I admire what the lot of you have accomplished," Doyle said, affecting the stuffy academician persona he'd worn in the coach with Alexander. "How grand and enterprising your work. Visionary indeed. Bravo all. Most impressive."

"How did you come to know of ... our work?" asked Lady Nicholson.

"I can see there's no use in pretending, I may as well confess," said Doyle casually, praying his powers of invention would not pick this moment to fail him. "The plain truth is ... I've made a study of you."

"A study," said Lady Nicholson, cocking an eyebrow.

Veiled, discreet, and troubled looks passed back and forth among them.

"Oh yes," continued Doyle blithely. "Presumed and forsworn secrecy is one thing and all very well and good— heaven forbid it should be otherwise, given what you've been on about—and one would assume you'd have no difficulty whatsoever secreting the activities of seven such extraordinarily gifted individuals from the eyes and ears of such a modest admirer—a nobody, if you will. But an admirer in possession of such a profound desire to divine your purpose ... well, that's quite another kettle of fish entirely."

There was a lengthy silence.

"How?" demanded Drummond.

Doyle managed a lighthearted chuckle. "One might as well ask you, respectfully, General Drummond, sir, to freely divulge your most cherished military secrets. No, no, my investigative methods are not a subject I intend to discuss. Why, however. Now there's a proper question. Why? And the answer to that, my lords and lady, is something I would be only too happy to share with you."

Doyle leaned back, took a sip of wine, and smiled brazenly. He caught Eileen's eye for the briefest moment, during which she silently inquired if he had gone mad, realized this was distinctly not the case, and indicated her improvisatory cooperation was available if needed or called upon. He covertly nodded his acknowledgment.

"Why, then?" asked Alexander Sparks. He glowered lupinely, but there was uncertainty in his face.

This is the second time I've confounded him, thought Doyle. For some reason, he can't see past this ludicrous, slapdash facade I've constructed: The man has a blind spot.

"Why, indeed, Mr. Sparks," said Doyle, leaning confi-

dently forward. "Well. Here I sit among you. Granted, ad-judged against this august company, I am a man of humble means and undeniably moderate accomplishments. I hold no place in the world to compare remotely with anyone's at this table. What I do share with you is a passionate sympathy for your objectives. I share with you a passionate desire to see your plans come to fruition. And I have nurtured a perhaps reckless aspiration that by creating an opportunity to meet you, face-to-face, I could persuade you to allow me to play some part, however insignificant, in the fulfillment of your plans, in which I so strongly and fervently believe."

Running through Doyle's head like an urgent telegraph: The longer they let me jabber—and the longer I spin out this web of weightless nonsense—the longer they'll let us live and the more time I'll afford Jack, if he's inside, to make his move.

"So that is why you wrote this ... story?" asked Lady Nicholson, as if she found the word itself distasteful.

"That is precisely why I wrote my story, Madam, and exactly why I sent it to you as I did," said Doyle, opening his hands as if revealing cards in a poker game. "There it is. You've found me out."

More furtive looks exchanged. Doyle could see significant doubts persisting; Drummond, and to a lesser degree Chandros, seemed particularly unconverted.

"In addition to Rathborne and Sons, you submitted your manuscript to a number of other publishers," said Chandros reasonably.

"I did, Sir John, for one simple reason," said Doyle, assuming one would occur to him in the next instant. "One doesn't venture into a lion's den without creating a distraction. My method required subtlety. A straightforward approach to you I quite rightly felt would fall short, and I strongly suspected that you might well greet my efforts with no small disfavor, so I made those additional submissions, should you choose to investigate my intentions before responding, to lend yours an air of legitimacy. As it happened, I nearly lost my life in the bargain regardless, on more than a few occasions."

The table was silent. Doyle sensed he had a quorum leaning in his direction. He summoned his last reserves of sincerity to the fore.

"Please forgive me, but I must speak plainly; if you honestly thought I had no value to you I don't believe you would have gone to the trouble you did to test me with the seance. If, in your estimation, resolve and sacrifice and persistence count for anything—and I know they must or you would have killed me long before this—then I have faith you will, at the very least, allow me some nominal opportunity to prove myself to you and by so doing join you in whatsoever way you deem fit, to help bring your great plan to completion on this earth."

"What about my brother?" asked Alexander.

"Your brother?" Doyle had prepared himself for this riposte. "Your brother, Mr. Sparks, has abducted me against my will, twice, and come close to killing me more times than that. It has come to my understanding he is escaped from Bedlam; if his behavior is any indication, his internment there was not inappropriate."

"What does he want from you?"

"How does one decipher the ravings of a madman?" said Doyle dismissively. "One might as well try to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Frankly, I'm just grateful to be rid of him."

A measured look passed between Sparks and Lady Nicholson; there's the axis of real power in this nest of snakes, noted Doyle.

"What do you know of ... our plan?" asked Lady Nicholson, with a provisional, but therefore significant, measure of respect.

"My understanding is you are attempting to return this being which Professor Vamberg has spoken of—the being I refer to in my manuscript as the Dweller on the Threshold—to the physical plane."

And now Doyle chanced his most daring leap of the offensive.

"And you are currently preparing a second attempt because your first effort—involving the birth of your son, Lady Nicholson, the blond child whom I saw depicted at the seance—has sadly and tragically failed."

That sent a bolt rocketing through the woman and on through the rest in a tumbling ricochet. Eileen's eyes widened

at this revelation. Doyle had gambled and come up aces. Prompted by an imperceptible signal from Sparks, Lady Nicholson extended their confidence in him another step.

"The physical vehicle was not strong enough," said the woman, without a trace of grief. "The boy was unable to ... bear the weight."

The physical vehicle: Good Christ, she's speaking about her own flesh and blood with the regretful sentiment of a poorly played game of darts.

"We impute the father," added Bishop Pillphrock piously. ''A weak man. A most weak and unserviceable man."

"It seems certain infirmities were ... passed along," said Lady Nicholson.

"I have met Lord Nicholson. I would have to say that does not surprise me, not at all," said Doyle. "One can only trust that your next standard-bearer proves to be as physically advantageous as is his position in the world."

"And who would that be?" asked Chandros mildly.

"Why, Prince Eddy, of course," said Doyle, taking another not altogether wild stab in the dark.

Another look between Nicholson and Alexander. Another nerve struck.

So that was the reason for Nigel Gull's presence in their midst: a short leash around the neck of the Crown Prince. Doyle barely had time to let the shock course through him. They believed they were going to bring this crepuscular phantom—Dark Lord, Dweller on the Threshold, call the Devil what you will—back to the world as presumptive heir to the throne of England.

"We are not immune to the ... persuasiveness and ... ingenuity of your arguments, Doctor," said Lady Nicholson.

"Just as we are duly impressed with your perseverance," added Sparks. "The seance was indeed a test. We needed to determine what you were made of. And what you knew."

"But given the risks involved, as you yourself have suggested, it is altogether fitting and proper that we look for additional . . . proof of your . . . suitability," said Lady Nicholson.

Doyle nodded. They've taken the bait, now I'll set the hook. "Most reasonable indeed, Lady—"

Doyle was distracted by something landing on the table in front of him. Although he hadn't seen the man move, Doyle knew that Sparks had tossed the object toward him.

A straight razor, blade exposed, gleaming in the candlelight.

"We would like to kill Miss Temple," said Sparks. "Here. Now."

Time stopped inside Doyle's mind.

"Kill Miss Temple," he repeated.

"Please," said Sparks.

You mustn't hesitate, Doyle. You mustn't blink. If Eileen is to have any chance at all ...

Where was Jack?

Doyle looked around the table. Alexander grinned. Pillphrock tittered nervously. Lady Nicholson's breathing had grown rapid and shallow; the woman was aroused by what she thought she was about to witness.

They wanted him to reenact the killing at the seance; this time there was to be no simulation.

Doyle didn't dare turn to Eileen.

"Yes, all right," Doyle said calmly.

Doyle picked up the razor, rose from his chair, and grasped its back to move it out of his way. Taking a step toward Eileen, he saw that five stone-eyed servants had moved in behind the table.

Eileen turned to look at him. Doyle let her know with his eyes:

Now.

Doyle pivoted on the ball of his foot and used the momentum of his turn to slash the razor down at Vamberg. Vamberg's eyes lit up behind his spectacles. He let out a cry, raising his left arm to ward off the blow: The razor sliced through the man's jacket and across his arm and hand. Crimson spurted onto the table from a severed vessel, splattering the manuscript.

Reaching into his pocket, with one motion Doyle pulled out the syringes and spun round the other way. The first sight that registered—Chandros leaning over to clamp Eileen's left hand onto the arm of her chair, the Bishop turning in his seat to pin down her right. Eileen stood halfway, slipped the Bishop's grasp, and drove her right fist directly into the face of -Chandros.

Bastards!" she yelled.

As her hand made contact with his flesh, the man screamed

violently, explosively, his hands flew to his face—to his right

eye—and as her fist drew back, Doyle saw that Eileen had

edged the four-inch hat pin firmly between her fingers; she had driven it deeply into the man's eye socket. Blood streamed out between Chandros's spasming fingers.

Before the Bishop could grab hold, Doyle secured his grip on the first syringe and thrust it into Pillphrock's fleshy throat, dropped the razor, and pushed down hard with both hands on the plunger, emptying the drug into the man's carotid artery. The Bishop screamed; halfway out his mouth, the sound cut off, strangulated by paralysis. His eyes bulged, his face turned purple and sclerotic, as the drug—a massive overdose of digitalis—raced into his bloodstream, where it would within seconds stop his heart.

"Run!" shouted Doyle.

Stunned by the suddenness of the attack, servants only now moved toward them from both sides of the table. Drummond rose to his feet; Lady Nicholson pushed her chair back from the table.

Alexander Sparks was no longer beside her; Doyle had lost sight of him.

Eileen ran toward the stairs. Chandros's screams stopped, his hands fell from his ravaged eye, and gore slipped out of the cavity in thick red clots; the pin had penetrated into his brain. Although the message had not yet reached his extremities, Sir John Chandros was already dead. Pillphrock sat stock upright, hands at his throat, face turning black, mouth open in a silent, protesting bellow. Death was near at hand.

A moan from Vamberg—in shock, clutching his wounded arm—brought Doyle back to his left. He bent to retrieve the razor; Eileen's skirts moved by him at floor level as she rushed from the table.

As his hand touched the steel, Doyle felt hot liquid pour onto his cheek—blood, not his—then a pincer grip descended onto his neck. With a hoarse screech, Vamberg clawed at him with his wounded arm; nails raked Doyle's skin, drawing blood. Unable to raise his head against the pressure of Vamberg's surprisingly harsh grasp, Doyle fumbled the second syringe into position, jammed it hard into Vamberg's upper left thigh, and hit the plunger; half the hypodermic's contents emptied into the femoral artery before the man jerked violently away, and the needle broke off in his leg. Now the needle's function reversed; voluminous arcs of blood pumped out in the opposite direction.

Doyle pushed off for the stairs. A servant mshed at him; Doyle slashed with the razor, cutting the man and knocking him back.

"Eileen!"

A pack of servants turned a corner in the upstairs hallway and swarmed down the stairs toward her.

"There!" he shouted, pointing to a door off the landing.

Dust pocketed from a point of impact on the marble steps near her feet as a shot rang out; turning, Doyle saw Drum-mond advance toward the stairs, leading a charge of servants, revolver in hand. Doyle hurled the razor at him; Drummond deflected it with an arm.

"Consign you to hell!" shouted Drummond, raising the pistol again.

Falling from high above, a suit of armor crashed down onto the servants nearing Doyle. Drummond's second shot missed wide.

"Arthur!" shouted Eileen.

He turned; a servant stood over him, club, raised to batter. Doyle heard a sharp whistle, and a silver star embedded itself in the man's forehead. The man fell away. Doyle looked up; a dark shape flew over the balustrade and sailed onto the servants advancing down the stairs. Driven into the steps by the impact, the attackers tumbled around Eileen as Doyle reached her on the landing. Dressed in servant garb, the figure who'd ridden them down jumped to his feet and began hurling assailants who hadn't been knocked senseless off the staircase.

"Go on," said Jack Sparks, gesturing to the door on the landing.

Sparks picked up a broadsword from the jumble of armor, and he used it to finish one of the men, swinging it wildly to prevent the others from advancing.

"Now, Doyle!"

Another bullet whistled past their ears. Drummond took aim again, struggling to line a clear shot through the knot of men working their way around the armor.

Eileen tried the door. "Locked!"

Doyle and Jack threw shoulders against the wood; the lock splintered on the second try. Doyle grabbed a torch from a sconce on the inside wall, took Eileen by the hand, and they rushed down a bare, narrow servants' passage. Sparks threw a vial onto the landing that produced a thick, noxious plume of smoke.

"Go, go, as fast as you can."

They ran. Sparks followed. They rounded a turn, hearing shouting and footsteps in the passage behind them as servants braved the smoke, driven on by Drummond's bellicose orders.

"Are you all right?" Doyle asked Eileen.

"I wish we'd killed them all," she said angrily.

"I saw you come off the wagon—" said Doyle back to Sparks.

"It took an hour to get this far into the house; they must have a hundred men inside."

"Did you see—"

"Yes: I reached the stairs before you attacked. I needed a distraction—"

"We understand, Jack—where are we?" said Eileen.

Good Christ, she's calmer than I am, thought an astonished Doyle.

They paused at an intersection. One fork of the passage led deeper into the house, the other sloped down and to the left.

"This way," said Sparks, leading them to the left.

"How do we get out?" asked Doyle.

"We'll find a way."

The passage walls grew rougher as they moved down, woodwork giving way to masonry and masonry to raw rock. Sounds of pursuit behind them grew encouragingly remote.

"They've killed Barry," said Doyle.

"Worse than that," said Eileen.

"I know."

"They must have Larry as well," said Doyle.

"No. He's alive."

"Where?"

"Safe."

They traveled nearly half a mile down. The temperature rose. Walls sweated moisture. Around another corner a heavy oaken door blocked the passageway. Sparks listened carefully, then reached down and lifted the latch. Open.

Carved out of the earth, the cave they entered stretched ahead indefinitely, as broad as it was long. The ceiling barely cleared their heads. Deep straw covered the floor. A wind draughted in from somewhere, guttering the flame, the torch blackening the rocks above with streaks of carbon. The air felt unusually warm, permeated with an unpleasant pungency, like a field of overripe fruit. Doyle knew he had encountered that smell before, but he couldn't place it.

Stepping forward they discovered shallow water underlying the straw, up to a foot of it in spots. As they sloshed cautiously ahead, the door behind them caught in the breeze and slammed shut, giving them a start.

"Did Larry come in with you?" asked Doyle.

"No. I found him at the train. Barry was taken at the abbey."

So those had been Barry's cries they'd heard raining down from the heights. Doyle hoped he hadn't suffered long. Who knew if he was suffering still.

They had passed halfway across the long chamber, their progress impeded by the curious combination of straw and water.

"Where did you go last night, Jack?" asked Doyle.

"A company of Royal Marines and two squadron of cavalry are on their way from the Middlesbrough. They'll arrive here before dawn."

Never had Doyle been more willing to take him at his word. "Why didn't you wait for them?"

"Eileen was with you," he said, without looking at them.

Doyle stepped on something soft and yielding; his foot slipped off before he could replant it, but he regained his balance before falling. He was left with a vague, unpleasant impression that whatever he'd stepped on had moved when he touched it.

"Jack, they've got Prince Eddy—"

"I understand—"

Something cracked sharply under Eileen's foot.

"What was that?" asked Doyle.

She shook her head; Doyle held the torch as Sparks cleared the straw under her feet.

"Oh God," she said.

Her foot had snapped the rib cage of a human skeleton lying half beneath the surface of the water, the bones bleached white, picked clean. A gruelly substance gleamed on the straw, trails of silver excretion circling around and away from the remains.

"We've seen this before—the stable at Topping," said Doyle.

"Don't move," said Sparks. He was looking over Doyle's shoulder.

An undulating shape humped toward them beneath the straw, a slow, rippling, ophidian movement. The distinctive smell suddenly grew more potent, stinging their eyes.

"Ammonia," said Doyle.

Doyle looked to his left; another shape slithered toward them from that direction.

"There," said Eileen, pointing straight ahead to more movement in the straw.

"What are they?" asked Sparks.

"If they can grow cabbages as big as globes and trout the size of dolphin ..." said Doyle.

"I'm not sure we want to know the answer to that," said Eileen.

The straw on every side of them seemed alive, as active as sea foam. The shapes closed in from every direction, but a gap opened in front of them.

"Go. Straight ahead," said Sparks, readying the sword.

Doyle moved ahead, brandishing the torch. He felt something brush against his boot and stepped quickly to avoid it.

A black shape slithered out of the straw to their right to a height of five feet. Its limbless, cylindrical shape ended in a fluttering orifice rimmed with palpitating suckers that surrounded a set of three gnashing jaws, each equipped with symmetrical rows of sharp white teeth.

An identical shape lifted to their left, drawn by a rudimentary sense of smell. Another rose behind them. What they smelled was blood.

They were leeches.

Jack darted underneath the swaying head of the one to their right and ripped the sword down the length of its body. A sac punctured, spilling a fetid black fluid, and the creature tumbled back into the swampy water.

Doyle waved the torch, keeping the creatures to the front at bay. Their black wrinkled bodies recoiled instinctively from the fire, moisture sizzling on their glistening skin.

"Light the straw!" said Sparks.

Another monster reared up behind Sparks and struck; teeth ripped into his shoulder before Jack wheeled with the sword and severed the thing in two. The surviving halves scurried frantically away.

Doyle set the torch to the straw around them; the drier stuff on top ignited rapidly and spread across the room in a solid sheet of flame. The leeches nearest to them fell in its advance, combusting, bursting apart.

"This way!" yelled Doyle.

They chased the burning straw. Water sloshed as creatures fled from the heat, explosive plops filling the air as the fire consumed more of the loathsome worms. Sparks finished off the few survivors they encountered. The fire at this end of the room fizzled as it burned down to the soggy straw below. Holding the torch high, Doyle found a door in the wall ahead. Sparks lifted the heavy latch, and they were through the door.

They found themselves outside, near a cooperage, barrels stacked around them, limiting their vision. Horses' hooves, carriages, and angry voices could be heard nearby. A full moon burned high in the night sky above. Doyle extinguished the torch.

"I'm going to be sick," said Eileen quietly. She moved off. Doyle went with her and held her gently as she voided the corrupt meal they'd been served. Sparks waited a discreet distance away. When the spasms had ended, she clung to Doyle and closed her eyes, shuddering against the cold air, nodding that she was all right in response to his entreaties. Refusing to speak about the nightmare they'd encountered was a way to deny its reality, Doyle supposed. He wondered how many other skeletons lay buried in that hellish breeding ground. Convenient way to dispense with disciplinary problems. Or drive one's enemies mad with fear—he

thought of the lines of salt across the halls of Topping; they had indisputably done the job on Lord Nicholson.

Did these monsters give credit to Vamberg's ravings about dark spirits and relationships with elementals? Had some fundamental secrets of spirit and matter been revealed to them?

The thought broke off with the approach of Sparks.

"How many did you kill?" he asked quietly.

"Chandros. The Bishop. Probably Vamberg."

"Alexander?"

Doyle shook his head.

"Wait here," he said, patted Doyle on the shoulder, and crept out of sight.

"I killed him. That horrible man," said Eileen, her eyes still closed.

"Yes, you did."

"Good."

She lay quietly in his arms. Sparks returned minutes later with two servant's outfits and, even more welcome, warm woolen coats. They changed behind the barrels as Sparks kept vigil. Eileen stuffed her hair under a mobcap.

Through a gap in the barrels, they looked out at a grounds-eye view of the courtyard where Doyle had earlier seen Jack slip from under the wagon. Servants and convicts ran in every direction. Panicked horses reared as they were held at rein before wagons and carriages. Platoons of guards gathered and dispatched under the direction of officers.

"Evacuation," said Sparks quietly. "The soldiers will arrive in time to mop most of this lot up."

"They won't fight?" asked Doyle.

"Not without orders. And we've ruptured their chain of command."

"What about Drummond?"

"He won't make a stand unless Alexander is with him."

"Maybe he is."

"There's no cause on earth for which he'd sacrifice himself. He's miles from here by now."

"Where will he go?" asked Eileen.

Sparks shook his head.

"What about Prince Eddy?" asked Doyle.

"I would imagine Gull's already gotten him well away."

'To where?"

"Back to his train. Back to Balmoral. He's not much good to them now."

"He'll probably sleep through it," said Eileen.

"They wouldn't keep him a hostage?" asked Doyle.

"To what purpose? They'd be hunted down like dogs. He can't harm them as a witness. Why would they risk confiding in him? He was the guest of some distinguished citizens for a country weekend."

"If that's the case, we've beaten them, Jack. They've given up."

"Perhaps."

A more troubling question occurred to Doyle. "Why haven't they come after us?"

"They've got a few other wickets to mind, don't they?" said Eileen.

"They will," said Sparks quietly. "Not tonight, or the night after. But they will."

A long silence followed.

"How do we get out of here?" asked Doyle.

"Through that gate," said Sparks, pointing at an exit leading toward the factory.

"How do we manage it?"

"Simple, my dear Doyle. We'll walk."

Sparks stood and headed out from behind the barrels. Doyle and Eileen followed, heads down, blending into the milling mix of the courtyard. No one stopped or questioned them. It wasn't long before they cleared the open gates and left the walls of Ravenscar behind.

The path led directly to the biscuit factory. Jaundiced electric lights lit up entrances as figures scurried in and out its open doors. To the west behind the hulking structure lay the moors, what remained of the snowfall glowing faintly in the moonlight. Sparks stopped where the railroad tracks branched toward the factory loading dock.

"Let's have a look," he said.

They followed the tracks to a pair of huge double-hung doors through which the train line ran into the building. Closed boxcars crowded the sidings that flanked the main spur.

Inside the doors was no approximation of a biscuit factory. The air was sulfurous, choked with smoke, coal dust, floating

cinders. Conveyors carried rough ore to crucibles suspended over howling, incendiary blast furnaces. Massive, lipped cauldrons poised over iron molds the size of houses. A concatenation of cables, belts, hooks, flywheels, pistons, linked in a dance of churning, perpetual motion, climbed impossibly high into the air under the sloping roof, an industrial Tower of Babel. Blossoms of flame spurted rhythmically out of twisted valves and malformed appurtenances. Smoke of various contaminated colors belched out of oscillating cavities and tubes. The army of shirtless workers moving about, blackened by the foul atmosphere, dwarfed by the monolithic machineries, seemed entirely superfluous; if they abandoned their stations, it seemed the host apparatus, with a frighteningly singular unity of purpose, would continue to grind on eternally.

What end product resulted from this manufacturing hell was far from certain. Hulking shapes on trolleys leading to the tracks outside suggested the silhouette of cannon, but of a size far greater than any they had ever seen. Engines of war of some kind, of a war not yet glimpsed or even guessed at. As they watched, a strenuous final effort was apparently under way in the despotic factory, hot steel flowing, boxcars frantically loaded by workers driven on by armed overseers.

No one spoke; they wouldn't have been heard over the tumult of the infernal works if they had. Sparks gestured. They stepped away from the doors, back to the relative quiet of the boxcars.

"What is it? What is it for?" Doyle asked, almost to himself.

"The future," said Sparks.

"Look there," said Eileen.

She pointed to a path tramped out of the snow, paralleling the tracks as they ran away from Ravenscar, where two armed figures bearing lanterns escorted a column of men. They were headed onto the moors. The wrists of the men being led were bound in irons connected by a long, unifying chain. Judging by the ungainliness of their shuffling gait, their ankles were similarly encumbered. Some wore the dirty gray suits of the convicts, others the familiar servants' garb.

Was there something even more familiar about one of those hobbled figures? thought Doyle.

"Where are they going?" he asked.

"We'll follow and see," said Sparks.

They set out along the spur. The track bed was elevated above the boggy ground on a levee of earth and cinder. Staying to the shelter of the opposite slope, they kept the light of the lanterns in sight maintaining pace with the column. Before long they saw a bright glow issuing from a shadowy structure set on a narrow rise a half-mile south of the tracks. Doyle identified it as one of the low buildings spotted from the window at Ravenscar. They heard what sounded like gunfire inside: single shots and occasional volleys. As the tracks drew even with it, the guards herded the column away from the rail line up a slight hill toward that dark building.

"What's in there?" said Doyle.

Jack peered down the tracks to the west. Looking for something.

"Let's find out," said Sparks.

Moon shadows led them down from the rails to the path below. The ground felt soft underfoot, covered with lichen and low shrubs, slick with melting snow. A hundred yards ahead, the column of men had just reached the building.

Keeping as low as the limited cover of the ground would allow, they crept up the hill and skirted the edge of the compound; two structures set on a level patch of land, roughly constructed of clay brick, adjoined by a narrow walled passage. Six stunted chimneys rose from the second building: Smoke and red heat chugged steadily from them, the origin of the glow they had seen in the distance.

A shifting wind sent the smoke in their direction; a fetid, malodorous stench swept over them, the overwhelming force of it driving them to their knees. Doyle fought off nausea. Sparks gave Eileen a handkerchief, and she gratefully covered her mouth and nose. Doyle and Jack exchanged a grim look, Sparks gestured to Eileen to hold her position, and the two men inched up the hillock to within twenty yards of the compound.

The row of men they had tracked stood idly outside the first building, behind a second shackled group herded around a single door. The armed guards who had guided the column stood off to one side. Two others flanked the doorway.

Doyle pointed to the figure he'd recognized in the middle of the group to the rear. Sparks nodded.

Rifle fire rang out from inside. Muffled echoes cracked sharply over the moors. The two guards at the door took the shots as a cue; one trained his rifle on the men nearest the door, the second took a key from his belt and unlocked their chains. Shackles removed, none of the men reacted to their freedom; they stood lifelessly, as before, eyes obediently downcast.

The steel door to the building opened from inside, and the first group of men were prodded inside. A row of riflemen lined an interior wall, reloading their weapons. Beyond them, carts laden with sprawling corpses were wheeled by men in gray down the passage to the second building.

To the ovens.

The door slammed shut. The second set of guards exchanged words with the two at the door—a transference of responsibility. The guards with the lanterns turned and headed down the path toward the tracks.

Sparks waited until the guards cleared sight of the building. The trailing man's neck was broken before he could make a sound. As the first guard turned, the butt of the second's rifle silenced him for good. Sparks and Doyle moved up the hill to the crematorium.

There was no stealth, no subterfuge. Sparks strode up to the guards at the door and cut them down before either man could lift his rifle.

Doyle retrieved the keys and removed the irons from the hands and feet of the second column of men. None moved. All bore the traumatic stamp of Vamberg's vile alteration. These were his failures. This was where they disposed of their waste.

Shots from inside. Doyle moved to the man they'd come for, took Barry by the hand, and led him away. He offered no resistance or recognition, following as docilely as a child. Sparks gestured Doyle to take him quickly down the path. He remained behind, near the door to the abattoir.

Doyle and Barry were out of sight of the door when he heard its hinges crack open, followed by a volley of shots and screams from within. Doyle stopped. Barry stared vacantly at the ground. Eileen moved up the path to join them; they turned toward the building and waited.

The shots ceased. Nothing moved. The sudden silence of the moors seemed as vast as the span of stars above.

Sparks appeared over the rise. He discarded the rifle as he drew near. His face and clothes were awash with blood, which looked black in the moonlight. Doyle had never seen such an expression on a human face: pity, horror, rage, like nothing so much as a god who had just destroyed a world of his own creation that had spun insanely out of control. Behind him, a column of flame shot up into the sky; Sparks had set fire to the buildings.

Sparks walked right by them, gathered Barry tenderly up in his arms, and carried him toward the railroad tracks. Eileen sobbed once, involuntarily. Doyle put an arm around her, and they followed.

As they neared the tracks, a curious sight appeared: an engine and two cars backing toward them down the tracks from the west.

"It's our train," said Doyle. "It's our train."

Hurrying to catch up to Jack as he climbed the embankment, from a distance they saw Larry leap from the cab and meet Sparks as he gently laid his burden down. Larry fell to his knees. The single, simple cry Larry gave out when he saw his fallen brother rent the still surface of the night like a spear.

Doyle and Eileen made their way up the slope. Larry knelt on the loose cinders, Barry in his arms, brushing an unruly cowlick of hair off his forehead.

"Oh law, oh law no, Barry, oh my boy, look what they've done, look what they've done to you ... look what they done to him, Jack, oh my boy, my poor boy."

Sparks stood over them, eyes lowered, face hidden in shadow. Eileen turned away to bury her sobs in Doyle's shoulder.

Larry shifted, and a slice of moonlight fell across Barry's face. Doyle saw Barry's eyes go up to meet his brother's and focus there. They seemed to momentarily sustain the dimmest filament of life.

Barry moved his lips. A sound came out. He repeated it.

"Fin ... fin ... ish," Barry had said.

Then Barry drifted back down into the void that now possessed him.

Tears streaming from his eyes, Larry looked up at Jack,

who gestured to himself. Larry slowly shook his head. Sparks nodded, understanding, gave a look to Doyle, and moved away. Doyle put both arms around Eileen and guided her far-ther down the tracks.

Doyle looked back over her shoulder. Larry bent down to kiss Barry's cheek. He whispered something to him and then slid his soft hands around his brother's neck. Doyle turned aside. Eileen trembled violently in his arms.

A short time passed. Doyle and Eileen looked at each other, but the intimacy of their shared distress felt insupportable. She looked away. Doyle sensed she had of necessity retreated to higher ground inside herself. He wondered intuitively if the resulting gap between them would ever again be breached.

Larry closed Barry's eyes. He cradled the body, rocking it slowly as if trying to soothe a child to sleep. Sparks stood over them, looking back toward Ravenscar. Dancing lights, lanterns, great numbers of them, moved along the tracks in their direction.

Doyle took Eileen on board the train. She collapsed onto one of the seats. Through the windows, Doyle watched Sparks crouch beside Larry and speak to him. Larry nodded, lifted up his brother's body, and carried it to the front of the train, out of sight.

Doyle heard shots, moved to the rear of the car and out onto the platform. The lanterns were a quarter-mile away. Bullets whistled through the air, pinging off the steel. Doyle steadied the rifle on the handrail and fired at the lights until he'd emptied its chambers.

The wheels of the engine engaged, and the train accelerated, pulling away from the pursuit. Before long, the lanterns faded to pinpricks of light that disappeared entirely into the darkness.

chapter nineteen V.R.

Eileen refused the brandy Doyle offered. She moved somnolently to the berth in the rear, turned her face to the wall, and lay silently, without moving; sleeping or not, it was difficult to tell.

Doyle did not spare himself a glass, draining it in two pulls. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the bar. The haggard, muddied, bloodstained visage staring back at him resembled no human being of whom he had memory. There are certain untoward advantages to shock, exhaustion, and grief, thought Doyle; a point is reached where one is no longer capable of feeling anything.

Opening the connecting door, Doyle climbed along the side of the tender, hand over hand along the guard line to the engine. Barry's body lay on the floor of the cab. Jack's cloak served as a shroud; a boot extended from under its cover, rocking casually with the motion of the train. Larry stood at the throttle, staring straight ahead at the rails.

"We're ten miles from the main spur," said Sparks over the roar of the engine. "The track's clear ahead."

"London?" asked Doyle.

Sparks nodded.

Doyle looked out at the desolate, downy moors, alien and unforgiving as the surface of the moon, lifeless as the body under the shroud. The cold bite of the air whipping through the open cab felt cathartic.

"I'll be inside," said Sparks.

Sparks climbed back to the passenger car. Doyle loaded coal into the fire from the scuttle, refilled it from the fuel car, then stood by in silence, ready to offer support only if called upon.

"You never heard him sing," said Larry after a while, without looking at him.

"No."

"That boy could sing like an angel. Had a voice like to ..."

Doyle nodded, waiting patiently.

"He told me to go."

"What's that, Larry?"

"We drew 'em away from the ruins—that was the idea. Half those bastards went down 'fore they got near us. But a few doubled back behind. Had us pinched, dead to rights. He tells me to run. I says never, no sir. He says Jack needs least one of us can drive the train. I say it should be him. He says he's the oldest, and I has to do what he tells me."

"Was he the oldest?"

"By three minutes. He kept the gun, see. And I got off that hill...." Larry wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Took a mess of them buggers down with 'im, didn' he?"

"Yes, he did."

"We talked about it occasional, you know? Which of us would go first. He always said it would be him; Barry, see, he took chances. And he weren't afraid of the end, not at all. From what Mr. Sparks taught us, he always said maybe death was just the start of something. What do you think, guv?"

Larry looked at him for the first time.

"I think that it is very possibly just the start of something," said Doyle.

Larry nodded, then looked down at his brother's form beneath the flapping edge of Jack's cloak.

"Mr. Sparks says you killed the man wot did this to him."

Doyle nodded.

"Then, sir, I am ... forever in your debt," said Larry, his voice breaking.

Doyle said nothing. He wasn't sure he could speak. Time passed. Larry wiped his eyes again.

"If you don't mind," said Larry, apologetically, "I'd like to be alone with him now."

"Of course."

Doyle put out a hand. Larry shook it, once, without looking at him, then turned back to the throttle. Doyle worked his way back along the siding to the passenger car.

Sparks sat at a table, the decanter of brandy open, two glasses set out. Doyle took a seat across from him. Sparks filled the glasses. They drank. The warmth of the liquor spread through Doyle's belly, allotting some small distance from the horrors.

Doyle told Sparks how Alexander had appeared in the courtyard of the inn, how they had then come to Ravenscar, leading to the confrontation in the great hall. Sparks listened intently to his thorough account, asking questions only about Alexander, Doyle's impressions of him. When Doyle was done, they sat in silence for a while.

"Are they just all mad?" asked Doyle finally, his voice low. "To believe they'll bring this ... being back to life."

Sparks thought for a while before answering. "What about those things in the basement of the museum? Can you offer an explanation?"

"Can you explain the life force?"

"One can have an opinion."

"But an explanation may be one mystery that's beyond us."

Sparks nodded. They drank.

"The story the old fisherman told Stoker, when he saw them come ashore from the schooner," said Sparks.

"They brought a coffin. Your father's remains."

"He said they brought two coffins. What was in the second?"

"We never found it."

"If this being they spoke of had in fact lived previously, presume for the moment they had some means of discovering the person it had been. Is it inconceivable Alexander and the Seven believed they required those remains in order to return it to life?"

"I suppose not."

"The reason for Alexander's sojourns in the East becomes the discovery of this person's identity and the acquisition of its body."

"That follows."

Sparks nodded his agreement. "Then that second coffin becomes the key to their entire enterprise. I imagine that whereever he might be, Alexander even now has it in his possession."

Doyle saw the silver insignia in Sparks's hand; he was

turning it over, studying it, as if the riddle of his brother lived within like a scarab in amber.

"But what did they mean to do? Practically. How could such a plan have worked?" asked Doyle.

"To reason it out, it helps if one is able to simulate the thoughts of a madman," said Sparks, with a slight smile.

Doyle felt a blush of shame redden his cheek.

"A child was to be born to the Duke of Clarence, on the assumption they first found a woman to marry him who satisfied the royal prerequisites."

"No small task."

"No, but assuming so. A child, a son, who as a result of whatever ritual the Seven invoke, is no more than an empty vessel bearing the incarnate soul of this slouching beast. What follows logically?"

"Remove the obstacles remaining in the line of succession," said Doyle.

"Precisely. Since the boy requires some years to grow into his majority, they would be in no particular hurry that would arouse undue suspicion. The Queen's been on the throne nearly fifty years—they know she won't live forever."

"The Prince of Wales then."

"The boy's grandfather and next in line. But it's likely they leave him be for the time being; why remove the apparent heir from the scene and throw the regency into chaos? No, they can afford patience; Victoria passes on eventually— perhaps by the time our fair-haired boy reaches his adolescence—and Eddy, already a man of late middle age, takes the throne. Now who stands between the boy and the crown?"

"Only his father."

"And no one in their right mind will ever allow that misbegotten sot to assume the globe and scepter. Prince Eddy has to go, and not long after his son is born, I'd guess. His death given the appearance of natural causes. Wouldn't be difficult to arrange. Not with his medical profile."

Doyle agreed.

"Leaving his son the Crown Prince, half-orphaned, adored by all, to take his place in succession behind his grandfather the King. Then it's a fairly simple matter; shuffle King Bertie and any inconvenient heirs off their mortal coil and it's Bonny Prince So-and-so in the coronation coach on his way to Windsor."

"But it could take twenty years."

"Raising the child from infancy takes that long regardless. Meanwhile, our friends in the Seven consolidate their positions as peddlers of influence to the royal family. Before the accession, the young King is made carefully aware of the lineage of his left-handed path to power—initiated into the fold—and so begins his thousand-year reign at the head of the most powerful nation on earth."

Sparks sat back. Doyle was astonished at how the scenario could sound so practical and at the same time utterly insane.

"Why would they do it, Jack?"

"A king can wage war. They're in the business of building weapons. There's a pragmatic reason. Perhaps the only sort with which we should concern ourselves for the moment."

Doyle nodded, the coolness of this rationality as refreshing as spring water. "And the land. The convicts. Vamberg's drug."

"Man as rough clay. Playing at god," said Sparks with a shrug.

"There must be a more practical use."

Sparks paused. "Building a private militia."

"For their defense?"

"Or some more belligerent purpose."

"But the treatment didn't work. Not with any reliability," said Doyle, thinking of the ruined men being force-marched to their deaths.

"Man's a very difficult creature to enslave finally. Try as we might."

Doyle finished the brandy. He paused, treading lightly now.

"Jack. When we were last in London ... the police told me you'd escaped from Bedlam."

"You gave them my name?"

Doyle nodded. "They said you were mad."

Sparks cocked his head at an angle and looked at him askew. Was there a trace of a smile?

"What did you tell them, Doyle?"

"Nothing more. I must admit there've been moments when it didn't seem altogether out of the question."

Sparks nodded calmly and poured himself another brandy.

"I was confined to Bedlam. For a period of weeks six months ago."

Doyle felt his eyes grow to the size of teacups.

"Against my will. So ordered by a prominent physician, a man I was investigating. Dr. Nigel Gull. In the course of my investigation, I posed as a patient of the doctor's. We became friendly. I was invited to the man's home one evening for dinner; I accepted as an opportunity to gather what I could about him from his place of residence. A lapse in concentration. A dozen men—police among them—waited for me as I stepped inside. I was subdued, strapped into a straitjacket, and taken to Bedlam Hospital."

"Good Christ."

"It's not difficult from our current vantage, is it, Doyle, to imagine who might have been directing the Doctor's actions?"

"No."

"I was kept alone in a cell, in pitch-darkness, the strait-jacket never removed. I frequently felt someone observing me. Someone I knew. I realized then that Alexander was the man I had been hunting all along."

There was one additional burden Doyle longed to lay aside. "Jack, you'll forgive me. The night we traveled to Whitby. In this train car. I saw you self-administer an injection."

Sparks didn't move, but the words scalded him with shame. His cheeks drew in, rendering his long face more gaunt and wearied.

"That first night in Bedlam a hood was placed over my head. The jacket shackled to a wall. And the injections began. They continued around the clock, each applied before the previous one wore off."

"Vamberg's drug?"

Sparks shook his head. "Cocaine hydrochloride. Within a week, they had created in me a ... physical dependence."

"How did you escape?"

"Before long I lost all sense of time—an entire month passed before there was any change in my routine: My captors assumed by then I had similarly lost the power of cognition and muscular strength as well. They were mistaken. I had conditioned myself to resist the effects of the drug to a greater degree than my behavior led them to believe. On this particular day, the morning injection administered, I was taken from my cell and driven away. As we neared our destination, they removed the straitjacket. The three men escorting me did not live long enough to regret it. I jumped from the moving carriage. Nearly blinded by daylight, I was still able to complete my escape."

"What did they mean to do with you?"

"The carriage was riding through Kensington. Toward the palace. I believe that their intention, having created this craving in me, was to implicate me in the execution of some terrible crime."

Sparks drained his glass and stared at the corner.

"So as to what you witnessed on the night we rode to Whitby ... in spite of my best efforts in the intervening months, I have not altogether rid myself of this ... dependence."

"Is there anything I—"

"Having said just that much ... I must call upon you as a friend and a gentleman and insist that we never speak another word of this matter again."

The muscles in Sparks's jaw clenched tight. His eyes went hard, his voice hoarse with emotion, withdrawn.

"Of course, Jack," said Doyle.

Sparks nodded, rose abruptly from the table, and moved out the door before Doyle could react. The weight of this new knowledge added to Doyle's oppressive weariness. He staggered to the rear of the car and looked in through the drawn curtains at Eileen in the lower berth. She hadn't moved from the position he had first seen her assume, her breathing slow and regular. As quietly as he could manage—holding at bay a befogged awareness that this decision carried more import than could possibly seem apparent—Doyle climbed to the upper berth. Sleep—a sonorous, black, unconscious deep— came and took him quickly.

Doyle opened his eyes. No sensation of movement; the train was not moving. Daylight filtered into the berth. He looked at his watch—quarter past two in the afternoon—and parted the curtains, squinting against the brightness: a train yard, the one they had used before in Battersea, south of the

city. He swung his feet over the side and climbed down. The lower berth was empty, as was the rest of the car. He exited.

The engine and tender were gone, uncoupled. The passenger car sat isolated on a remote siding. Doyle searched, but there was no sign of the engine anywhere in the yard. He ran to the stationmaster's office. An old, bewhiskered engineer stood at the window.

"The engine that pulled in that car," said Doyle, pointing. "Where did it go?"

"Left early this morning," said the man.

"There was a woman on board—"

"Didn't see no one leavin', sir."

"Someone must have."

"Don't mean they didn't; but I didn't, did I?"

"Whom can I ask?"

The old man told him. Doyle canvassed workers who'd been present when the train came in. They recalled the train arriving, but none saw anyone leave it on foot. Definitely not a woman; that they would have remembered.

Yes, you would have remembered her, said Doyle.

Doyle looked for a card to leave with them when he remembered his last few belongings had been lost at Ravenscar. But his pocket was not empty. He found a thick roll of five-pound notes and Sparks's silver insignia. Placed there while he was asleep. He thumbed the notes; there was well over a year's salary. The most money he'd ever seen at once in his life.

Doyle walked back to the car and methodically searched for any sign or letter that might have been left behind but, as he suspected would be the case, found nothing. He retrieved his coat, stepped down from the platform, and left the yard.

The day was heavily overcast, not overly cold as the wind was down. Doyle stopped at a pub to sate his gnawing hunger with a shepherd's pie. He thought of Barry. He bought a cigar at the register, left the pub, and waited to light the smoke until he began to cross the Lambeth bridge. Stopping halfway, he looked down at the churning, impersonal gray water of the Thames and tried to decide where he should go.

Resume his old life? If his patients, such as they were, would have him. The generous stake he'd been left was more than sufficient to set him up in another apartment and replace his possessions.

No. No, not yet.

The police? Out of the question. Only one idea made any solid sense. He crossed the rest of the way, turned right through Tower Gardens, past Parliament, and north along Victoria Embankment. The rush of traffic, the blur of commerce, felt as insubstantial as apparitions. Eventually, he reached Cleopatra's Needle. How much time had passed since he'd stood here with Jack and heard the story of his brother? Less than two weeks. It felt like a decade.

He turned left away from the river and made for the Strand. He bought a leather satchel, a pair of sturdy shoes, socks, shirts, braces, a pair of trousers, articles of underwear, and a shaving kit from the first men's outfitters he encountered. From a tailor down the street, he ordered an expensive bespoke suit of clothes. Alterations would take a day or so, if the gentleman didn't mind. The gentleman was in no particular hurry, he replied.

He packed the clothes in the satchel and hired a room at the Hotel Melwyn. He paid in advance for five days and nights, requesting a suite by the stairs on the second floor. He signed the register as "Milo Smalley, Esquire." The clerk, whom he did not recognize from his previous stay, took no particular notice.

Doyle bathed, shaved, returned to his room, and dressed in his new clothes. The police would still be interested, if not seeking him actively, but that concern troubled him not at all. He walked out into the evening. He bought two books from a stall near the hotel: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a translation from Sanskrit of the Bhagavad-Gita. He dined alone at the Gaiety Restaurant, spoke to no one, returned to the hotel, and read Twain until sleep overtook him.

The next day he walked up Drury Lane to Montague Street. Sparks's apartment was closed tight, no signs of life, not even the sound of a dog. No neighbors were available to query. On the way back, Doyle bought a bowler and umbrella from a haberdasher on Jermyn Street. He picked up his new suit at the tailor later that afternoon.

No sooner had Doyle finished changing into his gray worsted suit—the finest he had ever owned—when there

came a knock at the door. A hall-boy conveyed a message: a carriage waited for the gentleman downstairs. Doyle tipped the boy and asked him to tell the driver the gentleman would be there shortly.

Doyle put on the bowler and overcoat, picked up his umbrella—there was a threat of rain—and went down to the carriage entrance. The driver was not known to him, but waiting inside the hansom was Inspector Claude Leboux.

"Claude."

"Arthur," Leboux said, with a curt nod.

Doyle took a seat across from him. Leboux signaled the driver, and they drove away. Leboux was loath to meet Doyle's eye; he appeared simultaneously angered and chastened but was clearly in no mood for confrontation.

"Been keeping well?" asked Doyle.

"Been better."

The ride took twenty minutes, during which Leboux twice consulted his watch. Doyle heard gates open outside as they slowed, then the echo of hoofbeats as they entered a porte cochere. The carriage stopped; Leboux preceded Doyle out of the cab and ushered him through an open, waiting door, where they were greeted by a solid, dignified man of early middle age, alert, intelligent, but weighed by deeply private responsibility. The man struck a note of recognition in Doyle, but he was unable to track its source. The man nodded to Leboux, both thanks and dismissal, and led Doyle away.

They walked through a dimly lit antechamber, down a narrow, wainscoted corridor, and into a comfortable sitting room. Nothing could be learned about its owner from the room; furnishings were exquisite but neutral and impersonal. The man waved a hand at a davenport, inviting him to sit.

"Wait here, please," he said. They were the first words he had spoken.

Doyle nodded, removed his hat, and took a seat. The man left the room.

He heard her footsteps first, a slow, stately rhythm of heel to parquet, then her voice, imperious, golden, asking something of her companion, the man who had escorted Doyle. Doyle heard his name mentioned.

The door opened. Doyle rose as she entered. There was a shock at seeing her in the flesh at such close distance. She was smaller than he'd imagined, not much more than five feet tall, but she projected a stout presence that flowed across the room, closing the distance between them. The familiar face—plain, doughty, as familiar to any English boy as that of his own mother—was nowhere near as stern and adamantine as he had so often seen it depicted. The gray bun of her hair, her simple, matronly black woolen dress, the white linen collar and mantilla, were all talismans as intimate to him as the backs of his own hands. She smiled at the sight of him, an animation never hinted at in pictures, and her smile was dazzling, a diamond in a field of posies.

"Dr. Doyle, I hope this has not proved an inconvenience," said Queen Victoria.

"No, Your Majesty," he said, surprised at the sound of his own voice. He bowed, hoping to offer some semblance of the proper protocol.

"It is very good of you to come," she said, and took a seat. quite informally. "Please."

She extended a hand, indicating the chair to her right, and Doyle sat there. He remembered reading somewhere that she had grown nearly deaf in her left ear. She turned to the man who had served as Doyle's guide. "Thank you, Ponsonby."

Henry Ponsonby, the Queen's private secretary—that's how I know him, from the newspapers, thought Doyle—nodded and left the room. The Queen turned back to Doyle, and he felt the intensity of will in her pale gray eyes turn their full attention to him. They sparkled with warmth at present, but woe to be whosoever feels their wrath, he thought.

"It seems you and I have a very good friend in common," said the Queen.

"Do we?"

"A very good friend indeed."

She's speaking of Jack, he realized. "Yes. Yes, we do."

She nodded knowingly. "We've had a visit from our friend recently. He has told me how you proved such a very great help to him in a matter of no small importance to myself and to my family."

"I hope he hasn't overstated—"

"Our friend is not generally given to inaccuracies of any kind. I would say he has a great fondness for precision. Would you not agree?"

"I would. Most certainly."

"Then I would have no reason not to take him at his word, would I?"

"No, ma'am—Your Majesty."

"Nor you any reason to disavow the free expression of my most heartfelt gratitude."

"None whatsoever, Your Majesty. Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Thank you, Dr. Doyle."

She nodded. Doyle bowed his head in return.

"I've given to understand that as a result of your generous assistance, you have experienced some difficulty with our London police."

"Sadly, yes—"

"Let me assure you that you may consider this a cause for no further concern."

"I am ... most deeply appreciative."

She nodded again and was silent for a moment, regarding him with what seemed to be a benign fondness, if not coquetry.

"Axe you a married man, Doctor?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Really? A vigorous, handsome young man such as yourself. And a doctor? Why, I can't imagine."

"I can only say that the appropriate ... situation has not presented itself to me."

"Mark my word," she said, leaning forward and raising a royal finger. "Someone will come along. The married state is not often what we expect it to be, but we soon discover it is most definitely what we require."

Doyle nodded politely, trying to take the words to heart. She leaned back, moving immediately to the next item on her agenda.

"How do you find my grandson's health? I mean the Duke of Clarence."

Having been so effortlessly disarmed, Doyle was set back by the directness of the question. "Without having had a chance to thoroughly examine him, I—"

"Your opinion only, Doctor, please."

Doyle hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I would respectfully advise Your Majesty that the Duke should hereafter remain under close if not constant supervision."

The Queen nodded, digesting the full implication of his statement before moving on. "Now. We will demand of you, Doctor, your oath never to speak on any of what you have heard or witnessed, to any living soul, as long as you may live."

"I do so swear, my most solemn oath."

"And nary a word about our mutual friend and his friendship to us. On both these points, I am afraid, we must absolutely insist."

"Yes. Upon my life."

She looked at him, found satisfaction in the sincerity of his answer, and relaxed her scrutiny. Doyle sensed the audience was at an end.

"I find you a most impressive gentleman for your years, Dr. Doyle."

"Your Majesty is too kind."

She rose to her feet. Doyle preceded her, extending a hand, which she accepted, instantly fearing that he'd committed some dreadful faux pas. If so, the reassuring squeeze she gave before letting go set his mind at rest.

"You bear closer examination. We shall have our eye on you. And if we find just occasion to call upon you again, be fair warned we will not hesitate to do so."

"I only hope I shall not disappoint."

"Of that, young man, I have precious little doubt."

Queen Victoria smiled once more—the unexpected radiance dazzling again—and turned to go. For the moment, the weight of the world truly appeared to rest on those improbable shoulders. She hadn't taken two steps before Ponsonby, telepathically, it seemed, appeared in the doorway.

"If I may be bold enough to ask . . ." said Doyle.

The queen stopped and looked at him.

"Did our mutual friend give Your Majesty any indication of where he might be going?"

He wasn't certain at first if the question—or the interruption itself—had violated some invisible line of propriety.

"With regard to the movements of our mutual friend," said the Queen in measured tones, "we have found it advisable ... never to inquire." Victoria raised a sly eyebrow: Courtesy of

Jack, a moment of unprecedented intimacy passed between them. Doyle smiled and bowed slightly as she passed from the room, Ponsonby falling in alongside like a tug escorting a clipper.

I'm a man who's been for a ride on a comet, thought Doyle: I know I'm back on terra firma now, but, for better or worse, it will somehow never look or feel the same again.

Ponsonby returned moments later, and they retraced then-steps through the private corridors of Buckingham Palace back to the waiting carriage. The secretary opened the door for Doyle, waited for him to take his seat, and handed him a small, rectangular package.

"Her Majesty's compliments," said Ponsonby.

Doyle thanked him. Ponsonby nodded, then closed the door, and Doyle rode back to his hotel alone. He waited to open the package until he was again inside his room.

It was a fountain pen. A sleek black fountain pen. It lay as delicately balanced in his hand as a feather.

chapter twenty BROTHERS

HE WAS TO STAY ON AT THE MELWYN FOR ANOTHER THREE days. He spent the mornings strolling leisurely from shop to shop, in search of replacements for the most necessary of his lost possessions. Which forced him to consider a most welcome question: What does one actually need?

After taking a long lunch alone, Doyle each day returned to the privacy of his room and wrote through the afternoon, letters to Eileen; all the many things he'd wished he'd said to her and hoped he would still one day have an opportunity to say.

Returning from lunch on his last day in London, he found a letter waiting for him at the desk. The envelope was shockingly familiar, identical to the one he had received at his apartment not so long and worlds ago: a vellum cream. The words inside were written in the same feminine hand, not printed this time, composed in a flawless, flowing script, unmistakably the same hand nonetheless.

Dearest Arthur,

By the time you receive this, I will have left England. I hope you can one day find it in your heart to forgive me for not seeing you before I left and again, now, before I go. My heart, my very soul, had been so soon broken when we met, and the circumstances were thereafter so extreme, a moment never came that provided me with either the time or luxury to grieve. That time has come now.

I never spoke of him to you at any length and I shan't now except to say I was in love with him. We were to be married in the spring. I very much doubt if I will ever love a man as much again. Perhaps time will change that in me but it's far too soon to know.

I know that none of us who lived through those days and nights together shall ever see life with the same blind and blinkered eyes with which most around us look out at the world. Perhaps we have seen too much. I only know that your kindness, your decency, your tenderness to me and your courage are a beacon that will guide me through whatever remains of this dark passage.

Please know, dear man, that you will be forever in my thoughts, that you have my love always, wherever the tide may carry you. Be strong, my darling Arthur, I know in my heart, know truly and believe that the light you possess will burn to the great benefit of this world long after our poor footprints have been washed from the sand.

I love you.

Your Eileen

He read it three times. He tried to find comfort in the words. He knew, objectively, that it was offered there. Perhaps he would discover it on some distant sunlit morning. But not today. He replaced the letter in its envelope and set it gently between the pages of a book.

Where I will find it—he thought with startling prescience—quite by accident, many years from now. And thanks to the dependable erosions of time, I will be unable to remember with any reliable precision the soft, exquisite pain of this terrible moment.

Doyle packed his things—two satchels now, beginning again from scratch—and took a train that afternoon to Bristol.

Two months passed in this fashion: traveling by rail to a new town, somewhere in Britain. Taking a room, anonymously. Gleaning what he could about the environs and its history from libraries and circumspect conversations in public houses until his curiosity about the area was satisfied. Then, moving on, at random, without any pattern or plan, each new destination chosen on the morning of departure. He was assured the police no longer sought him; this was his way of avoiding any other interested patties whose intentions were not so reliable.

He read what newspapers he could find as he went, scouring the pages for signs. One day in northern Scotland, he came across an obituary in a two-week-old London paper: Sir Nigel Gull, erstwhile physician to the royal family. The body found in the study of his country home. A presumed suicide.

It was time.

Now late March when he returned to London, he once again took rooms at the Hotel Melwyn and settled into the same routine he had observed before, certain his life could not move forward until he had some word from Jack, equally certain it would not be long in coming.

Late one night after the passing of a thunderstorm, while he was watching the receding lightning spider across the sky from his window, there came a knock at Doyle's door.

Larry stood outside. The dog, Zeus, was with him. Both wet and sodden. Doyle let them in, and gave him towels. Larry removed his coat and took a seat by the fire, accepting Doyle's offer of a brandy. Zeus lay at his feet. Larry stared into the flames and finished the drink in a few draughts. He seemed smaller than Doyle remembered, his face harder and more careworn. Doyle waited for him to speak.

"We left you at the station like that. Didn't like it. Guv'nor said you'd had enough. Done more than enough, too. No reason to trouble you anymore, he said. He's the boss, wasn't he?"

"I don't blame you for that, Larry."

Larry nodded, grateful for the absolution. "First thing was, see, we had to give me brother a proper burial. Took him home. Put him in the ground besides our Mum. That was good."

"Yes."

"Then Mr. Sparks, he has some business in London. I goes down to Brighton like he asks me, and there I waited. Weeks go by. A month. Mastered every game on the boardwalk, I did. Then here he comes one night wit' news. The movements of a particular schooner. One wot left the port a' Whitby in the first week of the new year. Sailed for Bremen,

that was its destination. That's where we're goin' now, he tells me.

"We catch the next packet 'cross the Channel. Make our way to the German harbor of Bremen. Inquiries are made in that city; Jack speaks the language, no surprise there."

"No."

"We're looking for a couple, a man and woman wot boarded in Whitby and disembarked from this schooner. Seems they brung a coffin in the cargo hold. Body of a relative, the captain's told, brought back to be laid to rest in native soil. This couple left Bremen by train, to the south. Here the trail goes cold. Every station, every bleedin' whistle-stop 'tween Bremen and Munich. Saw more of Prussia than the Prussians. No soap. By this time, I'm right keen to get back to a native soil of my own, but the guv'nor, he's got one more notion—"

"Salzburg."

"That's right, sir, where the brothers as you know went to school. Austria: That's where we're off to now, and we goes over that old town wit' a louse comb. Comes across a driver remembers pickin' up a couple wot answers to our description. Took 'em to a town two hours north. Called Braunau. Braunau am Inn.

"Seems this couple took a house there on the spot, paid cash money for it. Lucky for us there's a nosy parker livin' next door, an old woman's got nothing better to do than peep out her lace curtains all hours of the day and night.

"Yes, she seen 'em arrive, all right. And they did unload a large wooden crate from the wagon. The only baggage they brought wit' 'em, too, save wot she seen 'em carryin' by hand, and that impressed her mind. Kept strange hours, this couple, lights burnin' all hours of the night. Stayed two months and never spoke a whisper to her—not very neighborly, was they?"

"Were they there when you arrived?"

Larry shook his head. "Gone a week, she says. We goes into this house ourselves. To say it's a right shambles doesn't quite cover it: It was as if somebody held a furnace to the place, melted it halfway down, then let it cool. Everything soft, the walls like aspic ... I can't imagine how they was still standin'."

Doyle knew these effects only too well: Blavatsky had described it as something breaking through from the other side. "Did they leave anything behind?"

"That coffin. What was left of it. Scorched, split to toothpicks. Empty. Sitting on a pile of dirt, like wot we seen at Whitby Abbey."

"No remains inside?"

"No sir."

Doyle didn't like the look on Larry's face: Something worse was coming.

"What happened then, Larry?"

"We endeavored to pick up their trail again, fresh as it was, only a week past. Led us southwest to a little town in Switzerland, 'tween Zurich and Basel. A resort area, this is, people goes to take the waters, and there's a waterfall folks like to see. Reichenbach Falls. Five cascades. Over two hundred feet high."

Larry asked for more brandy. Zeus watched attentively as Doyle poured and waited while Larry drank it down.

"We arrive. Check the hotel hard by the falls. Yes, the couple in question's been there two days now. We look to their room. Signs of life but no one about. Jack asks me to wait by the door while he goes round the other side. Little time goes by. I get a bad feelin' up the back a' me neck, so I runs out of there. There's a path leadin' up the mountain where one goes to look down at the falls, and there I can see Jack runnin' up that path. Fast as I can move, I'm on that path myself.

"I hasn't caught sight of him again when ahead of me I hear pistol shots, and I runs and I turns a corner and up there on the next switchback cutting 'cross the face of the mountain, not fifty feet from me, there's Jack and he's wrestling with a man in black and I know right off it's Alexander. Not sure who's fired those shots, but neither looks hit. I never seen two men go at each other so fierce and bad. Matched strength for strength, blow for blow, both battered and bleeding, neither one askin' or givin' quarter. I'm shamed to say I was paralyzed by the sight, I couldn't budge from that spot.

"And as I watched, I saw Jack begin to take a slight advantage, a margin so slim you couldn't measure but the tide turnin' ever so slightly in his favor. Alexander takes a step

back, trying to pivot on his rear foot near the rim, and the ground gives out beneath him, a shower of rocks and dirt go down and he loses his balance and for an eternal moment he hangs on the edge of that cliff. And then he goes.

"Just as he's about to disappear into that black gorge, he reaches out and he grabs our Jack by the boot, and Jack staggers, digs in, and holds back, but the sheer weight of the man pulls Jack over the edge with him, and I watches them fall, sir, down, down that long way. Down till the mist of the falls swallows them up entire."

Tears were flowing down his face. Doyle couldn't move.

"Did they ... did they find the bodies?"

"I don't know, sir, because in that next moment a shot hits the ground at my feet, and I looks up and see that hellcat on the path above me drawing another bead—"

"Lady Nicholson?"

"Yes, sir. And so I ran, and I don't think I stopped running till I got to the station and boarded the next train. So you see, I don't know, sir, if they found the bodies. But it was a terrible long fall, sir, and I seen those rocks two hundred feet below, and I'm very much afraid that Mr. Jack Sparks has been taken from us long before his time, long before the good a man such as he could do 'as been done by half."

Larry buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly. Doyle inhaled, his chest catching and his eyes blind, and he put a hand on the poor man's shoulders, and tears sprang to his eyes because Jack was gone and because now in so short a time they had both lost their only brother. And there the two men remained, before the fire, deep into the longest of London nights.

In the weeks that passed after hearing of the events at Reichenbach Falls, Doyle began again to crave the numbing comfort of prosaic daily routine. He sought employment and accepted an obscure medical post in the provincial harbor town of Southsea, Portsmouth, there beginning life anew, burying his grief and confusion in the welter of details and routine surrounding the maintenance of the health of this untroubled seaside community. The striking ordinariness of his patients' complaints proved a tonic for him. Gradually, in increments so small they passed unnoticed by his conscious mind, the overwhelming sense of terror and wonder that had swept him so nearly to the edge of madness fell slowly and quietly away.

Standing outside a small thatched cottage one morning, where he had just treated a child for colic, looking out at the lush green fields and crystalline ocean below as the sun broke through a spectacular thunderhead, he realized with a jolt he had not thought of Jack or Eileen or that unspeakable night on the moors in over a day.

You're on the mend, Doyle, he diagnosed.

Late that summer Tom Hawkins, a young farmhand from the village, strong and vital, enormously well liked, contracted cerebral meningitis. Responding to the most serious challenge of his medical career, Doyle moved the young man into his own house to care for him more thoroughly. The man's sister, Louise, a soft-spoken, comely woman in her early twenties, resolutely devoted to her brother, moved in with him as well. Their mutual dedication to Tom and his enormous dignity in confronting the end they soon realized was inevitable quickly brought Doyle and Louise closer than either had ever been to another. When Tom died in their arms three weeks later, his last act was to gently take Louise's hand and join it with Doyle's. Later that summer, Doyle and Louise were married. The following spring their first child was born, a daughter, Mary Louise.

With an unsurpassed sense of contentment and security informing his personal life, Doyle found himself able for the first time to consider with some perspective the time he had spent in Jack's company. He knew that none of the royals or government officers whom Jack had served could ever publicly acknowledge his contributions, but then he had never looked for or expected personal reward.

After puzzling it through, and after many long discussions with his beloved Louise, Doyle realized at last that what disturbed him most deeply, what haunted his waking hours, was the ^thought that this vivid, valiant, and extraordinary man, who had selflessly given his life for Queen and country, could vanish from the earth without so much as a moment's acknowledgment. This was a profound injustice. Although he had personally sworn his service and secrecy in this matter to the Queen—and she was to call on him again, repeatedly, in years to come—Doyle in the end devised a way to honor his sworn oath to her, while paying tribute to the memory of the late Jonathan Sparks.

That night, with his wife and child lying safely in their beds, he reached for the pen that the Queen had given him and sat down to write a story about their mysterious friend.

EPILOGUE

HERE, THE RIVER GOES DEEP THERE, AT THE BASE OF THE

rocks. Current below is deep. Fast. The bodies, they are not always found."

Doyle stands on the boardwalk at the rim overlooking Reichenbach Falls, as his hired Swiss guide, a broad-faced genial young man, points down at the cataract below.

"People jump, from there, you see," the guide explains. "Women most frequent. Broken hearts. So many, over the years." The man shook his head in an earnest simulation of despond.

"I understand," says Doyle.

"Very sad place."

"Yes. Very sad."

A bright April morning in 1890. Publishing success about to transform his life forever, Dr. Doyle, Louise, and three-year-old daughter Mary Louise are enjoying their first excursion abroad.

"Has anyone ever survived?" asks Doyle.

The guide's brow knits tightly. "One woman. Yes. She comes out, seven kilometers south down the river. Does not remember her name."

Doyle nods, letting his gaze drift across the turbid water.

Farther down the boardwalk, strolling with her mother, little Mary Louise is captivated by the sight of an infant in its passing perambulator.

"Mummy, look at the baby," she says, leaning over the edge to peer down at the child.

The parents, an unremarkable lower-middle-class couple, are taking a first vacation since the birth of their son the year before. The father, Alois, is a customs official, the mother, Klara, a simple country girl from Bavaria.

"Look at the eyes, Mummy," says Mary. "Doesn't it have the most beautiful eyes?"

The baby's eyes are indeed beautiful. Inviting. Transfixing.

"Yes, he does, dear. Die Augen ist ... sehr schon," says Louise to the young parents, in her schoolgirl German.

"Thank you," says Klara politely.

"Wo kommen Sie heraus?" asks Louise.

"We come from Austria," answers Alois, uncomfortable with any foreigner, let alone an English gentlewoman.

Doyle, with the guard at the rail forty feet away, fails to notice their conversation.

"Braunau," adds Klara. "Braunau am Inn."

"We must go," says Alois, and with a brusque nod to Louise he takes Klara by the arm, turning her back the other way.

"Auf wiedersehen," says Louise.

"Auf wiedersehen," says Klara, with a sweet smile for Mary.

"Say good-bye now, Mary," says Louise.

"Bye-bye."

Mary spies her father and runs to tell him all about the baby with the extraordinary eyes, but by the time she reaches him, the thought has fled from her mind, like the mist rising from the falls below.

As Klara turns the pram around she leans down to straighten her son's bedding. She smiles at him, and says softly:

"Komm mit, Adolf."

THE END

(Tale Continues in Book Two: The Six Messiah)